As the education privatization movement has spread across the country, school voucher programs have become more common and more expansive in many states. These programs use taxpayer dollars to provide scholarships to families to send their children to nonpublic schools. Like many voucher programs, North Carolina’s Opportunity Scholarship Program, which was created by the General Assembly in 2013, was originally reserved for families with limited financial resources. In order to qualify, applicants also had to have been enrolled previously in public schools. Proponents of the program argued that it would provide “choice” for families who felt their local public school was not the right fit for their children but would otherwise not be able to afford private school tuition.
A decade after its creation, North Carolina lawmakers passed dramatic changes to the Opportunity Scholarship Program, allowing any family to qualify regardless of income or whether they had ever enrolled in public school. Under the new “universal” voucher program, the state’s wealthiest families are eligible to receive public funds to subsidize their private school tuition. Expanded access has come with a hefty price tag for taxpayers–nearly half a billion dollars was sent to private schools through vouchers in the 2024-25 school year, and planned appropriations through 2032-33 will total approximately $7 billion, while local public schools that serve 84% of students in the state are among the lowest-funded in the nation.
This report addresses several critical questions about school vouchers in North Carolina, using data from the first year since universal expansion: Is the program actually providing more choice to parents and students? Who has access to the private schools that receive voucher funding, and who is benefitting most? What information is publicly available to prospective parents about the quality of private schools they may be considering for their children? To what extent are private schools receiving vouchers held accountable to the taxpayers who fund them?
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