NC's expanded vouchers have a hidden cost. Public schools will feel it
Republican state lawmakers refuse to tell the truth about school vouchers.
They claim that providing hundreds of millions of tax dollars to help families pay for private school tuition will not affect public school funding. But that's not what the experience in other states shows.
A study supported by the Education Law Center in 2023 looked at seven states where voucher programs are well established – Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Louisiana, Ohio and Wisconsin. It found that the portion of state gross domestic product allocated to funding public schools decreased.
Yet Republican lawmakers say that won't happen in North Carolina, despite a massive expansion of the state's voucher program known as Opportunity Scholarship. The program now offers vouchers of varying amounts to all families of all incomes, even those with children already attending private school. Last year the legislature approved spending $463 million more on vouchers. By the 2032-33 fiscal year, the program is expected to cost $825 million annually.
House Speaker Destin Hall says people concerned about funding of the state's public schools need not worry about the flood of cash going to private schools. In his March 12 response to Gov. Josh Stein's State of the State speech, Hall said, 'Expanding opportunity and supporting our teachers are not competing goals. They're two sides of the same coin. Empowering families and investing in our teachers builds a stronger, brighter future for all of North Carolina's children.'
Hall and fellow Republican leaders want to have it both ways, or rather they want North Carolinians to think they can have it both ways – spend lots of taxpayer dollars on private school vouchers and still have plenty to support good public schools.
This fits with another distortion that Republicans keep repeating – that the legislature has been generous in increasing teacher pay. Or, as Hall put it in his response, 'the Republican-led General Assembly has consistently invested and will continue to invest even more in meaningful teacher raises.'
Let's unpack these claims, starting with the second, based on figures provided by the Public School Forum.
In 2011, the year Republicans gained control of the legislature and have since held it, the average North Carolina public school teacher pay was $46,514. The average teacher pay in 2022-23 (the latest available hard figure) was $56,559. That's an increase, yes, but teachers still have lost ground to inflation. If average teacher pay had kept up with inflation since 2011, it would be $67,063 today. So much for 'meaningful teacher raises.'
Remarkably, raising teacher pay, as inadequate as it has been, is the good news for schools under Republican rule. By the broader measure of school funding, North Carolina ranks 48th among states in per-pupil funding and 49th in funding effort.
When it comes to vouchers, Republicans turn up the gaslighting. Remember that the Opportunity Scholarship program was introduced as a way to help low-income families move on from low-performing schools. Now it has morphed into a universal voucher system.
Will that affect the funding for public schools? Republicans say no because the voucher money is not drawn from public school funds. That's true, but the surge in private school funding certainly dampens the appetite for public school funding increases, especially when Republicans want to keep cutting taxes.
Days after Hall delivered his we-can-do-both message about vouchers and public school funding, Rep. Julie von Haefen, D-Wake, proposed a school funding bill that shows how dire the situation already is. Her bill, which she has proposed previously, calls for the legislature to provide full funding for public schools under the Leandro plan that Republican leaders have ignored.
How far is the state behind in meeting the Leandro plan? As of now, von Haefen said, the state would need to spend $4.3 billion this year just to get back on track with the Leandro schedule. Meanwhile, Stein's budget asks the legislature to approve a $4 billion bond to make improvements to repair and replace deteriorating school buildings across the state.
None of that spending will be approved by Republican lawmakers, of course. But somehow Republicans are asserting that spending hundreds of millions on school vouchers will not come at the expense of public schools.
Von Haefen said the cost of vouchers will have an even more pronounced effect if the economy slows as projected.
'The huge expansion of these vouchers is going to affect our public schools because our revenues are down and they are going to be dropping every single year as the voucher spending is going up,' she said. 'So something has to break and to me that's just going to be that our public schools system is going to continue to suffer.'
Vouchers will expand school choice, but they'll also expand the shameful gap between what public schools need and what the legislature provides.
