WisconsinWatch.org » Education

Key findings: Mental health services at UW System campuses

WisconsinWatch — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 06:05:43 +0000

About this story

Jenny Peek and Kate Prengaman reported this story with other journalism students in a UW-Madison class taught by Professor Deborah Blum, in collaboration with the nonprofit, nonpartisan Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism and the Investigative Journalism Education Consortium, which includes Midwestern university journalism professors and students working on news projects in the public interest. The Consortium is supported by a grant from the Robert R. McCormick Foundation. Read the IJEC consortium stories
Main story: Gaps persist in campus mental health services

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Explore data on mental health services across the UW System

In collaboration with a reporting class taught by UW-Madison Professor Deborah Blum, the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism examined mental health services at the University of Wisconsin System’s 13 four-year campuses. The project included extensive public records requests, interviews with students and officials, and data analyses.

Key findings include:

More UW students are seeking mental health care, reflecting nationwide trends.
In response, campus counseling centers are identifying and treating urgent cases first, emphasizing group therapy, limiting counseling sessions and referring students to off-campus providers when they need longer-term care.
In 2011, just eight campuses met recommendations made by a 2008 University of Wisconsin System subcommittee audit calling for one mental health provider for every 2,000 students. The average was about one mental health provider for every 2,027 students across the 13 campuses.
Only two schools — UW-Stevens Point and UW-Superior — met the stricter international standard of one provider for every 1,000 to 1,500 students.
Campuses are trying to follow up more closely with high-risk students referred off campus, another of the subcommittee’s recommendations. UW-Madison, for example, hired a full-time case manager in 2010 who works only on student referrals.
To improve access, some campuses have introduced programs like “Let’s Talk,” in which counselors try to reach students who may not be comfortable seeking therapy.
Students are forming campus mental health groups to support peers and fight stigma.

— Amy Karon

The Center also collaborates with Wisconsin Public Television, Wisconsin Public Radio and other news media. Works created, published, posted or disseminated by the Center do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of UW-Madison or its affiliates.

Stressed: Demands, counselor shortages strain Midwest campus mental health systems

WisconsinWatch — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 06:01:54 +0000

About this story

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Explore data on mental health services across the UW System

By Pam Dempsey and Brant Houston
For the Investigative Journalism Education Consortium

Counseling and psychiatric services at Midwest universities are buckling under the increased demand from students — many of whom are entering schools with more serious illnesses than ever seen before.

Indeed, many counseling programs are failing to meet the nationally accepted standards for counselor-to-student ratios, leading to longer waits for assistance and a limited number of sessions, an investigation by a consortium of Midwest journalism faculty and students has found.

The consortium also found that many campuses have not implemented key recommendations made to improve campus safety and mental health services in the wake of the fatal shootings at Virginia Tech in 2007 and at Northern Illinois University in 2008.

In addition, the consortium discovered that counseling centers are juggling limited staff and cutting programs because of shrinking budgets.

All this comes at a time when counselors are seeing more students entering college with histories of mental illness.

In the past, “if someone had a mental illness, college was not a feasible option,” said Christy Hutton, programming and communications coordinator for the University of Missouri’s counseling center. “They either received long-term treatment for their illness or they were placed in a closet and hidden from the rest of society.”

Now, she said, it is possible for most students to balance outpatient care and college coursework because of the treatment and medication they received before they entered college.

The five-month examination of programs was conducted by the Investigative Journalism Education Consortium, a network of journalism faculty and students at Midwest universities and colleges. The project is funded by the Robert R. McCormick Foundation based in Chicago.

The consortium reviewed services at more than two dozen campuses in Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana and Missouri. In its ongoing review, the consortium found that centers often fell far short of the number of mental health providers recommended by the International Association of Counseling Services.

The association’s recommendation for staffing levels calls for college counseling centers requires a minimum of one mental health provider for every 1,500 students. Yet most campuses have ratios of one provider for more than 2,000 students, with some having ratios as high as one mental health provider for every 16,000 students.

As a result, students in need wait weeks for appointments and get only a few sessions. In some cases, outreach programs and preventative services have been cut, reduced or turned over to trained students to run.

“It means making tough choices,” said Carla McCowan, director of the counseling center at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. “It’s a nick here and a nick there because I can’t cut people, really. I can’t cut clinicians.”

The situation is frustrating and worrisome for many students.

For example, when University of Wisconsin-Madison senior Rachel Steidl sought counseling services this year, she was assessed the same day under a new process at her Madison campus. But because her immediate needs weren’t deemed urgent, she was asked to wait three weeks for her next appointment.

“If my depression gets worse, it could escalate,” Steidl said. “I want to avoid getting to the point where I have to call the crisis hot line.”

As part of its review, the consortium culled through data and documents and conducted numerous interviews with mental health providers, experts, university administrators and students.

Among the consortium’s findings:

Four years ago, a University of Wisconsin System subcommittee recommended that, in the short term, its four-year institutions try to meet 75 percent of the association’s staffing standard or one mental health provider for every 2,000 students. The average is now is about one mental health provider for every 2,027 students across its 13 campuses. But when students at the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism used the subcommittee’s methods to re-calculate ratios for 2010-2011, it found that five campuses failed to meet that standard.
In Missouri, the University of Missourice-Kansas City has seen a 175 percent increase in the number of students seeking services over the past decade, while the University of Missouri-Columbia saw 80 percent more students seeking services over the past five years. At the Columbia campus, there were 602 students seen for individual, couple or group therapy in the 2006-2007 school year. For the 2010-2011 school year, there were 1,091 students seen.

At the Kansas City campus, there were about 830 students seen for therapy in the 2010-2011, up from 300 students during the 2000-2001 school year.

On average, University of Missouri says it has one mental health provider for every 1,900 students.
In Indiana’s public universities, counseling centers have been consistently understaffed. As a result, trainees are heavily used to provide clinical services. Ratios range from one mental health provider for every 2,208 student to one mental health provider for more than 16,000 students.
Southern Illinois University Carbondale has one mental health provider for every 3,000 students, while the ratio at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is one counselor for every 2,100 students.

“We start to get a wait list and what that means is that a student comes in this week but we won’t have any ongoing openings for three more weeks,” said Rosemary Simmons, director of counseling at Southern Illinois University Carbondale.

Simmons added, “For the past 10 years, we have had a built-in triage system and so we really make an effort to meet every student when they come in to make an initial assessment.”

The consortium also looked into other issues related to mental health on campus, including psychiatric treatment and the creation of behavioral or threat assessment teams.

