Wisconsin’s largest voucher school bringing in $40M by recruiting virtual students

A private Christian school in Milwaukee has grown over the last five years to become the largest recipient of funding through Wisconsin’s Private School Choice Programs.

Academy of Excellence will receive more than $40 million in taxpayer dollars this year, a 45 percent increase over last year’s payment from the state. 

The second largest recipient is St. Augustine Preparatory Academy in Milwaukee, which received about $24 million this year. Most of private schools receiving state choice funding receive less than $5 million a year.

Academy of Excellence landed in this position by being the first religious, private choice school to aggressively pursue building virtual enrollment.

Schools in the choice program receive payments from the state for students attending either in-person or virtually ranging from from $10,237 per student in grades kindergarten through eighth and  $12,731 per high school student. These payments are commonly referred to as vouchers.

About 760 students such were enrolled at Academy of Excellence in 2016. There are about 3,700 public voucher students attending the school this year. 

The number of voucher students attending the school who live in Milwaukee has remained the same — roughly 800. The majority of the school’s students attend through the online option the school added during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Founder Randy Melchert said the online option is appealing for families who aren’t satisfied with the public schools in their community. 

“Rural parents especially are looking for options, as they have fewer conventional private schools to choose from,” Melchert said. 

Academy of Excellence meets DPI guidelines, while enrolling homeschool families

Melchert said the virtual program meets all the requirements for choice schools and follows DPI guidance and best practices for public virtual charter schools.

About 13,000 students are enrolled in 62 virtual public charter schools statewide, according to the Department of Public Instruction. 

“Like most of those schools, our students receive both synchronous and asynchronous instruction, computers, internet access, textbooks and instructional materials, and physical education and extra-curricular programs,” Melchert said. “From what we can tell, our teacher-student ratio is actually higher than most public virtual schools.” 

In Wisconsin, charter schools are public, non-religious schools that are operated by a private organization. Their finances and academic performance are reviewed every five years by their authorizing body — which might be a school district or Universities of Wisconsin campus. There are brick-and-mortar charter schools in the state and virtual charter schools. The largest virtual charter is Rural Virtual Academy, based in Medford. The school has 2,259 students enrolled this year, according to the Department of Public Instruction.

Private schools that accept public vouchers do not have similar public oversight.

Academy of Excellence’s online school is “powered by curriculums such as BJU Press and Abeka,” according to its website. Both are Christian homeschooling textbooks. 

Melchert founded Academy of Excellence in 2012. 

He has a master’s degree in Christian thought from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, a Master’s in Rhetoric and Public Address from Bob Jones University, and a law degree from  the University of Wisconsin.

Melchert is also the treasurer of School Choice Wisconsin Action.

According to the school’s website, there are three brick and mortar locations in Milwaukee. Academy of Excellence is about 68 percent white with 45 percent of its students considered economically disadvantaged, according to the Department of Public Instruction school report card for the 2023-24 school year. The report card shows just 21 percent of the academy’s students were meeting expectations in English language arts, 15.4 percent meeting expectations in math.

DPI gave the school two stars, meaning it “meets few expectations.” 

Academy of Excellence has become a model for Christian schools

Now, other religious Wisconsin choice program schools are following Academy of Excellence’s example.

Shining Star Christian Schools, which has three locations in Milwaukee, is now offering a virtual option. 

The school is offering a $2,000 stipend for each enrolled student to families or congregations that host small-group instruction to “support an adult presence and ensure academic success.” 

In December, a podcast episode about the impact of Christian schools talked about a new virtual school planned for Fall 2025 called Pella Hill Virtual Academy.

In the podcast conversation, Nic Gibson, a pastor at High Point Church in Madison and Chuck Moore, the executive director of Impact Christian Schools, or ICS, a network of Christian schools in Wisconsin, said the virtual option helps homeschool families navigate curriculum. 

Moore could not be reached for further comment. 

Virtual schools raise funding concerns for some in rural communities

The focus on enrolling rural students at Academy of Excellence has left some people in rural communities wondering if their local public schools are being shortchanged if tax dollars for education are going to a virtual school in the state’s largest city.

“If a parent in our district chooses to send their child to a Milwaukee online school, our tax dollars are going to Milwaukee,” said Kristina Reser-Jaynes, who lives near Viroqua in southwest Wisconsin.

Reser-Jaynes spoke to a representative from Academy of Excellence about enrolling a student who has autism and is non-verbal in the online program. She said she wasn’t interested in enrolling the child, but wanted to learn more about the process. 

“[The school representative] was very encouraging for me to get onto the Choice Program, and especially the special needs program, so she could take online classes,” Reser-Jaynes said. “He said you have the freedom to line up whatever else you need. You can go to public school for speech and tutors. Public school will pay.” 

Melchert said his staff does not recall this conversation. 

Also in southwest Wisconsin, Westby Area School District Administrator Steven Michaels has seen billboards and displays from Academy of Excellence at homeschool conferences and events around Vernon County. 

“It’s a very tight knit network [homeschoolers], so when people find a resource that appears to provide a good service, that spreads very quickly,” Michaels said.

Michaels said his school district, which has about 1,000 students, and the surrounding districts have lost students to voucher schools, including Academy of Excellence’s virtual school. 

During the 2023-24 school year, 11 students in the nearby Kickapoo school district received a private school voucher. The district is based in the tiny community of Viola, which has about 700 residents.

Taxpayers there contributed $113,811 toward the cost of private school education for those students, an increase of more than 400 percent from the previous year. 

For public school districts, a decline in enrollment could mean less funding from the state and a lower cap on how much the district can raise from taxpayers. However, students who participate in the Wisconsin Parental Choice Program can still be counted by the home district.

“I certainly can’t fault families for this, and honestly, the system is set up — and Academy of Excellence appears to be following all the rules it needs to,” Michaels said. “Where it becomes a head scratcher for me is when I consider the financial implications for our school and for our taxpayers, and then seeing what the benefits wind up being for the family versus [the money] the school might be taking in.”