Michigan State Professor Joshua Cowen: “After Two Decades of Studying Voucher Programs, I’m Firmly Opposed to Them.”
Professor Cowen’s research focuses on teacher quality, student and teacher mobility, and evaluations of state and local education programs. His conclusion, after studying voucher programs, is that public money should not be funding private tuition.
Professor Cowen states:
“I am an education policy professor who has spent almost two decades studying programs like these, and trying to follow the data where it leads. I started this research cautiously optimistic that vouchers could help.
But in 2022 the evidence is just too stark to justify the use of public money to fund private tuition. Particularly when other choice options like charter schools and inter-district enrollment are available to families and have a better track record.
There’s also a moral case to be made against voucher programs. They promise low-income families solutions to academic inequality, but what they deliver is often little more than religious indoctrination to go alongside academic outcomes that are worse than before. “
Research findings do not convince the voucher zealots. Their mission is to destroy the public common school.
Learn more about the EdChoice voucher litigation
VOUCHERS HURT OHIO