NC Republicans just exposed their own school voucher scam

Senate leader Phil Berger has long described the school voucher program he pushed through in 2013 as a way to enable poor families to afford private school tuition. Now that claim is being dropped in favor of offering vouchers to families earning well over the state’s median income.

At a 2019 news conference, Berger, an Eden Republican, said, “In 2013 we created the Opportunity Scholarships program to provide low-income families an amount up to $4,200 per year to access the education pathway best suited for their kids.” Last year at another news conference he cited his concern about a single mother who could not afford the best school for her child without state help. “School choice should not be a privilege only for those who can afford it,” he said.

What was true then, isn’t true now. Problem is it was never true. The low-income kids were props for launching a program to expand school choice overall.

Eligibility for a state-supported voucher has risen since the program was initiated and now may rise again. On Tuesday, state Senate Republicans passed a bill that will increase the current $4,200 voucher cap by $1,650 and raise the level of income eligibility as well. Under Senate Bill 671, a family of four would qualify with an income as high as $85,794 – well above the 2019 North Carolina median household income of $54,602. The bill passed 29-20, with all Republicans and one Democrat, Sen. Kirk deViere of Cumberland County, voting for it.

The House also has passed a voucher bill that would keep the current income eligibility level at $72,000 for a family of four, but raise the maximum payment. Republicans hope a combined version of the two measures will attract enough Democrats to survive a likely veto by Gov. Roy Cooper. Otherwise, they may stick it into a bill Democrats can’t afford to oppose.

The Senate bill’s rising eligibility level speaks to what has been going on all along and the reason why this Editorial Board has opposed vouchers from the start. The idea isn’t to give children a chance to escape a high-poverty public school. That was a pretext. The real idea is to eventually give parents of all incomes a chance to send their children to private schools at the public’s expense.

That approach undermines public schools. But that’s the point. Those who would privatize K-12 education first have to break confidence in public schools. The worse the public schools become, the greater the need for a private option.

In a stunning interview, a former lobbyist for school voucher bills exposed that strategy. Charles Siler, formerly with the pro-voucher Goldwater Institute in Arizona, said voucher advocates start by targeting a sympathetic group and then gradually expand the program.

Siler was asked: “Why is it that many voucher programs start small — with children with disabilities or with military families?”

He replied, “If possible, privatization advocates would completely dismantle public schools tomorrow, but they don’t have the political leverage to achieve that right now, so they have to engage in incrementalism. Just this year, we’ve seen pushes to pass expansive, universal voucher programs in some states, showing that privatizers will abandon elements of incrementalism when they think they have an opportunity.”

That intent is bad for public schools. It also can be bad for children. Many of the children who receive the vouchers are not attending quality private schools. They’re going to small, usually church-run schools that operate without curriculum standards.

Superior Court Judge Robert H. Hobgood stressed that point when he struck down the Opportunity Scholarship program as unconstitutional in 2014. The state Supreme Court overturned Hobgood and allowed the voucher program by a 4-3 vote. Cooper has tried unsuccessfully to correct the high court’s error with a budget proposal to eliminate the voucher program.

Now this creeping effort to further bleed public school funding and put more students into schools without standards appears to be heading Cooper’s way again. He and Democratic lawmakers should hold the line against it.