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Hey, yo. What it do?
2 Dope Nation.
What's happening?
I'm back with you. Welcome back to 2
Dope Teachers and,
Mike.
I'm here with you, like I'm always here
with you
to talk a little bit about race, power,
and education.
If you are new to the show, welcome.
Welcome to 2 Dope Nation.
There is a piece about how 2 Dope
Nation supports open borders.
Basically, dopeness does not have a specific
citizenship
because what we do is we welcome citizens
of the world. Does that make me a
globalist?
Does that make me one of those people?
In fact, it does because I think the
globe is a place that I live
and that as a person who lives in
the globe, I should maybe try to act
accordingly.
Welcome back to the most dangerous podcast in
the schoolhouse.
As I said before, my name is Gerardo
Munoz,
and I am here to bring you some
stories
from the 2 Dope nation of education.
Today, we got a goodie for you. Be
but before we get into it,
you can always find us on social media
at 2 Dope Teachers on Instagram,
on X formerly known as
Twitter, as well
as on facebook.com/2Dopedeachersandamike.
You can also email us, 2Dopedeachers@gmail.com
if you have show ideas or
just wanna give us some feedback.
But we are always happy to bring you
these stories that remix the conversation on race,
power,
and
education.
If you are really excited about what we
do over here in 2dope nation and excited
enough to give us, I don't know, $5
a month? Like, $5 a month. What can
you get for $5 a month anymore? Barely
anything. But what you can get for $5
a month
is
instant
access to certain materials that we give,
low key
communication and conversation,
with us and, you know, some previews on
some of the changes that are happening in
2DOPE nation as we kinda speak.
I wanna talk a little bit about election
season today. And today, we we just have
this guest that I'm just really amped to
bring to you.
We are going to be bringing you
the 1 and only
Josh
Cowan.
Doctor Josh Cowan wrote a book called The
Privateers, How Billionaires
Created a Culture War and Sold School Vouchers.
And, man, I gotta tell you, this book
is fire,
and you need to check it out.
Really, you know, this is such a pressing
issue right now. Even in the state of
Colorado where 2 Dope Teachers and a Mic
is coming at you from,
there are
voucher resolutions on the November ballot. And make
no mistake y'all, like, if you don't listen
to anything else in this podcast and you
need to, you need to understand that vouchers
have had a negative impact on student achievement,
and that is across
all measures, all political stripes,
doesn't matter who you ask, the data,
speaks for itself. In this conversation,
doctor Cowen and I talk a little bit
about the sort of the end game of
the voucher movement, which is an extension of
of the privatization movement. And I just wanna
make it really clear. Privatization
is any means of introducing private money into
public education,
and creating
that franken system
that
we are pretending is not harmful to the
rest of education. I know I'm gonna upset
some people when I say this and just
know folks, for those of you who are
a little bit more reform minded, a little
bit more charter friendly,
a little bit more amenable
to some of the
the tricks and tropes of privatization,
know that I still love you. I will
always love you, but this is a place
where we probably
will not agree.
Vouchers was actually part of my first,
education from my mother, a public a retired
public school teacher
on the social justice imperative
of of public education.
Vouchers are private monies,
I'm sorry. Vouchers are public monies
that are diverted
to allow kids the opportunity to attend private
school and this is a fraud issue that
you can read up on on a bunch
of different things. In fact, I was just
actually listening to,
to another podcast, the Have You Heard podcast.
You should check it out.
When they're talking a little bit about some
of the declining,
enrollment issues
and
possible school closures across the state.
The vouchers conversation
offers us a lot to understand about that.
But we've got this really great
conversation coming
with,
with doctor Cowan. He's a professor in Michigan
who has written this book. And it's a
book he says he didn't wanna write because
what he's reporting, first of all, is not
good news for those of us who are
champions of public education.
And in addition to that, he even admitted
himself that this is gonna cost him some
friendships.
And I think if you're gonna plant your
flag somewhere, this is probably a place to
do that.
And so it's just really important that we
kinda check this out. Some of the, topics
of this show,
first of all,
we talk a little bit about how his
research,
led him to school vouchers. His initial research
didn't actually
start with research of vouchers. He was actually
examining broader inequities in education
and
his research naturally led him to this place.
He also talks a lot about these manufactured
culture wars and,
Christian nationalism
as being an extremely important part of this.
So the role of these think tanks, right
wing politics.
Yeah. We're talking about all of the usual
suspects of the voucher lobby, the Heritage Foundation,
Betsy DeVos, the Koch brothers, all these people.
He's gonna talk a lot about
how these organizations,
have unapologetically
promoted
bad,
policy and bad ideas for education reform,
knowing that it's not good for kids and
knowing especially it's not good for the kids
that it claims to serve. We We also
talk a little bit about school choice and
public education and how these debates,
that have led to these culture wars,
are are taking shape and how they're a
part of the voucher movement. And for those
of you who don't know, I had the
the pleasure with 4 fellow state teachers of
the year
to do a fellowship around this notion of
honest education,
to combat some of this harmful culture war
rhetoric that just seems to have ratcheted up
more,
even as popularity
for this rhetoric declines.
