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Unusual Allies: Elite and Grass-Roots Origins of Parental Choice in Milwaukee by Jim Carl — 1996This article outlines the development of the 1990 Milwaukee Parental Choice Program,
for several years the only publicly funded K?2 voucher program in the
United States. The program comprised an alliance of neoliberal reformers who
sought to extend competitive markets to public education and Milwaukee-based supporters
of a handful of inner-city “independent community schools?enrolling black
and Latino students. Five factors generated this conditional alliance: dissatisfaction
among many black Milwaukeeans with the Milwaukee Public Schools; the efforts of
multicultural supporters of community schools who had sought public funding for
two decades; the growth of black political power in Milwaukee during an era of
rightward-tilting state policies, as personified by state representative Polly Williams;
the actions of Governor Tommy Thompson to craft neoliberal and neoconservative
social policy; and the rise of Milwaukee’s Bradley Foundation as the nation’s premier
conservative grantmaker. This article suggests that, even given the serendipitous
alignment of forces necessary for Milwaukee parental choice, the establishment
of voucher programs in other large cities remains a distinct possibility.
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- Jim Carl
John Carroll University
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