This column was originally published by Sheila Kennedy on her blog, “A Jaundiced Look at the World We Live In.”
By Sheila Kennedy
May 14, 2025
I know, I know–those of you who follow this blog are tired of my periodic rants about MAGA’s war on public education. But the evidence–which keeps accumulating–is overwhelming.
A state’s economic development is critically dependent on the existence of an educated workforce, and Indiana’s legislature continues to demonstrate that most of its members don’t know what an education is, or how it differs from job training. Worse still, they have consistently attacked the state’s public school system, establishing voucher programs to siphon tax dollars from schools established to serve children from all backgrounds in order fund religious schools serving distinct tribes.
Voucher schools (which, as I always have to emphasize, are different from charter schools) were promoted as a way to allow poor children to escape “failing” public schools. They were sold on the premise that they would improve educational outcomes. Those improvements didn’t come; indeed, research after a number of years shows that public school outcomes are superior. (Private schools catering to the children of wealthy parents do perform well, but most of those schools don’t accept vouchers.)
Given all the evidence that vouchers do not improve educational outcomes, drain our public schools of critically-needed resources, and have an enormous negative budgetary impact in a state where legislators keep telling us we don’t have funds to continue summer food programs for children or medical care for the poor, Hoosiers might wonder why our GOP overlords continue to expand the program.
The Indiana Citizen recently answered that question. The Citizen interviewed Josh Cowen, a researcher who initially had viewed vouchers positively, but who–thanks to his research– has
become an outspoken critic of the programs. I have been reading Cowen’s 2024 book “The Privateers: How Billionaires Created a Culture War and Sold School Vouchers,” and I recommend it. It describes how Christian nationalists and wealthy libertarians joined forces to “push vouchers from a fringe idea to the conservative mainstream.”
The report began by acknowledging the research:
Studies of statewide programs in Indiana as well as Louisiana and Ohio, found
what Cowen describes as “some of the largest academic declines on record in
academic research,” comparable to the impact on learning of Hurricane Katrina
and COVID-19, which dramatically lowered test scores by disrupting students’
lives and keeping them out of schools for extended periods of time.
For Christian nationalists, Cowen said, vouchers amplify their ability to use K-12
schools to promote a version of Christianity marked by alignment with right-wing
politics, a hostility toward reproductive freedom, LGBTQ+ rights and racial justice
initiatives, and, in some cases, a literal interpretation of the Bible, including the
biblical creation story.
Private school vouchers are a huge part of the Christian nationalist long-term
strategy, the idea that this kind of specific, right-wing interpretation of
Christianity should dictate public policy and the law. These folks believe that
education, from birth to adulthood, is absolutely key to the idea of, to quote
Betsy DeVos, advancing God’s kingdom on earth. She laments that, in her words,
public schools have displaced churches as centers of community. She sees
vouchers as a cure for that.
Cowen points out that, unlike groups like Catholics that have long prioritized religious education, Christian nationalists have a very specific hostility to public schools.
It really gets back to this idea that public schools reflect this diverse, multicultural,
pluralistic society in the United States. To the extent that these people don’t want
a diverse, multicultural, pluralistic society, they really don’t want children
spending eight hours a day in an environment that educates them to value those
things.
Given their inability to claim better educational outcomes, Indiana legislators now argue that parents know best how their children should be educated. But as Cowen notes, if parental choice was really the motive, the state would require private schools to tell parents how they perform– to disclose student test scores and other relevant data. Instead, policymakers “have bent over backward, whether in Indiana or elsewhere, to make sure parents know as little as possible” about voucher school performance. There’s a reason for that.
Over the last decade, as vouchers have gotten bigger in Indiana and elsewhere,
when you ask how private schools funded by vouchers are doing compared to
public schools, the results are dreadful.
In Indiana, over 90% of voucher students spend our tax dollars at religious schools– and we know very little about what they are teaching. As Cowen says, “If the argument is that parents should have the right to teach their kids creationism, instead of science, would say, “OK, fine, but not on the taxpayer dime.”
Read the article–or better yet, buy the book.
Sheila Suess Kennedy is Emerita Professor of Law and Public Policy at the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis. As an attorney, she practiced real estate, administrative and business law in Indianapolis before becoming corporation counsel for the City of Indianapolis in 1977. In 1980, she was the Republican candidate for Indiana’s then 1th Congressional District and in 1992, she became executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana. She joined the faculty of the School of Public and Environment al Affairs in 1998.
The views and opinions expressed are those of the author only and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Indiana Citizen or any other affiliated organization.
