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The Private Eye: Josh Cowen’s Newsletter on School Vouchers and Right-Wing Politics
Billionaires Budgeting on the Backs of Kids and Families
Hey Everyone, So, this is my second-to-last newsletter with the great team at Education Law Center and Public Funds Public Schools. Although we’ll all still be working together in the fight for kids and families across the country, our formal collaboration will end when my fellowship wraps up in mid-May. I’m going to save my fifteenth and final newsletter to look back on the past year and look ahead into the future, but for this one I want keep focused on the state of play. First, Some Good News Let’s start with a few pieces of good news. In Utah, a state trial court ruled that the voucher scheme violated the state constitution. Kansas passed its state budget without expanding its voucher scheme as Republicans wanted to do this spring. In North Dakota, the Republican governor actually vetoed the legislature’s voucher proposal along with lawmakers’ efforts to further censor public school libraries. In his veto message on the latter, Governor Kelly Armstrong argued the library bill “represents a misguided attempt to legislate morality through overreach and censorship” and “imposes vague and punitive burdens on professionals.” Although Armstrong said he supports school choice conceptually, the voucher bill, in his words, “falls far short of truly expanding choice as it only impacts one [private] sector of our student population.” All of this means that right-wing billionaires don’t always win—even when it comes to their GOP allies. It’s possible to delay and even stop the so-called inevitable. The rush to vouchers is neither a mass movement of parents nor a tidal wave of history. It’s just an ongoing demand for a garden variety special interest subsidy that happens to be backed by some of the wealthiest people on the planet. Things change, and they will again. A Last Word (for now) on Texas But let’s be real, it looks pretty bleak in a lot of places if you’re a supporter of public schools and of public investments in kids and families. On May 3, Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed the massive school voucher scheme demanded of him by right-wing billionaires, from Betsy DeVos to Pennsylvania’s tech and crypto bro Jeff Yass. A photo of Yass himself celebrating at Abbott’s signing ceremony at the governor’s mansion was captured by a Houston Chronicle reporter. But that didn’t stop right-wing media outlets from continuing to pretend this is all about real parents and families. In fact, just before the voucher scheme passed a couple weeks ago, a handful of Republicans were getting ready to cross the aisle and work to put the voucher issue directly to Texas voters this fall. A last-minute call from Donald Trump himself to GOP legislators scuttled that effort, and in the end they went along with the plan to keep voters from having their say. Meanwhile, the public school funding bill passed by the Texas House stalled in the state Senate, threatening key resources depended upon by the vast majority of Texas families. The bill includes negotiated per-pupil increases and other investments—not enough, but something. I assume at some point some form of a school spending bill will have to pass, but the fact that vouchers for wealthy families are now law in Texas, and public school spending is still in limbo, tells you everything you need to know about these guys’ priorities. The Supreme Court Considers Religious Public Schools The U.S. Supreme Court just heard the Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board v. Drummond case about the proposed St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School. We’ll have to wait until late June or early July to find out whether the Court’s conservative majority will overrule the Oklahoma (also conservative) Supreme Court by allowing religious charter schools to operate. One thing I want to stress while we wait is that, like the proposed federal voucher scheme, a Supreme Court ruling that public charter schools can be religious schools would have massive implications for states across the country regardless of partisan political leaning. And if the Court imposes religious charters, it doesn’t quite seem in line with the notion of sending education back to the states. I’ve made clear that my own opposition to such developments isn’t about religion or even school choice. I’ve long argued that there is a role in today’s array of public schools for non-profit and secular charter providers to serve kids and families—as long as there’s strong oversight to make sure those kids and families are well-served. So too with common sense public school choice programs for intra- and inter-district enrollment. But let’s be clear: church-based public schools are neither common sense nor parental choice. It’s one more radical and extreme plan to erode First Amendment protections between individual religious practices and public policy. Federal Budgeting on the Backs of Kids and Families By the time you read this, MAGA Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives may have announced that the so-called Educational Choice for Children Act (ECCA) is included in their budget proposal. Recall that ECCA is a voucher scheme merged into a tax shelter for some of the wealthiest Americans. This would force vouchers into states like my home state of Michigan, plus top off voucher spending in states that already have them. Meanwhile, Donald Trump’s own budget proposal guts spending on public education, health care, housing, and environmental and community support programs. Oh and there’s this happening at the exact same time: the team led by billionaire Secretary of Education Linda McMahon has just restarted student debt collection. How we spend our money tells us where our values are. With Trump and his billionaire backers and GOP enablers, that couldn’t be any clearer: tax cuts for the wealthy, price-hiking and chaotic tariffs that pass new costs on to middle class families, and deep cuts to the supports and services many of us rely on for basic things like health care and a good start to our education. These things all go together: from billionaire Jeff Yass partying with the voucher lobby after forcing vouchers into Texas, to the MAGA budget in Washington built on the backs of American families. Josh P.S. If this newsletter was forwarded to you, please consider joining the PFPS distribution list so you can receive future editions directly in your inbox.
