Last year, Republicans in the General Assembly eliminated an income cap as an eligibility requirement to receive a private school voucher. This decision alone will funnel millions of dollars away from helping public schools in low-income communities and into the hands of wealthy families who never even considered sending their children to their community’s public school. By 2032 North Carolina’s voucher program will receive more than a half billion dollars of state taxpayer funds budgeted by the General Assembly.
It’s notable that the General Assembly makes no commitments to public school students and their families beyond the next school year.
The history of vouchers in the United States dates back long before 2014 and originated after the Brown v Board of Education decision requiring the desegregation of public schools. They don’t have roots in trying to help poor folks send their kids to a school with a polo shirt and khaki dress code. They have their roots in publicly funding white flight away from public schools.
The voucher program began in North Carolina in 2014 with $4.6 million and was marketed as a program designed to help low-income families dissatisfied with their local public school to pay for private schools with a several thousand-dollar voucher. There has been a historical surplus of voucher funding due to lack of demand.
Ten years later, the slippery slope has culminated in removing the expectation that families must have sent their children to public schools as a prerequisite, and even high-income families can get their hands on one.
Watch Republicans label these newly-eligible rich folks sticking their hands in the taxpayer cookie jar as a sign of “increased demand” for private schools (though their kids have always attended a private school).
Choice?
Those hawking vouchers claim it’s about choice – yet at last week’s school choice rally in Wake County, neither Superintendent Truitt nor any General Assembly members attending the event said anything about Wake County’s nationally awarded magnet public schools of choice. School choice means private schools choose their students. Their admission and retention requirements are designed to socially engineer who THEY think deserves an education. And our taxes help pay for them to do this.
Equity?
Vouchers aren’t about equity by giving poorer families partial coupons for private school. They exacerbate inequity by taking money owed to our poorest communities for over thirty years via the Leandro case to support their neighborhood public schools. Instead Republicans in the General Assembly hand it to wealthy folks who think it’s beneath them to send their kids to the neighborhood public school.
When our state refuses to solve the shortage of pre-K opportunities for poor families and instead makes it easier for a rich family to get 13 years’ worth of private school discounts for their kids – it’s not about equity and it’s not about choice.
Quality?
It’s not about quality either. After the budget passed last year, one proud NC voucher hawker celebrated “All it takes is a fire and health inspection” to start your own school. Teachers in private schools aren’t required to have any teaching training or credentials. At least one voucher receiving school requires their so-called teachers to speak in tongues to show their commitment.
If it was about a quality education, North Carolina would require private schools receiving state funding to follow state academic standards to ensure students actually work toward content and skill-based learning goals.
Heck, as the least regulated private school voucher program in the country, North Carolina doesn’t regulate the number of hours or days instruction is offered by a voucher-receiving private school.
Public schools have their school year start days micromanaged by the General Assembly in deference to the tourist industry, yet private schools receiving public funds don’t have minimum expectations for time spent on academic instruction.
Accountability? Competition?
Despite slick marketing attempts, vouchers aren’t about accountability or competition. Private schools are exempt from state testing requirements imposed on public schools. If voucher peddlers are SO confident private schools are better, then why wouldn’t they encourage the data collection to prove it?
Instead, the data from state required tests imposed on public school students is used to tell false and warped narratives to convince the public that public school students are failing. They rig the data and draw deceptive graphs to feed the voucher marketing beast.
Private school vouchers aren’t about choice, equity, quality, or accountability. They’re about privatization, adults, and exclusion.
They’re about privatization seeking to replace public schools run by education experts and instead distribute vouchers to anyone who has set up a so-called school with only a fire and health inspection. Work by Kris Nordstrom and Ann Doss Helms has uncovered sham schools receiving more vouchers than the number of enrolled students as well as property pyramid schemes.
Vouchers are about adults who want to cash in on the backpacks of students and celebrate the lack of accountability for actually teaching them by bragging that they only need a fire and health inspection.
Vouchers are about exclusion and rejecting the idea that ALL kids deserve a great education, no matter their zip code or parents’ income bracket.
For those of us who care about choice, equity, quality AND accountability, we must elect representatives who will support public schools – the ONLY schools who choose all students, offer equitable opportunities, meet quality standards and are accountable to their communities.
educatEDpolicy 