Gov. Mark Sanford says when you consider where South Carolina ranks on most measures of educational excellence, why wouldn't we want to try something that's working well someplace else? He just returned from Milwaukee, which was the first place in the nation to try using public vouchers to send low-income children to private schools.

"I think that what was incredible from my end is just how impressive the schools were that we visited," Gov. Sanford said Friday in his office.

State taxpayers did not pay for his trip to Milwaukee. He and several state lawmakers, including Spartanburg Rep. Doug Smith and Fountain Inn Sen. David Thomas, were invited by an Illinois-based group that advocates using tax credits for parents to send their children to private schools.

They went to see first-hand Milwaukee's voucher program, which was started in 1990. It applies only to lower-income families that make up to 175 percent of the poverty level.

The governor's "Put Parents In Charge Act", which Rep. Smith has pre-filed in the House, would not include vouchers. It would give families making up to $75,000 a year the option of tax credits to send their kids to another public school, a private school or to home-school them.

"You can read about it, but it ain't the same as when you see it there in real life," Gov. Sanford said. "So it made that much more real to me that which I've read about over the years."

He was particularly impressed by the discipline and order at the schools he visited. The schools were much smaller than a typical public school. Students wore uniforms and did up to an hour-and-a-half of homework every night.

Here in South Carolina, a group made up of the state PTA, School Boards Association and school administrators has formed to fight the governor's proposal. Leni Patterson, chairman of the Laurens 55 school board, said at an October news conference, "The diversion of public funds away from supporting already-underfunded public schools is a detriment not only to low-performing schools but also to high-performing ones as well. Why would we knowingly spend taxpayer money on an approach that research has shown to have a negative impact on our children and not shown results?" 

"Then there's a giant conspiracy going on up in Milwaukee," Gov. Sanford says of that claim, "because when you talk to school board members, when you talk to kids, when you talk to the leadership in the chamber (of commerce) organization itself, when you talk to a whole host of folks involved in the educational process, and when you talk to parents, they like what they're getting."

He says the results speak for themselves. Since the voucher system has been in place in Milwaukee, the dropout rate has fallen by ten percentage points. Test scores of the students in the private schools have gone up, and so have the scores of students who remain in the public schools.

And the governor points to a study by a Harvard economist that found that state per-pupil spending in public schools has actually gone up, not down, since vouchers have been in place. That's because the voucher is worth less money than what the state was giving a school for each student. If a child leaves a public school, the school still gets a portion of that child's money from the state.

While school officials and many Democrats in South Carolina are fighting his plan, the governor says it was Democrats in Milwaukee who first proposed vouchers, and school board members are solidly behind the system.

"So why people would fight against an idea that is progressive in nature, that gives to parents the same choice that a lot of wealthy parents already have and exercise currently, to me doesn't make sense."