News Stories to Follow—and a Note on Democracy and “the Price of Eggs”
Hi Friends, It’s always hard to sit down and try to write a few thoughts about the news. This fight against billionaires trying to privatize schools—and other longstanding public investments—seems to take a new turn by the day. So, I always worry that some new development will make whatever I put down here a bit out of date. But with that caveat, I still want to run through a few events and news items just to flag what I’ve been following and chewing on. And then I want to make a couple comments about something that’s never going to get old or out of date, and that’s connecting the fight for public education to the fight for democracy. Keep Your Eye on These Stories First, any minute now, the U.S. Supreme Court will be hearing the Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board v. Drummond case about the proposed St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, which will determine whether charter schools—independent but public schools—can be run by a religious entity. This has monumental implications for both public schools specifically and for the separation of church and state more generally. Education Law Center is co-counsel in the companion case, and the plaintiffs in that case filed an amicus brief in Drummond earlier this month. Next, make sure you’re following the pushback by state departments of education against the Trump regime’s threat to rescind federal funding over DEI initiatives. As of this writing, California, Minnesota, New York, and Vermont, as well as Colorado, Pennsylvania, Washington, my own state of Michigan, and ELC’s home state of New Jersey have responded to the federal threat by saying, essentially, “we already follow the law.” I also want to make sure we’re all monitoring the shutdown of regional offices serving Head Start families. It’s affecting providers across the country—there’s little or even no staff now to serve those providers. Here’s sample coverage from Michigan, but you can find similar stories in many states. Bottom line: this is a slow-moving disaster for so many families, and with everything else going on right now I’m worried it will get lost in the mix. Let’s not let that happen, okay? Finally, we’re all still waiting to see what happens with the so-called Educational Choice for Children Act (ECCA)—aka the tax shelter for the wealthy that’s also a federal voucher scheme intended to ram vouchers into every state—even those that don’t want it. Those of us with our ear to the ground have heard conflicting things: maybe it will make it into the federal reconciliation process (where it would need only a simple GOP majority to pass) or maybe it’ll come up for a vote later in the year. One thing we know is that Betsy DeVos’s group is continuing to make this a top priority, so it’s something to keep monitoring closely. A Note on Democracy—Recapping the Network for Public Education Conference Now I want to give a shout out to Diane Ravitch, Carol Burris, and the entire team at the Network for Public Education for putting together an outstanding conference in Columbus, Ohio, on April 4-6. I had the honor of opening the conference with a Friday night fireside chat-type session with Diane. And then none other than Governor Tim Walz closed us out. In between, several of us working with or as part of Education Law Center contributed to and presided over panel sessions. These included ELC Executive Director Bob Kim, ELC Litigation Director Jessica Levin, and Sharon Krengel, who is ELC Director of Policy, Strategic Partnerships, and Communications. These panels ranged from a discussion of voucher impacts on neighborhood school closures, a recap of victories against the voucher push in both red and blue states, and a session I joined with the Economic Policy Institute’s Hilary Wething to walk through EPI’s fantastic tool that lets you calculate how much vouchers will cost any school district in the country. (Ongoing shout-out here as well to ELC’s own cost-calculator that lets you estimate the hit to your state education budget from a universal voucher program.)Bob, Sharon, and I also joined NEA’s Kyle Serrette for a standing-room-only discussion of the link between public education and democracy. One of the things that I struggle with in conversations like that is trying to connect some of the big, underlying philosophical goals—standing up for democracy, defending the principle of equal citizenship, and so on—with the everyday events in people’s lives. This is the education version of a debate that progressives are having right now in the aftermath of the 2024 election: do we talk about democracy, or do we talk about the price of eggs? The answer is both. The NPE conference took place on the same weekend that hundreds of thousands of people turned out in states across the country for a day of protests, demanding Hands-Off public schools, Social Security, Medicaid, and so much more. It was a highly specific, and unusually policy-focused type of organizing. But it was also democracy. I think the lesson there is that as much as we need to defend democracy as a core and motivating principle itself, we also need to remember that people experience democracy in many different ways. For a single mom trying to get extra support for her child learning with dyslexia, democracy might mean a public school that responds to that advocacy on behalf of her kid. For a guy with a longstanding, chronic health condition, maybe democracy means a law that prevents him from getting kicked off an insurance plan. For a senior living check-to-check on Social Security, maybe democracy means having a regional staffer return her call if the check goes missing or delayed. For someone who’s just lost their job, maybe democracy means a few extra dollars of support until they get back on their feet. Or, for thousands and thousands of folks with jobs, maybe democracy means the chance not just to survive by putting food on the table, but to thrive and invest some of their paycheck in their children’s futures. All of that is at stake right now. But the flipside is also true: all of that is still possible. And it’s with that possibility, that potential, and another call to defend that future that I’ll leave you this week. Josh P.S. 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Testimony, Texas, and Trump’s Department of Education Order
Hi folks, I’m taking a minute here after stops in Texas, South Carolina, and D.C. to regroup before a busy April of more public speaking. For those of you attending the Network for Public Education conference later this week, Diane Ravitch and I will be opening the event together with a special fireside chat on Friday evening. After that, I along with several members of the ELC team will be in a variety of panels throughout the weekend. Stop by and say hello! What I want to do with this newsletter is make a quick comment on Trump’s Department of Education executive order, flag Jessica Levin’s testimony to a House subcommittee and a new resource on the federal voucher tax credit scheme, and wrap up with a comment on my testimony to the Texas Legislature on March 11. Quick Word on Trump’s Department of Education Order The big education news in the last couple weeks has been Trump’s signing of his executive order to gut the U.S. Department of Education. I’ve said a lot about this in other spaces, including: My appearance on Fox News Live Now; My appearance on my local news station, WILX; And my column in The Conversation, syndicated elsewhere, too, explaining what Trump’s order does and doesn’t do. You can even check out my Instagram feed, where I’m posting a lot of quick commentary on news events like this. What you’ll find in any or all of those is this: to me, it’s important not to get too lost in the language of departments, agencies, EOs, Titles, and the like. These are all really important, but that’s what we have lawyers like the good people at ELC to do. For the rest of us, I strongly believe we need to be talking about how these activities harm local communities in terms of funding. Services. People. Already the layoffs, the rhetoric, and