The Magazine

Showdown at the Voucher Corral

A high-stakes school board election in Milwaukee.

Mar 24, 2003, Vol. 8, No. 27 • By ELI LEHRER
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MILWAUKEE SCHOOL BOARD member John Gardner has a deep voice, a short temper, plenty of enemies, and left-leaning political views. 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.

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. He's always run on a nine-word platform: "Parents Choose Schools. Money Follows Students. Schools Make Decisions."

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.

This reform era, however, may draw to a close with the April 1 election--the school-choice faction Gardner represents holds a 5-4 edge, but his reelection is in doubt. "John Gardner was the moral and intellectual heart of the school-choice movement in Milwaukee," says former Bradley Foundation president Michael Joyce, who devoted the foundation's resources to funding a large-scale Milwaukee voucher experiment in the early 1990s. "He's made real enemies from the teachers' union groups who regard him as, well, dangerous."

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