Billionaires Are Using Vouchers To Turn Students Into Little Christian Nationalists!!!
This ridiculous claim was a key takeaway from a recent interview conducted by Maureen Downey in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. There are Christian Nationalists out there to be sure, but they are not as prevalent as some seem to think. But folks who write books about Christian Nationalism want you to think they are hiding behind every bush. Josh Cowen, the author of the forthcoming book “The Privateers: How Billionaires Created a Culture War and Sold School Vouchers” promises to explain to the reader how school choice is a terrible, terrible thing that will turn America into something akin to the “Handmaid’s Tale.”
Thankfully, Matthew Lee, an Assistant Professor of Economics at Kennesaw State University has written a response to Downey’s interview, filled with facts and data.
Other recent studies, such as those focusing on programs in Ohio and Indiana, evaluate school-choice programs using quasi-experimental methodologies where researchers “match” students to compare them. A more rigorous approach is to derive estimates from randomized controlled trials, universally regarded as the gold standard of social science research. Two twice-married, wealthy Englishmen born in 1948 might be considered well-matched in a quasi-experimental setting, but one would hardly believe that King Charles and Ozzy Osbourne are appropriate counterfactuals for each other.
Policymakers would do better to rely on experimental studies that compare voucher recipients and non-recipients who are randomly selected by lottery, ensuring that treatment and control groups are balanced on all characteristics. Indeed, the weight of evidence from gold standard evaluations of private school choice programs find that choice programs produce positive effects on student achievement. Cowen ignores the vast majority of the evidence—and he ignores the highest quality evidence, because that evidence contradicts his point.
Furthermore, Cowen’s attempts to cast school choice as a “conservative” (used five times), “religious” (used five times) or “Christian” (used four times) movement ignores evidence of the sweeping public support for choice. Polling conducted by Harvard University’s Education Next found that Republicans, Democrats, Blacks and Hispanics are all inclined to support voucher proposals. Support for choice is also growing among Jews, Muslims and other religious groups. Similar polling by the American Federation for Children (AFC) concludes that school choice has the support of a super-majority of groups by race, ethnicity and political affiliation—yes, over two-thirds of both Biden voters and Trump voters in 2020 support school choice.
While Cowen depicts “billionaires” as the driving force behind school choice, he ignores that supporters of these programs are actually far outspent by opponents. According to legal disclosures, the National Education Association (NEA), the union that represents over 2.8 million U.S. teachers, spent $50.1 million on political activities and lobbying between September 1, 2022, and August 31, 2023. Similarly, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), which represents 1.7 million teachers and featured Cowen as a keynote speaker at its 2024 convention, spent $46.9 million on politics between July 1, 2022, to June 30, 2023.
In contrast, Betsy DeVos’ AFC – the organization Cowen cites so often – spent a miserly $9.5 million on political activities in 2024. Koch Industries and Americans for Prosperity, two other organizations Cowen mentions, spent a combined $7 million on lobbying in 2024.
It’s a shame opponents of school choice such as Josh Cowen, resort to such inflammatory rhetoric and make such easily disprovable claims. As Lee points out, many parents, of all races and religions, support school choice. Thoughtful debate would benefit us all as we attempt to craft policies in the best interest of Georgia’s children.