the confusion are creating real threats and harms to supports and services that families depend on—and I think we need to talk about that all of the time moving forward. Jessica Levin’s Testimony and New ECCA Resources Next up, I want to give a shout out to ELC’s Jessica Levin, who did her own testimony before the House Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education in Washington. I didn’t get a chance to watch that live because I was in the committee hearing down in Texas, but I know that Jessica did a great job standing up for the facts on school voucher schemes and for the need for more public school funding. You can watch the entire hearing here. Speaking of Congress, I also want to take a second to remind folks that the latest effort to pass a federal school voucher scheme—the so-called “Educational Choice for Children Act” (ECCA)—is still a threat. There’s a great new report from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy that walks through the details of this bill, which doubles as a tax shelter for some of the wealthiest Americans. What’s great about this report is it lays out how the tax credit version of vouchers works—basically, wealthy donors divert what they owe in federal (or state) taxes into a middleman organization that then distributes vouchers. But it also lets you see how much some of the billionaires behind the voucher political push—Betsy DeVos, Charles Koch, and even Elon Musk—could personally benefit from the latest scheme. Worth a look. I’ll also flag a recent piece of my own in Michigan’s biggest paper, the Detroit Free Press. In that piece, I walk through how the ECCA bill would force vouchers into states that don’t want them—like my home state of Michigan. And I also explain how that scheme would do almost nothing for families in the Michigan 5th and 7th Congressional Districts—the two regions closest to my town. I hope you can use a piece like this to make your own case against these schemes in your communities. Texas, Texas, Texas Forgive the cliché metaphor, but Texas really is the Alamo when it comes to efforts to fight vouchers in the states. With vouchers spreading through red states over the past three years, the big holdouts have been Tennessee and Texas, mainly because the DeVos/Koch/Yass strategy of primarying out rural Republican school voucher opponents has taken longer and been more expensive there than in states like Iowa and Arkansas. But with Tennessee falling earlier this winter—I was there in late January trying to fight back—the voucher lobby really is running out of real estate on their strategy. There just aren’t that many states left with supermajorities of GOP legislators vulnerable to reshaping by right-wing billionaires. That’s actually a big reason why ECCA, the federal voucher scheme, is getting so much effort in D.C. It would give Betsy DeVos and team a wholesale way of avoiding tough legislative fights in blue states. Which, again, leaves Texas. The March 11 hearing on HB3—the voucher bill introduced in the state’s House of Representatives—was a marathon session that lasted more than 22 hours. I was one of five witnesses invited and scheduled by House Democrats in the minority. The hearing began at 8 a.m. It took almost five hours for the bill sponsor and committee chair, Rep. Brad Buckley, to lay out his bill. He took questions from Republicans and Democrats alike, and despite a few grandstanding comments from GOP members about failing public schools (under the jurisdiction of their committee, I might add), this was a pretty informative and detailed discussion. I sat in the front row for all of it. Late in the afternoon, after the first round of three majority witnesses (in favor of the bill) and two invited witnesses in opposition, I gave my testimony alongside Paige Duggins-Clay, the chief legal analyst from the Intercultural Development Research Association, who’s also been a great ally to ELC on these issues and others. Our opening testimony lasted five minutes each, but then we took questions for another hour. I took a lot of questions from hostile GOP committee members about my background, what the research on vouchers really says, and specific issues I raised in the bill. But I don’t mind tough questions. And we’re not going to win or win back any of the things we value—whether that’s new investments in public education or across the policy space on issues like health care, jobs, or retirement security—without talking to the other side. I didn’t get a single question I couldn’t handle. If you’re reading this you probably already know my message on these billionaire-backed voucher schemes: vouchers threaten public school funding by subsidizing a new sector of kids who were already in private school; vouchers devastate student learning for the few kids who transfer from public school; and vouchers give private schools—not parents—the true choice of which kids to admit and which to leave out. What all that has in common with the U.S. Department of Education news—and with the larger political moment we’re in—is the dangerous ideology that crucial public investments in kids, families, and communities should be not just deprioritized but considered wasteful, and that those investments should be replaced with a go-it-alone approach that simply won’t work for millions of Americans. That’s an idea I reject, I think most folks do too, and when you have your principles and you have your facts, tough questions are just one more opportunity to make your case. Be well. Josh P.S. If this newsletter was forwarded to you, please consider joining the PFPS distribution list so you can receive future editions directly in your inbox.
Additional Newsletters
Federal Education Funding, More on the U.S. Department of Education—and a Couple of Court Wins
Hi Friends,I had a couple weeks back in Michigan after a month of travel in January, but now I’m back on the road starting in New Orleans with a speech to AASA, the School Superintendents Association (if you see me, say hello!) and then on to South Carolina and Ohio (twice). While I’m in Ohio, I’ll be opening the Network for Public Education conference in Columbus with a fireside chat Friday evening, April 4, with Diane Ravitch.Diane recently published an amazing essay in the prestigious New York Review of Books, reviewing my book The Privateers and framing that in the larger context of the history of school privatization dating back to the 1950s. It’s worth the read for her contribution alone, regardless of whether you care for my stuff or not. 😊I’m grateful there are lots of folks out there interested in what I have to say. But I also know that’s mostly because there’s so much going on right now around threats to public education—and to public services more generally—that we’re all hungry for information and a way forward. So, because it’s the season, bear with me as I dial in on a couple of items around the federal budget and federal funding for education in particular.Federal Funding 1: ELC in the News and in the Arena First, shout out to ELC’s Executive Director Bob Kim, who appeared last week at a House Appropriations Subcommittee hearing on federal investments in education. And then, Bob appeared again two days later at the Brookings Institution’s panel on the U.S. Department of Education’s new guidance on civil rights. At the congressional hearing, Bob had to square off with representatives from the Heritage Foundation and something called the “Defense of Freedom Institute,” 🙄 one of the many dark money groups trying to privatize education. The Heritage panelist was the author of Project 2025’s education chapter. So, you can imagine what Bob had to deal with (bless him).The one thing I want to flag about this is it was a hearing about education spending. And since the subcommittee is being run by the GOP, it meant ample chance for the two right-wing panelists and the committee members to repeat the myth that “money doesn’t matter” when it comes to education outcomes. The Heritage panelist even cited old research by Eric Hanushek, godfather of that myth, even though he has all but recanted that position. Let’s just repeat for the 1000th time, with a go-to reference if you need it: research is “essentially settled” on this question: more money improves both short-run and long-run student and community outcomes. By the way—and as Bob pointed out—that’s even true for COVID recovery (ESSER) funding: the money did help students recover, but not enough to bring students back academically from a once-in-a-century pandemic. One way to think of this is that public school spending is absolutely necessary for educational improvement. It’s just not always sufficient to overcome poverty, pandemics, or historical economic neglect. And adequate funding is always better than not enough. I also want to give a shout out to Rep. Mark Pocan, who, during the subcommittee hearing, correctly noted research of mine and others showing that 75% of voucher users were already in private school and that it’s the wealthiest families using most of the vouchers today. He also mentioned an older paper from my team showing that it’s the most at-risk kids who are often forced to leave voucher schools, though they do better when they land back at their local public school.