And we know this is true.
And then the relationship or non relationship between
vouchers and academic performance,
parent preferences,
and then actual quality of
research,
sorry, of,
of voucher schools and the type of education
that,
is not happening at these places.
Really what we're looking at,
in this conversation is this threat of
privatization and what it means for kids,
who really do rely on a quality public
education to have,
options in life and options going forward.
This this is part of kind of a
series that we're doing. You know, it's it's
October when you're hearing this. We're a few
weeks away from a very consequential election, not
just the top of the ballot, but looking
at some of the statewide issues that are
happening, not just in Colorado, but in other
states.
A number of other states have either enacted
or put vouchers on the ballot,
and
these are things that are being cloaked in
the notion of school choice
and built on a lot of mythology that
doctor Cowan
emphasizes.
We know
that an educated populace
is a free populace
and it's critical that we start understanding
how that plays out when we go to
the polls,
this fall. Now I imagine that I don't
have a lot of pro voucher folks in
2DOPE nation over here.
And and, you know, if you are, you
feel free to engage.
The data is pretty clear though that that
doctor Callan shares with us.
So it's not enough to say to you
to vote against these resolutions that are happening
in Colorado and beyond,
But we've gotta really get the word out
and really talk to people and use our
platforms
to really,
really show how harmful this is to our
democracy.
There's gonna be some calls for action.
Definitely go get the book. And if enough
of you are interested, hit us up over
here. We'll do a book study of the
privateers.
So I hope you enjoy this episode as
much I as I enjoyed doing the interview.
Here we are with doctor Josh Cowan discussing
his book, The Privateers,
How Billionaires Created a Culture War and Sold
School Vouchers, right here on 2 Dope Teachers
and a Mic.
Hey. Yo. What's going on everybody?
As promised, I am here with doctor Joshua
Cowan, author of the privateers, how billionaires created
a culture war and stole and stole. Wow.
That's a Freudian slip. Sold school vouchers.
Josh, how are you doing? Good. How are
you doing? Thanks for having me. Yeah, man.
Thanks for being here. I'm so excited to
get a chance to speak with you about
this book. I have finished it since our
last conversation, and Right. It's just an incredible
book. And so,
I love doing book talks on 2 Dope
teachers and a mic.
We,
you know, not gonna give away spoilers. Y'all
gotta go out there and invest in this
book because in in our opinion here at
2 Dope Productions, an investment in this book
is an investment in public education and in
democracy. So,
the book is titled,
The Privateers,
How Billionaires Created a Culture War and Sold
School
Vouchers.
I wanna start off just with a quick
question on how it was at UP you
became interested in researching school vouchers?
Great question. So I've been studying school vouchers
for almost 20 years, both first as a
young researcher,
a junior member of a larger evaluation team,
and then increasingly as I sort of moved
up in the in the academic, the research,
and the
evaluation
profession,
increasingly sort of with teams that I helped
to direct,
as well as a bunch of other school
choice options and other education,
initiatives in general. I'm a policy analyst by
training, which means that I have historically sort
of been curious about questions that ask, do
these public policies work? And if so, for
whom? If not, who do they not work
for? And and why in any case? And,
vouchers were the first area that I really
sort of started to ask those questions or
be part of team to ask those questions.
And,
you know, so I've been I've been drawn
to
any controversial topic in in education
that,
that that needs more data and more evidence
to inform it, and and certainly vouchers. Well,
now we know vouchers really, do hurt kids
and families. But Yeah. In 20 years ago,
you know, there's there still,
was was an open question, at least as
far as the data were concerned. So that's
what initially brought me into the to the
conversation.
Yeah. I think it's a really interesting distinction
that you draw between
what the data says,
that in terms of the data, what I'm
hearing you say is that this is kind
of a closed case as to whether vouchers
are good for kids. At this point, yeah.
Yeah. And you're also indicating
that there may be another part
to that,
to the ongoing topic of conversation. So can
you start off by kinda telling us a
little bit of what it is in the
data that you have found?
And I think you told me I could
be wrong about this. I think you told
me that initially, you didn't set out specifically
to research vouchers that this other evaluation work
that you were doing, this policy analysis eventually
led you to vouchers. Am I remembering that
correctly?
I mean, as a yeah. Yeah. As a
as a
the origin story for my young, graduate school
days is probably not worth getting into, but,
you know, I I joined I I joined
Never is. I write about that I that
I wrote about in the book that kind
of, you know, were interested in vouchers specifically
in demonstrating how these these vouchers schemes could
work. And I, you know, I I,
was part of some of those teams and
then moved on to other questions and continue
to kind of keep an interest in school
choice evaluation research, and I've been part of
that really up to the present day.
But
the important thing to sort of
get here is that
is that at this point,
what we've
and it's not just me. I mean, listen.
