Journalist Maureen Downey talked to author and researcher Josh Cowen about his new book and the true source of the great voucher push.
Education researcher Josh Cowen understands that the movement to pass voucher bills in states across the country and the national rollback of reproductive freedom are not the same thing. “But they are driven by the same people,” he said. “What puts these two things together is their attempt to make America a Christian nationalist state.”
Who are these people? In a new book, Cowen says they’re conservative billionaires with tightly networked and well-financed political advocacy groups. Among them are former U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, who works through her American Federation for Children, and industrialists Charles Koch and the late David Koch, who created Americans for Prosperity.
In an interview about “The Privateers: How Billionaires Created A Culture War and Sold School Vouchers,” Cowen said school privatization has become the mission of a conservative cabal that has effectively masterminded “a political capture of the judiciary, the federal regulatory apparatus, and state lawmaking processes.”
Cowen is a Michigan State University professor whose early studies of small, select voucher pilots found they showed some promise. But as voucher programs expanded and became large-scale, Cowen documented increasingly dismal academic outcomes. Large-scale studies found students in Indiana, Louisiana, Ohio and Washington, D.C., who used vouchers to leave public schools for private schools experienced sizable learning declines.
Data from recently enacted state programs show the typical students using vouchers never attended public schools as they were already in a private school, home-schooled or enrolling in a private kindergarten. And the data also show many of these private schools raise tuition once states adopt vouchers.
Yet even as evidence mounts against their effectiveness, vouchers are spreading. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, this year, 19 states have already or will consider legislation on the issue of school vouchers or “education savings accounts.”
Cowen says these determined billionaires are manipulating lawmakers and running roughshod over the will of voters, who remain wary of diverting tax dollars to private schools.
“It is not parent driven. It is not locally driven. This is a nationally coordinated movement. Vouchers and voucherlike programs still have never won a statewide ballot initiative,” Cowen said. That’s why, he said, proponents have resorted to conservative advocacy groups disguised as think tanks and aggressive litigation and legislative strategies.
“If they thought vouchers would even have a good shot on a direct ballot, they would do it as it would be cheaper and much faster,” he said. “Betsy DeVos wouldn’t have a super PAC targeting legislators in Texas right now if she thought there was public support.”
