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?