There have been a number of great research
teams that have been asking these questions specifically
around
how how vouchers improve
or negatively impact academics.
One of the things that makes the Evidence
case against school vouchers so powerful is that
it has been drawn from a variety of
of researchers
across
disciplines, academic backgrounds,
different parts of the country,
different perspectives, all kinda come to the same
conclusion. And it's really just
the narrow kind of think tank based voucher
lobby, frankly, that kind of tries to make
the the case in the opposite direction at
this point. Yeah. When when we talk about
that voucher lobby, who are we talking about
generally? You know, the the sort of the
usual suspects if you pay attention to right
wing politics and to education,
right wing politics. So we're talking, of course,
about the Heritage Foundation. We're talking about Betsy
DeVos. We're talking about the number of organizations
affiliated with Charles Koch's
network.
And these are groups that, listen, vouchers,
are 2 of the first three paragraphs in
Heritage Foundation's project 2025. They are, in the
second sentence of Trump's,
campaign platform for education, which is called Trump
40 seven. You know what?
The think tanks, again, are all part of
this, but, really, these are, fairly well well
publicized,
policy priorities for,
right wing politicians in America.
Yeah. I think of I think of our
audience a little bit. Right? Our audience
is primarily,
educators in
in ECE to 12th grade kind of systems.
Yeah. And one one thing I hear a
lot from, folks and it and it hurts
my heart to hear this sometimes. One thing
I hear a lot from folks is, like,
I don't know. I don't get policy. It
confuses me. I just I just show up
and and teach my kids. So for for
the folks who need a little bit of
a primer
on things like the Heritage Foundation and the
Koch Brothers and those kinds of and and
why
like, maybe talk to us a little bit
about, in a nutshell, why public education is
such a talking point in these right wing
efforts.
Well, I don't think
anybody listening to this would,
disagree with the idea that a lot of
people have opinions about public education. A lot
of people have opinions about how Very true.
What should be taught in schools and how
schools should be run. And and, you know,
and and so in some sense, these these
these right wing kind of think tanks
certainly have their perspective.
Policy is what decides
how how much funding schools get, how how
many, you know, if there are,
other things that are gonna compete with that
funding, in in this case, doctors, but in
other cases as well. I mean, this is
what policy does. So it certainly affects the
the daily lives of of educators.
But any debate about, you know, what's taught
in schools,
Yeah. What what who who who uses the
bathroom in which schools. I mean Right. All
these things are are decided, you know, minimum
by state legislators and, policymakers, and so these
things all are are affected by that. Yeah.
You mentioned,
any of these things that are that are
being
discussed regarding schools. You talked about who's using
what restrooms, what Right. Books are allowed to
exist in the library.
Over the course of, the last couple of
years, I I had the opportunity
to really
learn a little bit about what this strategy
is
and,
particularly when it comes to what's in in
front of kids and what's being taught.
It's and one one of the things that
I'd be curious to get your
reaction to it. So we're in a,
we're in a Zoom meeting. There are 5
of us fellows,
and we were talking to members of of
a newspaper.
You know, there the staff
was on Zoom with us,
and, as we were talking about what we
were referring to as honest education, which means,
teaching
education teaching kids in a way that's inclusive
and that affirms
their identities and their communities
and,
the, you know, the the places they come
from.
1 of
the rep one of the reporters asked us,
well,
isn't school choice a solution to that? Like,
if you wanna go to a school that
has gender non binary bathrooms, shouldn't you just
be able to choose into that? Can you
comment on why that's a fallacy?
Listen. I mean, I get
so I'm waving my hands
because
folks have been making the argument that we
should just
separate
and isolate
children from each other
using public dollars
since at least 19 fifties.
Okay? I mean, Brown versus Board of Education
said, no. It's not constitutional to do that
at least on the basis of race. But
Right. This idea that,
that that, you know, folks have
are always going to have conflicting value sets,
and public schools
force parents to put their children into classrooms
with kids from families with other value sets
has been a a a pretty tired right
wing talking point from the beginning of the
modern sort of public education,
you know, environment that we're in. And so
listen. I mean, nobody's disputing the right of
parents to take their kids and put them
in a religious education environment, private school environment
that that might have
overt anti LGBTQ
language today or,
or might have a very narrow view of
what
race in American history the role race in
American history played
in our founding. And no one's disputing those
things, but the the question is whether public
dollars should be able to do that. And
and at the end of the day, if
you start to just simply say, we're just
gonna give everybody a coupon,
to go to their own school, public, private,
whatever,
and not
engage at all as a society in tough
questions,
tough questions around the issue of race, tough
questions around the issue of of income
disadvantage,
historical marginalization. We're just gonna completely step away
from all those conversations as a society. Just
Just give everyone a coupon so they never
have to interact with each other again. I
mean, that is what they're saying.
Yeah.
I I reject that idea at least as
far as living in in in the United
States in a pluralistic society.
But there's been a lot of, you know,
back and forth on this question when it
comes to
the extent to which religious values play a
role in this. I, again, would also reject
the idea that these are religious values and
say that as a Catholic, I I reject
much of what's said in the name of
Catholicism.
