Starting this school year, North Carolina changed the eligibility for state-funded vouchers to pay for students' K-12 private school tuition. The new rules made it so that any North Carolina family could apply for a so-called "Opportunity Scholarship," no matter their income. When tens of thousands of new applications came in, state lawmakers also passed about half a billion dollars per year to fund them.
Now that the school year is coming to a close, more information is becoming available on who received the vouchers. This week, the state board of education heard a presentation on a new report on the program.
WUNC's education reporter Liz Schlemmer breaks it down.
What's the top line takeaway from this report?
Reading into the numbers a little, it becomes clear that upwards of about 90% of Opportunity Scholarship recipients this school year already attended a private school when they applied for a voucher. The report doesn't state that explicitly, but it only takes a little math using other publicly available data to come to that conclusion.
What was the report meant to track?
The purpose of the report is to quantify how much the state saved on students who moved from a public school to a private school. The report found 6,710 scholarship recipients, or 8.3% of all recipients, used an Opportunity Scholarship to leave a public school this school year.
So if only about 8% attended a public school, then the vast majority already attended a private school?
Yes, that leaves more than 90% who did not attend a public school in the prior school year. Some were students who had renewed the voucher (and may have attended a public school at some point) so the percentage who have always attended a private school might be a little lower. Also, state education officials said they had difficulty matching every scholarship recipient with public school records because private schools don't use the same identification system. All that to say, the data isn't perfect, but it's safe to say the vast majority already attended a private school.
Now keep in mind these numbers may be different next school year since it'll be the first time since the voucher expansion that all parents can expect to get the funds at the beginning of the school year. That was a barrier this year for some families who sought vouchers.
If the report was meant to count how much the state saved on vouchers, can you explain — how does the state actually do that?
Although anyone can apply, higher income families receive smaller awards than lower income families. The lowest income families receive funding equal to what the state spends on a public school student, and the highest income families get about 45% of that. So when a higher income family uses a voucher to move from a public school to a private school, there's some savings for the state.
The report found the state saved about $10 million on those students this year and the Department of Public Instruction is recommending that amount go back to public schools. The law says that's the General Assembly's intent, but it's not a requirement.
Put that in context. How much did the state spend on Opportunity Scholarships this school year, after the expansion?
This school year, when anyone could apply, the state spent $432 million on 80,470 students. Before the income cap was lifted, the state spent less than half of that on this program.
So is the state actually saving money on Opportunity Scholarships?
That question is why this report matters. For years, voucher advocates argued these programs would save the state money.
If the state's saving $10 million on students who left a public school, but spending $382 million for the tuition of students who previously attended a private school, then I don't see how that could result in net savings. This is a huge public investment in private schools that were operating for years without these funds.
Now, I know voucher advocates would say taxpayers are also saving on local and federal funds for students who leave a public school for a private school, but that would have to be a lot of savings to compete with the hundreds of millions of dollars in new state funding for private school students.
What did state education officials have to say about the report?
State Superintendent Mo Green said he already believed the funds for these vouchers should be going to public schools, and his administration has called for a moratorium on the funding. Then, he added:
"Now we find out that at least in this first year, most of the dollars that go to those scholarships are for students who have already made the decision to be in private schools — to attend and pay for those private schools without government dollars — and now to think that they now get these resources when our public schools so desperately need them, the concern gets even deeper."
Green's administration is also recommending that the roughly $10 million in state savings be reinvested in public schools, and that private schools receiving vouchers use an identification system like public schools so they can better match student records in future reports.
What else do we know about the voucher recipients?
The demographic data shows us that the most typical Opportunity Scholarship recipient is a white student in Wake County attending a Christian school who had never received a voucher before the income cap was lifted.
