Walker's proposals to expand private school voucher programs to at least nine other districts outside Milwaukee and Racine need the support of key members of his own Republican Party who have not endorsed the plans, and Walker suggested he was open to some changes.
"If they want to more narrowly target (the new programs) and not just say it's open by district, but it's targeted to the school where parents' sons or daughters would be headed into a school that's fail ing to meet expectations . . . we're willing to work with that, because our goal is to help kids who are failing."
Many of Walker's comments on education Thursday reflected the importance of school quality and accountability across sectors. That goes to one of the biggest critiques of the voucher program - that the schools receive taxpayer money but aren't required to follow the same reporting requirements as public schools, such as disclosing high school graduation rates or rates of student absenteeism.
Walker faced criticism from public-school advocates last year when he did not mandate that voucher schools participate in a statewide school report card system to judge school performance.
The new report card system for schools places them into one of five categories vaguely related to an A-F grade, and it took the place of the unpopular No Child Left Behind accountability system.
Walker said the timing was bad last year, and that he needed to get more legislators on board with the plan.
Walker said that while he's a school choice advocate, there are some private schools getting public funds that he doesn't like, and that the school report cards better arm parents with the information necessary to decide whether - and how - to choose a better school.
"I think the best way to weed out (low-performing schools) is a clear and more transparent system that says here is the school and here's how it performs and whether it is failing," Walker said.
New report cards
But there are problems with the first round of report cards for schools that were released in 2012. Schools' grades almost uniformly correlate with the percentage of poor children they're serving, for example. And high schools have few data points to consider because the state test is only administered once at that level, in 10th grade.
State Sen. Luther Olsen (R-Ripon) expressed reservations in an interview Thursday about supporting any legislation that would quickly tie major funding to the report cards.
"They're in beta testing," Olsen said. "It's way too early to make any financial decisions based on measures that are not yet providing a full and complete picture of each school."
As for Milwaukee Public Schools, Walker said that under his proposal for providing schools with additional money based on performance - or their failure to perform - MPS could be eligible for up to about $7.2 million to help its most low-performing schools, contingent on the district submitting to the state a plan for improvement.
A smaller set of high-performing and high-growth schools in MPS could bring the district an additional $2 million in funding, Walker said.
When asked if he felt the long-standing school voucher program in Milwaukee, which now includes about 113 private schools and about 25,000 students, had delivered on its promise to improve the system through competition in the marketplace, Walker said not necessarily.
But MPS might be even worse today if not for the competition from voucher schools, he said.
"Is it better? Not necessarily. How much worse would it have been? That's debatable. I think the bigger argument is not whether it improved the district or not, it's (whether) it improves the lives of those students who are given that choice."
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