Education Vouchers in Wisconsin and St. Anthony School of Milwaukee

In 1998, the Wisconsin Supreme Court made Wisconsin the first state in the United States to allow low-income families to use publicly funded vouchers to pay for education at religious institutions. At that time, St. Anthony School of Milwaukee was a small school with fewer than 300 students in kindergarten through eighth grade. In the fall of 1998, 198 students enrolled at St. Anthony through the state voucher program. The number of students that attended St. Anthony through vouchers increased steadily through the 90's. By 2002, 356 students utilized vouchers to enroll. This number increased to 795 by 2005.

Currently, St. Anthony School serves roughly 1,000 students with all but a handful of the students attending through the voucher program. The school has more voucher students than any other institution in the state of Wisconsin. For each student that attends St. Anthony through the program, the school receives $6,351 from the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, meaning that St. Anthony gets $6.2 million per year as a result of its voucher students.