By Amy Cockerham

Public Ed Works

RALEIGH (August 28, 2025) – North Carolina has seen a vast expansion of vouchers – taxpayer dollars for students to attend private schools – called “Opportunity Scholarships.”

The state is projected to spend $731 million on its voucher programs this year, according to the NC General Assembly’s Fiscal Research Division.

Heather Koons, Communications and Research Director with Public Schools First NC, said all of this is happening while public schools suffer.

“North Carolina is in the position where it could definitely spend more on public education,” Koons said.

The intent of the program established in 2013 was originally to provide low- and moderate-income families with an alternative to low-performing public schools.

In 2024, state legislators lifted income limits on who can apply for vouchers. Now even the wealthiest families can get them. Voucher awards range from $3,360 to $7,468.

“Why are we spending money to allow millionaires to send their children to private school when they were never going to send them to public school anyway?” Koons said.

 Now students who are already in private school can apply for the funds.

 “We’ve seen that a number of private schools raised their tuition so that they can get more money,” Koons said.

Another concern: Private schools restrict who can attend. If you have a disability or are a member of the LGBTQ+ community, you might not be allowed to enroll.

“We put out a report on the discrimination in the private schools that accept vouchers,” Koons said. “Excerpts from the admissions policies and student-parent handbooks from these private schools that state very clearly that they do not admit certain types of students.”

As our previous reporting shows, leaders in rural North Carolina counties without any private schools have voiced concern about the state’s school voucher program. Each public school district loses tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of dollars due to students leaving their public schools with a voucher.

A report by the NC Justice Center shows 20% of this year’s new voucher recipients are from families in the highest income bracket, with an income of $259,750 or more for a family of four. 

Kris Nordstrom published the report. He’s a Senior Policy Analyst with the North Carolina Justice Center.

“Most folks want strong public schools,” Nordstrom said. “We want integrated schools where folks from different backgrounds can learn from each other and work together.”

NORTH CAROLINA isn’t the first to invest in vouchers.

Arizona expanded its voucher program in late 2022, and news outlets in Phoenix report at least 20 public schools across several districts have closed in the past year or so amid enrollment drops.

The enrollment decline has even caused some public schools to work with recruiters to convince parents to still enroll their students and find out what they want to see in public schools.

By 2031-32, nearly $5 billion in total will be allocated to North Carolina’s vouchers.

“I don’t think any voters really asked the legislature to take on this additional responsibility of funding the private school system when we currently have an underfunded public school system,” Nordstrom said.

Roughly two-thirds of this state’s students will continue to attend public schools. Yet North Carolina ranks 49th in the country for the percentage of our economy we devote to those schools. School choice can be a good thing, but it’s not an either/or decision. We can probably do both.

But we should fully fund our public schools first.