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The Private Eye: Josh Cowen’s Newsletter on School Vouchers and Right-Wing Politics
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.
Additional Newsletters
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.
Thoughts on the Election, Answering Questions from My Recent PFPS Webinar, and a Renewed Opposition
Dear Friends, Quick Election Reactions There is a lot to be said and done about public education in the weeks, months, and years ahead. For now, I want to just call your attention to the fact that school vouchers went down in defeat in all three states where they were put to voters on Election Day: Colorado, Nebraska, and Kentucky. Voter opposition to vouchers remains broad and bipartisan. In fact, it’s precisely because voters reject voucher schemes that the right-wing billionaires behind them keep turning to state legislators, who are easier (and frankly cheaper) to manipulate than hundreds of thousands of ordinary citizens. Privateers Q&A from the PFPS Webinar There were so many great questions from the Public Funds Public Schools webinar that featured me and my book, The Privateers. A few of those were very specific, and I’ve tried to provide useful responses. Others were about the broader political landscape, and I wanted to use the opportunity to make a few bigger comments about public education and civic engagement in our new reality. First, the technical questions: How do you see the rightwing privateers shifting their messaging in order to pass vouchers/ESAs in purple states or states with slim red majorities? Not only did vouchers go 0-3 on Election Day, including with Trump supporters, these schemes have never survived any other statewide ballot measures—being put to real voters—even in red states. I think what’s going to happen in January is that Governors Abbott and Lee will try once more to ram vouchers through what they hope are now more pliant legislatures in Texas and Tennessee, respectively. And then I think the voucher lobby, the billionaires and the Trump administration together will continue the culture war. They don’t need to convince ordinary voters, and they haven’t been able to do so. But if they can keep influencing GOP primaries and the federal courts, that will be the strategy. Where can we receive information to communicate and inform our community members? Also, what approach would you recommend that you may have observed and how do you communicate this information in very conservative based areas without creating mass conflict within the community. Well, Public Funds Public Schools has a great set of resources! I’d start there. They even have interviews with advocates in conservative states who give tips on getting out the anti-voucher message effectively. And other groups like the Network for Public Education, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the Economic Policy Institute, the National Coalition for Public Education, and the National Education Policy Center all provide resources on a number of education questions. I hear from voucher supporters that they should be able to take the money for education for their child and use it however they want to educate their child. How would you reply to this parent? Public money already follows our children to school—as long as they’re enrolled in traditional public or charter schools. The only thing that doesn’t happen everywhere is tax dollars going to private, usually religious, education. But even in the states that do have such voucher schemes, remember this: it’s not really school choice. It’s the school’s choice. It’s a total myth that parents can customize their children’s education unfettered by rules and regulations. It’s that with vouchers, the private schools are doing the choosing. How do voucher recipient schools escape regulation? What is the special sauce of these programs that they escape oversight — that would be a step to prevent the failure you describe? In the old days when I first started studying this stuff as a young doctoral student (2005 or so), oversight of emerging voucher systems was still in place. The federal D.C. voucher scheme, which began enrolling kids in 2005, had real evaluation provisions. This was the era of No Child Left Behind, and lawmakers more or less extended those rules to voucher programs. Ditto with Louisiana and Indiana, for example, on the state level. In fact, that’s how we know how terrible voucher results have been over the last decade: even conservatives wanted to know whether parents were getting the results that private schools were promising them. But since the first Trump term, when we really started to see how badly vouchers were performing on academic outcomes, there’s been a real effort to avoid that oversight by omitting these requirements from many newer voucher laws. Voucher supporters are afraid of news headlines like these. When challenged about the lack of any real assessment as to how well students are learning