Lindsay Wagner writes in NC Policy Watch that 90% of the students using the state’s new vouchers are attending religious schools. The institution receiving the largest number of vouchers is the Greensboro Islamic Academy.
The vouchers are given the euphemism “opportunity scholarships,” in an effort to disguise the fact that they are vouchers, which voters never approved.
North Carolina legislators are proving that our Founders were far wiser than legislators today. The Founders wanted no establishment of religion, and they did not foresee the subsidy of religious schools by the state. It was Thomas Jefferson who wrote about separation of church and state in 1802, aware of centuries of religious strife in Europe. For years, the U.S. Supreme Court tried to maintain such a wall, allowing some subsidy for religious schools to perform state-required activities, subsidizing textbooks and testing, even transportation, but not tuition in religious schools.
Wagner writes:
“Religious private schools account for 90 percent of those receiving the state’s new taxpayer-funded school vouchers—a disproportionately high amount given that only 66.4 percent of the state’s 715 private schools are religious institutions.
“According to data released by the N.C. State Educational Assistance Authority, 98 out of the 109 private schools that have received vouchers (formally known as Opportunity Scholarships) from the state so far are religious institutions. Ninety-four of those schools identify as Christian, and four other schools identify as Islamic. To date, the state has disbursed just over $1 million to the religious schools.
“The largest recipient of school voucher dollars thus far is Greensboro Islamic Academy. The school has received more than $90,000 from taxpayers while information has surfaced indicating that the school is in financial trouble and has inflated its tuition rates to reap as many publicly-funded vouchers as possible to stay afloat.
“The Opportunity Scholarship Program, which lawmakers enacted last year, siphons approximately $10.8 million dollars out of the public school system to allow students to attend private and religious schools instead. Each voucher is worth a maximum of $4,200 per student, per year.
“Proponents of the program say the voucher program is a way to give low-income students better choices when it comes to their education; critics say it siphons badly needed funds away from public education and funnels them into unaccountable, religious private schools that are not obligated to hold themselves to high quality teaching standards.
“In August, a Superior Court judge found that the program violates the state’s constitutional mandate to use public funds only for public schools – but thanks to a Court of Appeals ruling last month, the state must disburse school vouchers that have already been awarded while the case winds its way through the state appellate courts.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Not only are these “scholarships” stripping money from the public schools but they aren’t going to the neediest kids. I did a little looking at private school tuition last year and they range from $5000 (I found ONE school under $6500) up to $20,000 in the Raleigh area. Most were around $12,000. These vouchers are not worth enough to cover an entire tuition, let alone transportation and lunches, so the students they purport to be helping STILL can’t afford to go to a private school. So essentially, they are skimming the kids who are just shy of being able to afford it on their own and who’s parents care about their education, out of the public schools leaving the most needy kids in schools which have now been stripped of even more needed money and involved parents.
I’ve talked to people who actually believe that this will make the public schools more competitive in an attempt to keep those kids. It’s so frustrating to watch the public school teachers get maligned year after year for doing more and more with less and less. Then the parents are incentivized to jump ship rather than pitch in and make a difference. It makes me so sad.
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This year, vouchers were only available for student who qualified for free /reduce lunch, after this year, the income level rises and I was told they can amend the law to lift the income cap even more.
http://pefnc.org/who-qualifies/
The majority of schools that do accept the vouchers are small. Many of the private schools with great reputations in my area don’t accept vouchers.
I wonder if the private schools that are accepting vouchers accept the voucher as payment in full. I don’t understand how a parent who cannot afford $2.50/ day for lunch is going to afford to provide lunch, transportation and possibly pay the difference between tuition and the voucher.
I agree it is sad.
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I did not look into if any of these schools accepted the voucher so that is a good point. I imagine if the voucher system continues, we will see a lot more private schools popping up with a tuition of just above the voucher value. (Gotta keep out the riff-raff some how!) I am truly scared for the future of our public schools in this state if this isn’t shut down.
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I wonder if it encourages the following:
down at the free will holy pentecostal evangelical holiness congregation we are needing some funds. Let’s open a school in the basement and accept students with some of them opportunity scholarships. Then we can help support the mission of our church and we’ll use the Sunday School materials as our resources.
————–
Does that happen?
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How much is each voucher worth?
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The maximum allowable voucher is $4,200.
http://www.edchoice.org/School-Choice/Programs/Opportunity-Scholarships.aspx
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Thanks. I’d be surprised if that covered tuition for a church basement school.
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Also, the voucher law is being contested in court but the judge said they could distribute funds in the meantime.
Think we’ll ever get those funds back when the vouchers are finally deemed unconstitutional?
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Oh GOD no! That $ is GONE!
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Like all things ed reform, you’d have to delve really deeply into the state law and then look at how the thing operates as a practical matter to see if it’s at all on the level.
The Georgia law, for example, is a big taxpayer funded rip-off that mostly benefits wealthier families:
“The exchange at Gwinnett Christian Academy, a recording of which was obtained by The New York Times, is just one example of how scholarship programs have been twisted to benefit private schools at the expense of the neediest children.
Spreading at a time of deep cutbacks in public schools, the programs are operating in eight states and represent one of the fastest-growing components of the school choice movement.
While the scholarship programs have helped many children whose parents would have to scrimp or work several jobs to send them to private schools, the money has also been used to attract star football players, expand the payrolls of the nonprofit scholarship groups and spread the theology of creationism, interviews and documents show. Even some private school parents and administrators have questioned whether the programs are a charade.”
Even the non-profit “scholarship”groups get a cut of the state money, so everyone is making out except public school kids.
Our national corruption problem is much bigger than our public education problem, in my opinion.