(This illustrates one of the major reasons why the Right is trying to defund education research and evidence-based education policy.) Federal Funding 2: A Bit More on the U.S. Department of EducationIn my last newsletter, I made some notes about the U.S. Department of Education and Linda McMahon’s confirmation hearing, and I don’t want to repeat myself. Except now we have news that President Trump is issuing an executive order directing McMahon to dismantle what she can in the Department, subject to what Trump seems to suggest are the limits of federal law. To me, that makes the new order just a press release with Trump’s signature on it. But we’ll have to see how far they take it.In the meantime, I do want to underscore the issues with moving pieces of that department into other agencies, whether it’s Title I and IDEA into Robert F. Kennedy’s Health and Human Services, the Office of Civil Rights into the Department of Justice, or other plans raised in last week’s hearing. Don’t believe claims that those programs could “just” be moved without funding cuts. When the subcommittee asked panelists how much federal funding could and should be cut, the Heritage Foundation panelist said, “90 percent.” Meanwhile, ELC’s Bob Kim said zero, and a raise would be better. Good stuff – both the “quiet part out loud” bit from Heritage and Bob’s response.The point is that these folks do want to cut federal education spending, and the honest among them will just say so. Here I want to stress that we ought not to get caught up only in conversations about “agencies” and “departments” and organization charts. Those are important. But we also need to talk about real human impacts. One way to do that is with an important new resource from the University of Michigan’s Ford School of Public Policy, which allows you to calculate federal education spending by congressional district. And as I mentioned previously, check out Education Law Center’s new advocacy tool, Trump 2.0: How Much Federal Education Aid Could Your State Lose?A Few Court Wins Now, let’s close on a good note. Federal courts are beginning to kick in and stop a variety of Trump/Musk efforts to access our private data, in some cases stopping efforts to cut federal jobs as well. In education: last week, judges stopped Musk from accessing private student loan data, as well as certain U.S. Treasury data. These are important wins in terms of holding the line against what amounts to an unelected billionaire running wild through the federal government. Public Funds Public Schools and many of our allies will continue using all available avenues to challenge moves to enact federal vouchers, so stay tuned for more information about that.Hang in there everyone. This moment too shall pass. Josh P.S. 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On Linda McMahon, DOGE, and Attacks on Education Research
Hi friends. I don’t have to tell anyone that there’s been a non-stop barrage of news coming out of Washington, D.C. over the past couple weeks. And for someone who literally wrote a book about billionaire influence on public policy—in this case, education—it all feels like we’ve collectively raced past any warning signs and straight into crisis. But let’s try to make sense of a few ongoing developments moving so fast that they may well be further along by the time you read this. The McMahon Hearing First, let’s start with some comments on Linda McMahon’s confirmation hearing to lead the U.S. Department of Education. McMahon appeared at kind of an awkward moment, which more than one Democratic senator acknowledged, in that she was there to testify for leadership of a department that Trump had less than 24 hours earlier said should be disbanded “immediately.” (Trump also called the Education Department a “con job,” which may be why he appointed someone who made her billions hocking fake wrestling matches on national television.) It was a long hearing, but there were a few moments that stood out to me: First, note that McMahon was flanked by top staff from Betsy DeVos’s voucher lobby group, the American Federation for Children, one of whom sat directly behind her for the hearing itself. Second, McMahon said “I don’t know” and “we’ll have to see” when Senator Tim Kaine asked whether IDEA would actually be enforced if it left the U.S. Department of Education and was placed, for example, in Health and Human Services. This is a Project 2025 idea, and it would result in Robert F. Kennedy Jr. overseeing special education funding and programming. Third, McMahon noted (correctly) that the U.S. Department of Education doesn’t set curriculum policy. Which puts her at odds with other Trump Administration and right-wing influencers who claim the federal government has been indoctrinating children. It’s also at odds with McMahon’s answers to questioning during the hearing about whether Trump’s executive order on education content could restrict what local public schools teach. She appeared to suggest it could, but hedged a bit on a final answer. Fourth, I think it’s important that Senator Murkowski—a Republican—pointed out that many education reform strategies were built for urban and suburban markets, while doing nothing for rural communities. This is true, not just for school choice policies, but also “reforms” like firing teachers and assuming a better pool of educators is just waiting around town to be hired. Speaking of failed education market strategies, for me a key positive moment came when Wisconsin Senator Tammy Baldwin entered four research studies into the Senate record. Those four studies detail the devastating academic impacts for children who used school vouchers to transfer to private school over the past decade. I write about these studies in my book, The Privateers, and in the book I explain how those devastating impacts forced the voucher lobby to pivot back to culture war strategies to sell the voucher story. Finally, Linda McMahon went on record that private schools funded by taxpayer vouchers—including through a federal voucher scheme—should and do have the right to turn away any child who doesn’t fit those private schools’ needs or values. Always remember, when it comes to voucher schemes, it’s not about parent choice at all; it’s the school’s choice. Now’s a great time, by the way, to shout out to the great Jessica Levin, ELC’s Litigation Director, who’s quoted in this must-read new New Yorker piece on what Trump’s education agenda might mean for students with disabilities. To quote Jessica directly: “The vast majority of IDEA rights only apply to public school students. These rights are all lost when a student goes to a private school.” To summarize the Linda McMahon hearing, the best I can say for her is that she was an able spokesperson for the nonsense, the contradictions, and, in some cases, the outright scheming behind the Musk-Trump education agenda. Musk, IES, and More The other item to flag here is that Elon Musk—who is functionally all but in control of federal governmental operations—has his team inside the Education Department already. So much of the debate about how far Trump and McMahon could push a plan to dismantle the Department is sort of behind, in real time, some of the facts on the ground. We know that the administration is laying off key staff members inside the department, and that Musk’s young army of programmers appears to have access to key data systems. We also know that under the auspices of his “Department of Government Efficiency,” or DOGE, Musk has cancelled nearly $1 billion in contracts run out of the Institute for Education Sciences (IES), the key research and data arm of the federal education agency. The hypocrisy there is that many of these contracts and grants were directly supporting studies of what works best for children in public schools, something the administration claims it wants to know. Those studies include research on math and literacy supports, mental health, college access, educating students with disabilities, and—get this!