By Amy Cockerham Public Ed Works PHOENIX, AZ (October 23, 2025) – Arizona public education advocates say their state is grappling with the fallout from a voucher program without income limits – it’s caused multiple public-school closures and depleted funds for essential public services. In 2022, Arizona passed a universal voucher program – anyone could… READ MORE
Lessons Learned: Voucher expansion and public schools
By Amy Cockerham Public Ed Works RALEIGH (August 28, 2025) – North Carolina has seen a vast expansion of vouchers – taxpayer dollars for students to attend private schools – called “Opportunity Scholarships.” The state is projected to spend $731 million on its voucher programs this year, according to the NC General Assembly’s Fiscal Research… READ MORE
Public Schools First: Most vouchers going to students already in private school
By Heather Koons Public Schools First NC RALEIGH (June 13, 2025) – On June 4, staff at the Department of Public Instruction presented their report on Opportunity Scholarship voucher use for 2024-25 to the State Board of Education. According to data they shared from the North Carolina State Education Assistance Authority (administrators of the Opportunity Scholarship… READ MORE
Rural resistance: County leaders question private school vouchers
By Amy Cockerham Public Ed Works TRENTON (April 25, 2025) – Leaders of rural North Carolina counties without any private schools are voicing concerns about the state’s school voucher program. “Opportunity Scholarships” were created in 2014 and expanded last year to no longer have an income limit on who can apply. The scholarships use taxpayer… READ MORE
Vouchers: Racist legacy, help the wealthy, hurt rural counties
RALEIGH (March 12, 2025) – This is our final planned post to address misinformation about North Carolina’s taxpayer-funded private school vouchers. To access the series of five posts, follow this link. Here are the facts: •NC taxpayer money funneled to private school vouchers DOES divert money from local, neighborhood public schools. Every tax dollar that… READ MORE
Myth: Vouchers won’t hurt traditional schools or rural NC counties
RALEIGH (February 19, 2025) – Proponents of using North Carolina taxpayer funds for millionaires to send their children to private schools love to talk about “choice” and how “choice” provided by the “Opportunity Scholarships” will be good for every child in North Carolina in the long run. Based on experiences of other states, if North… READ MORE
Vouchers: Next step to dismantle NC public schools
By Kris Nordstrom Senior Policy Analyst, North Carolina Justice Center RALEIGH (January 16, 2025) – If your goal was to dismantle North Carolina’s public school system, how would you do it? Would you starve schools of resources? Real per-student state funding is down 3.8 percent from 2009. North Carolina’s school funding effort (education spending as… READ MORE
Hopes for 2025
RALEIGH (January 2, 2025) – North Carolina’s General Assembly seems to consider itself all-powerful. Well here’s hoping that changes with the new year. Republicans lost their supermajority in the state House by a single seat in November’s elections, giving Gov. Josh Stein slightly more bargaining power with the legislature than his predecessor Roy Cooper had…. READ MORE
Vouchers’ impact on public school funding
RALEIGH (January 2, 2024) – Over the next several weeks, we will publish several short posts to address misinformation circulating about the North Carolina School vouchers called “Opportunity Scholarships.” These vouchers use public, taxpayer funds to pay for private school tuition. First up is the claim that Opportunity Scholarships do not divert funding from public… READ MORE
Vouchers = Resegregation
RALEIGH (November 27, 2024) – Does North Carolina – once a beacon of the New South – really want to remain a segregated state of the 1950s? An analysis this month from ProPublica indicates it does. ProPublica’s study identified 20 private “segregation academies” in North Carolina that were founded in the 1960s and 1970s whose… READ MORE