After two years at Eastbrook, Eboni, then in the seventh grade, took first place for her age group in a citywide speech contest. Her prize-winning elocution was on the topic of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

But it is not only younger students who find success with the choice program.

“[Gerald] came in and was under a one point GPA,” recalls Robert Gottschalk, who is involved in admissions as the person in charge of scholarships and financial aid, including the voucher program, at Messmer High School, a Catholic high school on Milwaukee’s north side. Messmer High is part of the independent Messmer schools collaboration.

“He was never off the honor roll in four years of high school … so it was probably a combination of putting him in the right type of program and also a little bit of a kick in his butt to get him going a little bit more,” Gottschalk says. “Probably, the capability was there all along.”

A college preparatory high school, Messmer High’s enrollment is currently more than 80 percent voucher students. According to Gottschalk, who also manages scholarships for students, the class of 2007 of about 120 students amassed more than $2 million in scholarships – an average of about $16,600 per student, enough for more than two years of in-state tuition at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The long-term benefits of the program, however, still remain unknown.

“What you’d really like to do is you’d like to look over the next 40 years at the quality of life of the students,” says Harry Brighouse, UW-Madison professor of philosophy and educational policy studies. “But that study would take 40 years, and it would be very intensive, and we don’t get those kinds of studies in educational research, which is a shame, but it’s true.”

Gottschalk also finds that the research may not ever be able to tell the whole story about the voucher system.

“They look at the statistical stuff. They don’t look at the anecdotal stuff, like … Gerald,” Gottschalk says. “Kids who are the first ones in their family to go to college.”

Despite the current lack of conclusive data, in 2012, Witte’s new study may finally have attainment data on the group of followed ninth-graders, and Milwaukee may finally have a better picture of the choice’s broader effects on the next generation’s education.

For now, however, parents of children like Eboni and Gerald seem content simply to have a choice – one that beholds bright potential for their children’s futures.