—whether or not the Washington, D.C. voucher scheme (the only voucher system funded by the federal government in place to date) is actually working. All of this is basically in line with the administration’s efforts to cut billions of dollars from the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, cuts that federal courts are taking a close look over at this very moment. My own research was a beneficiary of IES funding for years. I was in the inaugural cohort of doctoral students funded by IES during the first term of George W. Bush’s administration, back when Republicans at least claimed to believe in knowing what works for schools. I was part of teams that won major grants to study literacy reforms in Michigan, and led the $2 million, Michigan-specific site for the Education Department’s R&D center on school choice research. All of which is to stay, in addition to knowing just how important the U.S. Department of Education is to kids and families across the country, I also deeply believe in its support for learning more about how to make education work for all kids in this country. And have given my career to that work thus far. What it comes down to, though, is that we’re in a period of American politics and policy where facts really don’t matter to many of the folks in charge. Even when—especially when—those facts run counter to rightwing ideological priorities. Just take the school voucher case. As I say in my book, “if evidence meant anything, vouchers would have ended years ago,” such has been the devastating toll of these programs for so many children. None of this is an excuse to sit back and watch all this destruction unfold. But it’s worth taking a moment to just name, again, what’s at stake. It’s not only public schools. It’s more and more a question of democracy and of the truth itself. Josh P.S. If this newsletter was forwarded to you, please consider joining the PFPS distribution list so you can receive future editions directly in your inbox.
Notes from the Road, NAEP, Trump’s Forced Voucher Orders, and…What’s at Stake?
Just back from the road (again!) I just returned from a multi-state trip where I met with lawmakers, parents, and community leaders in Tennessee, Wisconsin, and New Hampshire. I’ve appreciated the chance to speak with folks of all political stripes—conservatives, progressives, and a lot of people in between. You can read some of the coverage of my visits here and here. News Dump: NAEP and Forced Vouchers Meanwhile, if you believe that education policy in this country has to be built on a fundamental commitment to public schools, and that public education is perhaps the most important of our public goods, the first days of the second Trump Administration have been chaotic and disheartening. Trump has issued sweeping executive orders (EO) pausing all manner of federal public services. And then there’s a specific EO trying to carve out pieces of federal agency budgets to fund school voucher schemes. Administration threats to gut and maybe eliminate the U.S. Department of Education abound, too. Then there’s the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the so-called nation’s report card which came out on January 29, right alongside Trump’s voucher EO. NAEP says, as usual, that math and reading learning rates for American 4th and 8th graders continue to stagnate. And the scores of many at-risk kids are even declining relative to their more advantaged peers—reflecting decades of financial and policy neglect dating well before the pandemic. (Just a reminder: vouchers do far more damage to vulnerable kids on similar academic measures). It's a lot. With the voucher EO, Trump is intending to create federally funded vouchers by diktat: directing the Departments of Education, Defense, and Health and Human Services (among others) to find ways to spend chunks of their budgets on voucher schemes. How that EO holds up in court, and what its relationship will be to the Educational Choice for Children Act (ECCA) tax shelter/voucher scheme sitting in Congress, are still open questions. But for the moment, what’s clear is that all of this is about amplifying voucher spending in states that are already diverting their own taxpayer funds to private education as well as forcing vouchers into states that have already (and often repeatedly) rejected them. So, while we wait, I want to take up a question I get everywhere when I travel. I think it comes from a genuine exhaustion that folks have fighting against things, and some genuine desire for inspiration to take up fights for something too. Sometimes this comes as a good faith question, sometimes as a challenge. But basically, it’s: “Okay Cowen, what are you for” What Works, and What’s the Right Thing to Do? These are important questions because although we know parents and voters strongly support public education and their own local public schools, they also want improvements. And isn’t learning and working together to improve investment in our future the point of public policy? What are some of the real opportunities for supporting and improving public education? Any answer ought to be guided by two basic principles: what actually works, and what’s the right thing to do? And those answers have to begin with deep, sustained investments in public schools. We know money matters, and we’ve known that for years. What else? Here are the kinds of things I talk about: investments in early education like pre-K and child care for all kids; Grow-Your-Own teacher pipeline initiatives that draw on local talent; policy strategies for diverse learners like English Learners and students with dyslexia; universal school meals and new investments in high-quality HVAC systems. And that’s just the start. We know those investments not only work, but parents like them, too. That’s why the voucher lobby has tried to buy votes and divide progressives by throwing versions of some of these ideas into spending schemes for so-called “education savings accounts (ESAs),” whose real policy goal is private K-12 tuition on the taxpayer dime. The common denominator for all of this is making sure these resources are available to every school in the nation, but especially those educating the most vulnerable students. And threats to those resources are clear and present every day—whether it’s in chronic underfunding in many states or in the Trump Administration’s effort to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education. Wrapping Up: What’s at Stake? Maybe your own list of policy priorities is different than mine. Maybe you’d add or take something away. But one thing is certain: when states commit more and more resources to voucher schemes—mostly for kids already in private school, by the way—they close the door on other solutions and opportunities. So, whatever our answer, “what are we for?” also becomes a question of “what do we lose?” when taxpayer dollars are sent to private schools. And with all the news and all the chaos out there, it’s more important than ever to remember what’s at stake. Josh P.S. If this newsletter was forwarded to you, please consider joining the PFPS distribution list so you can receive future editions directly in your inbox.
