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
Tom Campbell: Public dollars directed to “Segregation Academies”
RALEIGH (November 27, 2024) – The recently passed 131-page Omnibus bill contained additional money to help victims of Hurricane Helene, but that was only a small portion of the bill. It contained dramatic changes to state government which we will discuss at another sitting, but the big headline was the allocation of $463.5 million dollars… READ MORE
Outrageous
RALEIGH (November 21, 2024) – Western North Carolina faces $53 billion in damage from Hurricane Helene. Yet state legislators voted this week to send $655 million in tax dollars to private schools this year and $6.5 billion through 2032-33.1 That’s outrageous. To think it won’t divert funds from public schools – especially schools in rural… READ MORE