MILWAUKEE - Students attending private schools through the Milwaukee school voucher program are not doing much better or worse than students in Milwaukee Public Schools, a new study indicates. But the authors cautioned Monday in releasing the information from the first year of a planned five-year study that stronger conclusions will come only when trends over several years can be examined. "We have displayed a rough and limited snapshot of the average performance of Choice (Milwaukee Parental Choice Program) students in certain grades that suggests they tend to perform below national averages but at levels roughly comparable to similarly income-disadvantaged students in MPS," said Patrick J. Wolf, a professor at the University of Arkansas who is the lead researcher in the project. The study, based on test results from the 2006-2007 school year, was conducted by the School Choice Demonstration Project, part of the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas. The researchers said there was little evidence that voucher schools are "skimming the cream" by taking the best students from MPS, as some critics have claimed. The state voucher program provides up to $6,501 per student to private schools in the city. State officials expect about $120 million in voucher payments to be made during this school year. As part of a deal in 2006 between Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle and Republican legislative leaders, the voucher program was allowed to grow to as many as 22,500 students, but the private schools were required for the first time to administer nationally accepted standardized tests, and the School Choice Demonstration Project was authorized to conduct its study. (Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)