Demand for NC school vouchers is slowing down, but the damage has already been done | Opinion
When Republican lawmakers radically expanded North Carolina’s voucher program last year by removing all income requirements, it was met with a surge in applications. So many applications, in fact, that lawmakers went back and gave the program even more funding so they didn’t have to turn down a single applicant.
Now that surging demand for vouchers is slowing down, at least among families applying to the program for the first time.
Approximately 40,000 new families applied for a voucher by the most recent deadline, according to data released by the N.C. State Education Assistance Authority (NCSEAA), which administers the Opportunity Scholarship program. Compare that to last year, when 72,000 new families applied for a voucher. That’s a decrease of roughly 44%.
This isn’t exactly surprising, since demand for vouchers hasn’t always been nearly as high as it was last year. In fact, the program was often unable to spend its full annual allocation when income eligibility requirements were still in place, but Republican lawmakers continued to pour more funding into the program anyway, increasing the dollar amount of voucher payments before ultimately removing income requirements altogether.
As it turns out, when you offer people a free discount on something they’re already paying for, you get a lot of takers. After Republicans removed income requirements, the demand exceeded available funding. Lawmakers went back to provide enough additional funding to clear the waitlist — which more than doubled the number of students getting taxpayer funding to attend private schools. It’s not clear how many of the existing voucher recipients — nearly 80,000 in total — will renew their funding for the upcoming school year. According to a spokesperson for NCSEAA, that data won’t be available until after the renewal deadline next month.
The damage from expanding the program has already been inflicted. Unsurprisingly, the expansion of the Opportunity Scholarships didn’t bestow opportunities upon families who otherwise couldn’t afford them. It effectively gave subsidies to those who already could. Of the nearly 80,000 students currently receiving the scholarships, 42% of them come from upper middle class or wealthy families who made too much money to have qualified for a voucher last school year. In some counties, a majority of recipients come from affluent families, including as high as 66% in Wake County. Among the new applicants, the trend is no different. In fact, it’s exactly the same. Around 42% of new applicants come from the two highest income tiers, both of which were not eligible for the program before its expansion.
Students with diverse backgrounds and those who live in rural counties have benefited the least from expansion. The majority of funding has gone to schools in urban counties, despite the fact that everyone is paying for it. Some rural counties don’t have a single private school that accepts direct voucher payment and therefore have not seen an increase in funding from expansion at all. And in the past year, the percentage of white students receiving a voucher has increased from 63% to 74%, while the percentage of Black students receiving a voucher has fallen.
Some of the consequences of voucher expansion are perhaps unintended. The increase in funding has led some private schools to treat vouchers as taxpayer-funded financial aid — many schools now require families to apply to the Opportunity Scholarship program in order to receive any financial assistance. Other schools have apparently seen the expansion of vouchers as an opportunity to increase tuition costs. According to an analysis by the progressive group Carolina Forward, tuition costs at private schools that receive significant amounts of voucher funding will increase by an average of nearly 16% in the next year. That’s significantly higher than at schools that do not accept vouchers as well as schools in South Carolina, a state that does not have a voucher program.
Unfortunately, despite the fact that demand from first-time applications has slowed, funding for the program will continue to increase, even with no new action from lawmakers. The legislation passed by the General Assembly includes annual increases to the program’s funding through 2033, including a nearly 10% increase in the next fiscal year. But if demand from new applicants continues to shrink, it will be hard for lawmakers to justify those increases.
