Joshua Cowen Calls Vouchers “Dangerous to American Education”

In a detailed essay published by The Hechinger Report, Joshua Cowen, a professor of education policy at Michigan State University, warned that the American embrace of school vouchers constituted a grave mistake.

“Vouchers are dangerous to American education,” Cowen wrote.  “They promise an all-too-simple solution to tough problems like unequal access to high-quality schools, segregation and even school safety. In small doses, years ago, vouchers seemed like they might work, but as more states have created more and larger voucher programs, experts like me have learned enough to say that these programs on balance can severely hinder academic growth — especially for vulnerable kids.”

“I am an education policy professor who has spent almost two decades studying programs like these,” Cowen continued, “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.”

Cowen contended that while some early programs exhibited positive outcomes, scaling these programs up has failed to produce similar results. “All of these results have a straightforward explanation: vouchers do not work on the large scale pushed for by advocates today,” he wrote. “While small, early pilot voucher programs showed at least modest positive results, expansions statewide have been awful for students. That’s because there aren’t enough decent private schools to serve at-risk kids.”  

- S.E. Abrams