North Carolina Newspaper Editorial Boards
The North Carolina Supreme Court’s decision to uphold school choice sparked a wave of angry editorials.
The News & Observer editorial board writes, “It is distressing on its face, this idea that public money can go toward the expenses of private schooling.” Why stress about something that has occurred for decades already?
The News & Record editorial board argues the Supreme Court contradicted itself by allowing vouchers. “In 1997,” it writes, “The N.C. Supreme Court unanimously delivered its landmark Leandro ruling that declared the state has an obligation to offer every child a ‘sound, basic education.'” That obligation isn’t compromised by offering children vouchers to attend private schools. Sound basic education and school choice are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they often go hand-in-hand.
“The state Constitution requires that state funds for public education be ‘used exclusively for establishing and maintaining a uniform system of free public schools,'” writes the Charlotte Observer editorial board. Yes, any money appropriated to the state K-12 school fund has to be used for public schools, but the voucher money was never appropriated to that public school fund. The money was appropriated to a state scholarship program within the higher-education budget. The N.C. Supreme Court correctly decided (see p. 13-15) that the constitution did not prohibit the state legislature from funding other means of K-12 education outside the public school fund.
Grade: Needs Improvement
Kirk White and family
When Kirk White was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, he had to quit is job as a truck driver. The devastation to the family budget, however, made the family eligible for Louisiana’s voucher program. Kirk’s son Geno used the voucher to attend a private school and went from a struggling student both socially and academically, to a successful student. Read the whole story here.
Hopefully things continue to improve for the family. Get well, Mr. White.
Grade: Satisfactory
The Arizona Republic Editorial Board
Arizona’s Individual Tax Credit Scholarship has its fair share of warts and the Arizona Republic editorial board rightly takes a few stabs at those, but the they also tried to slay a few imaginary dragons as well.
Arizonans raised $84 million for individual tax credit scholarships and $39 million from the corporate tax credit program in 2014.
The Republic says only one-third of the students benefiting from the individual program were low-income and just 3 percent were special needs. As a result, the paper argues the program should be means-tested to benefit more low-income students (see correction below).
The state’s individual tax-credit program, passed in 1997, was never targeted to low-income families. The state passed the corporate tax credit scholarship program in 2006 and later a special need’s tax credit in 2009. (Note: the individual tax credit doesn’t track special needs students, but Lexie’s Law, a separate corporate tax credit program, does.) The corporate tax credit program is means tested, allowing it to focus on lower income families.
Maybe Arizona needs to do more to help disadvantaged students, but increasing the cap on the low-income and special needs tax credits might be the wiser approach.
Grade: Needs Improvement
*Correction: An earlier version of this post mischaracterized the eligibility criteria for Arizona’s Corporate School Tuition Organization Tax Credit. The program defines student eligibility as 185 percent of the eligibility threshold for free or reduced-price lunch. While this means tested program does allow families of four earning up to $82,000 per year to be eligible, the state does not define these families as “low-income.”
