From PittsburghLive.com

Here’s a report to make school choice critics reach for the Pepto: More low-income students in Milwaukee’s 20-year-old voucher program — 18 percent more — graduate from high school than their traditional public school peers.

In fact, if Milwaukee’s public school graduation rate matched that of students using school vouchers from 2003 to 2008, 3,352 additional students would have received diplomas, according to the study by University of Minnesota professor John Robert Warren.

Add to that a study reported by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: The annual economic benefit from all those high school grads would be an additional $21.2 million in personal income and about $3.6 million more in tax revenues.

Did we mention that Milwaukee’s school choice students cost less than half the $14,011 per-pupil cost of students in the city’s public schools?

It’s a cold dose of reality for those who demonize school choice as a needless draw on education dollars with nary any benefits — which, in fact, are abundantly evident in other school choice programs across the nation.

As President Obama so appropriately put it in his State of the Union speech, “Instead of funding the status quo, we only invest in reform that raises student achievement.”

The choice couldn’t be more clear.