Showdown at the Voucher Corral

...Weigelt himself says that Milwaukee unions have "accepted lower salary increases for the sake of maintaining the quality of the health and retirement plans...

...Thanks to Gardner, the Bradley Foundation, and Democratic mayor John O. Norquist, Milwaukee launched an ambitious choice experiment to remedy this situation...

...It's difficult to separate the influence of vouchers from everything else that went on in Milwaukee," says Frederick Hess, an American Enterprise Institute scholar who has written a book on the Milwaukee school-choice experiment...

...when he last ran for reelection in 1999, teachers' unions, People for the American Way (of which Gardner is a longtime member), and a host of other nationally organized leftist groups spent about $1 million to defeat him...

...John Gardner was the moral and intellectual heart of the school-choice movement in Milwaukee," says former Bradley Foundation president Eli Lehrer is senior editor of the American Enterprise...

...very likely the most ever spent for a local school board race...

...BY ELI LEHRER MILWAUKEE SCHOOL BOARD member John Gardner has a deep voice, a short temper, plenty of enemies, and left-leaning political views...

...They may surpass that amount this time...

...A publicly distributed Balistreri campaign plan, however, describes Gardner as a voucher candidate and says the campaign against him will rely mostly on unions like Weigelt's Administrators and Supervisors Council...

...The major job of a school board official ought to be to develop policy based on the recommendations of the school administrations," he says...

...More distressingly for diehard voucher opponents, Milwaukee's voucher program appears to have put to rest the idea that choice destroys public schools—the school district's enrollment has actually grown slightly and inflation-adjusted per-student spending has risen about a quarter...

...Activists can gain a lot if they work hard to take them over...

...But not all the news is good: Math scores in the public schools have risen slightly less than those elsewhere in the nation, 60 percent of African-American males fail to graduate from high school in four years, and improved parental choice has brought the greatest benefits to well-informed middle-class parents...

...And, actually, he's right about that...

...Gardner's opponents don't really want to talk about their plans regarding vouchers or, indeed, about anything else...

...First elected as an at-large member to the board governing America's 12th largest urban school district in 1995, Gardner, a union organizer by profession, made a name for himself with outspoken (sometimes outrageous) rhetoric and passionate support for Milwaukee's ambitious school-choice experiments...

...Despite his tussles with unions, though, Gardner continues to work as an independent labor organizer...

...Gardner has no money for television and has raised only a little more than he had at this time in 1999, when he and allied groups spent slightly under $200,000...

...He supports raising entry-level teacher pay and cutting back on the benefits for the long-timers who dominate the union hierarchy...

...So even though the election may turn out to be a critical one for the future of vouchers, Balistreri won't even talk about vouchers in public...

...The lack of grass-roots opposition to the voucher plan may make the left most nervous...

...One official evaluation in Milwaukee even showed that the vouchers made little or no difference (although most studies have shown positive effects...

...This reform era, however, may draw to a close with the April 1 elec-tion—the school-choice faction Gardner represents holds a 5-4 edge, but his reelection is in doubt...

...But if you are not, your kids just get dumped in some central area...

...Money Follows Students...

...Michael Joyce, who devoted the foundation's resources to funding a large-scale Milwaukee voucher experiment in the early 1990s...

...John Gardner is a meddler...

...Milwaukee Public Schools is a great system if you're willing to get involved," says Rick Marino, a staunch Gardner supporter who has two children in Milwaukee charter schools...

...They may be particularly afraid of him because he's a convert away from their cause...

...For all the fixation on vouchers (Nobel laureate Milton Friedman has donated $3,000 to Gardner's campaign), it's not clear that they've made an enormous difference in Milwaukee...

...Through a spokeswoman who would not give her name, Bal-istreri refused to comment on any issue related to the campaign...

...But that doesn't mean I favor warehousing of inner city youth...

...But he won't say much else: The Miliwaukee Journal Sentinel calls his plans "short on specifics...

...Whatever happens, Gardner will have a significant legacy...

...I firmly believe that labor unions are one of the cornerstones of democracy," he tells me...

...At public forums, Balistreri pushes uncontroversial efforts to retain quality teachers, continue the district's work in improving reading scores, and make schools safer...

...He complains that Gardner has spent too much time looking for problems in the school system and figuring out how to get reelected...

...Still, efforts to undo the reforms have little popular support...

...Weigelt says that his union never asked Balistreri about vouchers during the endorsement process and that it wants all charter schools to be unionized...

...Instead of attacking the choice movement head-on, teachers' unions and their supporters decided to attack the movement's leader...

...He's made real enemies from the teachers' union groups who regard him as, well, dangerous...

...He's always run on a nine-word platform: "Parents Choose Schools...

...He also has a bevy of support from nationally prominent conservatives and is fighting a broad spectrum of left-wing forces that want to end his political career...

...Since reform began in earnest in 1994, mixed but mostly positive academic outcomes have emerged: Reading and language scores have risen significantly and dropout rates have fallen (although they remain abysmally high...

...Tom Balistreri is running a campaign on the idea that John Gardner is divisive," says Gardner...

...And Gardner doesn't get along very well with most school unions...

...John Weigelt, who heads the Milwaukee principals' union, was the only prominent Balistreri supporter who would speak with me...

...Thanks in large part to Gardner and his political allies, Milwaukee's parents have more options than those in any other large urban school district: Of 105,000 students in the district nearly 15,000 get publicly funded vouchers to attend private and religious schools, while a roughly equal number attend scores of new charter schools that have sprouted all over the lakeside city...

...Stephen Moore, who heads the Club for Growth, says that the free-market group has never supported any candidate nearly as left-wing as Gardner...

...Gardner's opponent in the April 1 election—former high school principal Tom Balistreri—plans to run about a quarter-million dollars of television ads, Gardner says...

...While Milwaukee has done well with vouchers, school districts like Chicago and Wake County, North Carolina (which serves Raleigh-Durham), have shown similar or better student performance gains from voucher-less school reform schemes...

...This race shows that local school boards really matter to those who support school choice," says Ralph Benko, a Washington political consultant and longtime parent rights activist who serves as an adviser to Gardner's campaign...

...in the February primary for the non-partisan board, Balistreri beat Gardner by almost 1,000 votes out of 25,000 cast with about 2,000 going to a minister who has since endorsed Balistreri...

...Schools Make Decisions...

...When he first became involved in city politics in the early 1990s, everyone agreed that Milwaukee's schools needed some sort of drastic change: Test scores were among the lowest in the nation while dropout rates (over 60 percent) ranked among the highest...