success helped “end welfare as we know it”—Joyce was constantly in the background, providing advice, support, and encouragement.

Joyce was even more central to the school-choice movement, which has sought to improve K-12 education by bringing market pressures to bear on it. The theory—a longtime favorite of Nobel economist Milton Friedman—is that financial vouchers that let students attend the public or private school of their choice will improve the education of all students as school leaders discover they must compete for their charges. The concept achieved greater success in Milwaukee than anywhere else, through an amazing coalition of white conservatives such as Thompson and black activists such as Democratic state representative Polly Williams. In the background was Joyce, who shepherded the idea from the realm of theory into theworld of public policy by underwriting books and papers on it, paying for demonstration projects, and footing large legal bills when school choice was challenged in courts. He understood both the urgent need for philanthropic dollars as well as the prime importance of assembling bipartisan and multiracial coalitions.

In Rethinking Schools, a left-leaning journal on urban education, Barbara Miner offered grudging praise of Joyce: “Perhaps more than any other person, he was responsible for the voucher legislation under which Wisconsin became the first state providing public dollars for private schools.” Those dollars—given to parents rather than directly to schools—will now grow, following a decision earlier this year by Wisconsin’s current governor, Democrat Jim Doyle, to increase the number of students eligible for school choice from 15,000 to 22,500. Although