The Milwaukee plan.

Watch Milwaukee, if you are interested in the evolution of private education. But be prepared to lose, if you believe in educational choice: The situation doesn't look good, though whatever happens in the courts, it will be cited in the history of efforts to give a choice to public-schoolbound youth.

The genesis was a bill ardently proposed in the Wisconsin legislature by state Representative Polly Williams. Its design is to provide parents with an alternative to sending their children to a designated public school to learn, or, as is so in many cases, not to learn.

The Williams bill contained practically every known provision to guard against its being branded as racially discriminatory, as a sop to the middle class, as elitist. As passed, with the endorsement of Governor Tommy Thompson, here is what it would entail.

Beginning next September, a student attending a private school would be given a voucher (in effect) entitling that private school to $2,500. Now here are the qualifiers:

-Any student applying for such a voucher would need to prove that he/she came from a family whose income was not more than 175 per cent of the U.S. poverty line. That means, for a family of four, the gross earnings of father and mother cannot exceed $1,848 per month, or roughly $22,180 per year.

-To qualify for a role in the program, the private school would have to be nondenominational.

-Under the program, the private school cannot charge that student more than the $2,500 which would be remitted by the city. Never mind what other students had to pay.

-If more students applied for acceptance than the school had vacancies, the selection would be made randomly.

Now on the face of it, this experiment is an anemic approximation of the fullblooded voucher system. Compare it, for instance, with the G.I. Bill, which permits the veteran to attend any accredited school: beyond that, no questions asked. The ex-soldier could be a Rockefeller, could opt for a Catholic, Protestant, Jewish college. His choice.

But unprovocative as the Milwaukee Plan is, anticipating a maximum enrollment in the private system of 1 per cent of the Milwaukee student body, it has now aroused the Forces for the Status Quo. A lawsuit has been brought by the Wisconsin Education Association Council, the state's largest teachers' union, by officials with ties to the NAACP, the Wisconsin Federation of Teachers, the Wisconsin Congress of Parents and Teachers, the Administrators and Supervisors Council of Milwaukee, and the Wisconsin Association of School District Administrators. Their complaint is, as one would expect, comprehensive. They charge that the Williams Act is unconstitutional, a violation of Wisconsin law, discriminatory, heartless, and if you can think of any other legal, moral, or environmental objection to the plan, hurry and communicate this to Friebert, Finerty & St. John, attorneys for the petitioners. In a word, the Williams people are opposed by-The Establishment.

June 30 was the deadline for students desiring to go to a different school from the public school they would otherwise go to, to file their applications. A total of six schools met the earlier deadline to register their willingness to participate.

Now the petitioners for the nulification of the law are using every conceivable argument. Among them that the private schools are not being required to meet all the criteria met by the public schools, for instance, that all the teachers are certified to teach by Wisconsin law (this is the educationists' lobby for the continuation of those deadening teachers' schools). Moreover, the petitioners say, How can the private schools provide the necessary help for handicapped students? Under the recent federal law, public schools need to provide handicapped students with: transportation; audiological services; psychological services; occupational therapy; physical therapy; recreation; medical services; counseling and guidance; social-work services; parent counseling and training. Not every little red-brick schoolhouse is able to do this. Granted.

But then, who is pushing for the program? The unorganized poor, and urban minority parents. Who can possibly stand to profit from the choice aspects of the Williams bill? Milwaukeeites who earn, jointly in the case of couples, less than $22,180 per year.