In some instances, it was difficult to assess problems because campuses did not provide information despite repeated requests.

National experts say the challenges at Midwest universities reflect national trends.

A 2011 National Survey of Counseling Center Directors found an influx of students with serious psychological problems including large increases in crisis issues that require an immediate response and an increase in students arriving on campus already on psychiatric medication.

“Sometimes counseling centers have to decide which is the least worse because there’s no money,” said Dan Jones, president of the Association for University and College Counseling Center Directors. “There are some things you just can’t address because of the budgets.”

Gaps persist in campus mental health services

WisconsinWatch — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 06:01:52 +0000

Matt Vohl (left) meets with Rachel Steidl in the Student Activity Center on East Campus Mall in Madison, Wis., Jan. 27, 2012. Vohl and Steidl help lead the UW-Madison campus chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness. Lukas Keapproth/Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

SIDEBARS

About this story

Other UW-Madison journalism students contributing to this report were Anna Bukowski, Gayle Cottrill, Monica Hickey, Thomas Mitchell, Daniel Rose and Sam Zastrow.

By Amy Karon, Kate Prengaman and Jenny Peek
Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

A decade ago, Thomas Murphy was a college dropout who used alcohol and drugs to deal with undiagnosed depression. Now he’s back at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he co-leads a chapter of Active Minds, a national, student-run group promoting open conversations about mental illness.

Therapy made the difference for Murphy. But he can’t receive it at school. When he re-enrolled at UW-Madison and went to the counseling center, he walked out with no appointment and a list of referrals.

“They couldn’t help me because of my extensive history,” Murphy said. “So I go out and pay on my own for the services I need.”

Murphy’s story underscores a national dilemma: a surge in students seeking intensive counseling and psychiatric care, which college mental health centers often lack resources to provide. The problem has become even more urgent in the wake of mass shootings by troubled students at Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois universities.

In Wisconsin, understaffed counseling centers are prioritizing services for those with urgent needs, expanding group therapy options to reach more students, and referring patients off campus for long-term treatment. And students like Murphy are forming campus organizations to support peers and fight the stigma of mental illness.

A growing need

Step onto a U.S. college campus today and you’ll still find students rushing between classes or holding hands with first loves.

But 80 percent of college counseling center directors reported seeing more students in crisis during the past five years, according to a national survey in 2011. The same study found that students with severe psychological problems now account for nearly 40 percent of counseling center visits — more than double the proportion in 2000.

Last spring, 19 percent of college students surveyed by the American College Health Association said they’d been diagnosed with depression sometime in their lives, up from 12 percent a decade ago. Almost one in five students had seriously considered suicide.

These statistics aren’t all bad news, said psychologist Danielle Oakley, director of mental health services at UW-Madison, where counseling visits increased 10 percent last year alone. More people know about mental illness and are seeking help, and better psychiatric medications enable some to attend college who couldn’t have a generation ago.

But Oakley said the faltering economy is fueling worries about paying for school. Many students are stressed, overworked and sleep-deprived, which can cause mental health problems.

Though studies show people with serious mental illness usually aren’t violent, there have been tragic exceptions: In 2007 and 2008, troubled students shot themselves after killing 37 people and wounding dozens more at Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois universities.

Campuses across the country responded by revamping policies for handling disturbed students and staff. At UW campuses, threat assessment teams — whose members hail from deans’ offices, academic departments, campus police, and counseling centers — try to identify and help such people before they hurt themselves or others.

“If there is a silver lining in something like that happening, it’s put the spotlight on some needs on our campus,” said John Achter, counseling director at UW-Stout.

Still, most people with mental illness fly under the teams’ radar. And despite attempts to meet demand, Wisconsin students are being turned away — or told to wait weeks for care.

UW-Madison senior Rachel Steidl, Jan. 27, 2012. Lukas Keapproth/Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

Long waits, but some improvements

UW-Madison senior Rachel Steidl was one such student. “I grew up really focused on helping other people,” she said. “When I had my own problems with depression, I didn’t feel like I had anyone to turn to. I was pretty lonely my freshman year.”

Steidl later saw a psychology intern at the campus counseling center. She learned to open up more and made friends. When she returned to the center this year, an intake provider saw her the same day to assess her needs.

That’s because at Oakley’s urging, UW-Madison began offering same-day assessments in early 2011.

“We don’t want any barriers to get to us,” Oakley said. “The day you decide that you want support, all you have to do is walk in.”

But what happened next frustrated Steidl. Because her immediate needs weren’t deemed urgent, she said, she was asked to wait three weeks for her next appointment.

At UW-Madison, crisis line staffers keep up with demand

The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s crisis line received 14 percent more calls last academic year than ever before, but data suggest staffers have kept up with demand. Last fall, the average time to answer was 19 seconds, 86 percent of calls were answered within 30 seconds, and the longest hold times were a few minutes, said Dr. Sarah Van Orman, University Health Services director.
— Amy Karon

“If my depression gets worse, it could escalate,” she said. “I want to avoid getting to the point where I have to call the crisis hot line.”

Most UW campuses use such triage systems to help students in crisis first. UW-Eau Claire student Anneliese Vaini, for example, was prescribed Paxil when she sought help for panic attacks in 2009. After she stopped eating and sleeping and went on a “financially disastrous” shopping spree, her campus counselor and psychiatrist correctly identified and treated her bipolar disorder — ending eight years of bouncing between clinicians who’d misdiagnosed her.

“They saved my life. Literally,” said Vaini, who now works as a pet groomer. “I wasn’t able to complete a degree, but they gave me a brighter future than education.”

But Steidl’s wait time is more typical. Last fall, UW-Madison students went an average of 14 days between their intake appointment and first regular counseling session, said Dr. Sarah Van Orman, health services director. Other UW campuses report similar waits.

Such delays stem partly from inadequate staffing. A UW System audit found that five years ago, only UW-Madison met the international standard of one mental health professional for every 1,000 to 1,500 students. The auditors recommended that over the short term, UW institutions aim to employ one mental health staffer for every 2,000 students.

But as of 2011, just eight of 13 campuses had achieved that ratio, an analysis by the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism showed. Of those, only two schools — UW-Stevens Point and UW-Superior— met the international standard.

The average was about one mental health provider for every 2,027 students across the 13 campuses.

To improve counselors’ availability, UW-Madison wait-lists students for earlier sessions, offers daily drop-in groups and confidential consultations in several campus locations, and has more than 25 process and support groups to help students deal with issues ranging from low self-esteem, grief and social anxiety to graduating or coming out as a sexual minority.

