In which Nora De La Cour reports for Jacobin, with support from the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, about the North Carolina state legislature’s ongoing scheme to replace equitable public schooling with a massive wealth transfer to the rich through an anti-democratic voucher plan. This piece was a long time coming, with Nora speaking to experts, local teachers, historians and most importantly parents of children who have been scammed by vouchers and school “choice.”
Spoiler: It’s the schools who are choosing the students, not the other way around.
Susan Book says that, in theory, she “should be the poster child for private school choice” because of the “hell” her family went through at her son Emerson’s Wake County, North Carolina, public schools. Between kindergarten and fifth grade, Emerson, who has autism, experienced inappropriate and harsh discipline, segregation from nondisabled students, and extended removal from school through a program called Home/Hospital.
During this ordeal, Book began researching a statewide voucher program that allows parents of disabled students to apply for state funding for private education and therapies — provided they unenroll in public school. But the Wake County schools set up for autism all had gargantuan wait lists. And, Book was shocked to discover, many of the other private schools designated for special education didn’t even have a trained special education teacher on staff.
North Carolina has another, larger voucher plan — the Opportunity Scholarship — that has been publicly subsidizing private schools since 2014. But many of the nondisability-specific schools simply refuse to enroll children with disabilities, while others add upcharges for special learning needs. One of the modifications Emerson depends on is a one-on-one aid to help him access the curriculum. In public school, this service is free and guaranteed through his legally binding Individualized Education Program (IEP). But in the Wake County private schools that would theoretically accept someone like him, Book told Jacobin, a one-on-one was $15 an hour, on top of pricey tuition that already exceeded what either voucher program would cover.
While Book was reaching the conclusion that vouchers offer parents like her false hope, her state legislature was working to rapidly expand them — despite the lack of evidence that they help marginalized students, as initially promised. Research across numerous states shows that vouchers artificially prop up inferior or subprime private schools, while enabling rampant fraud and waste. A 2023 study, for instance, found forty-three examples of North Carolina private schools claiming more vouchers than students.
Last fall, North Carolina became the tenth state to universalize its private school voucher plan. Starting next year, even ultrawealthy parents who have never dreamed of enrolling their kids in public school can begin cashing in on the program. It’s a policy that will drive racial and economic segregation while enabling widespread discrimination against kids like Emerson. Above all, it will drain the pool of funding available to the already cash-strapped public schools that accept all North Carolina students.
Read the rest at Jacobin.com.