under our voucher program in NH, a lawmaker said recently that it’s the parents whose children are in the voucher program who are the best judges for how the program is performing. What would you say to that? That’s more or less what Ken Starr said (remember him?) on the steps of the Supreme Court after leading the first voucher defense there back in 2002. That’s what voucher advocates have been saying for years. As a parent, I’d simply say: I’m very skeptical of any school that refuses to let me check their work. If that private school—or the lobby promoting voucher schemes—is so confident in what they’re selling, basic accountability shouldn’t be a problem. The fact that they’re so terrified that parents could compare results between their voucher school and a local public school should tell you a lot about what really happens when vouchers come to town. How do vouchers impact students with disabilities? With the expansion of vouchers, do we know what the impact is on students with specialized learning needs? In the past, states have carved out some voucher programs specifically for students with disabilities. Today, the emphasis is on vouchers for anyone, regardless of income or other characteristics. In almost all these programs, whether narrow or broad, students lose most of their rights under special education and disability laws. And in today’s world, there is no expectation that individual private schools will have to serve students with disabilities. The federal Government Accountability Office has previously warned about misinformation and false promises from voucher schools to parents with special needs students. And that’s something Arizona’s own Attorney General has warned about more recently. Now for two fundamental questions about education and democracy: What steps can we take to fight back? I just keep going back to the fact that voters don’t like these schemes—even conservative voters who backed Donald Trump. In The Privateers, I talk about the fact that school vouchers are one of the religious right’s very top policy priorities, alongside rolling back reproductive rights. The parallel is especially apt because voters hate rollbacks to their reproductive freedom, too. In this past election, not only did voters reject school vouchers in three states at the same time many backed Donald Trump, they also enshrined reproductive rights in seven more states. In four of those states—including Arizona, a key voucher state—Donald Trump won a majority of votes even while voters decided to protect reproductive rights. No matter what administration is in power, these fundamental questions about freedom will remain, and I think we need to remember that on those specific questions, more people agree with us than with the far-right. Join Education Law Center/Public Funds Public Schools next week for a webinar on concrete tools and steps to fight back against vouchers during Trump’s second term. Register here. How do you warn public school supporters about the extensive web of right-wing/privatization interests you've documented without sounding like a conspiracy theorist? Educator and author Jonathan Kozol said, “I used to think I could make a difference in education, but now I realize all I can do is stand back and watch.” Dr. Cowen, what can we do besides stand back and watch the dismantling of public schools by billionaires? For my part, I get called a conspiracy theorist all the time. It’s the Heritage Foundation’s favorite insult to use against me. And coming from the same people that wrote Project 2025, it’s an honor. I also get called a union activist, because I’ve appeared on stage with Randi Weingarten, head of the American Federation of Teachers. And people call me woke because I spoke at a summit with Nikole Hannah-Jones. But in both cases, I am proud to have done so. Name-calling is to be expected when you’re doing the hard work. The reality is, many of these name-callers are just power-worshippers who have no problem being servient to far-right billionaires who will never know their names or care about them as people. Here’s what I’m trying to say: I’d rather be called an ally to unions that fight for working folks, journalists who ask questions about power and injustice, or educators on the front lines for our kids every day, than surrender my dignity to some of the wealthiest people on the planet. Know truth, and let it keep you free. We know that the evidence is on the side of new investments in public schools. We know that many state courts have said: “so is the law.” And we know voters are too—we just got another reminder. Standing up for democracy, and for education as a fundamental human right, is going to be an effort. And we do need to think hard about new strategies to take that stand in a way that speaks to people where they live, not just where or how we’d like them to be. So let those of us who can, get back to work. 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.
And Now for Some Good News!