None of these options was right for Steidl, though. She found a therapist in private practice.

Thomas Murphy’s face still bears scars from a violent mugging three years ago in the Dominican Republic. During his treatment for a resulting brain injury, he also got the counseling he needed for depression. Photo taken Jan. 23, 2012. Lukas Keapproth/Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

Referred off campus, some never find help

It took a violent mugging in the Dominican Republic in 2008 for Thomas Murphy to finally face his depression. During rehabilitation for a brain injury, he also got the counseling he’d needed.

Milwaukee native Mary Martinco sought help sooner, seeing a therapist for depression for two years in high school. But transitioning to UW-Madison was painful.

“Freshman year I felt so alone, crying all the time,” recalled Martinco, now a junior.

Like Murphy, Martinco sought help at UW-Madison’s counseling services and left with a list of off-campus referrals. But in her case, they either weren’t a good match or didn’t take her insurance. In the end, it was her mother, not her school, who helped her find a therapist.

Most UW counseling centers limit students’ counseling sessions. UW-Madison students like Martinco, who need more than the 10 permitted each academic year, are often asked to go elsewhere from the beginning.

Oakley said that’s because making students change therapists disrupts their treatment. But a 2006 University of California-Davis study found that 42 percent of students referred off campus never connected with providers — usually because of financial concerns.

To address that problem and help prevent tragedies like those at Northern Illinois and Virginia Tech, UW System officials recommended in 2008 that campus providers follow up with high-risk students to help ensure they’re successfully referred.

A half-time case manager now fills this role at UW-Oshkosh. And in 2010, after Martinco’s failed referral experience, UW-Madison hired a full-time case manager who saw 300 students her first year— five times more than expected.

Still, lack of health insurance “poses great barriers” for students referred off campus, Van Orman said. She cited campus surveys that show 6 to 8 percent of students at UW-Madison are uninsured and another 30 to 40 percent have no coverage in the Madison area.

The case manager connects these students to agencies that charge a fraction of the going rate or to the student health insurance plan. She also helps students navigate deductibles and co-pays.

Some students struggle to pay for psychiatric prescriptions. Martinco saw peers risk going off medication when short on cash. She and Murphy said they knew students who self-medicated with alcohol or illegal drugs because they couldn’t afford mental health care.

“The self-medication issue is complex,” Oakley said. “For example, students who use substances such as alcohol to treat anxiety can end up with substance abuse problems in addition to their anxiety.”

Alcohol withdrawal symptoms can mimic anxiety, Oakley added, leading students to drink more or use stronger drugs. In the end, she said, money spent on drugs and alcohol, lost time at work, medical treatment for accidents and legal consequences can far outstrip medication costs.

UW-Madison senior Matt Vohl, Jan. 27, 2012. Lukas Keapproth/Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

Student groups expand

Frustrated by her experiences on campus, Steidl joined fellow student Matt Vohl two years ago in reviving the campus chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

“We saw a lack of resources available for students with mental illness or even just mental health problems,” Vohl said. “We wanted to offer an alternative.”

Students responded en masse: More than 70 signed up at the campus organizational fair last September, Vohl said. A month later, they peppered Bascom Hill with signs.

“The best way to reduce the stigma is by educating people,” Vohl said. “We want to let people know that (mental illness) is not this inherent condition that makes people freaks, it’s not demonizing, it shouldn’t be taboo. It’s something that can affect anyone.”

Steidl and Vohl are working with the counseling center to train students to provide confidential, face-to-face support for peers who want to talk about everyday problems.

“You can go there and know that people kind of understand you at least,” said a member with obsessive-compulsive disorder who asked not to be named for privacy reasons. “You get to know their struggles every day, whatever they are, and to be there to be support for them and other people as well.”

Murphy and Martinco now run UW-Madison’s branch of Active Minds, which promotes mental health awareness. Five other Wisconsin campuses also have chapters. At UW-Parkside last semester, members practiced yoga, colored and made squeezable stress balls.

“Finally I feel able to talk about it, and I want to help others talk about it too,” Martinco said.

“I had this deeper, darker side that I never talked about,” Murphy agreed. “For me, communicating my emotions, my struggles, and my successes has been vital.”

Amy Karon is a reporter for the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism. Kate Prengaman, Jenny Peek and Sam Zastrow contributed as students in a UW-Madison journalism class taught by Professor Deborah Blum, in collaboration with the nonprofit, nonpartisan Center (www.WisconsinWatch.org).

Campus mental health: Connect, learn, find help

WisconsinWatch — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 06:01:47 +0000

About this story

Interactive map

Explore data on mental health services across the UW System

If you’re in crisis, call:
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline
1-800-273-TALK (8255)
TTY: 1-800-799-4TTY (4889)
Español: 1-888-628-9454

Veterans crisis line
1-800-273-TALK (8255): Press 1
Or text to 838255
Or chat confidentially on the crisis line website

UW-Madison’s 24-hour mental health crisis line: 608-265-5600

Campus resources

Interactive map with links and summaries of University of Wisconsin counseling centers.

UW-Madison chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI)
uw.nami@gmail.com
608-268-6000

Active Minds
Chapters exist at Marquette University, UW-Madison, UW-Milwaukee, the Milwaukee School of Engineering, UW-Parkside and Carthage College.

Supporting Peers in Laidback Listening (SPILL)
Chapters exist at UW-La Crosse, UW-Madison and UW-Whitewater.

Off-campus organizations and links

National Institute of Mental Health

NAMI Wisconsin
608-68-6000
800-236-2988

Mental Health America of Wisconsin
Milwaukee office:
414-276-3122 or toll-free 866-948-6483
info@mhawisconsin.org
Madison office:
608-250-4368
shelgross@tds.net

Helping Others Prevent and Educate about Suicide (HOPES)
608-274-9686

Wisconsin Department of Health Services: mental health and substance abuse programs

Prior mental health coverage from the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

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Wisconsin suicide toll rises, exceeds that of neighboring states

UW-Milwaukee strives to improve mental health care

WisconsinWatch — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 06:01:19 +0000

About this story

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Explore data on mental health services across the UW System

Five years ago, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee had the worst mental health care of any four-year UW institution, by some measures.

Students waited the longest for counseling appointments — up to four weeks, according to a UW System audit. UWM had just one counselor for every 4,289 students, the highest ratio of any four-year UW campus and nearly three times worse than the international standard.

