NC’s vouchers for all may hurt the GOP’s original school choice – charters | Opinion

In their zeal to expand school choice in North Carolina, Republican state lawmakers may be sabotaging their own efforts.

The Republican-controlled General Assembly has approved a massive expansion of school vouchers known as the Opportunity Scholarship Program. Originally intended to give low-income families a choice beyond their district public school, the program would offer tax dollars to families of all income levels to help with private school tuition, including to those families that already have children in private schools.

Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper vetoed the legislation that offers vouchers for all, but the veto is likely to be overridden.

By offering private school vouchers to all families, the Republicans may undercut their original choice for school choice – charter schools. One concern is that the wider availability of vouchers may prompt parents to remove their children from charter schools to attend private schools. Another is that some charter schools may go private to avoid the accountability requirements that apply to them as public schools.

Chris Heagarty, chair of the Wake County Board of Education, pointed to vouchers’ threat to charter schools during a recent news conference where he and other Wake school officials opposed the expansion of the voucher program.

”If you think about the parents that have looked for an alternative to our traditional school systems and have enrolled in charters, how many of them will then go to private schools once these vouchers are available?” Heagarty asked. “What sort of destabilization will you see in some of these programs that have been operational for decades and produced good results?”

Public schools advocates say charter schools should ally with traditional public schools to oppose giving more public dollars to private schools. Heather Koons, communications director for the group Public Schools First NC, said, “I wonder when the charter school folks are going to start sounding the alarm.”

So far, they aren’t. That may be because charter school leaders, like Republican state lawmakers, are so committed to school choice that they are unwilling to criticize a school choice initiative that has gone too far.

Charter school leaders say vouchers are not a threat to their schools.

“Data shows that over the last five years, charter school enrollment continues to rise even in states with robust private school choice programs,” said Starlee Coleman, president and CEO of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. “In fact, public charter schools are the only segment of public schooling that continues to see enrollment growth.”

That is the situation now, but universal vouchers are still new. Enrollment and funding erosion may hit charter schools as more parents become familiar with the subsidies available to attend private schools.

Joshua Cowen is a professor of education policy at Michigan State University and author of the book “The Privateers: How Billionaires Created a Culture War and Sold School Vouchers.”

He told me vouchers are a threat to all public schools – but particularly charter schools.

“The charter school movement has become sort of an orphan in this space,” he said. “They are certainly caught in the middle, for sure, and the data would say they are going to lose kids.”

Cowen said parents of charter school students will be more inclined to use vouchers because they have already experimented with an alternative to a traditional public school.

“The best market for those who might be considering a move are the charter kids. They’ve already made a move,” he said.

Charter schools, when limited in number, can and have provided valuable alternatives to traditional public schools. But the reckless move by Republican lawmakers to spend hundreds of millions of tax dollars on private school tuition will diminish that sound and innovative alternative.

Charter schools and district schools are in the same boat. They should join to stop a voucher expansion that could sink them both.

This story was originally published October 13, 2024 at 4:00 AM with the headline "NC’s vouchers for all may hurt the GOP’s original school choice – charters | Opinion."