Hey friends, I’m writing this edition on the way back from a swing through Florida, Iowa, Ohio, and Kentucky. Officially this is a book tour, but the first three of those states are dealing with the fallout of devastating universal voucher schemes, and the fourth – Kentucky – has a constitutional amendment on the ballot on November 5 that could open the door to voucher schemes. I’ve been talking about my book, The Privateers. But underlying that conversation is always the basic facts about vouchers: they defund public schools, devastate student learning, and fund discrimination against vulnerable kids and families. I’ve talked to so many folks on the road since August. Teachers who’ve given their careers to public schools, only to see themselves attacked and demoralized for their service. Parents who were lured in by the false promise of school choice for all, only to hear a school they chose for their child was not going to choose to accept them. Local activists and organizers who just want to know: “What can I do to stop these voucher schemes from growing in my state?” I don’t have all the answers. But I tried to end The Privateers with some uplifting words about the rock-solid evidence behind investing anew in public schools and communities and the moral value of whole-child commitments to kids everywhere. But if I were writing that conclusion today, I’d also add this: the fight against school privatization isn’t over. Not even close. And that’s not just a statement of will but a statement of fact. Although a handful of right-wing billionaires have succeeded in ramming voucher laws through a number of state legislatures over the last few years, they’ve also had some big setbacks. So, let’s talk about that good news. First, I mentioned Kentucky. There’s a scheme on the ballot trying to pry open the door to vouchers, disguised as a constitutional amendment that would merely, innocently, provide more parental choice. Something similar is on the ballot in Colorado, and in Nebraska, the state supreme court has allowed a vote on whether to roll back the state’s newly enacted voucher scheme. I don’t know what’s going to happen in those three states, but I know this: Vouchers have never survived a statewide vote by real, actual parents and other voters. It’s why so much dark money has to get spent to ply legislators into backroom deals to ram these things through. Second, there are the courts. Kentucky’s voucher amendment is up for a vote in 2024 because back in 2022 the commonwealth’s supreme court saw through the voucher scheme passed as a tax credit by a supermajority, right-wing legislature. The court noted, correctly, that the tax credit version of vouchers has the same revenue impact as a direct appropriation, and that using public dollars collected for education to fund anything other than the public schools (without voter approval) was a constitutional no-no for the Bluegrass State. Well, guess what? Just a few weeks ago, the South Carolina Supreme Court also rejected that state’s voucher scheme. Never mind the marketing around giving voucher cash to parents, the court said, all of that is just “window dressing" for sending public dollars to private schools. Again, another state constitutional no-no. Shoutout, by the way, to my amazing colleagues this year at Education Law Center and in the ELC-led Public Funds Public Schools campaign, who were co-counsel in the South Carolina case. There’s also Tennessee – another place ELC is co-counseling a voucher challenge – where the courts held vouchers at bay for several years. Though a geographically- and income-limited scheme exists now, the program has yet to find legislative votes to expand statewide. And look, we know the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative members keep blessing the diversion of public funds to private and religious schools. We know the end goal for Betsy DeVos and the Koch network is a SCOTUS ruling making private education vouchers mandatory in every state. But we also know they’ve got a ways to go. The SCOTUS term just started. And already the Court declined to take up a case from the right-wing Mackinac Center in Michigan that sought to crack open my state’s 529 savings plan for use on private K-12 tuition. And while voucher allies have just asked the Court to hear Oklahoma’s Catholic charter school case – basically, they want SCOTUS to say religious public schools are A-okay – let’s be clear about why they’ve had to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court in the first place. That’s because earlier this summer, Oklahoma’s Supreme Court threw that religious public school out the legal window. Watch’s ELC’s webinar on the decision for more details. (ELC is also co-counseling a separate case challenging the religious charter school, by the way.) What do you notice? Kentucky, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee. A case still pending in Ohio. When you ask state courts to decide for themselves on the constitutions they know best – and when you ask state voters – turns out these voucher schemes just don’t pass muster much of the time. And that’s important to remember because we know the other side claims the moral high ground, that they’re speaking for parents. And more often than not, they try to claim the legal high ground, too. Except it’s not at all true. Real voters have yet to pass a voucher scheme, and the courts have often rejected voucher laws. Vouchers are batting pretty well with judges like Samuel Alito and John Roberts. But so did ending reproductive rights and granting broad presidential immunity. I have said for more than two years now that the school voucher issue specifically, and the Christian Right’s privatization plans for education more generally, have passed the point of being credibly called effective public policy or a reflection of the “will of the people.” The evidence is just too dreadful for us to really have that debate any longer. And what we actually learn about vouchers comes as much from journalists and real parents shortchanged by the reality of failed voucher promises, as well as their legal advocates, as from researchers like me: outside of a few special interest groups fueled by right-wing billionaires, real parents and voters reject these schemes. Vouchers don’t have to be a foregone conclusion. Thanks again for reading and take good care. 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.
