We are owed answers about massive school privatization

By Kris Nordstrom
Kris Nordstrom is a Senior Policy Analyst with the North Carolina Justice Center’s Education & Law Project. He previously spent nine years with the North Carolina General Assembly’s nonpartisan Fiscal Research Division.
(This opinion was published in the April 25, 2023 edition of NCNewsline, formerly NC Policy Watch. The author explains that, among other things, North Carolina’s school voucher program allots taxpayer funds to schools whose religion-based curricula directly contradict state educational standards.)
If legislative leadership has their way, our public schools will be radically transformed by the 2023 legislative session.
Bills targeting Black students and trans students threaten to make our schools increasingly hostile for many children. They are seeking to radically overhaul school funding in ways that harm rural students, students with disabilities, Black students, and students from families with low incomes. And they continue to violate students’ constitutional rights by inadequately funding schools.
Central to this radical overhaul is the push to dramatically expand the state’s Opportunity Scholarship voucher program. Powerful legislators from both chambers have coalesced around a proposal (H823/S406) to substantially increase public subsidies for students attending unregulated private schools.
North Carolina began awarding Opportunity Scholarship vouchers in the 2014-15 school year. The voucher was initially limited to students who qualified for free or reduced lunch (family income up to 185% of the federal poverty level). With demand for vouchers regularly falling short of available funding in recent years, lawmakers have taken several steps to juice demand by expanding eligibility.
H823/S406 brings those efforts to overdrive. The bill:
• Eliminates all income eligibility requirements. Billionaires would be eligible to draw down public funds to subsidize private school tuition for their kids.
• Increases the maximum voucher size. The maximum voucher size was originally set at $4,200. Had this amount grown by inflation, the maximum voucher size would be about $5,300. Legislators are now proposing a maximum voucher size of $7,213.
• Eliminates public school enrollment requirements. By eliminating these requirements, most vouchers will be awarded to families who already have children enrolled in private schools. The program will simply subsidize wealthier families for doing something they’re already doing.
• Increases the program’s guaranteed funding by 64 percent. Total program funding would grow from $181 million to $540 million by 2032-33. It is important to note that this is the only education program with guaranteed funding increases.
In sum, the bill dramatically accelerates the privatization of North Carolina’s school system. Voucher expansion at this scale will exacerbate budget pressures in our already underfunded inclusive public schools, increase segregation (which of course was the original purpose of vouchers), and undermine the shared societal benefits of a strong public school system.
Given these negative impacts, bill proponents should be pressed to justify this radical plan.
1. What public good is served by using taxpayer funds to subsidize the tuition of disproportionately wealthy students who are already enrolled in private school? The removal of income eligibility limits and the requirement for prior public school enrollment means that most of this money will be paying relatively wealthy families to do something they’re already doing. According to Census data, the median household with a child in private school earns 55 percent more than the median household with a child in public school. This bill simply transfers wealth to these already-wealthy households. Bill sponsors should be required to articulate what public benefit they think is achieved by this regressive transfer of wealth.
2. What public benefit is served by teaching faulty science and history? Over 90 percent of voucher students attend religious schools. Of those, more than three quarters use a biblically based curriculum presenting concepts that directly contradict the state’s educational standards. In addition to telling kids that man walked with dinosaurs and that slavery wasn’t that bad, many of these schools openly discriminate against LGBTQ students. For example, Fayetteville Christian School, which to date has received $5.4 million in voucher funds, promises to expel any LGBTQ students, calling them deviant and “perverted.” Bill authors should be required to explain why public dollars should subsidize lies and hate.
3. Why do sponsors think North Carolina’s voucher program – the most unaccountable, unregulated voucher program in the country – will somehow be the only statewide voucher program in the country to not produce stunningly disastrous test results for voucher students? The negative effect of Indiana’s voucher program on student test scores is on par with Hurricane Katrina. Programs in Ohio and Louisiana had a more negative impact on their voucher students’ test scores than the pandemic. These statewide programs have all had negative impacts that are virtually unprecedented in their scope. Why do bill sponsors think results will be different here where there are no guardrails in place to set even minimal quality standards for voucher schools?
4. Who do sponsors think will be teaching all of these new private school students? If fully implemented, the new funding should increase private school enrollments by about 25,000 students. This means that private schools will need to hire approximately 1,500 teachers. Thanks to policies pushed by voucher bill sponsors, North Carolina is in the midst of a historic teacher shortage, with more than 5,500 vacancies this year. Do sponsors think there is a secret stash of great teachers waiting in the wings for jobs at private schools? Are sponsors concerned that failing to consider who will teach these additional students might have something to do with the horrific test results observed in other statewide voucher programs?
5. Are sponsors aware that for free market competition to work, families need access to good information about the schools they’re choosing? Functioning markets require many sellers, many buyers, and good information. The Opportunity Scholarship voucher fails to provide parents with useful information to facilitate “choice.” But Opportunity Scholarship families are given no help assessing which school will be best for their child. Voucher schools face no quality standards. No class size limits. No teacher qualifications. No vetting of curricula. Nor are voucher schools required to provide any useful information on academic performance. Do the bill sponsors – who undoubtedly consider themselves champions of market-based reforms – understand how markets work? If so, why do they steadfastly refuse to provide parents with the support to make informed decisions for their children? Undoubtedly, they will say that “parents are the best form of accountability.” But the results from Ohio and Louisiana – where voucher students’ academic outcomes were worse than the pandemic – show conclusively that parents are only the “best form of accountability” when they have good information from which to make informed decisions.
6. How do sponsors think this plan will expand “choice” for families when private schools can continue choosing their students by simply increasing tuition? Private schools in Iowa are jacking up tuition in response to just-passed legislation in that state. The lack of price controls in H823/S406 gives lie to the notion that this is about “funding kids, not systems.” Unfettered voucher programs subsidize the private school system and fail to provide students from families with low incomes the choices available to their wealthier peers.
7. How do sponsors plan on providing massive new subsidies to the private school industry while still fulfilling their constitutional obligations to provide every student with access to decent public schools? In November, the Supreme Court confirmed that North Carolina is failing to meet its constitutional obligations to provide decent schools for the state’s 1.5 million public school students. Meeting that obligation requires substantial new state investment in our public schools, directed mainly to the districts, schools, and students that require the most help to meet state standards. Billions are required to meet this obligation and bring North Carolina’s school funding levels in line with other states. Sponsors should be required to explain how they will meet these fundamental, constitutional requirements (requirements that they swore to uphold when they took office) while funneling half a billion dollars per year into the private school industry.
These voucher bills offer a radical acceleration in the privatization of North Carolina’s education landscape. Can lawmakers justify their decisions?
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