With permission, sharing snippet of feedback I received on my article about impact of 'spiritual warfare' on LGBTQ students in religious schools. Please share if you think others might benefit from my deeply personal work. 👇tandfonline.com/share/WKJHBSHX…

'Iowa legislator opening his own private school, to be funded by vouchers he voted for'

Josh Cowen have you seen this sheer audacity?

Constance 'Our preferred methods in education policy research have limitations. The question of whether race causes an outcome is so constrained that the null hypothesis is that there is no discrimination and no structural or systemic racism' - Constance

I’ve been warning you these voucher schemes spur pop-up schools and that’s part of why the results are so bad.

But even I hadn’t expected some of the Right-wing lawmakers who backed them to cash in themselves.

Tracks, I guess.

Look. It’s not like there’s a strong evidence case for vouchers, so there’s a genuine moral dilemma about a scheme that works for kids even though it’s part of a big discriminatory Right-wing push.

It’s that the evidence is atrocious, too, and has gotten worse with time.

TL;DR: what the voucher lobby means when they talk about their grassroots “movement”
arkansasadvocate.com/2024/03/25/sch…

Years ago, working on a voucher evaluation led by pro-voucher scholars, a couple other then-junior analysts and I found a troubling pattern.

At-risk kids left vouchers at very high rates.

But they did better switching to public school.

We published that separately in 2013👇

Few education policy experts, and few journalists on that beat, really grasp how key school privatization is to *broader* Right-wing political aims.

It’s not just a policy debate. Anne Nelson Bad Faith documentary
theguardian.com/film/2024/apr/…

This graphic from NPEF does a good job compiling the independent evidence on vouchers in one graphic.

And these sorry outcomes are probably the most generous evidence-based take—attainment results have been flat more recently, including where test scores cratered.

Research shows parents do want many things from their schools but they don’t want *horrific* academics as a tradeoff.

Which is what vouchers give to the average student.

As voucher systems grew in size over the last decade, truly terrible providers began to cash in CEEP

This graphic from NPEF does a good job compiling the independent evidence on vouchers in one graphic.

And these sorry outcomes are probably the most generous evidence-based take—attainment results have been flat more recently, including where test scores cratered.

State and local education agencies usually get 30 days notice to edit/review research using their data, prior to release.

Oliva’s shop is so political it’s an open question whether Arkansas Department of Education would ever approve publication of a study that goes against their message.

How many parents would buy a used car to drive their kiddos to school, without test-driving and checking the vehicle history first?

But the voucher lobby’s view of accountability is: take the word of the sub-prime school that you’re driving to, when it claims to be good.

To put the point differently: application data from high-choice cities like NOLA and DC show parents value academics more than they tell surveys.

They’re willing to accept a small academic decline to get other school features.

But not the huge drop they get with vouchers.

Research shows parents do want many things from their schools but they don’t want *horrific* academics as a tradeoff.

Which is what vouchers give to the average student.

As voucher systems grew in size over the last decade, truly terrible providers began to cash in CEEP

Few education policy experts, and few journalists on that beat, really grasp how key school privatization is to *broader* Right-wing political aims.

It’s not just a policy debate. Anne Nelson Bad Faith documentary
theguardian.com/film/2024/apr/…

Herzog is one of the big new voucher lobby players pushing voucher schemes.

They admit vouchers are about destroying public schools and pushing up church attendance rates.

Part of what’s going on in pushbacks to empirical and theoretical discussions of weakness in the market case for vouchers is that the energy (and much funding) behind vouchers today is driven more by Christian Nationalism than libertarianism.

Politically, the stylized economic…

Some people would rather watch a film about the #CouncilforNationalPolicy than read a book; some people will do both. Here you go: Bad Faith documentary #ShadowNetwork theguardian.com/film/2024/apr/…. .

This is the type of deeply reported media coverage we need about how a second Trump administration would undermine the public sector and democratic checks on authoritarianism
cnn.com/2024/04/27/pol…