But Yeah. My point is the the view
are you articulated has has certainly come up
a lot. And and,
57 80 years ago, it was on an
issue of race. And today, it's on the
issue of gender and gender identity. And, you
know, it's just a Yeah. And even that
conversation,
even that discourse, I should say,
has even evolved in the last couple of
years because the initial attack is on CRT.
And when the attacks on CRT didn't really
make the traction that that they were hoping
to among undecided folks, then it moved
into,
LGBTQ
students, and that wasn't really that palatable. And
now we're into this other sort of place,
and so that that discourse seems to have,
shall we say, been dynamic.
For sure. No. I guess. I guess. Yeah.
One one of the things that's so the,
some of the the topics in the book
are just, like, super,
woah. You know, that's kind of, like, these
responses that I have, some really big things
that are researched here. I wanna ask kind
of a broad question about your research and
invite you to dig into it if that's
something you wanna do. What's been kind of
the most
striking thing about your experience reach researching this
book? What are some things that have kinda
jumped out at you
as
this is huge and this is extremely important?
It is very difficult to overstate
the
in the size of the negative impact that
vouchers have had on student achievement
over the last decade. Wow. It is you
have to go to something like what hurricane
Katrina did to the the test scores Wow.
Of kids in Louisiana. Like, not exaggerating at
all. No. No. No. You no. The just
in terms of just the the effect size,
the the magnitude of the drop
on academic outcomes, you have to go to
something like that. You have to go to
something like what actually COVID 19 did to
test scores more recently. And, you know, we
can have a conversation about whether test scores
do or don't measure Of course. Academic success.
I I for the purposes of the the
voucher conversation in the book, I I kinda
stay out of that conversation simply because what's
not arguable right now is that s scores
are used to evaluate public schools and to
say public schools are failing or doing well
or whatever. And so my only in in
the evaluation community is you have to study
the same apples to apples. When you when
you are asked a question
about whether or not vouchers are performing better
than public schools, you need to use the
same metric. It's just That's right. Plain and
simple. So I I sort of sidestep the
our test scores good or bad. Listen. Test
scores don't measure everything. But on whatever they
But if this is the measure that you
are choosing If public schools are held accountable
for what their test scores say, it's reasonable
to ask voucher schools funded by public dollars,
how they do. And the answer to that
question
is that the bigger and the more recent
the voucher system, the worse the results have
been. And it's what's surprising is just how
bad those results have been. That's
well and then part 22 you know, 1
a to that response is not only what's
surprising is how bad the results have been,
but that we're still in this moment where,
you know, 24 states have passed some version
of the voucher scheme in the last 3
years despite that horrific impact.
Right. And I've you know, just looking at
some preliminary research on this,
obviously,
there are school voucher bills being debated all
over the place. Yep.
I'm reading that around 32 states have already
implemented or
begun the process of implementing some form of
a voucher system. And so this is something
where it sounds like practice doesn't align with
facts. I wanna read a,
I wanna read just a quick passage and
have you kind of expand on it a
little bit. So it's from the introduction,
that has to do with parents, and it's
titled parents looking for academic quality struggle to
find room in private schools. The pattern of
recent academic loss for voucher students raises the
question of what parents actually want.
Studies from New Orleans are especially useful, you
mentioned Katrina,
because researchers
at and affiliated with Tulane University have been
able to use actual school application data to
study how parents make priorities.
The those results indicate that although parents can
do consider school features like demographic, safety, size,
and distance to home, the academic performance of
the school remains
a determining factor in the way they rank
preferences.
So I wanna have you comment a little
bit about that because your
you your research has found that categorically,
the negative impacts of vouchers are pretty
seismic. They're pretty significant.
Yeah.
What is it that parents are looking for
if we're still seeing some supporting
some form of vouchers?
Well,
you know, I mean, partly,
parents are different. They have different preferences we're
talking about on average.
The way
to think about this, and the the reason
this really matters here is that in New
Orleans, we're talking about public or parents who
who who go who've been through a lot,
that historically,
under resourced community, in terms of education
and other things. And we saw Katrina
sort of expose a lot of that historical
inequality or re exposed it.
But, you know, you go to
the whole theory of the case behind vouchers
until recently, until the counterculture wars came back
into the conversation,
was really that vouchers that, you know, the
right wing groups most of the book, I'm
I'm talking about efforts that right wing voucher
backers made to
undermine public schools using academic outcomes, test scores
in particular as the measure that they used,
saying that public schools were failing.
Yeah. The the
voucher
advocates have long claimed public schools are failing,
using test scores to say that public schools
are failing. And they've been going into historically
under resourced communities,
And instead of saying, let's give those communities
more resources. Let's give public schools in Cleveland
or public schools in Milwaukee or public schools
in New Orleans more money to work
and build a a system that works for
everyone.
They said, let's just give everyone a coupon
and send them on to private schools, which
will give them more academic opportunity.
