Milwaukee State Representative Chris Sinicki has proposed a long list of regulatory measures that would add huge administrative costs to private schools that participate in the MPCP.

The number of Milwaukee children attending private schools using publicly funded vouchers has crossed 20,000 for the first time, according to data released by the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction.

Presidential hopefuls John McCain and Barack Obama aren�t the only ones gearing up for an intense battle this fall. Some hotly contested Wisconsin races are on the horizon, as Democrats try to wrestle control from Republicans in the state Assembly, and Republicans try to flip the state Senate.

Students in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP) graduate at a higher rate than students in the Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS), according to an analysis of five years of data by a national expert.

The Milwaukee Chapter of the Black Alliance for Educational Options opposes Representative Christine Sinicki�s Assembly Bill 919, which threatens to destroy the 18- year-old Milwaukee Parental Choice Program. (MPCP).

We released a set of five baseline reports on the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program last month, the first new studies of the voucher program using individual student data since 1995.

Get ready. In two ways, those words fill the day at St. Anthony School. There's the literal sense.

Number 68 on my list of reasons I drive my kids all the way to Wauwatosa for school is that the classroom parties in October marked All Saints' Day: Candy, games and traditional Catholicism instead of pumpkins. Call me weird, but I was pleased.

The release last month of initial research reports on the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP) provided a wealth of information. I welcome these reports and the dozens that will follow in the next several years.

I have spent the past couple of months in situations with many children in our community listening to their words of pain. The children are hurting, and the adult leadership in this community is not listening.

A major research effort that aims to measure the effects of the Milwaukee voucher program this week released a baseline portrait of the program, its students, and a comparable group of students in the city�s public schools.

Voucher schools are helping students, and there's nothing wrong with trumpeting that. At the very least, low-income children get the same choice as more affluent ones.

Students who participate in Milwaukee�s private-school-voucher program graduate from high school at significantly higher rates than those who attend regular secondary schools in the city, a new study contends.

This, at last, was the smoking gun, the think-tank plastique that could finish off school choice.

Mary Budiac, a teacher, tells how one of her third-graders did unusually poorly on a quiz - a little low-stakes math quiz. Budiac's school, St. Anthony's, the largest in Milwaukee's private school choice program, offers many lessons. One is a contradiction of the notion that parents won't choose a better education.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel misrepresented a new study about school choice from the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute ("Choice may not improve schools, study says," Oct. 24). The paper's flawed coverage has generated considerable attention in Wisconsin and nationally.

Ho-hum: Another study suggesting good results from school choice in Milwaukee, not that it will make much of a dent with the opposition.

Joel McNally combines comical reasoning with outright lies to argue in his Saturday column that the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program explains "why education for black children in Wisconsin is worse than education for blacks elsewhere."

The number of students using public money to attend private schools in Milwaukee dropped by almost 400 between September and January, according to the state Department of Public Instruction.

The gaps haven't closed and achievement hasn't improved much, but the work goes on, with both some positive and negative signs.

In an effort to keep Catholic education in the central city strong, Milwaukee Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan said Monday that Messmer Catholic Schools will take control of two core inner city programs, St. Leo and St. Rose elementary schools.