According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel,

The $102 million spent on reviving the concept of the neighborhood school in Milwaukee hasn’t improved academic success at most of the schools where the money was used, a Journal Sentinel investigation found.

With a few exceptions, student achievement has shown little improvement – and in some cases it has fallen dramatically – at 22 schools that were among the largest beneficiaries of the district’s school construction program.

The district’s Neighborhood Schools Initiative was conceived as a way to get children off buses and into their local schools – which MPS officials hoped to improve with new classrooms, before-school and after-school services, and such things as state-of-the-art science labs and libraries.

But bricks and mortar have not raised student performance, testing data shows.

In an attempt to persuade taxpayers to approve massive school construction programs, school district officials often claim that shiny new schools will somehow, perhaps via awe or osmosis, improve student performance. Nope.