But the university has worked to shift those figures. In 2008, it formed a task force to identify students’ needs and find ways to improve. Some outcomes:

The university hired two more counselors and quadrupled its number of counseling groups, said counseling center director Paul Dupont.
Like most other UW campuses, UWM now uses a triage system to identify and help at-risk students first.
Staffers now follow up with students referred off campus for treatment. They also track high-risk students throughout their care, Dupont said, and notify authorities if students who leave counseling are considered imminently likely to hurt themselves or others.
The campus has stepped up suicide prevention efforts, having trained about 675 students, faculty and staff how to recognize when someone could be suicidal and assist.
To encourage students to seek help when they might not be comfortable coming to therapy, plans are under way for counselors to offer all students first-come, first-serve consultations at designated times and locations outside the counseling center.

Those changes have brought results. While UWM’s counselor-to-student ratio remains the worst among four-year UW institutions, it has improved by 20 percent. Wait times have dropped to three weeks during busy times of the semester, said Dupont, even though there’s been a 32 percent increase in the number of new counseling appointments in the last two years.

— Daniel Rose and Amy Karon

At UW-Stout, ‘obsessive’ data crunching to save — and improve — lives

WisconsinWatch — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 06:01:06 +0000

About this story

Interactive map

Explore data on mental health services across the UW System

By Sam Zastrow and Amy Karon
Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

The University of Wisconsin-Stout had a problem, counseling director John Achter told the student association last year. Twenty-two percent more students were seeking counseling services than ever before, forcing patients to wait up to 26 days to be seen.

Presented with those numbers, the association designated enough money for Achter to hire a new counselor.

That’s the power of data, Achter says, and why his counseling center’s number crunching borders on “obsessive.” Creating detailed analyses of who uses campus mental health services and why enables Achter to better direct resources to help students in need.

But some UW counseling centers don’t track even basic information on patients. UW-Milwaukee doesn’t count the number of students seen, for example, only the number of appointments. And though UW-Green Bay collects data on patients’ races and ethnicities, it does so on paper forms that it doesn’t analyze — despite the fact that it has the second-highest percentage of Native American students of any UW campus, and Native Americans have the highest suicide rate of any racial or ethnic group in the state.

“We have been trying to reach out to all students, including Native American students,” said Amy Henniges, UW-Green Bay health services director.

Henniges said that although a campus counselor focuses on suicide prevention, the counseling center could do more to reach Native American students through UW-Green Bay’s intercultural center. She added that she is seeking funds to convert to an electronic medical record to improve data reporting.

Achter, for his part, now chairs a UW System subcommittee — created on the heels of a 2008 audit that reported inconsistent data tracking by UW campus mental health centers — which aims to standardize the information collected. The effort, he says, will enable providers to compare “apples to apples,” improving mental health care throughout UW System.

UW-Madison journalism student Monica Hickey contributed reporting.

UW bias busters not open about funding

WisconsinWatch — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 16:39:47 +0000

Bill Lueders, Money and Politics Project Director.

By Bill Lueders
Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

The other day a journalism professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison asked me if I knew where the Center for Equal Opportunity gets its funding.

It’s a good question.

The Virginia-based center, which opposes affirmative action and bilingual education, recently released a pair of reports accusing the UW-Madison of rampant discrimination — against white people and Asians. The beneficiaries of this alleged bias are African Americans and Latinos.

Center chairman Linda Chavez, a prominent conservative, called it “the most severe undergraduate admissions discrimination” her group has found over the past 15 years. She said hundreds of applicants to the university and its law school “are rejected in favor of students with lower test scores and grades” for discriminatory reasons, like “the wrong skin color.”

That an outside group would raise a fuss about reverse discrimination at UW-Madison, commonly seen as having too little diversity, struck some as peculiar. (The Wisconsin State Journal ran a cartoon on the controversy showing a lone black male in a sea of white faces with the caption, “Affirmative action run amok at the UW-Madison.”)

The center’s study claims that, for undergraduates in 2007 and 2008, UW-Madison “admitted more than seven out of every 10 black applicants, and more than eight out of 10 Hispanics, versus roughly six in 10 Asians and whites.”

These conclusions are drawn from information obtained from UW-Madison, but they seem at odds with other university numbers. While directly comparable data are not currently available, the UW-Madison’s numbers for new freshmen as well as for transfer students show considerably lower admission rates for blacks than for whites in both fall 2007 and fall 2008.

According to these numbers, only 43 and 41 percent of black freshman applicants were admitted during these years, compared to admission rates of 57 and 55 percent for whites, respectively.

I asked Roger Clegg, the center’s president, about this apparent discrepancy. He suggested several general possibilities, like that the university gave the center inaccurate data, but said he doubted it would undermine the “overwhelming evidence of discriminatory treatment that we found.”

And what about the group’s funding? I couldn’t find any information about this on its website.

“I don’t know whether we post that or not,” Clegg told me, in one of several conversations. Nor would he tell me where his group gets its money, except to say it’s all from individuals and foundations, not the government or corporations.

Clegg did point out a recent statement in which the Milwaukee-based Lynne and Harry Bradley Foundation says it “substantially supports” the center’s work. He said this and other funders were all “mainstream conservative foundations.”

But why not say who they are? That’s what we do at the nonprofit and nonpartisan Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism, supported in part by grants from foundations established by lefty billionaire George Soros, which have supplied about 30 percent of our overall funding. All three dozen of our funding sources are listed online — and the money comes with no editorial strings attached.

We believe people ought to be able to learn this, and to gauge for themselves whether it matters.

The Center for Equal Opportunity’s nonprofit tax filing for 2009 shows that it raised about $476,000. But the public report does not reveal where the group’s funding comes from, and the law allows public charities to withhold this information.

Media Matters, a progressive watchdog (yes, it’s gotten money from Soros), lists about $5 million in foundation grants to the center from 1995 to 2009. This includes $1.6 million from the John M. Olin Foundation, $850,000 from the Bradley Foundation, and $845,000 from the Sarah Scaife Foundation.

I emailed this list to Clegg on Sept. 23 and invited him to provide additional information or perspective. He didn’t.

Bill Lueders is the Money and Politics Project director at the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism. The project, a partnership of the Center and MapLight, is supported by the Open Society Institute.

The nonprofit and nonpartisan Center (www.WisconsinWatch.org) collaborates with Wisconsin Public Television, Wisconsin Public Radio and the UW-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication and other news media. All works created, published, posted or disseminated by the Center do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of UW-Madison or any of its affiliates.