And in general, parents do have a lot
a variety of preferences, but what they do
and what they say are sometimes different things.
And when they fill out applications and this
was the point I was making in the
passage you read. And they, like,
they maybe there are some parents out there,
I'm sure there are, who say, I don't
care about the academic quality of my kid's
school. All I care about is if they're
getting, you know, religious education. They're not around
woke kids. They're not around LGBTQ kids. That's
all I care about. Maybe those parents exist.
But survey after survey after survey shows parents
really do care about the academic quality of
their schools, whatever else they're searching for. To
think of it differently,
parents may not be seeking out, you know,
an a plus school in every instance, but
they don't want f schools. They don't want
the lowest of the low either. And the
problem with the voucher
evidence
is that
the other side on this question pitches vouchers
as specifically academic improvements. They go in there
and market themselves as improving education, and they
actually
are substantially hurting children when it comes to
their academic outcomes. In in in New Orleans
Yeah.
The magnitude of the voucher decline is is
is roughly equivalent to taking a kid from
the 50th percentile or in the middle
of an academic outcome,
distribution
and pushing them back down, below, another
16 to 20% of children.
Most parents don't know that. So if you
pitch the question to them,
are academics the only thing you look for
in a school? They're all gonna say no.
I want lots of things. But if you
say to them,
in exchange for those other things, you are
going to push your kid behind 20% more
of the kids than they were before I
gave you the voucher.
I mean, no one's ever asked that question
directly, but, all of the evidence we have
suggest they would decline to send their kids
further and further below
below, the average on academics. And that's really
what Voxers are doing. Yeah. Definitely.
One follow-up question just kind of occurs to
me, and I don't remember if you cover
this in the book. But one thing that
occurs to me is a question
of the extent to which
students
who receive vouchers,
who have never been in private schools. That's
another point that you make in the book
is that the Yeah. The overwhelming majority of
beneficiaries
of vouchers have never actually gone to public
school, and Yeah. So they're
even even if you
even if you buy into the rhetoric that
we're saving them from failing public schools,
that's not who's benefiting anyway even if that
were true. So I guess my question is,
do you have any sense for the attrition
rate of voucher receiving students from public schools?
So so they try it. They're like, this
is not what we're getting. We we just
are gonna get out. Is there any data
around that at this point? Right. So it's
so about 70% of voucher users were never
in public school to begin with, and that's
true. For the 30 or so, percent, that's
been true for a very long time in
a lot of different states, by the way.
That number holds up quite well. They're not
paying for the people that they claim to
be paying for. No. No. No. But there
are about 30% of vouchers who do transfer
from public school to private school. And, actually,
those are the kids whose
impacts
of doing that, of taking a voucher. We're
actually able to study because we we can
see it before and after. We can see
how they were doing in public school, then
we can see how they were doing in
private school after they took the voucher. And
that's those are the group of kids who
who really did suffer.
Those tend to be kids who are disproportionately
students of color, disproportionately lower income families.
You know,
and part of that's because listen.
Voucher schools the high quality private schools don't
need vouchers to to to fund them. They,
they don't need, new enrollment. They've got waiting
lists in many cases.
It the schools that are open, the private
schools that are open are either pop up
schools, schools that just
come into the market to cash in on
the new taxpayer bailout or,
financially distressed existing private schools that do take
that cash that that taxpayer bailout.
So they're not very good is what I'm
trying to say. Yeah. So those 25 to
30% of kids, though, they they often don't
who do transfer from public to private school,
they often don't stay.
And they they come into private school with
about for a year or 2, and then
they leave. And we don't have a lot
of great
scientific data on why they leave. In some
cases, they
you know? But what we do know is
that they tend to be lower scoring kids.
They tend to, again, be more likely to
be students of color than even in a
school that's primarily,
say, 80%
students of color.
Even with that that high rate, kids who
leave are even more likely to be.
These are consistent with,
more recent media reporting on private voucher funded
private schools, expelling or quietly asking kids they
don't particularly like to leave, kids that aren't
working well for them. We do know that,
you know, students with disabilities
have a very difficult time getting into many
voucher schools and staying in voucher schools. So,
you know, it's it's it's a the attrition
rate is very high too, by the way.
It's about 25 to 30% per year. Kids
giving up a voucher and going back. And,
again, the vast majority of those are actually
going back into the public schools. They're not
they're not previously admitted voucher students who just
happen to leave. They this is a a
revolving door, between it. And that has implications
too, by the way, on the the schools
and classrooms that are taking them back in.
Right? Because,
you know, any educator will will tell you.
Right? Like, the classroom churn's a a big,
it's it's disruptive. It's it's it's not great
for anyone. Yeah.
A little bit of a
there's one thing just kind of occurs to
me.
So what's what's to stop
voucher advocates
for making the argument? Well, the reason they
fail out of private schools is because public
schools
hold low standards, and we have a higher
standard, so we're gonna have a failure rate.
I don't know if that argument's been made.
