How do parents pick Milwaukee schools? Results were shocking. See for yourself.

Yahoo

24-02-2025

How do Milwaukee parents choose schools for their children? Why do they make the choices they do? The answers to these questions are critical to understanding Milwaukee's current state and future improvements. Yet, no one has ever asked parents in depth. My group, the Institute for Reforming Government, decided to find out.
We polled Black and Hispanic parents on the North and South Sides of Milwaukee to better understand how equipped parents are to make school decisions for their kids and how happy they are with their options. The RMG Research, Inc. online poll includes the responses from 542 parents of school-aged children between Oct. 14 and 30, 2024. The margin of sampling error for the full sample is 4.2%.
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We were shocked by some of our findings. Here are 5 key points based on how the parents responded:
They must travel far for what they want. Parents most wanted schools with great academics (35%) and extracurriculars (15%), but also preferred a school that was close (22%). But too few good options are near their homes; 25% of parents had switched their child's school within the last 3 years. Seeking quality, 85% sent their children to a school outside their neighborhood. In fact, 29% enrolled in a school more than 15 minutes' drive away. Without good schools in every neighborhood, blight will dissolve the fabric of communities.
Families with the least resources struggle to choose schools. Parents who were unmarried or cohabitating, lower-earning, who seldom or never attend religious services, and are younger were less likely to know of great schools, prioritized distance over academics, and switched schools more often. For example, only 27% earning under $40,000 made academics their top reason for choosing their kids' schools, while 43% earning over $40,000 did. That leads to lots of student disruption and too many low-performing schools, particularly on the North Side.
Parents cannot choose the highest-performing schools if they do not know what they are. Thirty-eight percent of north siders had never heard of Saint Marcus; 34% of south siders had never heard of Reagan. Nearly 50% had no name recognition of terrific options like UCC, LUMIN, and ALBA. If even top schools with waiting lists have less name recognition than your average TikTok star, why are we surprised when parents move away?
Milwaukee Public Schools are their default choice. Ninety percent who picked a traditional MPS school for their oldest child also enrolled their other children in traditional MPS schools. However, only 75% of private-school parents and 55% of charter-school parents had all of their children in choice. Many parents only use choice-school alternatives after trying MPS.
Parents do not want their children to stay in Milwaukee. Only 32% wanted their children to settle down in Milwaukee someday, and only 20% more hoped for Milwaukee County. Black and low-earning parents were especially skeptical. It does no good for our region if we produce talent that buys a plane ticket out the first chance they get. Better schools will keep our families here.
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The urgency could not be greater. Milwaukee is likely to lose over 20% of its schoolchildren by 2040. Parents are sick of the educational chaos and are moving out, hindering prospects for a prosperous city and state. If we want to retain the best of our 250 schools, school leaders must adapt to what parents want, business leaders must help grow excellent schools, and political leaders must help parents more easily identify great schools.
Otherwise, school closures will be random, painful, and plentiful. Follow the numbers and help a new generation of Milwaukeeans bloom.
Quinton Klabon is Senior Research Director at the Institute for Reforming Government, a Wisconsin-based right-leaning think tank.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Majority of parents don't want children to stay in Milwaukee | Opinion