School choice advocates hope to build on gains

WisconsinWatch — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 05:01:32 +0000

Jim Bender, president of School Choice Wisconsin. Joseph W. Jackson III/Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

PART THREE OF THREE IN A SERIES

PART ONE: The selling of school choice: A national network. Sept. 18, 2011.
PART TWO: School choice big winner in state. Sept. 21, 2011.
PART THREE: School choice advocates hope to build on gains.

Racine expansion shows movement’s clout

By Bill Lueders
Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

Jim Bender, president of the advocacy group School Choice Wisconsin, has a ready answer for those who charge that giving tax dollars so students can attend private schools is taking away money from public schools: “It’s not their money. It’s taxpayers’ money. It’s parents’ money.”

The decision on how this money is spent, he says, resides with the Legislature: “It’s not about a system. It’s not about a district. It’s about a student. If we put the student’s needs first, then there’s no problem with having the money following the child.”

Beginning this fall, the money is going to be following children from public to private schools in Racine.

The 2011-13 state budget authorized vouchers for 250 Racine students this year and 500 students in 2012-13; thereafter, enrollment will be open to all eligible applicants. Eight local private schools have been approved to participate.

“I’m ecstatic about this,” says Laura Sumner Coon, executive director of SOAR (Scholarships, Opportunities & Access in Racine), a school choice advocacy group. “This is great news for us.”

Sumner Coon says her group was able to raise just $50,000 over two years for a scholarship fund for private schools, enough to serve 13 children. Now she expects most if not all of the 250 voucher slots to be filled this fall.

The program is open only to students entering private schools in kindergarten or first grade, as new arrivals to the area, or those switching from public schools. Also eligible are students entering high school from eighth grade, even if they are just moving from one to another private school.

Among the new choice students is Miguel Rodriguez, 6, a first grader at Trinity Lutheran. Miguel, abandoned by his mother, has been raised since he was two weeks old by Kathy Robison and her husband Robert of Racine. The couple, who have four children of their own and raised three adopted kids, now all adults, are Miguel’s legal guardians.

Miguel Rodriquez with guardian Kathy Robison at Trinity Lutheran, a voucher school in Racine where Miguel is attending first grade. Mark Hertzberg/Racine Journal Times

Kathy Robison says Miguel was born with fetal alcohol syndrome; he has a speech impediment and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. About a month after they got Miguel, Robert Robison was diagnosed with Parkison’s, now in stage 4. He can no longer work.

“God has always provided for us,” says Kathy, who believes God gave the couple Miguel “to help us get through my husband’s illness.”

Last year, the couple paid to send Miguel to kindergarten at Trinity Lutheran, which most of their other children have attended. This year the state is picking up the tab, which is a relief.

Once a week, Kathy takes Miguel for an hour of speech therapy at one of Racine’s public schools. But she’s grateful he is able to attend school in “a Christian environment” — from now until he graduates from high school.

At what cost?

According to the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau, expanding vouchers to Racine will add nearly $3 million to the state’s costs over the next two school years, after aid reductions to the Racine Unified School District are factored in.

The Fiscal Bureau estimates the district will see a $618,000 state aid reduction in 2011-12 and $1.2 million in 2012-13 due to the voucher program. But Bender says the district “gets to make up for 100 percent of the state aid reduction in the same manner they have done for independent charter schools for years,” through local property taxes at a lower per-student cost than for Racine public school students.

And Sumner Coon says it will be several years before the program’s impact is fully felt, giving the district time to adjust: “They need to make some changes.”

The district says the voucher plan comes on top of a $25 million funding shortfall, mostly due to budget cuts. In August, it cut 123.5 full-time equivalent positions, including 85 educational assistant jobs, along with some administrators, secretaries and teachers, according to district spokeswoman Stacy Tapp.

“The vouchers are a real gut punch to this district,” says Steve Urso, executive director of the Racine Education Association, a union representing 1,630 teachers and more than 400 educational assistants. “There’s not a lot of money to work with.”

Doris Szejna, president of the Racine Educational Assistants Association, says her members make anywhere from $18,165 to $31,948 a year, working in the classroom with special needs students. The cuts mean that 79 assistants were laid off, and several dozen more forced to take reductions in hours and pay.

“My question is, ‘How are you going to handle all of these children?” asks Szejna. “Even with vouchers, the learning-disabled kids do not go away.”

Szejna, an educational assistant since 1990, says her own position was eliminated at the end of the last school year. To stay on, she had to bump another assistant — one of her fellow union members — out of a job.

‘I didn’t see this coming’

The expansion of the school voucher program to Racine is one of several successes by supporters of school choice in Wisconsin since the election of Republican Gov. Scott Walker and GOP majorities in both the Senate and Assembly.

Indeed, the cause of school choice in Wisconsin has advanced so rapidly that even some choice proponents have been tapping the brakes.

During a state budget hearing in April, school choice pioneer Howard Fuller angrily dubbed the proposal to phase out income limits for Milwaukee voucher students “egregious” and “outrageous,” according to a press account.

The plan to expand choice to new cities also drew a cool reaction from some Republican lawmakers, with Senate President Mike Ellis, R-Neenah, telling the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, “I’m amazed at this. I didn’t see this coming.”

In the end, the Legislature opted to raise but not eliminate income limits for Milwaukee voucher students and sidelined plans to expand vouchers to Green Bay and Beloit, doing so only for Racine.

Dan Rossmiller, director of government relations with the Wisconsin Association of School Boards, hopes the recent narrowing of Republican control in the state Senate will have a moderating effect on future choice initiatives “and the impact they will have on public schools and the communities where choice would be expanded.”

The state’s budget woes, adds Rossmiller, could also have an inhibiting effect: “The agenda is supposed to be on the economy and creating jobs, not taxpayers subsidizing private schools.”

Bender says efforts to expand the choice program to Green Bay will continue, noting that “the conversation has been going on in Racine for some time,” whereas the idea was only recently pitched as a possibility in Green Bay.

On the horizon

Among the bills that have been introduced and may be taken up this fall is SB 69, which would create an individual income tax credit for the cost of tuition to send dependent children to private K-12 schools, up to $2,500 per child per year, depending on grade level.

The credit would be phased in over time. The state Department of Revenue has estimated it would reduce state tax revenues by $48 million in 2013, $68 million in 2014, $89 million in 2015, all the way up to $165 million in 2021.

The Legislature is also weighing a plan to create a new voucher program for disabled students. The bill, introduced in late April, drew furious opposition from disability rights advocates and the Wisconsin Association of School Boards, which pronounced it “flawed from an educational standpoint, a fairness standpoint, a school funding standpoint, a pupil rights standpoint, and an accountability standpoint.”

