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The Private Eye: Josh Cowen’s Newsletter on School Vouchers and Right-Wing Politics
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.
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.