But because I think For sure. What I've
seen is this kind of presumed
elite status of private schools. I've been in
public education my entire life, and there's this
presumption among a lot of us, and particularly
I come from a community of color, particularly
with communities of color. I've seen some of
the latest
data,
where we just sort of uncritically
assume that it's an elite education because it's
private. So have you seen that argument,
and is there any way of kinda saying,
no. You can the data is the data,
and you can't spin it that way. Well,
yes. There is that argument, and I will
just honor that,
you know, where we do see,
stronger measures of voucher support in public opinion
data
among otherwise progressive families tends to be actually
on the voucher issue. If you go into
some communities of color and you say, listen.
How do you support vouchers to go to
private school? More
respondents in those communities will say yes than
than in others. And I think that's partly
a a function of the fact that many
public schools have been historically under resourced. Public
schools reflect society. Society still contains,
you know, very levels of racism, of sexism,
of,
you know, disadvantage
based on income, even in some cases, geographic
access. So,
you know, nobody's,
you know, in making the case against vouchers,
you know, not no no one is at
least I'm not claiming that public schools have
served every one of these communities
at all times historically. That would be foolish
and and and, offensive, frankly, to to do.
But
what is true is that this perception of
private schools as an elite option
and an elite
alternative
to that historic,
you know, under resourcing at minimum of public
schools is just it's not it's it is
a perception. I think Hollywood adds to it.
I think the voucher
backers add to it. I think people's perception
of certain there are such thing as very
elite private schools out there. There are such
thing as you're very elite public schools. Right?
Yeah.
But the question is, what's the typical voucher
receiving school? And it is not
the boarding school of the movies. It's not
the elite academy of of Hollywood. It is
a rundown
private school.
I call them subprime private schools. They're, again,
financially distressed.
Often, they're they're working, you know, on a
trailer in the backyard of a of a
church. In many cases, I've been to private
schools run out of church basements in Milwaukee.
Like, these are not
high quality academic elite providers, but that is
certainly the perception that gets traded on and
and marketed when you when you see these
these voucher schemes pushed in, especially into vulnerable
communities. I call it the education equivalent of
predatory lending because that's what it is. They're
they're selling a vision
of academic hope and academic opportunity that does
not materialize.
Yeah.
It's powerful stuff.
Gonna take a quick little break, and then
when we come back, we're gonna talk a
little bit about
all of these different holes in this about
whether vouchers represent privatization
and, and those kinds of things. So,
that when we're back, but first,
just wanna take some time to
welcome everyone back
to the podcast as we,
as we continue to do this work
remixing the conversation on race power in education,
particularly in equity in education.
We also know that if you're a teacher
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Alright. So,
back here with doctor Josh Cowan, author of
the Privateers, how billionaires created a culture war
and sold school vouchers,
had the pleasure of read it. Well, okay.
I'm not gonna say it was a pleasure
reading this book, actually. And that reminds me,
of something that we talked about before
and and that you opened the book with
was that this is not a book that
you
are happy that you had to write. Can
you talk a little bit about
why it is why you did not wanna
write this book?
Well,
you know, I am
having
to part ways pretty publicly in some cases,
very selfishly, I suppose. One reason I didn't
wanna write is I'm having to part ways
very publicly with people who I knew, who
I think do
care about kids and families in their own
way,
who but who have been wrong when it
comes to the to the research, the evidence
on these voucher schemes. It's not an it's
not a comfortable thing to do. But much
more importantly than,
my own feelings
is the fact that,
you know,
researchers in education
don't get
straightforward,
uncomplicated
results very often. They they're they're you know,
who knows what the right curriculum is? Who
knows what the right teacher training program is?
Who knows what the right approach to classroom
management is? Right? And there's a lot of
different Some things work for some folks. Some
things work for others. What we try to
do is just kind of use
research to sort of do what's best to
make ourselves
stronger,
more caring, empathic professionals, but also to do
what's best for kids and families because that's
the most important thing.
And over the last 10 years, it just
can't overstate enough how awful and one-sided
the evidence against vouchers have become.
And yet they're here. They're being pushed like
never before,
And they're being pushed in a very, very,
in my view, nefarious and and long headed,
and and in some cases, discriminatory way,
which is where the kind of culture work
conversation comes in. Because over the last decade
as vouchers have
given the research community and the education community
more generally
strong evidence that these do not work for
especially for historically marginalized families,
we've seen
in parallel
their resurgence,
first during the Trump years and then in
the aftermath
of kind of this new instead of academic
opportunity as the marketing pitch, which still happens
to some extent, you're seeing
the mark the Culture Wars, The Heritage Foundation,
the authors of project 2025
once wrote a report recently saying, you know,
the culture wars can help reduce woke in
education. The cult vouchers can help reduce woke
in public schools.
Ron DeSantis,
the Florida governor,
who signed last year Heard of him.
Yeah.
Right wing Florida governor Ron DeSantis signed last
year and pushed for,
the largest what is right now the largest
voucher system in the country.
