-
Education policy expert Josh Cowen alerted educators to his view on what he thinks is the most pressing threat to public education: the aggressive expansion of school vouchers.
“Vouchers have never survived a ballot initiative—never,” Cowen said in an address to urban school district leaders assembled in Washington D.C., for the Council of the Great City Schools' recent Annual Legislative/Policy Conference. “Even in 2024, when Donald Trump won two of three states, those same states rejected vouchers by wide margins. Trump voters don’t want them either.”
A professor of education policy at Michigan State University, Cowen described the surge in voucher programs, often rebranded as “Education Savings Accounts” or tax-credit scholarships, as a coordinated, billionaire-backed campaign with conservative funders and organizations like the Heritage Foundation, Betsy DeVos, the Koch brothers, and Elon Musk. “This isn’t grassroots—it’s a coup,” according to Cowen.
He urged education leaders to call vouchers what they are: a deliberate effort to defund public schools. Instead, Cowen advocated for investments in proven strategies such as teacher training, universal pre-K, school meals, HVAC upgrades, and tutoring programs.
Challenging the popular narrative that vouchers “rescue” students, Cowen cited data from Ohio, where 69 percent of early voucher users were already in private schools, and from Michigan, where most private school students come from families earning over $200,000.
According to Cowen, for the small number of students who do transfer from public to private schools, outcomes have been “devastating,” with academic declines comparable to those seen after Hurricane Katrina or during the COVID-19 pandemic.He warned that many private schools accepting vouchers operate with little to no oversight, teaching creationism instead of science and often excluding students with disabilities or those who identify as members of the L.G.B.T.Q. community. “This isn’t about school choice—it’s about schools choosing which kids they want,” said the professor.
Cowen framed the fight against vouchers as a broader battle over the future of public goods. “Where our treasure is, there our hearts will be also,” he concluded. “If we treasure public education, we have to fight for it.”
