The long-awaited state budget signed by Gov. Josh Stein last week included a number of provisions for the state’s private schools and Opportunity Scholarship Program, including reallocating some funds from the voucher program back to public schools.
Researchers and critics of North Carolina’s private school vouchers have long said the state uses the scholarship to drain public schools of their funds, which they say is particularly problematic because of the few accountability and oversight efforts the state follows compared to other voucher programs — one highly cited report from Duke University’s Children’s Law Clinic calls North Carolina’s accountability measures for vouchers “among the weakest in the country.”
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With Republican State Auditor Dave Boliek also announcing an audit into the Opportunity Scholarship in June, to be completed sometime this fall, is North Carolina boldly committing to more accountability measures for the heavily criticized and costly program?
Supporters and detractors both say it’s not so simple.
Voucher funds back to public schools
The budget states public schools will be reinvested in utilizing savings from the Opportunity Scholarship. The legislature says the state saved money the last two years by expanding access to vouchers and making more students eligible, including those who were already attending private schools on their own dime, because the scholarships often cost less than what the state would spend on a public school student.
“The General Assembly finds that the state has realized a savings from students formerly enrolled in a nonpublic school unit of the state using scholarship grants to enroll in a private school due to the expansion of eligibility for the scholarship grants awarded from the Opportunity Scholarship Grant Reserve Fund …” the budget bill reads.
“The Department of Public Instruction has identified a savings of thirty-five million seven hundred fifty-one thousand four hundred nine dollars ($35,751,409) for the 2024-2025 and 2025-2026 fiscal years based on the difference between the total amount of funds used for an opportunity scholarship grant award that is less than one hundred percent (100%) of the average state per pupil allocation for average daily membership for a student in a public school unit.”
The $35 million, the estimated amount public schools lost because of voucher expansion, will go toward one-time bonuses for nutrition and custodial staff, middle school literacy professional development and acquisition of “mathematics curriculum from another state that has developed its own mathematics curriculum and to conform those materials to align with the North Carolina Standard Course of Study.”
But when more than $600 million went toward a voucher program sending kids to private schools rather than investing in public schools from the get-go, $35 million doesn’t feel like much, said Heather Koons, director of communications and research at Public Schools First NC.
“We have this huge amount of money that is no longer available to public schools because it’s going to private schools,” she said.
“Now a smidge, less than 10%, can come back to the public schools. But in my view, none of that money should be coming out of the general funds. If it’s going to education in North Carolina, it should be going to education that serves public school students. So it’s not righting a wrong at all. It is putting a crumb back into the public education system when they’re actually taking 90% of the loaf and putting it to private schools.”
Testing compliance
The state already requires nonpublic schools to administer standardized tests to students in third grade and above who receive a state-funded scholarship. Tests given to voucher students in grades three and eight are chosen by the North Carolina State Education Authority and grade 11 must be the ACT, but tests for other grades are chosen by the school administrator.
Schools must submit the data to NCSEAA by July 15 each year, though it is not considered public record.
Now, to verify compliance with the testing requirements, the new budget makes it so schools must retain those records for four years. NCSEAA will also audit at least 4% of schools each year to ensure tests are being administered.
“The new school certification and record retention provisions largely formalize compliance with existing testing requirements rather than creating new testing obligations for participating schools,” Mike Long, president of Parents for Educational Freedom in North Carolina, told CPP in an email.
“Establishing a clear process for certification and record retention should create greater consistency across participating schools while providing SEAA with a defined process for verifying compliance when questions arise.”
Testing standards at private schools have been criticized for differing from public school requirements. The 2017 Children’s Law Clinic study recommended the state require students receiving vouchers to participate in the End-of-Grade testing program, and that schools getting voucher support should publicly report the data.
That would address some issues like the lack of consistency and transparency across private school testing. There’s really no way to compare levels of achievement in North Carolina, across different private schools or between private and public, with the way things are now, Koons said.
“School A could give one test. School B could give another test. School C could give another test,” she said.
“There’s probably 10 or so legit nationally standardized assessments that most of them probably give. … I’ve never seen any assessment administration requirements. So in the public schools, it’s very carefully monitored. That’s the standardized assessment piece. We don’t know in the private schools if there’s a teacher or parent helping the student. There’s no oversight at all that is required that I’ve seen in any sort of legislation.”
NCSEAA’s new audit responsibility and voucher-accepting private schools certifying testing compliance is a small win, Koons said.
“The budget does have a smidge of accountability — it’s completely insufficient when you think about the amount of money that’s going to the voucher program,” she said.
Boliek’s audit of voucher program
The news of an audit from Boliek might have come at a shock to some who understand private school vouchers to be an issue that falls along party lines, especially after Stein expressed interest in imposing new income limits. But Boliek said he planned to audit the voucher program after it came up in his office’s risk analysis.
Given Boliek’s emphasis on returns on investment and “rooting out waste, fraud and abuse,” Koons wasn’t shocked to hear he was interested in the voucher program in spite of his party.
“I’m not surprised that he would look at the Opportunity Scholarship for an audit, and I’m really glad that he is,” she said.
“What will be found is that there is no return-on-investment data available.… I would expect him to find it very shocking that there’s so little tracking of what’s happening to the dollars that are going to these private schools.”
With the program expanding, and drawing a lot more eyes, voucher supporters like Long and the John Locke Foundation’s Robert Luebke also welcome the audit to help strengthen the voucher process.
“As the Opportunity Scholarship Program continues to grow, well-defined processes help ensure families can navigate the program with confidence while maintaining appropriate stewardship of public funds,” Long wrote to CPP.
“Regarding the State Auditor’s announced audit, we welcome the review. Oversight is an appropriate part of administering any publicly funded program. Strong programs benefit from continuous evaluation, and any improvements that make the program more efficient, transparent, or user-friendly ultimately benefit the families it is designed to serve.”
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