RALEIGH (August 15, 2024) – Republican state legislators want to spend hundreds of millions more of our tax dollars on vouchers for students to attend private schools.

Bills passed separately this spring by both the state House and Senate would boost funding for vouchers to $625 million next year and $825 million a year by 2032-33.¹

Everyone wants what’s best for their child, of course. But we don’t always connect North Carolina’s rapid expansion of private-school vouchers with the collateral damage they inflict on the public schools more than 80% of North Carolina children still attend.

The Office of State Budget and Management estimates the proposed expansion – which legislators could still approve this fall² – could amount to $4 billion in taxpayer dollars over the next 10 years and siphon another $277.5 million a year from public schools across the state.

“I’m not against private schools, but I am against sending taxpayer dollars to private schools with no accountability and extreme social agendas at the expense of public schools,” says Gov. Roy Cooper. “North Carolina’s public schools are the choice for 84% of students and families and this scheme to gut them of funding and dismantle public education makes no sense.”³

SUBSIDY TO THE WEALTHY

North Carolina’s voucher program, known as “Opportunity Scholarships,” started in 2014 with the supposed intent to help low-income students escape faltering public schools to attend private schools.⁴

But last year, the General Assembly, with its veto-proof Republican majority, removed any limits on income for families to receive vouchers. It also approved vouchers for students who already attend private schools.

As a result, applications for vouchers skyrocketed this year from 12,000 to 72,000⁵ – anyone with a CPA knew to apply. Some 18% of new applicants have household incomes more than $260,000. More than half have incomes of at least $115,000 a year.

“How does that make any sense? And how can anyone justify it? … The voucher funding, regardless of income, is extravagant, unnecessary and, in fact, detrimental to public schools,” said an editorial in the News & Record of Greensboro.

The increase in voucher spending last year alone would support an additional 2.6% raise for the state’s public school teachers,⁶ who remain among the worst-paid in the country.⁷

In Arizona, an expansion similar to North Carolina’s – with no income limit on who can receive taxpayer-funded private-school vouchers – helped blow a $1.4 billion hole in the state budget. An estimated cost of $65 million grew to $332 million last year and $429 million this year.⁸

Such a rapid expansion of vouchers could well lead to resegregation of North Carolina’s schools, leaving Black, Brown and poor students concentrated in public schools – a return to the days before the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision that desegregated public schools.

Is that really what we want?

90% RELIGIOUS SCHOOLS

Recent research for the Public School Forum of North Carolina revealed that 90% of the schools that receive voucher funds in North Carolina are religious schools.⁹

Republicans like to complain that public schools “indoctrinate” students with “woke” ideology – whatever “woke” means. (A North Carolina high school teacher tells us, meanwhile, that if teachers could “indoctrinate” high school students to do anything, it would be to put down their phones and wear deodorant.)

But if they are dumping hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars into private schools, and 9 out of 10 of those schools are religious schools, just who is doing the indoctrinating?

For someone to oppose rapid expansion of vouchers – especially to wealthy families and children who already attend private schools – does not mean that person isn’t religious. Or Christian. Or that they oppose private school.

But it might mean they appreciate the separation of church and state – and recognize that using taxpayer dollars to support private schools drains the public schools that still serve more than 80% of North Carolina’s children.

RURAL PUSHBACK?

The impact is not just socioeconomic, but geographic. North Carolina’s private schools are generally clustered in metropolitan areas. So what do vouchers mean for public schools in rural North Carolina?

In states like Tennessee, Ohio, Georgia and Texas, rural Republicans with few private schools to “choose” have pushed back against massive voucher expansions that benefit students in metro areas. They fear expanded spending for private schools will leave less state money for the public schools on which their people rely.

“I just felt like we were abandoning our public schools,” Republican state Rep. Gerald Greene told ProPublica. “I’m not against private schools at all, but I just did not see how these vouchers would help southwestern Georgia.”¹⁰

Any pushback from rural North Carolina, if any, has been muted – though the state House did resist a push from the Senate this year to expand vouchers by nearly $500 million unless the state also expanded support for public schools.¹¹

ACCOUNTABILITY

Private schools can pick and choose their students – they don’t have to accept students with disabilities, for instance.

In short, they can discriminate.

Nor do they have to hire licensed teachers. Or provide bus service.

If you want to compare their performance with that of public schools, good luck – they aren’t required to give the same standardized tests students in public schools take. There’s no way to compare.

North Carolina ranks 49th among the states in the percentage of its economy (GDP) it devotes to public K-12 schools.¹²

We have the means to do more for public schools – we just don’t do it.

We ranked 38th in average teacher pay in 2022-23, and we’re projected to slip further, to 41st, in 2023-24.¹³

North Carolina was once respected for its public schools – but not anymore.

So legislators, please don’t dump hundreds of millions of our tax dollars into private schools until you fully fund our public schools.

And voters, please bear that in mind November 5.

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¹ https://www.ncleg.gov/Sessions/2023/Bills/House/PDF/H823v5.pdf.
² https://www.wfae.org/education/2024-08-02/cms-hopes-september-legislative-session-offers-a-chance-for-bigger-teacher-raises.
³ https://governor.nc.gov/news/press-releases/2024/03/27/case-against-school-vouchers-steroids-governor-cooper-outlines-threats-extreme-gop-plan-poses-public; https://governor.nc.gov/documents/files/osbm-s406-h823-impact-analysis/open.
⁴ https://publicschoolsfirstnc.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/5.2024-The-Facts-on-School-Vouchers_F.docx.pdf.
⁵ https://www.wfae.org/education/2024-07-02/nc-voucher-expansion-has-gop-support-but-didnt-materialize-in-state-budget.
⁶ https://greensboro.com/opinion/editorial/our-opinion-weve-said-it-before-and-well-say-it-again-vouchers-are-terrible-policy/article_304b103e-51cb-11ef-b58d-a7b2b674e390.html.
⁷ https://publicedworks.org/2024/05/nc-slips-in-teacher-pay-ranking/.
⁸ https://www.propublica.org/article/arizona-school-vouchers-budget-meltdown; https://grandcanyoninstitute.org/research/education/private-school-subsidies/cost-of-the-universal-esa-vouchers/.
⁹ https://publicedworks.org/2024/06/school-choice-or-schools-choice/.
¹⁰ https://www.propublica.org/article/rural-republicans-school-vouchers-education-choice.
¹¹ https://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/article289794744.html; https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/education/article290566329.html.
¹² https://edlawcenter.org/research/making-the-grade-2023/.
¹³ https://publicedworks.org/2024/05/nc-slips-in-teacher-pay-ranking/.