Vouchers By Any Other Name Are Still Vouchers—And Let’s Talk About Fraud
Hello and Happy New Year! By the time you’re reading this, most state legislatures will already be in session, a new Congress will be gaveling in, and the second Trump presidency is about to make landfall. I want to use this first newsletter of 2025 to flag two items that will come up a lot in states and in Congress as the school voucher push keeps rolling. The first concerns all the various names for school vouchers: education savings accounts, freedom accounts, scholarships (usually branded with the word “hope” or “opportunity”), tax credits, and the rest. The second is a warning about waste and good old-fashioned fraud. Let’s get into it. All ESAs Are Vouchers, But Not All Vouchers Are ESAs The fanciest voucher out there these days is the “education savings account” (or “education freedom account” in places like Arkansas or New Hampshire). There’s an almost frantic effort by the voucher lobby to avoid the “V” word, and some of that includes genuine self-delusion that these ESAs/EFAs are actually something other than vouchers with extra allowable expenses beyond private school tuition. But that’s all an ESA is: tuition plus. Some states like Iowa and Arkansas still have fairly limited packages in that “plus” bucket: mostly add-on costs associated with attending private school itself, such as textbooks, uniforms, school fees and so on, with limited homeschool expenses thrown in as well. In other states like Arizona and Florida, these add-ons are far more permissive, from educational materials on Amazon to Disney World field trip passes. One side argument that research-aware voucher lobby folks make is that the horrific academic outcomes suffered by lower- and middle-income voucher users will go away because these new laws aren’t creating vouchers, just “ESAs.” But there’s no educational theory of action—and no brand of common sense—that says students will make up academic losses just because their parents can now use vouchers on backyard trampolines and SeaWorld tickets on top of tuition at private schools that don’t deliver academically. All of this also applies to the voucher schemes structured as tax credits. The only difference between the typical tax credit voucher —including what’s on tap for a federal voucher push—and older “conventional” voucher programs, like those in places like Ohio and Wisconsin, is that private tuition is paid out by a “scholarship granting organization.” That’s basically a middle-man—technically a non-profit—funded by wealthy taxpayers and corporations who pay what they owe in state (or, if it passes, federal) taxes into these voucher-distribution funds instead. But it has the same effect on state revenue as when states just cut the voucher check directly. One last thing. Sometimes you hear voucher advocates say these new voucher designs—especially ESA/EFA vouchers—aren’t really “vouchers” because the parents get the dollars instead of the private schools. I have news for them: this is no innovation. Parents have long been directly compensated by states for tuition. In fact, the earliest modern voucher system, in Wisconsin, did so precisely to avoid potential church-state walls before the Supreme Court’s Zelman v. Simmons-Harris decision ruled that such concerns weren’t necessary. The point of all this is that whether states pay private tuition to schools directly, cut checks to parents to reimburse private tuition, create savings or “freedom” accounts to pay private tuition and other private educational costs, or allow wealthy taxpayers to pay what they owe in state/federal taxes into funds that disburse private tuition funds, publicly funded private tuition is the through-line. And that through-line’s called a voucher. Don’t be fooled by semantics. What About Waste and Fraud? One problem with this new array of school voucher designs is that some programs do make it even easier for fraud, misuse, or simple errors to occur involving large sums of public dollars. When a state education or revenue agency is administering the voucher system and directly reimbursing private schools or parents for demonstrable tuition expenses, it’s a bit easier to keep track of spending, especially when routine audits accompany that activity. But in the ESA/tax credit voucher versions, new opportunities for waste and even fraud can and do occur. In Arizona, Attorney General Kris Mayes has filed charges against people who created what Mayes called “ghost children” to claim voucher dollars, while spending on non-permitted items also has been and continues to be a problem there. In Utah, the state’s voucher middle-man vendor spent more than state law allowed on administrative fees and expenses, while the vendor in Idaho and Missouri has struggled to make payments on time. In Florida, investigative reporting has found voucher payments to schools that faked fire safety and facilities inspections, while in North Carolina, watchdog organizations found the state was sending voucher dollars to private schools for more students than were enrolled in those schools—and even to a school that didn’t exist! Wisconsin at least has something resembling best practices on this issue: a financial audit system in place for private schools getting voucher cash. The state has periodically removed schools from its voucher system for failing to maintain financial health—examples of the “sub-prime” private school market I warn about all over the country. Even when fraud or financial shortcomings aren’t necessarily apparent, there’s an enormous potential for waste with the newer voucher schemes. In Iowa, the state auditor found its voucher vendor was charging taxpayers twice what the pro-voucher governor originally promised those fees would cost. While back in Arizona, which inexplicably allows voucher users to roll over unspent funds into the next year, a report found more than $300 million in unspent funds just sitting in individual voucher accounts. One account had amassed more than $200,000. As voucher costs have ballooned, Arizona has had to borrow against its opioid settlements just to fund its Department of Corrections—an example of how voucher waste harms state budgets outside of education spending. Wrapping Up All of this is to say that to the extent there’s any difference at all between classic voucher schemes where the state covers private school tuition and the new-fangled versions that bring in a middleman and allow additional expenses, those differences just add more opportunities for waste and fraud to take hold. The fact that these schemes are now available on a universal or near-universal basis regardless of family income only adds to the problem. The newer versions of voucher programs have all but removed the few safeguards that were part of older programs (accountability and transparency anyone?), while putting more taxpayer money on the table. I’m not a gambling man, but I know one thing about high stakes: a bad bet made with good money is still a bad bet. Josh P.S. If this newsletter was forwarded to you, please consider joining the PFPS distribution list so you can receive future editions directly in your inbox.
