Privateers
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A01=Josh Cowen
academic risk
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
at-risk youth
Author_Josh Cowen
automatic-update
billionaire
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=JNA
Category=JNF
Category=JNK
Category=JNKG
conservatives
COP=United States
culture war
Delivery_Pre-order
education finance
Education Freedom
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=0
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
evaluation
evidence
income inequality
Language_English
legislation
low-income
outcomes
PA=Not yet available
political advocacy
Price_€20 to €50
private education
privatization
PROSE Award
PS=Forthcoming
public education
religious education
research
school choice
school vouchers
softlaunch
state exams
tax-funded
test scores
transparency
Trump administration
voucher programs
Product details
- ISBN 9781682539101
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 10 Sep 2024
- Publisher: Harvard Educational Publishing Group
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
- Language: English
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A deep-dive investigation of education privatization that reveals voucher programs as the faulty products of decades of work by wealthy patrons and influential conservatives
In The Privateers, Josh Cowen lays bare the surprising history of tax-funded school choice programs in the United States and warns of the dangers of education privatization. A former evaluator of state and local school voucher programs, Cowen demonstrates how, as such programs have expanded in the United States, so too has the evidence-informed case against them.
This thought-provoking work traces the origins of voucher-based education reform to mid-twentieth-century fears over school desegregation. It shows how, in the intervening decades, a cabal of billionaire conservatives supporting a host of special political interests—including economic libertarianism, religious choice, and parental rights—have converged around the issue of education freedom in an ongoing culture war. Through deliberate policymaking, legislation, and litigation, Cowen reveals, an insular advocacy network has enacted a flawed system for education finance driven largely by dogma.
Far from realizing the purported goal of educational equity, privatization is failing students and exacerbating income inequality, Cowen finds. He cites multiple research studies that conclude that voucher programs return poorer academic outcomes, including lower test scores on state exams, especially among students who are at greater academic risk because of their race, their religion, their gender identity, or their family’s income. Continued advancement of these policies, Cowen argues, is an assault on public education as a defining American institution.
In The Privateers, Josh Cowen lays bare the surprising history of tax-funded school choice programs in the United States and warns of the dangers of education privatization. A former evaluator of state and local school voucher programs, Cowen demonstrates how, as such programs have expanded in the United States, so too has the evidence-informed case against them.
This thought-provoking work traces the origins of voucher-based education reform to mid-twentieth-century fears over school desegregation. It shows how, in the intervening decades, a cabal of billionaire conservatives supporting a host of special political interests—including economic libertarianism, religious choice, and parental rights—have converged around the issue of education freedom in an ongoing culture war. Through deliberate policymaking, legislation, and litigation, Cowen reveals, an insular advocacy network has enacted a flawed system for education finance driven largely by dogma.
Far from realizing the purported goal of educational equity, privatization is failing students and exacerbating income inequality, Cowen finds. He cites multiple research studies that conclude that voucher programs return poorer academic outcomes, including lower test scores on state exams, especially among students who are at greater academic risk because of their race, their religion, their gender identity, or their family’s income. Continued advancement of these policies, Cowen argues, is an assault on public education as a defining American institution.
Josh Cowen is a professor of education policy at Michigan State University and an author on topics related to education politics, school choice, and culture wars in the United States. In addition to all of the major academic outlets in his research field, his popular writing has appeared in outlets such as the Dallas Morning News, Detroit Free Press, Hechinger Report, Houston Chronicle, New Republic, Philadelphia Inquirer, Slate, Time, The Tennessean, and Washington Spectator. He lives in mid-Michigan with his family.
