Review of Wisconsin's Most Cost-Effective K-12 Program

OCTOBER 28, 2025

False Claims and Faulty Methods Doom Wisconsin Voucher Report

An NEPC Review funded by the Great Lakes Center

Key Takeaway: School Choice Wisconsin report's conclusions about the cost effectiveness of private school vouchers rest on invalid methods and inaccurate data.

GRAND RAPIDS, MI (OCTOBER 28, 2025) - As one of the nation's longest-running private school voucher initiatives, Wisconsin's program has drawn decades of research interest. A recent report from a think tank called School Choice Wisconsin considers the cost-effectiveness of voucher-receiving schools in Racine, Milwaukee, and across the state.

University of Miami professor Bruce Baker reviewed Wisconsin's Most Cost-Effective K-12 Program , which claims that Wisconsin's voucher-receiving schools are far more cost effective than public district schools. Baker found the report's conclusions to be not just flawed, but completely wrong.

The report compares revenues and student outcomes between public district schools and private voucher schools, concluding that the latter produce better outcomes for every $1,000 in revenue per pupil. Professor Baker, in concluding that the report is both "flawed" and "wrong," explains that a flawed analysis applies the right method poorly; a wrong analysis uses the wrong method altogether. Charitably, this report does both.

Cost-effectiveness ratios, as used in this report, are wholly inadequate for evaluating the relative efficiency or productivity of educational institutions serving non-randomly distributed student populations. Moreover, even if one were to accept the report's unfounded premise, its imprecision and inaccuracy in reporting spending, outcomes, and demographics severely undermine its findings.

Put simply, Baker concludes, School Choice Wisconsin has conducted the wrong analysis, and done it the wrong way. The report offers no valid insight for informing education policy in Wisconsin or anywhere else.

Find the review, by Bruce D. Baker, at:

https://www.greatlakescenter.org

Find Wisconsin's Most Cost-Effective K-12 Program, from School Choice Wisconsin, at:

https://schoolchoicewi.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Wisconsins-Most-Cost-Effective-K-12-Program.pdf

NEPC Reviews ( https://nepc.colorado.edu/reviews ) provide the public, policymakers, and the press with timely, academically sound reviews of selected publications. NEPC Reviews are made possible in part by support provided by the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice: https://www.greatlakescenter.org .

The mission of the Great Lakes Center for Education Research & Practice is to support and disseminate high-quality research and reviews of research for the purpose of informing education policy and to develop research-based resources for use by those who advocate for education reform.

Visit the Great Lakes Center website at GreatLakesCenter.org

Contacts

Michelle Renee Valladares

Bruce D. Baker