Three Kinds of Voucher Billionaires—and Other Big Questions
Hey Friends, The team at Public Funds Public Schools recently hosted a webinar on education issues in the upcoming Trump Administration. Specific topics were school vouchers in general, a renewed voucher push in places like Tennessee and Texas, and the plan to create a federal voucher scheme through the tax code. That federal plan, a version of which has been proposed by GOP legislators in the past several congresses, would be modeled on existing state voucher tax credit schemes. The goal: nothing short of pushing publicly funded private school vouchers into every state. I want to use this newsletter to answer a couple of questions that came up during that webinar. First up: Why do right-wing billionaires care so much about school vouchers?I get a version of this question everywhere I go to speak. It’s a key question I ask in my book, The Privateers, and I try to give some answers there. But it’s especially important now with Linda McMahon replacing Betsy DeVos as Donald Trump’s voucher-backing billionaire Education Secretary, with news that Elon Musk wants to create his own private school in Texas, with TikTok billionaire Jeff Yass giving $10 million to try to push vouchers into that state, and with the various Koch-backed organizations continuing their own voucher agenda. These are all very different billionaires. But they have one thing in common in their demand for school voucher schemes across the country: vouchers fit into the way they think the world ought to work and, being billionaires, they’re used to getting what they want. Nonetheless, the differences are helpful to understand. I see these billionaires and their associated advocacy organizations falling into three categories representing three different areas of public policy that billionaires want to influence. The first, and oldest, are the Christian Nationalists—the folks behind the idea that a far-right notion of Christianity should form the basis of American law and policy. This is the Betsy DeVos version. And the Linda McMahon version. Betsy DeVos has said she wants vouchers to literally “advance God’s kingdom” on earth. It’s why her 501(c)(4) is pushing a voucher campaign to “save Catholic schools” and why more regional, billionaire-founded groups like the Herzog Foundation are pushing vouchers in the heartland to help fill seats in church pews. (There’s high-quality research evidence, by the way, that when vouchers pass they become the dominant source of funding for churches that run private schools). Next are the zero-government folks. This is mostly Koch Network groups like Stand Together, and Yes Every Kid. As I recount in The Privateers, the Koch brothers had longstanding ties to Milton Friedman himself. They want school vouchers because they see public schools as “government” and—being from oil and gas money—they associate government with “regulation.” Not for nothing do many of these groups hold up the voucher scheme created by the Pinochet regime in Chile—which coupled economic deregulation with rollbacks to civil liberties—as a policy model. Voucher godfather Milton Friedman, along with other University of Chicago colleagues, advised Pinochet in the 1970s. Third, and finally, there are the tech bros like Musk and Yass. These guys are new players in the billionaire voucher shell game. Without the long histories of the DeVos or Koch groups it’s hard to identify a coherent aim or ideology that ties them to vouchers. Except for one thing: the privatized, monetized idea of education as just another commodity. I’ve compared school vouchers to crypto-currency—something in which both Musk and Yass have emerging interest. If your world view draws from an every-bro-for-himself mentality, stoked with the conviction that you’re a genius investor (and to be fair, your billions seem evidence to that effect!), it makes some sense that a check from taxpayers to go speculate on an open education market has some appeal. We’ll see how dominant that appeal becomes—and how it interacts with the older DeVos and Koch ideologies in the coming years. If Trump’s victory coalition on other issues is any indication, they’ll find much to draw from one another. Now for the Second Set of Questions:Do you have advice on how to talk with law and policymakers about crafting state legislation that keeps public funds for public schools in light of the Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue decision and how that impacts no-aid clauses? Have any states enacted pre-emptive legislation that protects public schools and public school funding from voucher programs? For these I’m going to ask Jessica Levin, ELC’s awesome Litigation Director and the head of the PFPS campaign, to weigh in. I’m learning so much from Jessica this year while I’m at ELC, so let’s just go to the expert: Thanks Josh, and great questions from our webinar audience. The U.S. Supreme Court’s Espinoza decision dealt with Montana’s “no aid” clause, which barred public funding specifically to religious schools, and a majority of the Court found that provision problematic under the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. But there are a number of states that have a different type of no aid clause that is not limited to religious schools, but rather bars public funding of private schools in general. These are very powerful bulwarks against voucher programs. In fact, the South Carolina Supreme Court recently struck down the state’s voucher program under a no aid clause of that very type. We at Education Law Center were proud to help represent the plaintiffs in that case, Eidson v. South Carolina Department of Education. So, what can states do to erect legal firewalls protecting public schools and the resources they need to serve their students? Even better than pre-emptive legislation are constitutional protections like the South Carolina style of no aid clause that preserve state funds for public schools. These are not necessarily products of long-ago times; Michigan enacted such an amendment to its constitution in the 1970s. We just saw Kentucky voters reject a constitutional amendment meant to open the door to vouchers. This indicates potential to enact voucher-blocking constitutional amendments. Thanks, Jessica, and with that, we’ll wrap up this edition of the newsletter. Stay tuned next time! Josh P.S. If this newsletter was forwarded to you, please consider joining the PFPS distribution list so you can receive future editions directly in your inbox. P.P.S. Don’t forget to check out the first webinar in the ELC series “What Do We Do Now?” that featured Josh and Jessica on private school vouchers. The second in the series is on Dec. 16; more info here. During this time of giving, please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Education Law Center, which directs the PFPS campaign. Follow @EdLawCenter and @pfpsorg on Facebook, X, BlueSky, and LinkedIn.
