The News and Observer editorial board in North Carolina published a sharp critique of the state voucher program and a very flawed study of it.
The state gives a voucher worth $4,200 per student. The students who get vouchers do not take the state’s standardized tests. A recent “study” claimed that they were making progress, but the voucher schools and public schools don’t take the same tests, and the students in the study were not representative of the program.
“Two researchers from N.C. State’s College of Education and a third from the Friday Institute for Educational Innovation at N.C. State set out to explore this yawning accountability gap in the nation’s least regulated voucher program. They recruited 698 student volunteers in grades 4 through 8 from public and private schools to take the Iowa Test of Basic Skills in the spring of 2017. After students were sorted and some eliminated by various factors, the final comparison involved 245 students in private school and 252 in public schools. More than 7,000 students received Opportunity Scholarships in the 2017-18 school year.
“The students getting Opportunity Scholarships showed a “positive, large and statistically significant” edge on the exams, the researchers said. But that conclusion came with multiple caveats. For one, half the private school students were from Catholic schools, which represent only 10 percent of the more than 400 schools receiving vouchers. In addition, the researchers stressed how a lack of common testing requirements for public schools and voucher-receiving private schools limits the applicability of their findings.”
Most of the students in the voucher program attend evangelical Christian schools, which typically use textbooks that deny evolution and teach bigotry and invalid history based on the Bible.
Voucher proponents are cheering the results. The program is budgeted to grow by $10 million per year until 2028, when it will cost $145 million annually.
“The law creating the program contains virtually no requirements that private schools receiving public dollars account for the quality of their curricula or the performance of their students. That is in sharp contrast to Republican lawmakers’ enthusiasm for tying public school teachers’ salaries to student performance and slapping letter grades on every public school based on test results…
“We still haven’t measured the impact of vouchers. And we still don’t know if they work.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“The state gives a voucher worth $4,200 per student”
Even lower than Michigan’s attempt to pass out low value vouchers and abandon public education.
This isn’t education policy- it’s tax policy. The plan is to eradicate public schools and give each family a low value voucher for education, which means more tax cuts for wealthy people!
That’s what “the money follows the child” means. You notice ed reform lobbyists never say how much money follows the child. There’s a reason for that. If people find out the plan is low value universal vouchers they would stop hiring ed reformers.
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No accountability — fake research — no surprise there. That is the trademark of the Alt-Right Deep State that thrives on fake conspiracy theories and lies and seems to find a lot of easy to fool people to support them.
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A voucher of $4200 in NYC would get you two days a week in Pre K in the outer surburbs like long island and westchester. Private schools in this area go for tens of thousands of dollars her in NYC. A voucher for $4200 would help if I had all pre K kids in the house except for the fact that I don’t.
So, my daughter wants to attend a private school over looking the water with a brand new refurbished building, modern classrooms and state of the art technology. All the teachers there have at least 15 plus experience in the classroom. There is just one problem, the cost for the school is $35,000 per year. OK, less $4200 so now my bill would be only $30,800! No problem my daughter, I can afford that no problem.
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“No problem my daughter, I can afford that no problem.”
Especially on the two minimum wage jobs that you and your spouse have. Or is that four minimum wage jobs?
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Why are you using the North Carolina amount at a New York School? New York spends about $20k per year for each student in a publicly-operated school. A school voucher of $20k, would enable you to meet the costs at a school which charges $20k.
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New York will never have vouchers that are equal to private school tuition. In NYC, the best private schools charge $50,000. Typical vouchers are less than public school cost on assumption state is saving money. In the past two years, every study of vouchers, even those funded by pro-vouchers organizations, such as Fordham in Ohio, has shown negative results. Kids lose ground compared to their public school peers. Good way to harm kids and our future. Teach them that dinosaurs and people co-existed, that slavery was benign, that Jews, Catholics and gays are evil.
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I do not believe that the People’s Republic on New York will ever have school choice/vouchers. (for any amount)
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Republicans currently control the State Senate in New York, with the help of an Orthodox Jew whose only education goal is to get maximum funding for yeshivas that don’t teach English, math, or science with minimal or no state oversight. Hopefully a blue wave will sink the Senate Republicans in November. Their leader, John Flanagan, loves charters and wants many more, but not in his district. NIMBY.
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Wonder how eager they’d be to give vouchers to attend Yeshivas or Muslim schools?
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@suemonaco: in 2014, The largest recipient of taxpayer-funded school vouchers in the state of North Carolina, was the Greensboro Islamic Academy (in 2014) . North Carolina families can redeem their vouchers at any accredited school.
see
http://www.ncpolicywatch.com/2014/10/07/biggest-recipient-of-taxpayer-funded-school-vouchers-greensboro-islamic-academy-in-financial-trouble/
Currently, the largest recipient of school vouchers in North Carolina is a religious school in Fayetteville. see
Tax money has been flowing to all types of religious schools in North Carolina for many years, and it will continue to do so.
This includes Yeshivas, Madrasses, Catholic schools, etc.
Our nation has a whole “rainbow” of faith traditions, and part of that tradition is religiously-operated institutions of learning.
(BTW- Ramadan ends at sundown tonight June 14. Eid Al-Fitr begins at sundown tonight)
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How fascinating that voucher proponents blare voucher-school academic achievement via… a study where 50% participants were Catholic school kids—even tho Catholic schools represent only 10% of the voucher schools LOL!
Stats show voucher schools are 90% religious—but only 10% Catholic. I wonder about the makeup of the other 80%: what’s the breakdown? How many bread&butter Protestants, how many Baptist et al evangelists w/their predilection for curriculum that teach bizarre Biblical versions of history?
I have always been leery (tho I am RC) of the Catholic-school quest for public funding. But hey. this set of stats is leaning me toward, OK Catholic kids get public funds—others: pony up at the stats station.
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I once proposed vouchers for Catholic schools only but was quickly convinced of its impossibility. Any government benefit for one religion must be equally available to all religions. Most voucher receiving schools are fundamentalist, anti-modernist. As a Jew, I would not want government to subsidize Orthodox Jewish schools where students are not taught English or modern studies.
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