Despite the absolute beating Republicans took in last week's midterms, there's a path forward for Republicans in Wisconsin, and it involves reaching out to Milwaukee residents. Parents in the city, home to one of the highest-funded and worst-performing public school districts in the nation — Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) – are about to get a swift kick in the teeth from Madison Democrats.
One of the trifecta's agenda items is repealing the state's robust school choice program. In Wisconsin, that's broken into three parts: the Wisconsin school choice program and separate programs for the Milwaukee and Racine school districts. If you live in one of the latter two districts, you can use school choice dollars to attend a private school in that district. The Wisconsin school choice program applies to districts outside of Milwaukee and Racine.
This is going to be a big problem for Milwaukee parents, because MPS now enrolls fewer than half of Milwaukee students.
MPS now enrolls fewer than half of Milwaukee students. https://t.co/moXsuEYmGg via @alanjborsuk
— Molly Beck (@MollyBeck) November 11, 2026
To put it another way, more than half the children in Milwaukee attend other schools (e.g. private or charter schools). It's understandable why they would do that, of course. Black students in MPS test at the bottom nationally in reading and math despite the district spending between $19,360 and $25,000 per student per year.
Despite all that money, the testing results are abysmal. Only 25 percent of students are proficient in English Language Arts (ELA); just 20 percent are proficient in math. Only 23 percent are proficient in science, and just 29 percent are proficient in Social Studies. That's for grades three through eight.
It gets worse in high school: 20 percent of students are proficient in ELA, 13 percent in math, and 15 percent in science.
Compare that to private schools in Milwaukee, where 31 percent are proficient in ELA, and 27 percent are proficient in math. Not great, but better. And that's why parents are choosing private schools.
Conservatives have always challenged the Left to assign a number to what is "enough" school funding. We're about to find out. No excuses. And when it's done, can we all agree that the schools have enough funding and are failing for other reasons? https://t.co/LtdMI4MoYb
— Owen (@bootsandsabers) November 11, 2026
Democrats will tell us they need to end school choice because it takes money from private schools. But MPS outspends every other school in the state, for results that are an embarrassment and a disgrace. Money will not fix this, but it's not about educating children. It's about funneling taxpayer dollars to public schools and teachers' unions, who then turn around and funnel that money back into Democrat coffers.
As Mike Rogers pointed out in Michigan, students who fail in school are very likely to end up either in prison or on welfare. Of course, both of those outcomes benefit Democrats, who do not care if your child is illiterate. In fact, they want your children to grow up unable to read and do math. That illiteracy is an obstacle to getting a decent-paying job, which creates another welfare-dependent Democrat voter.
But if more than half of students aren't enrolled in MPS, this is an opportunity for Republicans, if they're bold and smart enough. When — not if, but when — Democrats nuke the state's school choice programs, Republicans should engage in massive outreach of urban voters, vowing to return the school choice program so their children can get the education they deserve, an education Democrats deny them for their own political gain.