At the same time, he was
defending a public school curriculum mandated by the
state that that said that suggested that slavery
had economic benefits to enslaved people. And he
doubled down on that when he's asked if
he misspoke. So no. No.
Blacksmithing. He he cited blacksmithing as an example
of how slavery had economic benefits for enslaved
people,
while attacking
woke in public schools while in so called
woke in public schools while attacking what they
call gender ideology in public schools. So so,
you know, mean listen. If none of those
things weren't happening, I wouldn't have written a
book about them,
and and
it would have been better for everybody if,
vouchers had gone the way of the evidence
and and been discarded and left in a
dustbin of, you know, discarded bad ideas,
right around 2019 or even the beginning of
2020. And then and,
but that's not what happened, and,
and, it's really unfortunate, I think.
Yeah. It it is, as you kinda speak
to this, it, you know, it causes a
sense of overwhelming
sort
of dread because as we see,
as we see
the rhetoric, particularly coming from right wing spaces
Yeah. That is
decreasingly
fact based and decreasingly
evidence based where
it becomes that you can just say
you can spin things you wanna spin them,
and they're not critiqued. It's a little scary.
I I mean, we are in a world
where a former president of the United States
can incite a a a a riot at
the at the national capital because he falsely
claimed that he won, in in in the
election in 2020, and and a good chunk
of the country,
is willing to go along with that. And,
you know, so if we're in a world
where,
you know,
35% or so of the country is just
simply
adhering to this idea that that just to
name one example
that Donald Trump won of the election in
2020.
Then I'm not I'm not optimistic
that something,
you know, in some sense, on the surface
lower scale than about the than election denial
would be a voucher program. But if if
we're at a point where evidence
that that Donald Trump lost election 2020 is
is just discarded,
then I'm not optimistic that evidence that vouchers
hurt kids and families is gonna be discarded
or what, and it certainly hasn't been. And
in fact, many of the same right wing
funders, frankly, that are behind, you know, that
have supported election denial efforts,
are also
lot of these are and I talk about
that in the book of,
of folks who push all of these things,
but this is where we are.
Yeah.
Yeah. It's it's a little terrifying, and,
and I think it's, you know, it's interesting
because,
you know,
there are things that I
am trying to feel optimistic about. Right?
There was the documentary
that actually, I think it drops today,
that focuses on the Republicans
that pushed back against the incitement of January
6th and who
took a stand,
against former president Trump and these things that
were happening,
but it's still
it's it still feels so discouraging because so
much of you can I've been thinking about
this a lot. I can throw
evidence and,
information
at people, and
it doesn't mean it's gonna gain any kind
of traction. Right. I wanna but but let's
let's lean into the gloom and doom for
a second.
Wanna ask you really quickly because I think
that
in my experience in you know, I have
I have a I have one kid who
is a 2nd year college student.
Yeah. And so Right. Yeah. So, you know,
and of and it's funny because they they
tell you you'll stop caring about what's happening
in schools once your kid is out of
schools, and I'm like, yeah. But now my
kid is advocating too, so we're advocating together
on these kinds of things. But
what
what is the threat
posed by privatization
in general in education
and vouchers
in particular?
Why is this
a 5 alarm fire?
Well, in a very
technical sense, I suppose, you have to start
with money. So
states can't afford
to pay for 2 sectors of education
over the long run. You see in states
like Arizona, states like Ohio, states like Florida,
more than a $1,000,000,000,
a b with a 1,000,000,000 with a b
dollars are being spent each year on voucher
systems. That's money that's not going to,
first, it's not going to increasing
school school funds for public schools, but it's
also not going to improving, you know, environmental
quality, improving roads, improving,
you know,
health care system. So that's one thing. And
it's also you know, we touched on this
a few minutes ago. It's it's also
rooted in this philosophy
behind
American democracy
and public schools and education
that,
you know, coming together to solve common problems,
coming together to learn more about our differences,
coming together to
educate our children who are our quite literally
our future. Right? It's not metaphorically
the children
actually are tomorrow's
tomorrow's leaders.
We're just gonna tell them that if they
don't like,
mom and dad don't like, we don't mom
and dad says
our our our our values don't align with,
you know, what what Joe's down the street
aligns. So we're not gonna let you near
them. We're not going to let you engage.
We're just gonna kinda take our coupon and
go to our school, and we're gonna send
Joe's kids to his school. Then we start
doing that in other parts of life, right,
where it's like, well, I don't I I
don't wanna live in that neighborhood, and I
don't wanna work in that place. And we
start just compartmentalizing.
Yeah. It's it's it's tribalism. It's it's it's
the the language that in in global history
is vulcanization.
They're just we're gonna sort of segment everybody
else out, and and no one's gonna have
to engage and have conflicting values and work
them out
as if it's the problem
of the, you know, individual groups that hold
those values. Right? It's That's right. That's right.