Critics allege the bill as drafted would let private schools receive money for educating disabled students without any assurance that they will provide the requisite services.

“That scares me to death,” says state Rep. Sondy Pope-Roberts, D-Middleton, invoking the specter of a private school accepting the cash for a non-communicative student in a wheelchair and then having that child “sit in a corner for the day.”

The bill is now being redrafted, and Bender is optimistic that this and other choice initiatives can yet advance: “There are some very strong choice supporters in the Assembly, especially, that did not play a starring role…yet.”

School choice big winner in state

WisconsinWatch — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 05:01:19 +0000

PART TWO OF THREE IN A SERIES

PART ONE: The selling of school choice: A national network. Sept. 18, 2011.
PART TWO: School choice big winner in state.
PART THREE: School choice advocates hope to build on gains. Sept. 24, 2011.

By Bill Lueders
Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

Sondy Pope-Roberts and Howard Marklein rarely talk to each other.

That’s not surprising, given the political climate. She’s a Democratic member of the state Assembly from Middleton; he’s a Republican from Spring Green. But there’s something she’s sort of dying to know, about his relationship with supporters of school choice.

State Rep. Sondy Pope-Roberts. Joseph W. Jackson III/Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

“How much money did he get from them?” asks Pope-Roberts. “And how does he go back to Spring Green and explain his vote when schools there are struggling to maintain programs and staff?”

A graduate of River Valley High School in Spring Green, Pope-Roberts is perplexed by Marklein’s support for the state’s parental choice voucher program, which directs taxpayer funds to private, mostly religious schools. He even introduced measures sought by and drafted with input from School Choice Wisconsin, a lobby group. Most of these were folded into the 2011-13 budget bill and passed into law.

“What’s in this for Howard Marklein?” asks Pope-Roberts. “If it isn’t for the campaign funds, why is he doing this?”

Marklein, who insists he has other reasons for supporting school choice, was elected to an open Assembly seat last fall, getting 52 percent of the vote over Democrat John Simonson. According to an analysis by Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, a nonpartisan group that tracks campaign contributions, Marklein received $3,274 from pro-voucher individuals and political action committees.

That’s not an overwhelming amount of money, in a race where Marklein spent almost $98,000. But it doesn’t end there. The American Federation for Children, a pro-school-choice group, sent district voters three anti-Simonson mailings, none of which mentioned the issue of school choice.

The group has not disclosed how much it spent on this and other races, but the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign has estimated the cost of a “quality” state Assembly mailing at $10,000 a pop.

“I cannot control what a third party does,” says Marklein, adding that he wasn’t even aware of these mailings until several months after the election. “It certainly didn’t influence any of my decision-making. I sleep well at night.”

State Rep. Howard Marklein. Joseph W. Jackson III/Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

In fact, Marklein is just one of dozens of Wisconsin political players on the receiving end of millions of dollars poured into state campaigns and the legislative process from individuals and interest groups committed to promoting alternatives to public schools.

Like other school choice proponents, Marklein says he just wants to give students an alternative to failing public school systems. “It’s all about the kids,” Marklein explains. “I will always start my decision-making with the kids. If that offends the teachers unions, so be it.”

Expansion plan

The biennial budget passed by the Legislature and signed into law by Republican Gov. Scott Walker advances the school choice agenda in several ways.

It eliminates the cap on the number of students who can participate in the Milwaukee Program; allows Milwaukee students to attend any private school in the state that enrolls in the choice program; raises the income limit for program eligibility to 300 percent of federal level, or about $67,000 for a single-parent family of four; and lets participating high schools charge higher-income parents some tuition on top of the $6,442 voucher amount.

According to the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau, these changes will increase the number of voucher students in Milwaukee by about 3,000 students over two years, to a total of 22,900 in 2012-13.

Perhaps more significantly, the bill for the first time expanded the voucher program to a school district outside Milwaukee; it allowed up to 250 students in Racine to receive vouchers to attend private schools, beginning this fall. (A proposal to also expand vouchers to Green Bay was inserted into the budget by the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee but yanked from the final version.)

The Fiscal Bureau estimates these changes will collectively hike state net spending in Milwaukee and Racine by $16.9 million over the next two years.

That compares to a nearly $800 million cut in state aid to public schools over the same period.

A drain or a gain?

The budget bill also contains a number of changes initially proposed as stand-alone legislation by Marklein, now vice chair of the Assembly’s Education Committee.

These include allowing the state Department of Public Instruction to pay private choice schools directly, rather than send checks to parents that are signed over to schools.

Marklein describes the change as “a matter of efficiency.”

Marklein’s original bill would have also more than doubled the rate of reimbursement to choice schools for summer school students, a move the Legislative Fiscal Bureau estimated would have hiked state and local costs by $784,636 over the biennium. This part did not make it into the budget bill.

“They tried to sneak one past the goalie,” Pope-Roberts says of this provision.

Marklein says he introduced the bill after being contacted by Jim Bender, now president of School Choice Wisconsin. Records show that the group’s research associate, Michael Ford, was involved in the process, reviewing and commenting on bill drafts.

As Pope-Roberts sees it, Marklein’s advocacy on this issue “does not represent any interest in his district,” which does not receive any vouchers.

Jamie Benson, superintendent of the River Valley School District, agrees.

“I know of no advantage to our corner of the state to supporting the choice program,” Benson says. “It will only drain resources from our schools.”

Marklein, an accountant by profession (his firm handles the financial audits for Milwaukee Public Schools), disputes this.

“The reason I support school choice is because it saves Jamie Benson money,” says Marklein, also a River Valley High School alum. He cites a May 2011 Legislative Fiscal Bureau report showing the consequence of ending parental choice vouchers, which cost the state less than the average public-school student.

According to the report, if 50 percent of Milwaukee choice students were to return to public schools, the additional expense to the state would translate into a $39,489 reduction to the River Valley School District.

The counterargument is that many of the private schools which receive voucher funding once existed without it, at no cost to taxpayers.

Over time, many private choice schools have become dependent on public dollars. According to the state Department of Public Instruction, on average 83 percent of students enrolled in any given choice school were on publicly funded vouchers in 2010-11.

Operating the levers

Advancing the cause of school choice in Wisconsin is an all-star cast of paid advocates, many with deep ties to the state’s political structure.

Serving as a senior adviser to the Alliance for School Choice, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group, as well as the affiliated American Federation for Children, is Scott Jensen, a former Republican Wisconsin Assembly speaker. Jensen’s 2006 conviction on three felony counts of misconduct in office was overturned on appeal; late last year, the more serious charges were dropped when he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor ethics violation.

