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 schools. This assertion ignores a critical reality: These vouchers disproportionately harm rural counties and small public school districts that rely heavily on state per-pupil funding to survive.
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 a share of our state economy) has fallen from 42nd in 2008 to 49th in 2022. If we made just the average funding effort that year, school funding would have been $6.5 billion higher, 43 percent above actual levels.
Would you make the teaching profession as unpleasant as possible?
North Carolina’s starting teacher pay is the worst in the Southeast. In real terms, it’s 7% lower than it was in 2011. Since the 2011 change in General Assembly leadership, North Carolina’s average teacher pay has gone from being 19% below the national average to 23% today. Legislators have taken away career status, master’s pay, funding for National Board Certification applications, longevity pay, and retiree health benefits. Is it any wonder that teacher vacancies have reached record levels?
Opportunity Scholarships: Discrimination and neglect of special-needs children
RALEIGH (January 23, 2025) – There is misinformation circulating about whether North Carolina’s taxpayer-funded Opportunity Scholarships enable schools to discriminate against applicants.
Let’s set the record straight.
The starting aim of the program was to provide low-income families with greater access to private education. But the program has come under increasing scrutiny for enabling private schools to discriminate against applicants and exclude children with special needs—all while using public funds, our tax dollars, to do so.
Unlike public schools, private institutions that accept Opportunity Scholarship vouchers are not required to follow federal laws such as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). This means the private schools have no legal obligation to accommodate children with disabilities or to provide specialized services for those students.
For families of children with special needs, the outcome can be rejection by the school or enrollment in schools unequipped to meet their children’s needs. The Opportunity Scholarship program may result in prioritizing choice for private schools over equitable access for all students.