Republicans in NC don’t want to choke the life out of public schools

Take a beat and consider the charge that Republicans seek to "choke the life out of" public education, as Gov. Roy Cooper recently alleged.

This view abandons the long-held (and true) assumption that Republicans and Democrats share a common goal to provide North Carolina's children with the best possible education, though they differ in how best to get there.

In its place, Cooper says Republicans seek to suffocate public education as an end in itself — that Republicans don't offer Opportunity Scholarships and their K-12 budget proposal to improve outcomes for children, but to destroy the state's schools.

"It's clear that the Republican legislature is aiming to choke the life out of public education," Cooper said in a May 22 address. "They just want billions of $ going to private schools at the expense of public education so a millionaire gets thousands of $ to keep a kid already in a private academy while veteran teachers get a $250 raise," Cooper tweeted May 31.

Cooper's reckless rhetoric assigns dark and absurd motives to Republican proposals, which signals to me a recognition that he's lost the policy debate — because he has.

First, Republican policies on Opportunity Scholarships, or private school vouchers, are popular. Polls, including a 2023 one from Carolina Partnership for Reform, show the public supports them by double-digit margins.

Second, the policy rationale for Opportunity Scholarships is sound. At bottom, school choice initiatives aim to give parents more than just one option for their children's education. Sometimes a child's best option will be the local public school, but sometimes it will be a public charter school or a private school.

Better to give parents the resources and opportunity to select from an array of choices than burden them with just one.

It's a strong and simple argument. Yes, it necessarily takes power away from the education bureaucracy, but it transfers that power to parents. And parents like it.

As for the objection that the latest Opportunity Scholarship plan removes income limits for voucher recipients, that's a reasonable argument and I understand why opponents don't like the policy.

But just like Social Security pays out what taxpayers put in regardless of income, Opportunity Scholarships offer funding to all taxpayers, too. The difference, of course, is that wealthier families will receive less than half the Opportunity Scholarship funding as families with less means.

Cooper's other purported evidence that Republicans wish to suffocate public education is the level of K-12 funding Republicans have offered over the years.

On this count, the argument is wildly divorced from the data. According to annual state budget figures, the inflation-adjusted K-12 state budget has been steadily increasing, not decreasing, over the past decade and looks to have reached the highest level in history last school year.

Cooper and others can certainly argue that the K-12 budget hasn't increased fast enough. But constant year-over-year increases, though they don't meet the governor's requested total, are a far cry from a "state of emergency."

And substance arguments against other school choice measures, like public charter schools, are often riddled with falsehoods.

Better to roll out a "state of emergency" calling Republicans arsonists than keep losing on the merits, it seems.

I acknowledge the population of head-in-the-sand partisans grows by the year, but I find it hard to believe that many thinking people truly accept that policymakers wish to suffocate the state's education system.

The truth is, Republicans and Democrats want North Carolina's children to learn and succeed. Yes, they have very different prescriptions to accomplish that, but I don't question the motivations from either side, and neither should you.

Contributing columnist Pat Ryan is a former spokesperson for Republican N.C. Senate leader Phil Berger.