Jensen is also registered as one of three contract lobbyists for the federation, which reported spending $56,659 on lobbying Wisconsin state government in the first six months of 2011. This included $6,680 to Jensen for 32 hours of lobby work, which comes to more than $200 an hour.

The bulk of the federation’s lobby effort in Wisconsin is handled by its government affairs associate, Brian Pleva, formerly an aide for state Rep. Jeff Fitzgerald, R-Horicon. Former Fitzgerald chief of staff Jim Bender left to become a lobbyist for School Choice Wisconsin.

That these groups managed to hire two top aides who would have been key players in a GOP-controlled Legislature is seen as a sign of the movement’s tremendous clout. State Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Madison, says the “natural progression” would have been for Pleva and Bender to take their place at the pinnacle of power. Instead, “they left state government to work for the voucher groups.”

Another lobbyist on the payroll of School Choice Wisconsin is former Republican Assembly Speaker John Gard. This spring the group sent Gard to Green Bay to talk up expansion efforts there.

“They’ve got people in place who understand how to operate the levers of government and who are probably doing it pretty skillfully,” says Dan Rossmiller, director of government relations for the Wisconsin Association of School Boards, which opposes school vouchers.

Bender says the various pro-school-choice groups have different focuses and operate mostly independently of each other. He calls it coincidence that he and Pleva both ended up working for school choice groups. And he credits the movement’s recent successes not to its elite lobby force but “a very supportive governor and a strong Legislature to back up his initiatives.”

Recently Bender replaced longtime choice advocate Susan Mitchell as president of School Choice Wisconsin. He declines to identify the group’s funders, but claims “a very large number of small, local donors.” The list of contributors, he says, runs “pages and pages long.”

School Choice Wisconsin’s nonprofit tax filing for 2010 reports a total of $4.7 million in public support for the five-year period between 2006 and 2010. It lists total 2010 expenditures of $732,998, including $207,792 in compensation to Mitchell.

Bender says his own compensation will be comparable, though some details are still being worked out.

The selling of school choice

WisconsinWatch — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 05:01:21 +0000

Walmart family heirs and others are changing the face of education in Wisconsin

Heirs to the Walmart fortune, including Alice and Jim Walton, have given thousands to Wisconsin political candidates since mid-2008. Photo courtesy of Walmart Stores

By Bill Lueders
Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

Public schools in Wisconsin will have to make do with $800 million less from the state over the next two years, under the budget passed by Gov. Scott Walker and the Republican-led Legislature. But state spending on programs that provide public dollars to private schools will see a net increase of nearly $17 million.

Top individual donors to Wisconsin Legislators, 2009-2010

Click here to explore an interactive version of this data.

PART ONE OF THREE IN A SERIES

PART ONE: The selling of school choice: A national network.
PART TWO: School choice big winner in state. Sept. 21, 2011.
PART THREE: School choice advocates hope to build on gains. Sept. 24, 2011.

Sidebar: Are choice schools better?

School choice proponents argue that private vouchers give students in troubled school districts the opportunity for a better education. But the numbers don’t always back them up. Read more in a new page

And, for that, these private schools can thank Alice Walton and her family.

Walton, the multi-billionaire heiress to father Sam Walton’s Walmart empire, was the largest individual contributor to successful state legislative candidates in the 2009-2010 election cycle that brought Republicans to power in Wisconsin, according to data from MapLight, a nonpartisan organization that tracks the relationship between money and politics.

Walton, a horse lover and arts patron who lives in Millsap, Texas, gave a total of $16,100 during this cycle to these candidates, the data show. In fact, six of the top 15 individual contributors to last fall’s successful state legislative candidates were Walton family members.

Other members of the Walton clan contributing to Wisconsin candidates include Alice’s brother and sister-in-law Jim and Lynne Walton, sister-in-law Christy Walton, niece Carrie Penner and her husband Greg Penner.

Collectively, these six individuals have given at least $103,450 to Wisconsin candidates since mid-2008, state records show. Walmart’s political action committee gave another $9,750 to successful legislative candidates in the 2010 election cycle, according to MapLight.

Alice Walton. Photo courtesy of Walmart Stores

But the Waltons’ contribution to the state’s choice program — which allocates tax dollars to private schools, most religiously affiliated — goes well beyond campaign contributions. The Walton Family Foundation is a major funder of School Choice Wisconsin, the state’s leading voucher advocate, and other state and national groups that play a role in school choice efforts in Wisconsin.

In just the past several months these efforts have produced major gains, including expanding school choice in Milwaukee and extending it to Racine. A vast and interconnected array of choice proponents, many from out of state, is changing the face of education in Wisconsin.

State Rep. Mark Pocan. Henry A. Koshollek/The Capital Times

“The new 800-pound gorilla – actually it’s more of a 1,200-pound gorilla – is the tax-funded-voucher groups,” says state Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Madison. “They’ve become the most powerful lobbying entity in the state.”

National movement

And in fact, the advancement of school choice in Wisconsin has long benefited from interested outsiders.

In 1997, a group of school choice supporters spent $200,500, more than half from out of state, on postcards and calls to help re-elect state Supreme Court Justice Jon Wilcox. The state Elections Board sued, alleging illegalities. Wilcox and others eventually paid $60,000 in fines — but not before he voted to uphold the constitutionality of Milwaukee’s pioneering voucher program, launched in 1990.

Milwaukee’s voucher program had 20,300 full-time equivalent voucher students at 102 private schools in 2010-11, compared to about 80,000 students at Milwaukee’s public K-12 schools. The total cost, at $6,442 per voucher student, was $130.8 million, of which about $90 million came from the state and the rest from the Milwaukee Public Schools.

Across the nation, proponents of school choice are sensing opportunity. The National Conference of State Legislatures, a bipartisan policy group, reports that so far this year bills to create voucher programs have been introduced in at least 30 states, and tax credits to those paying private school tuition or giving to private school scholarship funds have been proposed in at least 28 states.

A dozen states and the District of Columbia have school choice programs in place, according to the American Federation for Children, a national school choice advocacy group. (Click here for a state-by-state map.)

And Wisconsin, home of the nation’s first and largest school choice voucher program, in Milwaukee, is a key battleground.

“Wisconsin has a high level of value to the movement as a whole,” says Robert Enlow, president of the Indianapolis-based Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, a nonprofit group that advocates for school choice. The state, he says, is notable for “the high level of scholarship amounts that families can get.” And he’s pleased that Wisconsin is “catching up with the rest of the country” in expanding choice options to other communities, such as Racine.