My Address to the Center for Journalism and Democracy at Howard University
Hi again from the road! On October 8, I had the honor of addressing a gathering of journalists at the third annual Democracy Summit at Howard University’s Center for Journalism and Democracy. The Center was founded by Nikole Hannah-Jones, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of the 1619 Project.This year’s summit theme was understanding oligarchy. And my subject, not surprisingly, was private school vouchers. In her opening remarks, Ms. Hannah-Jones commended the audience to “call the thing the thing” in their reporting and writing. In my book, The Privateers, the thing I call vouchers is a billionaire-backed right-wing culture war on vulnerable children.I want to share my remarks to the Summit with all of you:******Thank you for the kind introduction, and thanks to Nikole and the Center for Journalism and Democracy for having me here today. I’ve been traveling around the country talking about the issue of school vouchers, and one of the things I say is that it’s going to be up to journalists—especially those with an investigative focus—to illuminate what these schemes are doing and where they come from, moving forward. So, I’m honored to be here. If you’ll indulge me, I want to take a minute to add a small piece to my biography, because it highlights the door I used to enter this kind of work, it’s an important part of the book I wrote, and it’s part of the message I try to get across today. I won’t go line by line, but the take home point here is that I started my professional life as a policy analyst, first as a young researcher across town at Georgetown, and eventually through making my way up in the field with bigger and bigger projects. I worked with state agencies, school districts and other partners to help learn what policies and programs work for kids and families, which don’t, for whom, and why. And I started that work studying school choice—programs that fund children who go to school outside their residential area—and especially school vouchers. There are a lot of different ways to deliver “school vouchers” and we can talk about those in the Q&A if you’d like but for the purposes of today’s talk a voucher is a.) public funding for private school tuition, and b.) an exit from traditional public schools. First just a status check. Now, this chart from researchers at Georgetown is a few months old now, and it’s broken down by type of voucher scheme. But you can get the idea even from the basic shape. And this is the 2024 status alone. What does this all tell you? Vouchers are on the march. So, with that basic introduction, I want to tell you a story. It’s 1955. Just a few months after the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that segregation in public spaces is unconstitutional. A 43-year-old conservative economist named Milton Friedman—who’d later go on to win a Nobel Prize and advise such leaders as Ronald Reagan and the Chilean strongman Augusto Pinochet—is crafting an essay. In this essay, Friedman is proposing what became the school voucher idea: payments to parents to shop for an educational environment as they wished. Now it seems likely that Friedman was working on this idea before the Brown decision but he certainly knew of its potential, and we know from historical work by Dr. Nancy MacLean and others that Friedman’s editor pressed him to address it. So how does Friedman choose to do that? By suggesting that vouchers can alleviate the inevitable conflict caused by “forced integration.” He says, “Under such a system, there can develop exclusively white schools, exclusively colored schools, and mixed schools. Parents can choose which to send their children to.” Now it’s a matter of some debate whether Friedman himself was a segregationist but what’s inarguable is that segregationists sure liked his idea. States across the South saw this voucher scheme as a way to avoid Brown. And predecessors to today’s voucher legislation popped up everywhere. In Texas, for example, voucher legislation called for parents to sign an affidavit affirming they were requesting the voucher cash specifically to avoid racial integration. It’s in documents like these that the “parents’ rights” slogans you hear today have their origins. The Texas bill didn’t pass, but the state’s about to consider a new voucher scheme this upcoming January. Because, although vouchers have gone down to defeat in multiple specially called legislative sessions over the last year, the right-wing billionaires pressing them today have not given up. So that’s where our story fast forwards to the present. Today, if we’re talking about vouchers, we have to talk about Betsy DeVos. Betsy DeVos has lamented the role of public schools in American life. She thinks public schools have replaced churches as centers of community. And she wants to use “school choice” (vouchers) to “advance God’s kingdom” on earth. She has the money to do it. This spring, CNN got ahold of an internal slide deck showing DeVos and her allies have spent more than $250 million over the last decade, to pry out $25 billion in voucher funding across the states. That’s $100 back for private school vouchers for every $1 they put in. There are other billionaires to talk about. Charles Koch. Jeff Yass. A right-wing organization called the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, based in Milwaukee, where the first modern voucher