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JOSH COWEN

Articles

Arizona is sending taxpayer money to religious schools — and billionaires see it as a model for the US

Arizona was the first state in the country to enact a universal “education savings account” program – a form of voucher that allows any family to take tax dollars that would have gone to their child’s public education and spend the money instead on private schooling. A CNN investigation found that the program has cost hundreds of millions of dollars more than anticipated, disproportionately benefited richer areas, and funneled taxpayer funds to unregulated private schools that don’t face the same educational standards and antidiscrimination protections that public schools do.

Bambini in scuolabus

How School Voucher Programs Hurt Students

Time Magazine

In recent months, state legislatures across the country have broadened efforts to subsidize private school tuition with taxpayer dollars. New proposals for these programs—collectively called school vouchers—have appeared in more than a dozen states and passed as major priorities for Republican governors. . . . But do school vouchers actually work? Based on data from existing voucher programs, the answer is almost unambiguously negative.

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The False Promise — and Hidden Costs — of School Vouchers

The Philadelphia Inquirer

If you’ve ever run a small business or talked to a business owner, you might have heard the phrase “under promise, over deliver” as a strategy for customer service. Unfortunately, when it comes to school voucher plans like those being considered by Pennsylvania lawmakers this spring, what happens is the opposite of a sound investment: a lot of overpromising ahead of woeful under-delivery. As I testified to Pennsylvania lawmakers last fall, vouchers are the education equivalent of predatory lending.

Writing a test

After two decades of studying voucher programs, I’m now firmly opposed to them

The Hechinger Report

In recent years, nearly half of all states have created publicly funded private K-12 tuition plans, collectively known as school vouchers.Vouchers are dangerous to American education. They promise an all-too-simple solution to tough problems like unequal access to high-quality schools, segregation and even school safety. In small doses, years ago, vouchers seemed like they might work, but as more states have created more and larger voucher programs, experts like me have learned enough to say that these programs on balance can severely hinder academic growth — especially for vulnerable kids.

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My Profane, Revealing Year Working for Tucker Carlson

Slate

Tucker’s abrupt dismissal from Fox News this week has me revisiting that year of my life. And the details emerging from a pending lawsuit over the toxic atmosphere on his production team tell me that what’s new is old. Over the last two decades, the jokes have moved from a female politician’s weight to, reportedly, debates about which one his staff would prefer to sleep with. In other words, little about the man’s sense of humor has changed.

Kids in Church

How Taxpayer-Funded Schools Teach Creationism—and Get Away With It

The New Republic

One of the major arguments for requiring voucher schools to report test results is not to cast doubt on the private sector as a whole, but to flag particularly ineffective private schools (just as public accountability systems flag failing schools). A couple of weeks ago, Zack Kopplin noted in Slate that some Texas charter schools were teaching creationism in science classes. This week, Slate released an interactive map showing creationist teaching not only in charter schools but also private schools receiving public vouchers.

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As an education researcher, the data show school vouchers would harm Tennessee students

The Tennessean

Gov. Bill Lee’s new plans to expand Tennessee’s existing school voucher program would amount to doubling down on a policy that has failed kids and parents horribly in other states. When I started as a young researcher, I was cautiously optimistic that these schemes could help provide new educational opportunities. But the data are in and have been for years now: the larger and more recent the voucher system, the worse the results.

When it comes to school vouchers, do taxpayers get what they pay for?

Dallas Morning News

With the debate over school vouchers and similar programs heating up in Texas and across the country, it’s important to consider what we know from states that already have vouchers, and the private schools that accept them. Unfortunately, it’s quite devastating.

School classroom

Texans beware: School vouchers are bad for kids and taxpayers

Houston Chronicle

As the Texas Legislature debates a school voucher program (officially called an education savings account), details like pupil count not only affect taxpayers’ bottom-line, but more basic issues of equity and opportunity as well. The bottom line for SB8, based on the evidence in other states, is that school voucher-type programs are on average bad for kids and bad for taxpayers. Texas would do well to reject them now.

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When it comes to school vouchers, Josh Shapiro should pass

Philadelphia Inquirer

The governor-elect Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania has expressed some cautious support for school vouchers — including (at least in principle) the “Lifeline Scholarship” bills that have already been introduced by the current legislature. He has defended his position by saying, “It’s what I believe,” and that vouchers provide students with additional avenues to “help them achieve success.” Unfortunately, the data show exactly the opposite.

Image by Olga DeLawrence

Research on School Vouchers Suggests Concerns Ahead for Education Savings Accounts

Brookings Institution Chalkboard

Private school choice is having quite a moment. Whether structured as traditional school vouchers paying direct appropriations for private tuition, scholarships funded by redirected state income tax liabilities, or as new education savings accounts (ESAs), the use of public funds for private schooling has never been more prominent. This push is largely a red state phenomenon. Of the new or expanded private choice states, all but two went for Donald Trump in the 2020 election. But, the last decade of research on traditional vouchers strongly suggests they actually lower academic achievement.

Nella classe

“Apples to outcomes?” Revisiting the achievement v. attainment differences in school voucher studies

Brookings Institution Chalkboard

The summer of 2022 has seen a flurry of legal and policy efforts to expand publicly funded private school choice programs. These include: the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Carson v. Makin, which ruled that voucher programs cannot exclude religious schools; Arizona’s creation of a near-universal voucher program; and various state-level actions, such as a ballot initiative led by Betsy DeVos to create a tax credit-based voucher program in my home state of Michigan. After more than two decades of research on vouchers, a general pattern has emerged in the results.

School

Opinion: A school voucher plan in Michigan? Here's what it should include

Detroit Free Press

Michigan schools faces enormous challenges and opportunities in the coming years. Any changes we make to our public and private schools — whether with the DeVos plan or others like it — should come with oversight, transparency, and good faith efforts to keep the needs of students ahead of partisans pushing ideological agendas. And we have to pay for what we require our schools to do. Educational freedom is already part of our school landscape, but with freedom comes responsibility.

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