CBC Editorial: Friday, June 23, 2023; editorial #8855
The following is the opinion of Capitol Broadcasting Company
Senate leader Phil Berger says the Republican majority he leads in the General Assembly has been “working to usher in a new era of government responsibility and accountability.”
He’s declared that “government is best which governs least.”
He decried spending for public schools, saying it is little more than “blindly throwing money at an education bureaucracy that fails to put students first.”
What’s the legislature he leads doing to make our public schools better? What’s being done to place quality teachers in every classroom, provide students the resources they need to achieve, institute ways to track student achievement and effectively address any situations where performance is lagging?
What is being done to correct the failure to live up to the state’ Constitution’s declared right to a quality education – that non-partisan and bipartisan judges at every level of the state’s judicial branch has concluded repeatedly over the last 25 years?
The answer, regrettably, is doing just what Berger says he decries: Sending hundreds of millions to private schools without any accountability to show taxpayer dollars are actually spent in classrooms. There’s no effective tracking of student learning and progress.
Shifting funding to private schools is an abdication of the legislature’s primary state constitutional duty concerning education. That duty is, first and foremost, to provide the necessary funding for quality public schools available to every child in the state. Public schools — that is where 1.6 million of the state’s school-age children are doing their learning.
The OBLIGATION is to our public schools. The OPTION is to fund private school vouchers. While they are not mutually exclusive, we emphasize the obligation is to fund QUALITY public education.
There aren’t even assurances that the voucher money is being distributed properly. A recent review of the distribution of the state’s private school voucher funds revealed that in at least 62 circumstances, private schools have received more vouchers than they had enrolled students.
One school in Johnston County received “opportunity scholarship” vouchers for 149 students – but the school reported a total enrollment of 72 students.
The curious status of the distribution of these state tax dollars ought to be an alert to State Auditor Beth Woods to initiate one of the office’s investigative audits.
While we have been consistent supporters of private school vouchers in concept. The execution of the program as designed by the legislature, has been wasteful, fosters inappropriate and illegal discrimination and provides taxpayers with no ability to determine if their tax dollars are being spent wisely or even as intended.
Before another penny – let alone the proposed hundreds of millions of dollars in increases – is spent on this program several steps must be taken:
- Schools that discriminate on the basis of race, gender or gender identity, family status, faith should not be eligible to receive taxpayer voucher dollars.
- Schools should be accredited by reputable agencies – such as the Southern Association of College and Schools or the Southern Association of Independent Schools.
- Schools should provide information about their business status and finances at least in the same manner and detail that non-profits and other non-government agencies receiving state directed grants now must provide to the State Office of Budget and Management.
- All schools receiving vouchers must evaluate student progress in the same manner, with the same testing – including end of course, end of grade and skills achievement (reading and mathematics) used to tract students at public (traditional and charter) schools.
There is a well thought out, consensus and comprehensive plan to fulfill the Constitutional mandate of access to quality education for every child. But legislative leaders refuse to discuss it even as Gov. Roy Cooper launched a statewide campaign and declared a “state of emergency for public education.”
Funding public schools is North Carolina’s first priority and our legislature must show concern for the state’s future and honor that commitment to our children.
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