system began. DeVos gets more attention, but the role the Koch-backed groups have played in pressing for these schemes is almost incalculable. Journalists like Jane Mayer and scholars like Harvard’s Theda Skocpol have written widely on Koch groups, and I draw on their work for my own. In the voucher case what’s important to know is the Koch Network stands up everything from think tanks to campaign style field operations for door-to-door and direct mail efforts to get vouchers through. Milton Friedman gave all that an intellectual cover story. The Cato Institute, started with Koch funding, has a Friedman award to what they call the greatest champion for liberty in the 20th century. Quite the statement about someone who was a contemporary of Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, and other members of the civil rights community. But Milton was a social scientist (technically). So let’s talk about social science for a second. I’m a social scientist too. And I think it’s important to disenthrall ourselves from dusty old theory. I think it’s important to ask who—if anyone—these voucher schemes are helping now. What if vouchers really are an “opportunity” for kids who’ve been ill-served for whatever reason by their public schools? Except. That’s not what vouchers do. For one thing, most voucher users, around 70%, were already in private school to begin with. So, a lot of this needs to be thought of as just a typical interest group subsidy. That’s why some of the most accurate coverage I see of voucher schemes comes from state budget and political reporters. And the subsidies don’t stop at parents. It’s why you see in Ohio, the state is actually funding new private school construction—90% of private schools are religious by the way—to take new seats. But let’s talk about what happens to the kids who do transfer from public to private school? That would be, historically, about 30% of voucher users. And historically, those are disproportionately students of color, and kids from low-income families. The answer is, they suffer horrific academic consequences, especially in math and science. Over the last decade vouchers have caused some of the worst academic declines on record. You have to go to something like what Hurricane Katrina did to kids’ education in Louisiana, or to pandemic-sized learning loss, to get at the magnitude of what we’re talking about here. There’s a basic reason why. The private schools taking voucher bailouts aren’t the elite academies you may have heard of or that some of you may even have attended. They’re what I call sub-prime providers. Financially distressed. Mostly attached to churches, which siphon off much of the revenue. Some teaching things like creationism instead of the academic basics. So, what’s really going on? I call vouchers a new religious separatism in American education. Funding discrimination—in the name of a private school’s “creed” or “values”—against the most vulnerable kids out there. It's no accident that we’re talking about vouchers in the same moment as book bans, the teaching of accurate histories about race in schools, and new attacks on LGBTQ+ rights. I mentioned the right-wing Bradley Foundation. Bradley has funded most of the favorable voucher “studies” since 1990, millions in voucher advocacy, and all of the litigation pushing vouchers forward in the states and in the federal courts. Bradley has also backed indirect efforts to weaken trust in public schools—like the pandemic-era fights over in-person school learning. And they’re right in the middle of election denial schemes from the past, and voter suppression efforts today. They’re funding a new legal PAC by Trump’s anti-immigration crony Stephen Miller, and some of the groups aligned with Turning Point USA—the network for young, far-right operatives. This is a long-game effort, and vouchers are a key part of the story. Because what’s education really about? Is it just about academics? No, it’s quite literally about the future. If you grew up in a faith tradition as I did, and still practice as I do, you know how much emphasis is placed on child development. Vouchers, book bans, fights about school bathrooms and locker rooms—it’s all about trying to mold not just our children but everyone’s child into what Christian Nationalists think they ought to be. And doing so by separating out, isolating, and excluding those kids from what these folks consider sinful and unclean. So, let’s summarize what I’ve had to say today. Today’s vouchers mostly go to existing private school families. And they cause unprecedented academic hardship for kids who do transfer, many of whom lured away from under-resourced public schools. The voucher lobby folks like Betsy DeVos know this. It’s why they’ve turned increasingly to culture wars and especially to Christian Nationalism to make their case. In doing so they’re calling us back to voucher origin stories. Those based on separation. Isolation. Exclusion. Instead of community. Commonality. And shared dreams and goals. Vouchers have to be understood as part of this larger political moment we’re in. They headline Project 2025 and the Trump 47 education agenda. And they go alongside everything from book bans to election denial—quite fittingly. And quite deliberately. Thank you for giving me the time to tell you part of that story today. ****** Thanks again for reading and take good care. 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.