Critics see the school choice program as part of a larger strategy — driven into high gear in Wisconsin by the election of Walker and other Republicans — to eviscerate, for ideological and religious reasons, public schools and the unions that represent teachers.

“This is a national movement and they are trying to come into Wisconsin now that Republicans are in control to take this opportunity to expand school choice,” says Miles Turner, executive director of the Wisconsin Association of School District Administrators, a professional association for state school superintendents. “I think it is a serious attack on public education in Wisconsin and a watering down of one of the best public school systems in the nation.”

The case for choice

Voucher advocates say they just want to give students an alternative to failing public school systems, which encourages the public schools to do better.

Alice Walton and other family members did not respond to multiple interview requests placed through the Walton Family Foundation since early August. But the foundation states in an annual report that “increasing the quantity and quality of school choices available to parents” infuses competitive pressure into the educational system, resulting in improvements to all schools.

The report cites statistics showing that “the number of children attending their designated public school measurably declined between 1993 and 2007 — from 80 percent of the student population down to 73 percent.”

The Walton Family Foundation highlights “systemic K-12 education reform” as one of the areas in which it is “making a positive difference.” In 2010 it invested $157 million in this cause, including efforts to shape public policy.

This includes $300,000 to School Choice Wisconsin; $250,000 each to three existing or proposed charter schools in Milwaukee and Madison; $275,000 to the University of Wisconsin-Madison for research and evaluation; and a total of $496,000 to Marquette University’s Institute for the Transformation of Learning, headed by school choice advocate Howard Fuller.

The Walton Family Foundation also gave at least $600,000 last year to the University of Arkansas’ School Choice Demonstration Project, which is conducting a multi-year assessment of Milwaukee’s school choice program (see sidebar), including a report earlier this year that has been criticized as too rosy.

Direct contributions

The Waltons are part of a network of groups and individuals pouring money into the state’s political process to advance the cause of school choice.

An analysis by the nonpartisan Wisconsin Democracy Campaign found that individuals and political action committees associated with school choice gave $125,220 in campaign contributions to Walker and another $181,627 to current legislators and committees, most of them Republicans, in the 2009-10 election cycle. Foes of school choice, meanwhile, gave $25,650 to Walker’s Democratic rival, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, and $217,734 in donations to current legislators, most of them Democrats, according to the group.

Gov. Scott Walker reads to students at Messmer Catholic Preparatory School, a private voucher school in Milwaukee. Photo courtesy of John-Paul Greco

The largest legislative recipient of individual and PAC donations from school choice supporters in 2009-2010 was state Senate candidate Van Wanggaard, at $14,399, according to Wisconsin Democracy Campaign. Wanggaard, R-Racine, defeated the incumbent, John Lehman, D-Racine, then chairman of the Senate’s education committee.

Both sides spent much more on independent electioneering activities, including ads and mailings, Wisconsin Democracy Campaign noted. In all, it estimated total spending at more than $3 million for school choice proponents and $1 million for opponents.

Many of the direct contributions to Wisconsin candidates from school choice proponents come through a conduit called the Fund for Parent Choice. Conduits bundle money from individual donors to present to candidates collectively, maximizing their impact.

The fund is administered by the Alliance for Choices in Education, an advocacy organization affiliated with School Choice Wisconsin, founded by Susan Mitchell of Whitefish Bay. Susan Mitchell and her husband, George, are major contributors to the fund.

Propelling the fund are a number of prominent players in the school choice arena, including Betsy and Dick DeVos, the Michigan-based billionaire heirs to the Amway fortune, who have given $39,250 since 2008, according to the state Government Accountability Board.

It is the Fund for Parent Choice through which the Waltons make their contributions to state political campaigns.

From August 2008 to mid-August of this year, the Fund for Parent Choice funneled $354,400 in direct contributions to Wisconsin political campaigns, of which $312,000 was from out of state. More than 90 percent of these contributions have gone to Republican candidates. The largest single beneficiary: Scott Walker, at $58,575.

Walker has been a prominent supporter of school choice. In May he spoke before the annual meeting of the American Federation for Children in Washington, D.C. “It’s not only good for our children,” he was quoted as saying. “I think when you make a commitment to true education reform it’s also good for your state’s economy.”

Behind the scenes

Betsy and Dick DeVos are also main players in the American Federation for Children. Launched in January 2010, the group is an offshoot of an earlier DeVos effort called All Children Matter, which was fined in Ohio and Wisconsin for violations of campaign finance laws.

According to the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, in the fall 2010 legislative races, the federation spent an estimated $820,000 on independent expenditures and “phony issue ad activity” — ads that purport to raise issues but are meant to influence elections. These expenditures are not publicly disclosed.

Wisconsin Democracy Campaign has calculated that the federation made television ad buys totaling $500,000 in three media markets in advance of this summer’s recall elections, all on behalf of Republican incumbents. In those elections, Republicans lost two Senate seats but succeeded in maintaining a one-seat majority.

The federation shares a Washington, D.C. street address with Alliance for School Choice. The boards of directors of both groups are nearly identical; both are chaired by Betsy DeVos and include Walmart heir Carrie Penner.

In 2010, the Walton Family Foundation gave $2.3 million to the Alliance for School Choice.

State Rep. Robin Vos, R-Rochester, co-chair of the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee and a strong backer of school choice, suggests that all of this spending is a waste.

“I believe in school choice because I believe in school choice,” Vos says. “It’s not because of who I know or who talks to me.”

Vos sees voucher programs as part of the solution to troubled public schools. “It is not a panacea, not a silver bullet, it is not an answer for every single situation. In certain situations, however, I believe that it’s an alternative that should definitely be utilized to try and make the lives of these kids in bad situations better.”

In recent years, Vos has received $500 checks from both Alice and Christy Walton. Does he know these people personally?

“I wish I did,” he says with a laugh.

Explore contributions data

Navigate the tabs below to see more details about the Waltons’ contributions to Wisconsin legislators.

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WisconsinWatch.org » Education

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Stressed: Demands, counselor shortages strain Midwest campus mental health systems

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Gaps persist in campus mental health services

SIDEBARS

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School choice advocates hope to build on gains

PART THREE OF THREE IN A SERIES

Racine expansion shows movement’s clout

School choice big winner in state

PART TWO OF THREE IN A SERIES

The selling of school choice

Walmart family heirs and others are changing the face of education in Wisconsin

Top individual donors to Wisconsin Legislators, 2009-2010

PART ONE OF THREE IN A SERIES

Sidebar: Are choice schools better?

Explore contributions data