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Separation of church and state – more lawsuits are needed. Where is the ACLU and the NAACP? If the neediest kids are kids of color, where are their champions? It seems to me that “they” say all the right things, “their” rhetoric is confusing enough to make a person believe they are on the side of helping the kids, the religious schools are more than happy to get the funding and take the students (I know several Catholic schools in my area that closed down due to lack of enrollment that would have been thrilled to take kids of any denomination for the cash), and you have people like Campbell Brown and Michelle Rhee and their rhetoric and the well-funded PR machine and lawsuits to kill unions, tenure, lifo, and open charters —- who can keep up with it? Where does it end?
Lawsuits, more lawsuits need to be brought against vouchers, and against the funding that leaves public school kids in the dirt and lifts up charters, even thieving charters that are being investigated, or have closed and want to open up elsewhere, and to get the charters to fully open their books, and stop the for profits. Any “profits” should be rolled over into the next school year. The politicians are throwing away my tax dollars, pretty much willy-nilly. I’d like it stopped.
Where do I sign up for the lawsuit?
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The old South is alive in North Carolina.
These state initiatives are, I believe, totally consistent with George Bush’s decision to set up the faith-based initiatives at the federal level.
These initiatives are still coordinated by the White House. Recall that NCLB had a specific provision for faith-based organizations to offer supplementary services —-set up tutoring in church facilities and the like. They had to work out details on whether church facilities with religious symbolism in plain view could be used for the supplementary services. Then there were questions about foregoing overt expressions of faith by the providers of services. This was problem for “providers” who made no distinction between their religious views and a “secular life.”
Early in 2009, USDE finally offered the following “non-regulatory” guidance on this matter
C-5. Are faith-based organizations, including entities such as religious private schools, eligible to be Supplementary Education Service provider? (Answer here is edited for acronyms)
Yes. A faith-based organization (FBO) is eligible to become a provider of Supplementary Education Services on the same basis as any other private entity, if it meets the applicable statutory and regulatory requirements. A state education agency may not discriminate against potential Supplementary Education Service providers on the basis of the entity’s religious character or affiliation. Additionally, a provider, including a faith-based organization, may not discriminate against students receiving Supplementary Education Services on the basis of religion. A faith-based organization is not required to give up its religious character or identity to be a provider; it may retain its independence, autonomy, right of expression, religious character, and authority over its governance. A faith-based organization, for example, may retain religious terms in its name, continue to carry out its mission, and use its facilities to provide services without removing or altering religious art, icons, scriptures, or other symbols from areas where Supplementary Education Services are provided. (See 34 C.F.R. §80.36(j) (http://www.ed.gov/policy/fund/reg/fbci-reg.html) for more information.)
-1. Neither Title I nor other Federal funds may be used to support religious practices, such as religious instruction, worship, or prayer. (Faith-based organizations may implement such practices, but not as part of Supplementary Education Services.) Faith-based organizations, like other providers, must ensure that the instruction and content they provide are secular, neutral, and non-ideological [Section 1116(e)(5)(D); Section 1116(e)(9); 34 C.F.R. §200.47(b)(2)(ii)(D)].
This clause— “must ensure that the instruction and content they provide are secular, neutral, and non-ideological” was in the original language of NCLB.
I suppose this language was intended to forestall “indoctrination,” but it seems to me a really dangerous view of what teaching entails: Selections of content and method are never neutral.
I find the implied test of “ideological purity” scary. If you never refer to religious beliefs or political positions in your teaching, then you will have to edit out of the curriculum a lot of content in the arts and humanities. Perhaps that was the point. That set of restrictions seems to me an effort to place limits the speech of teachers and on what can be taught in our schools,
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Laura, I see a big difference between an after school program in a church and federal funding for parochial schools.
Many churches try to do right by the community providing services at low cost or for free. They are not looking for handouts from the government, they want to do right for the outlying community. And participation is voluntary.
I can support federal funding at these sites for meals in high poverty areas, similar to what the school lunch program provides, but that has nothing to do with vouchers.
Perhaps this scenario is different in other areas.
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The supplemental services that can qualify for federal funds are tutoring, not meals and enrichment.
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Honestly, I think providing some funding for those programs would be a good use of our tax dollars but they need to NOT come out of the funding for our schools. That’s my gripe with these vouchers: they fund them with money that is being directly taken away from our public schools.
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NC Mom. . . I agree. In fact, the faith community is a good resource for that type support (even tutoring).
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And the pendulum continues to swing backwards. We have less rights every day.
I wonder how public funds for religious education passes the smell test via the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights?
You don’t need to have a law degree to know the answer.
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I teach in a Catholic School, but I strongly disagree w/ the Alabama Accountability Act that provides scholarships from so called “failing schools” in my state. I realize that it is just robbing Peter to pay Paul. Generate the money or the schools in need to lower class sizes, hire extra counselors, etc. Then we will be helping rather than hurting our neediest students. The Act is making its way through our court system as I type….
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and also, why would it ever be OK to help a student escape a school, when that same school is also the responsibility of the people enabling the escape?
Escaping from schools makes no sense to me. It sounds like it came from the mind of someone who never made the transition from childhood fantasy to real-life situations. “Escape From Witch Mountain,” and all the tweenie books about escaping.
I think we were fascinated by that idea with sitcoms like Different Strokes and Webster. . . where would-be-abandoned or suffering children (although I think Webster’s fictional dad was a pro-football player) are rescued by an unlikely family; but the basis is that we like stories about exceptions. . .we don’t flock towards stories of whole community success. But we should.
I hope we can escape the reformer mindset soon. All of us.
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I have seen good after school programs which provide tutoring housed in churches. I agree that funding should not be at the expense of public education.
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