Josh Cowen, "The Privateers: How Billionaires Created a Culture War and Sold School Vouchers" (Harvard Education Press, 2024)
Sep 10, 2024
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Josh Cowen, an expert on educational policy and author of "The Privateers," discusses the controversial role of school vouchers and their negative impact on educational outcomes. He reveals how these programs, initially linked to conservative economic strategies, have fueled a culture war over education. Cowen critiques the motivations behind the voucher movement, highlighting the connections to billionaire influence and the emphasis on ideological goals rather than student success. He also explores the implications of vouchers for public education and societal equality.
Voucher programs, rather than improving educational equity, often lead to poorer academic results, especially for students from marginalized backgrounds.
The promotion of school vouchers is primarily driven by wealthy conservatives seeking to reshape education in line with specific ideological and political agendas.
Deep dives
The Ineffectiveness of Voucher Programs
Voucher programs, designed to allocate public funds for private school tuition, have shown largely negative academic results over the past decade. Originally, there was some evidence of benefit, with a few students experiencing improvements when they transitioned from public to private schools, particularly in pilot programs like those in Milwaukee and Cleveland. However, as these programs expanded, they became correlated with significant declines in student performance, with many private schools being termed 'subprime providers' due to their financial instability and inadequate academic standards. Research indicates that the assumption that private schools are universally superior to public schools does not hold, as many of the institutions accepting vouchers are low-performing and often struggling with their operations.
Historical Context and Origins of Vouchers
The genesis of the voucher system can be traced back to the ideas of economist Milton Friedman, who proposed that public funding should follow students to the schools of their parents' choice. Friedman's theory emerged during a turbulent time in U.S. history, notably soon after the Brown v. Board of Education ruling, which addressed the legality of racial segregation in schools. This controversial backdrop saw segregationists advocating for vouchers as a method to maintain separate education systems while using public money. Consequently, the historical relevance of vouchers is complicated, intertwined with issues of race and educational equity, reflecting deeper societal divides.
Political Influence and Motivations
The push for voucher programs is driven by powerful conservative think tanks and wealthy backers who view education as a mechanism for furthering specific ideological agendas. Organizations like the Heritage Foundation and various foundations associated with individuals like Betsy DeVos have been instrumental in promoting these policies, intertwining educational choices with broader cultural and political movements. This strategic focus reflects a longer-term goal of reshaping American society, leaning toward a vision that emphasizes parental rights and reduces public accountability in education. Ultimately, the motivations behind the proliferation of vouchers are more political than educational, aiming to shift the future of schooling in line with a particular worldview.
Religious Implications and Faith-Based Arguments
The debate around vouchers has increasingly shifted toward religious considerations, with proponents arguing for the right to use taxpayer funds for religious education as an exercise of faith. This framing challenges long-standing legal and constitutional boundaries between church and state, suggesting that educational choice is fundamentally a parental right rooted in individual belief. Despite significant evidence indicating that vouchers do not improve educational outcomes, advocates pivot the discussion away from academic efficacy to the rights of families to choose religious education. This ideologically driven narrative signals a broader trend where education is becoming interwoven with cultural and religious identities, complicating the dialogue about what education should entail in a pluralistic society.
School vouchers are often framed as a way to help students and families by providing choice, but evidence shows that vouchers have a negative impact on educational outcomes.
In The Privateers: How Billionaires Created a Culture War and Sold School Vouchers(Harvard Education Press, 2024), Josh Cowen describes voucher programs as the product of decades of work by influential conservatives and wealthy activists to support a vision of America where education is privatized and removed from the public sphere.
Far from realizing the purported goal of educational equity, Cowen cites multiple research studies that conclude that voucher programs return poor academic outcomes, including lower test scores on state exams, especially among students who are at greater academic risk because of their race, their religion, their gender identity, or their family's income.
The books traces the history of vouchers from it's initial proposal as part of conservative economic policy through its adoption as a method for families to resist school desegregation. Since then, the issue of education "freedom" has been a part of an ongoing culture war waged through policymaking, legislation, and litigation.
Cowen describes the advocacy network that funds research and promotion of vouchers as a way to attain ideological goals related to conservative social policy, not educational outcomes.
