Public Dollars, Private Power: Who Really Benefits from School Choice?
Welcome to The RootED Weekly
Deeply Rooted in Education and Equity
Issue 02 | 28 March 2025
A Note from Dayson
Earlier this month, I had the honor of guest lecturing in an Ethnic Studies class at a North Carolina high school. We explored resistance through art—from Cowboy Carter to Kendrick Lamar’s halftime show, from protest murals in Bogotá to lyrics by Bad Bunny.
This experience has stuck with me.
Representation isn’t just about who stands at the front of the classroom; it’s about who’s reflected in the curriculum, in the texts, in the stories we center. When students don’t see themselves in what they’re learning, they learn that they don’t matter.
As Bad Bunny says in El Apagón:
“Yo no me quiero ir de aquí. Que se vayan ellos.”
Our students know who they are. And they deserve schools that honor that, where they can thrive.
This issue of The RootED Weekly digs into the expansion of school vouchers in North Carolina, the broader implications for funding equity, and the organizations, like CREED, that continue to fight for schools that serve all of our students.
Let’s keep building schools where no one has to leave parts of themselves at the door.
– Dayson Pasión
Founder & Principal Consultant, RootED Consultancy
Digging Deeper: The Expansion of School Vouchers in North Carolina
Balancing Choice and Public Education
In 2023, the North Carolina General Assembly expanded North Carolina’s school voucher program, making the Opportunity Scholarship Program available to all K-12 students, regardless of income. The program, originally intended to offer low-income families an escape from underfunded neighborhood schools, now redirects hundreds of millions in public dollars to private institutions, without addressing the root inequities in our public school system.
The results are stark.
As of March 2025, over 80,000 students now receive private school vouchers—an increase of nearly 48,000 students since the program’s expansion. However, this growth hasn't led to higher interest overall. New applications dropped by nearly 30,000 this year, down to 40,089 from over 69,000 last year, despite the program being open to everyone. What’s changed isn’t the number of families applying, but who is benefiting.
Who’s Getting the Vouchers?
Let’s talk about who’s actually benefiting from this expansion.
This program was originally created to support low-income families who needed alternatives to underfunded public schools. But that’s not what the data shows now.
Statewide, 42% of voucher recipients are in the top two income tiers, and 14% are in the highest income tier alone. In places like Chatham, Mecklenburg, Wake, and Orange counties, that number jumps to nearly 30%. That means public dollars, intended to expand access, are increasingly being used to subsidize private school tuition for families who already had options.
It’s not just about income. Racial disparities are growing, too. The number of white students receiving vouchers jumped from 63% to 74%. The number of Black recipients dropped from 19% to 11%. And nearly 90% of all voucher recipients are non-Hispanic. That’s not a reflection of our state—it’s a reflection of who these programs are actually working for.
And here's the thing: we still don’t know how many of these students were already in private school before receiving taxpayer dollars. But what we do know is this—as vouchers expand, the public schools that serve the majority of low-income and students of color are being asked to do more with less.
This isn’t just about policy—it’s about power. And who gets access to it.
A Lack of Accountability
North Carolina has one of the least accountable voucher systems in the country. Private schools receiving public dollars are:
Not required to follow the state curriculum
Not required to publicly report test results
Allowed to discriminate based on religion, disability, sexual orientation, or gender identity
This means public dollars are flowing to schools with little transparency or oversight, while public schools continue to shoulder the burden of serving all students, often with fewer resources.
The Promise—and Pitfall—of School Choice
Let’s be clear: school choice matters. As long as a student's zip code can predict their academic outcomes, families deserve options. That was the original purpose of the Opportunity Scholarship Program—to give low-income families a pathway out of under-resourced schools.
But what we see now is a program that robs opportunity more than it provides. It subsidizes private education for higher-income families, drains public schools of funding tied to enrollment, and weakens the systems meant to serve all students, especially those with the fewest resources.
If school choice is to be truly equitable, it must be intentional. It must center the communities most impacted by educational injustice, not provide an exit ramp for those who already have access.
It’s past time to revisit the values behind the policy. Because public dollars should serve the public good, and our schools should be places where every child can thrive, not institutions that students must flee to succeed.
RootED Resource of the Week
Public School Forum of North Carolina’s Local School Finance Study
🔗 View the full report
Want to understand how school funding really works across North Carolina’s 100 counties? This is the go-to resource.
The Local School Finance Study breaks down how local wealth, state investment, and tax policy shape educational opportunity. It’s a powerful tool for policymakers, advocates, and educators alike, and a reminder that equity isn't just about intentions. It's about investments.
Use it to:
Track where funding gaps persist
Advocate for fairer school finance formulas
Understand the connection between local property wealth and student outcomes
In the News: Immigration Crackdown Targets International Students
Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish doctoral student at Tufts University, was detained by federal agents while walking in Somerville, Massachusetts, and swiftly transferred to an ICE facility in Louisiana—before a federal judge could intervene. Her only known activism: co-authoring a student op-ed urging the university to address concerns about its relationship with Israel. Federal officials cited alleged links to Hamas without providing public evidence, part of a growing trend of student visa revocations targeting pro-Palestinian voices.
This is about more than immigration—it’s about silencing dissent, especially from international students of color. Schools should be sanctuaries of inquiry, not surveillance. If academic freedom is under attack, so is education as a public good.
Equity Spotlight: CREED
This week, we shine our spotlight on the Center for Racial Equity in Education (CREED), an organization working to dismantle systemic racism in education through research, storytelling, and capacity-building.
From their landmark “E(race)ing Inequities” report to district-level partnerships that center students of color, CREED is shaping how North Carolina thinks about equity, unapologetically, not as a buzzword, but as a call to action.
Whether you're an educator, policymaker, or community leader, their work can help you ask better questions, confront harmful assumptions, and build more just learning environments.
📌 Explore their work: https://www.creed-nc.org
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