[SoDu Reading Room] Exploring the Private School Voucher Controversy

On our radar for the first installment of SoDu Reading Room is an article by my former Herald-Sun colleague Greg Childress, who now covers education for NCNewsline.com. For this piece, he writes about Gov. Roy Cooper’s increasing criticism of North Carolina’s private school voucher program, which Cooper has called a “reckless waste of taxpayer money.”

Some takeaways from the article include:

1. Criticism of Voucher Accountability and Funding: Cooper criticizes North Carolina’s private school voucher program for its lack of accountability and potential to divert taxpayer money from public schools to private institutions without sufficient oversight.
2. Call for a Moratorium: Cooper calls for a halt to the voucher program until public schools are fully funded, highlighting concerns over the use of taxpayer money for private education with “no accountability and extreme social agendas.”
3. Legislative Expansion of Vouchers: The expansion of the “Opportunity Scholarship” program by the Republican-led General Assembly now allows all families, including wealthy ones, to receive vouchers, a significant shift from its original intent to help low-income families.
4. Impact on Public School Funding: Public schools lose funding based on student enrollment to private schools via vouchers, which could lead to over $200 million diverted from public schools in the first year of the program’s expansion alone.
5. Academic Performance Concerns: Several studies cited by Cooper indicate that students using vouchers to attend private schools often perform worse academically than their peers in public schools, raising questions about the educational quality and effectiveness of the voucher program.

How do you feel about private school vouchers and their impact on public school funding?