Privatized Schools Will End Democracy

America’s founders believed in a need to educate the populace, especially second and third presidents, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. They believed that the only way a self-governing society could be sustained is with an educated population. Adams penned to his wife, Abigail,

“And liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people who have a right from the frame of their nature to knowledge, as their great Creator who does nothing in vain, has given them understandings and a desire to know.”

In a 1786 letter to scholar and fellow signatory to the Declaration of Independence, George Wythe, Jefferson wrote:

“I think by far the most important bill in our whole code is that for the diffusion of knowledge among the people. No other sure foundation can be devised for the preservation of peace and happiness.” (School and Society 1995, Page 25)

In the antebellum era, two types of schools flourished, common schools and academies. Common schools were supported by local and state governments. They were free for students. Academies may have received some governmental support but they charged students tuition. The common schools dominated towns and cities while the rural areas without enough population to support a common school turned to academies which were often boarding schools.

After the Civil War, common schools became more dominant. As the school system developed throughout America, the public structure took root.

In the 1930’s, the fact of an educated population that could read, write and do some math probably saved America from authoritarianism. During World War II, the high rates of literacy among American troops had a lot to do with their success on the battlefield.

The 1960s and 70s witnessed civil rights coming to public education and the development of a pluralistic system. Unfortunately, in the late 1970s, Washington DC politicians began to interfere with public education by proposing education standards, a harmful error.

In 1983, the Reagan administration published a deceitful attack on public schools, “Nation at Risk.” Since then public schools have been under relentless attack financed by billionaires.

A key weapon in this attack has been forcing school vouchers on communities and states. Vouchers have never survived a popular vote, but in areas dominated by the Republican Party they have been enacted by legislatures. Researcher Joshua Cowen’s new book, “The Privateers; How Billionaires Created a Culture War and Sold School Vouchers,” documents the way rightwing billionaires advanced a public education killing agenda.

The Privateers

Milwaukee, Wisconsin brought us America’s first voucher program in 1991. Cowen claims with evidence that the driving force behind the program was the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation.

In 1901, the brothers founded the Allen Bradley Company with a $1,000 investment by local Milwaukee doctor Stanton Allen. The older brother Lynde died in 1942 and the younger brother Harry succumbed in 1965. In 1985, Rockwell International bought the Allen Bradley Company for $1.65 billion and overnight the Bradley Foundation ballooned from $14 million to $300 million. The faceless people in control of this giant pile of cash pushed through America’s first voucher program.

Joshua Cowen is a Professor of Education Policy at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.  From 2015-2018, he served as co-editor of Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, the flagship peer-reviewed education policy journal in the United States. He was previously Associate Editor of Education Finance and Policy, and remains on the editorial boards of both journals. Since 2009, his research has been funded by an array of philanthropist and organizations including The University of Arkansas Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation and John Arnold.

Cowen being in the research trenches working directly with scholars that had an ideological predisposition to support vouchers makes his information powerful.

Billionaires Charles Koch, Betsy DeVos and other holders of extreme wealth have financed the fight to move funding away from public education and toward private schools. Cowen explains,

“The purpose was and is to do away with schools existing as a core function of democracy and stand up instead a privately held, sectarian and theocratic version of publicly funded education.” (Privateers Page 30)

When the nation’s first voucher program was enacted, Wisconsin lawmakers included a requirement for an outside evaluation. University of Wisconsin professor of political science, John F. Witte, was given the assignment. Cowen reports,

“Although the evaluation found the parents of voucher users indicated greater levels of satisfaction with their children’s educational experiences over time, Witte also found little consistent evidence that vouchers improved test scores or attendance rates and found that students gave up the vouchers at high rates to return to Milwaukee Public Schools.” (Privateers Page 36)

Paul Peterson, a Harvard professor who thirty years earlier earned a PhD in political science from the University of Chicago, was not having it. He blasted Witte’s report in the New York Times and in academic papers. Peterson was known mostly for his 1990 book, “Welfare Magnets.” However, in 1995, he received funding from both the Olin foundation and the Bradley foundation. Some of that funding was to evaluate Witte’s report. Peterson and his then graduate-student Jay P. Greene (now at the Heritage Foundation) attacked Witte’s study with a shocking level of vitriol and ferocity. (Privateers Page 38)

The next voucher program popped up in Cleveland, Ohio. It was the Peterson-Greene evaluation of the program that caused researchers concern about a hidden agenda and sloppy scholarship. Cowen writes:

‘“Even when he has limited data, he’s always squeezing out whatever data he can to arrive at a predetermined answer,’ said Professor Bruce Fuller, an early voucher critic at University of California, Berkeley. Fuller noted that with Olin and Bradley funding Peterson’s work, ‘That’s like the tobacco companies sponsoring studies on the effects of smoking.’ A later textbook for future evaluators would cite the Peterson Milwaukee work as a cautionary example of ideologically predisposed research and ‘a hidden agenda,’ particularly in Peterson and Greene’s willingness to use lower-than-conventional standards of statistical inference to make their case. Even Paul T. Hill, an otherwise prominent school choice supporter, singled out the Peterson Cleveland work as ‘not a persuasive study.’” (Privateers Page 42)

The central role of the Bradley Foundation was brought home with a quote from the New Yorker’s Jane Mayer:

“The Bradley Foundation virtually drove the early national ‘school choice’ movement, waging an all-out assault on teachers’ unions and traditional public schools. In an effort to ‘wean’ Americans from government, the foundation militated for parents to be able to use public funds to send their children to private and parochial schools.” (Privateers Page 46/7)

The wheels on the voucher bandwagon flew off. Patrick Wolf, another Peterson acolyte at Harvard who is now at the University of Arkansas, presented a paper with results Cowen described as “shocking.” The evaluation of Louisiana’s statewide voucher program showed unprecedented large negative impacts on students. Martin West, a former Peterson student and now Harvard Professor, wrote about the results calling them “as large as any I’ve seen” in the history of American Education.(Privateers Page 89)

Since that Louisiana study, two studies in Washington DC also showed large academic losses. The same thing occurred in both Ohio and Indiana. The largest academic declines ever recorded were from these voucher programs; larger than the losses due to Katrina or the Covid pandemic.

Conclusion

 If you have not read “Privateers,” I strongly recommend you do. In it, Joshua Cowen documents the massive spending by Charles Koch, Betsy DeVos, the Walton family and other wealthy conservatives to undermine public education by selling school choice. Public education is expensive and does not allow for religious indoctrination. Good private schools cost a lot more than the vouchers offered. This creates two benefits for conservative billionaires, overall education costs are reduced and the public is forced to fund religious schools. Those who are not wealthy will get an enfeebled education if the billionaires succeed in destroying public education.

Koch, DeVos and other billionaires run wealthy foundations that are tax exempt charities. In reality, they are not charities. They are political organizations spending to advance school privatization and other political agendas. The laws governing tax exempt foundations are being ignored because no one wants to face the wrath of the supper wealthy.

America can no longer afford billionaires. They undermine democracy. I have two recommendations. Tax billionaires back to being millionaires and cleanup tax free giving.