It's always the folks
that occupy, at least in this conversation with
vouchers, it's the folks who occupy the
center,
the the sort of the the the place
of power, the the the funding kind of
the historical legacy of privilege
that want to,
make an argument for keeping other folks away
from them
as if it's on behalf of those other
folks. Like, we just don't we we can't
handle being around you, so we're gonna do
you a favor and give you a voucher
so you don't have to be around us.
Like, that's the argument.
Man, it is.
And that's so those
those philosophically,
from a standpoint of democracy, those stakes
are part of this whole conversation, and that's
part of what you know, the national, you
know, conversation going forward. But in a very,
very basic sense, what that means is vouchers
will defund your local public school. Yeah. Absolutely.
And I think, you know, I think there
is a there is something you and I
talked about before that is touched on in
the book where a statement, I believe, was
by Betsy DeVos that,
part of what's informing
this push is this idea that the school
has replaced the church.
We didn't get a chance really to talk
much about Christian nationalism
and how that piece
sort of is
extremely relevant to this whole conversation. Can you
unpack that just briefly so people can see
that connection?
Right. So none of this is particularly secret.
So Betsy DeVos has long lamented in public,
as has her husband and her family,
this idea that in their view, public schools
have taken over community centers instead of
churches. They they've public schools have displaced churches
in the center of American community life.
I find that
proposition laughable. Again, as someone who goes to
church every week, I mean, their churches are
very much In an in an era of
megachurches, nobody's going to church. Churches are very
much active parts of community life. But to
their in their view, church public schools are
are are doing this.
And, you know, they will say that. They
will they will make that case. What they
really mean is that religion is not as
central as they would like to be. Specifically,
their religion is not as central as they
would like to be in American life.
And, you know, that's part of the the
goal here. Just this morning,
the the investigative journalism outfit,
ProPublica,
issued a report early just this morning. It
happened to be quoted in, but they
the state of Ohio is now not only
funding vouchers, they're actually starting to give money
to religious schools to build new buildings and
to expand their capacity to take vouchers in
the first place. That's unprecedented.
Okay? This is, you know, this is that's
not happened before in the at least not
in the voucher world. So this is what
we're talking about is is a completely different
idea of what, education is in this country
and one that tracks very closely with, you
know, frankly, what what religious fundamentalists,
believe, education should look like for everyone.
Yeah. I don't want people to miss that
piece of it because
it this
the the argument that has historically been framed
around vouchers isn't that's a bad faith argument.
It is not Yeah. It's not the argument
that they're living even if it's the one
that they are speaking.
So, just as we conclude,
what are what is it that folks can
do,
to to organize against these kinds of things?
To
what is it that you would have a
listener,
probably an educator, do when it comes to
vouchers, if anything?
Understand that that everything that we would do
starts with,
renewing,
commitment both financially and, philosophically and morally to
public schools. Every other
step requires funding. And it turns out that
money does work. It it it's the right
thing to do, I happen to believe, funding
public schools, but it actually you know, we've
talked a lot about evidence on this on
this in this conversation. Yep. As the evidence
against vouchers has accumulated, so too has the
evidence that equalizing funding,
to to under resourced communities, investing in in
communities
actually pays off, and it pays off with
academics. It does improve academic outcomes. It does
improve high school graduation rates, but it also
improves later in life outcomes like, wages,
for community, community income levels,
declines in community crime rates, all as a
result of just simply investing in public schools
and school communities. So
everything I would say, and I say this
in the book, everything I would say begins
with that. You must fund public schools, and
and then and then we move forward into
the conversation together.
Well, doctor Josh Cowan, this has been an
incredible conversation.
Thank you. Thank you for writing this book.
I I understand the these are not the
the things that necessarily give us joy as
writers, but bringing this information to people in
the hopes that it does something. Folks, the,
book is The Privateers, How Billionaires Created a
Culture War and Sold School Vouchers, and it
officially dropped about a week ago. Am I
right? It did. Yeah. Thank you. At this
recording,
the book is now out.
I recommend that you order it from your
local independent bookstore. But if you don't have
one that's close to you,
get it from where you need to get
it.
What are some ways that people may be
able to follow your other work? And we
are gonna link that ProPublica report in the
episode notes so people can kind of
see what the situation really is. How do
people follow your ideas and work?
I'm I'm all over social media for better
or worse. Before I put out sort of
my daily daily,
you know, message on this on this stuff.
You can follow-up on me.
I'm actually
working with Instagram,
all those sorts of things. And I'm they
cross all those things. It's my name, Josh
Cowan. That's where it would start. And and
start with the book.
Yeah. Start with the book y'all, and, definitely,
we we would love to see others read
this book.
Folks,
that is it for this episode. Hit us
up till we pause what you thought.
Definitely give the book a look. Follow doctor
Cowen on social media.
Follow this issue. I think he would say
the same thing is follow this issue probably
more than anything else.
And,
you know, get in touch with us. If
you are listening to us on Apple Podcast,
throw a 5 star review on there,
and,
thank you for listening to Keto Keepers in
a mic. Stay dope, y'all.