Two choice schools banned from program

Tomorrow's Journal Sentinel reports that Wisconsin has expelled Mandella School of Science and Math and Alex's Academics of Excellence from the Choice program. These two schools clearly had serious management problems for years and their termination was long overdue.

Despite their well-publicized financial and educational problems, the schools continued to attract students. Leaders at MPS should find this disturbing. Why would parents prefer a shaky private school to the local public schools? Have the parents tried the public school and found it wanting? Or do they have the impression that the public school is not nearly as anxious to enroll their students as are these two schools?

This action raises issues of what level of regulation is best for the Choice schools. Pure free market theorists would expect the schools to have collapsed on their own as parents found better schools. That they did not may reflect parents' sense of desperation. In practice most markets, such as the stock market, depend on regulation that allows consumers the assurance that minimal standards are met.

The danger is that the Department of Public Instruction will use this precedent to further regulate the schools, taking away some of their distinctiveness. A quote in the article is ominous: "We believe taxpayers and parents should have the same kind of accountability measures that are in place for public schools." Does that mean, for example, that DPI will resume pushing for certified teachers?

Update (July 23): An editorial in today's Journal Sentinel makes much the same two points:
1. Cutting off the two schools is a good thing.
2. But the comment about wanting to apply the same standards as for public schools is worrisome.