More on the Election: State Results and the Emerging Trump 2.0 Education Agenda (a.k.a.: What Do Billionaires Want?)
Hi everyone,Well, we’re into the holiday season, and in the post-election period that means cabinet and other appointments (I know, nothing says holiday spirit quite like it, right?). Over the last few weeks, it’s become clear that Donald Trump’s appointments mainly come from a roster of his personal loyalists.Linda McMahon and the Billionaire Education AgendaTrump has followed exactly that pattern by naming Linda McMahon his nominee to head the U.S. Department of Education. McMahon ran the Small Business Administration during the first Trump term, and media reports have already made much of her thin education record. To me those resume items are far less important than her most recent role as chair of the America First Policy Institute (AFPI)—a dark money, vaguely focused outfit founded in the months following January 6.What this pick means is that, perhaps even more than the right-wing obsession with dismantling the very department McMahon is slated to lead, school vouchers will be item number one for Trump’s education agenda. McMahon founded AFPI with at least $20 million of her own money, partnering with Texas billionaire Tim Dunn in the effort. Dunn is the Texas-specific force working, as the New York Times put it: “to send public funding to private schools and to increase Christianity’s role in civic life.”My take on all of this is that the McMahon pick is about creating space to push these kinds of policy priorities while making sure the nominee doesn’t embarrass Trump. Expect to see a host of right-wing idea people and political hatchet-men coming in and out of the Department of Education. They’ll be looking to carve up, reorganize, and shut down programming they don’t like. They’ll reduce the Department’s budget ask to Congress and try to push the limits of any and all discretionary authority they have on, say, Title IX protections on gender-related discrimination. But the point of McMahon is to reward a long-time Trump loyalist who will let all of those things happen while the big, chief policy goal of a federal, tax credit voucher scheme gets priority. That scheme, currently called the Educational Choice for Children Act, which would establish a broad federal voucher program, is currently in play in Congress.It’s important to remember that Congress doesn’t belong to Donald Trump. So federal vouchers are hardly a foregone conclusion—especially if members of both parties stand up for their districts, like they did at times during the first Trump administration by rejecting cuts to public education.More on Election Results and Next StepsAnd on that note, I wanted to use the rest of this newsletter to make a point about the politics of the billionaire-backed school voucher push. Basically, that vast amounts of billionaire spending are necessary to ram voucher bills through state legislatures precisely because voters hate these schemes.That argument also includes the idea that voters in places like Texas selected pro-voucher legislators. But it’s important to remember how long and how much money from right-wing billionaires even that result has taken—among otherwise friendly Republicans. Texas Governor Greg Abbott has tried for nearly two years to ram vouchers through. And just as it did in other states, the Texas voucher push has cost millions in both in-state and out-of-state billionaire funding to come even as close as they have. What do those millions buy? Mostly favorable results in Republican primaries to try to weaken conservative opponents to vouchers. But as we know, actual voters tend to reject vouchers when given a direct say on them as opposed to a choice between legislators hand-picked by billionaires. Vouchers went 0-3 on Election Day on three statewide ballots: Colorado, Kentucky, and Nebraska. In Colorado, the result was a bit closer, in part because the ballot language was vague and contained a statement about parents’ right to direct their child’s education (who’s against that?!). In Nebraska and Kentucky, clear majorities of voters rejected vouchers while—and this is key—backing Donald Trump for the presidency. In Nebraska, 57% of voters actually pulled an existing voucher law off the books. In Kentucky, 65% of voters rejected a constitutional amendment that would have expressly authorized the state to spend public dollars on private school tuition. All 120 Kentucky counties voted against that plan, 119 of them by double digits.With those results, the streak continues: vouchers have never survived a statewide ballot where voters get to weigh in directly on these schemes. Public Schools are EverywhereIt’s really pretty simple. There are so many communities across the country where public schools hold a special place in folks’ hearts. And in their economies. Voters may not say so directly, but they’re perceiving what researchers find: that public school investments not only raise academic achievement, they also reduce crime rates, for example, and even may lead to greater health and life expectancy. And on the flip side, as voters may remember all too well from tough times like the Great Recession, cutting public school funding hurts kids and families.Look, there’s a reason real voters keep defeating vouchers even when they support Trump or other right-wing politicians on other issues. Public schools are everywhere—in red communities and blue communities. Just before the election, the New York Times published a massive new data tool showing where voters live with respect to key services, industries, and professions. So, for example: lots of public relations professionals in blue areas, lots of taxidermists in red spots, lots of Lululemons in blue areas, lots of Hardee’s and Sonic Drive-Ins in red. But you know what’s everywhere? Public schools. Check it out yourself. Alongside McDonalds (really, is that a surprise?), public schools are the one spot in the Times data tool you can’t really find a political pattern for based on left/right voting. (And on the flip-side, check out the new Public Funds Public Schools data tool to explore where private schools are, and aren’t, to see where parents would actually be able to use a voucher if those schemes came to town).Look, there’s work to be done. The extent to which public schools are able to fulfill their mission to serve everyone—every child—is going to be determined to a large degree by whether they’re given the support and the investment needed to do so. The data and the evidence are clear on that. It’s also the right thing to do. Voters spoke on Election Day. They didn’t choose everything I had hoped they would, but by and large they chose to keep and improve and ultimately fight for their public schools.Have a wonderful start to the holidays, I’ll get back to you again soon! Josh P.S. If this newsletter was forwarded to you, please consider joining the PFPS distribution list so you can receive future editions directly in your inbox.