Associate opinion editor Ned Barnett can be reached at 919-404-7583, or nbarnett@newsobserver.com
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35 minutes ago
- Politico
Andrew Yang Is Ready to Team Up With Elon Musk
Andrew Yang has reached out to Elon Musk with a sales pitch: Let's build a third party together. The former 2020 Democratic presidential candidate has been pushing his independent Forward Party for several years — and he sprang into action after Musk's feud with President Donald Trump erupted and Musk polled X users on whether they wanted a new political party. In an interview with POLITICO Magazine, Yang said he hasn't heard back from Musk yet, but he's optimistic. Yang also acknowledged he doesn't agree with Musk about everything, but said that his Forward Party should appeal to those across the political spectrum. And don't forget that Musk had endorsed Yang's previous presidential bid. Enormous hurdles exist to breaking through in America's two-party system. But Yang argued the American public is ready for a change, particularly if the effort gets help from the richest man in the world — who also happens to control a massive social media platform. 'Elon has built world-class companies from nothing more than an idea multiple times, and in this instance, you have the vast majority of Americans who are hungry for a new approach,' Yang said. 'I'm happy to spell it out for Elon or anyone else who wants to head down this road: A third party can succeed very quickly.' This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. I saw that you retweeted a post Elon Musk made about needing 'to create a new political party in America that actually represents the 80 percent in the middle.' Have you reached out directly to Musk about creating a new party or working with your Forward Party? I have reached out, and some mutual friends are also looking to connect us. Have you heard back yet? Not yet, but I assume he's been very busy. We have been of the opinion that America needed a new political party for a number of years, and so waiting another 24 hours is nothing. Is he someone you'd want to work with to build a third party? 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If you look at Musk's politics over the last number of years, he waited in line to meet Barack Obama, he endorsed me in a Democratic cycle, and even earlier in this cycle — 2024 — he was looking for an alternative to Trump. There are a number of things that I think Elon shares in common with a lot of other folks I talk to who want to see some kind of middle ground or balance. The problem is: In our two-party system, you get whipsawed either one direction or the other. I will say that the deficit in spending, neither party has done a good job of addressing it, because as soon as they're in power, they don't want to make the tough choices. You're coming politically from the center-left; Elon Musk is coming from arguably the hard right. How would you overcome your political differences? If you look at the Forward Party makeup, my co-chairs include Christine Todd Whitman, who was governor of New Jersey and EPA secretary under George W. 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Are there any specific policies that you feel like you agree on with Musk? The three pillars that we're operating on are dignity, dynamism and democracy, which is something that most Americans can get behind. But in practical terms, if you can imagine three or four U.S. senators who are from a new party, they could work with either side to get things done and would become the most powerful legislators in the country, because their votes might be necessary to pass any legislation. And I dare say that you would have a much more interesting and balanced set of solutions as a result. What about his work to dismantle USAID and cause havoc in much of the federal government? Did you agree with that? One thing I found interesting was that a number of moderate Democrats signaled over the last 24 hours that they would be open to receiving Elon as an ally as a result of his feud with Donald Trump, despite him being essentially one of their primary boogeyman over the last number of weeks. I don't have to agree with everyone's past decisions in order to agree that the primary mission has to be getting our political system back in a place where it's actually responsive to both the views and the needs of the American people, and right now, we don't have that. Anyone who's kept up with me over the last number of years knows that I've been driven by the fact that AI is going to transform our economy in ways that push more and more Americans to the side. That is playing out before our eyes right now in real time, with [Anthropic CEO] Dario Amodei coming out saying that entry-level white collar work is going to be automated, and that we need to think bigger about solutions. I think that Dario is right. I've been making the same case since 2019, 2018. I'd ask anyone who is reading this right now, 'What is the current plan when it comes to the economic changes that are going to be brought by AI?' The answer is, 'Not much.' Because our current political class does not have to address that issue, or any of a panoply of other issues in order to keep power. They have done an expert job of gerrymandering the country into red zones and blue zones, such that all of us are looking up, wondering, 'What the heck is going on?' Speaking of AI, do you think Musk could be a good partner on that? If you look back at the [2020] cycle, he was openly saying that AI was going to have a massive impact, and he did endorse me while I was running as a Democrat on some of those solutions. Musk has become very polarizing to much of the country. Who are the people you think you'd attract if you built a third party with Musk? Again, people have come to the Forward Party from all different walks of life and different ideologies. Elon has a very, very significant following and megaphone, and you can see that with the number of people that have voted on his post about starting a third party. It's about 5.3 million votes, with 81 percent saying yes, it is time to create a new political party, and Forward has gotten thousands of new followers just in the last 24 hours, because we are the preeminent effort to modernize and rationalize America's broken political system. I'm thrilled that others are waking up. Do you think Elon Musk is actually serious about creating a new party? What do you think he wants out of all this? I haven't spoken to Elon recently, but I think there are several things that are animating him, and very, very high on his list is America's financial solvency. I think he's deeply frustrated by the fact that he wanted to reduce waste in government, and then the Republicans turn around and propose a bill that would increase the deficit by two and a half trillion dollars. If your goal is to have the government on a positive fiscal path, that's not the way to do it. 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Politico
35 minutes ago
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‘Trump movement' turns on Cornyn, poll finds
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