The Milwaukee program is the nation's oldest giving low-income families publicly financed tuition vouchers to enroll their children in private and parochial schools, according to George Mitchell, a Milwaukee-based voucher advocate.
Analysts at Moody's, the bond rating agency, say that the number of parents across the country requesting at least a year's postponement in repaying federally financed tuition loans has doubled in the last 12 months.
Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani is taking Board of Education members to Milwaukee on Monday to tour schools that accept publicly financed tuition vouchers, an indication that the hostile climate toward vouchers within the board may be shifting.
They are publicly financed, tuition-free and open to all students.
Texas, California and Arizona account for nearly 40percentt of the nation's charter schools, the publicly financed, tuition-free schools that operate independently of existing schools and school districts.
In 1998, New York became the 34th state (of a current 37) to provide for the establishment of publicly financed, tuition-free schools that operate independently of existing school districts.
Meanwhile Biden had in recent days begun to carve out what looked like the beginnings of his alternative proposition, something he continued in Wednesday's speech with calls for action on campaign finance, college tuition and more bipartisan cooperation.
But when his parents ran out of money, he transferred to Florida Southern College near his parents' home in Lakeland, where he could help finance his tuition by teaching chemistry, biology and physics at the college.
"The manner in which colleges determine 'need,' and the expectations that they bring to family financing (such as assuming families will take out a second mortgage to finance the tuition) are perverse and fail to take into account the many claims already made on family budgets," says Ellerbeck.
