Nearly 1.5 million students return to classrooms across North Carolina this month, ready to begin the school year with dreams and hopes of families to make this the best year ever.
This academic year is monumental for students as they have more options available to select an institution that works best for them, regardless of their ZIP code. Families can choose from many opportunities available: public schools, public charter schools, private schools, religious-affiliated schools, and homeschools.
Established in 2013, our state’s Opportunity Scholarships were created to help lower-income North Carolina families afford K-12 nonpublic education. The program was immediately popular, helping expand school choice across our state. Overwhelming demand for the scholarships led the General Assembly to expand the thresholds over the past decade at no cost to our state’s public schools.
Finally, in 2024, the program grew to include every North Carolina family thanks to the Republican-led General Assembly. No longer are families forced to send their children to a failing school in a failing district.
In addition to Opportunity Scholarships, public charter schools continue to expand thanks to Republican-led efforts to increase their availability in communities. North Carolina is also a leader in homeschools, with over 101,000 state-recognized homeschools with over 203,000 students.
It’s no surprise North Carolina has been considered a leader in the school choice movement. At one time expanding charter schools and opportunities outside of traditional public schools was a goal lauded by both political parties. However, radical left Democrats led by former Gov. Roy Cooper broke North Carolina’s bipartisan agreement on school choice.
Only among the radical left is school choice a problem: history shows Democrats once agreed with giving children a fair shot at obtaining a quality education. That radical left is led by Cooper, who waged war on school choice as governor. In his lame duck year in office, he went so far as to call school choice an emergency on par with hurricane warnings and public health concerns.
Cooper’s state of emergency sham was called “The Year of Public Schools” – making no mention of parents or students.
In nearly every budget cycle, Cooper zeroed out funding for Opportunity Scholarships, arguing the money going directly to families to escape a failing school should go elsewhere. Cooper and his Democrats misled the public about the source of funding: the General Assembly fully funded North Carolina’s public schools, increasing appropriations every year for over a decade. This is a shameful lie perpetuated by Cooper and the radical left.
Republicans have committed to improving the state of public schools in addition to making school choice a priority.
It’s Republicans who led the charge to get North Carolina students back in classrooms when Cooper opposed it, finally ending his draconian orders during COVID-19 which shut the doors to classrooms.
It’s Republicans who implemented measures such as Science of Reading and phonetic education when it became clear too many students couldn’t read at a third grade level.
It’s Republicans who have taken the fight against woke indoctrination directly to school boards and mandated curriculums.
Voters have seen Republican efforts to improve education in North Carolina and rewarded state legislators with strong majorities to continue on the current path.
The most exciting part of this school year is the return of America First policies in the White House. The Trump administration is returning more control over education policy to the states.
The U.S. Department of Education has not meaningfully improved test scores or school performance over the past 45 years and President Trump and Republicans believe we can, and will, do better. That means ending bloated bureaucracy at the federal level and allowing states and local communities to lead.
The Trump administration and congressional Republicans are serious about improving school choice. In the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, tax credits for families opting into school choice are now law. North Carolina will be the first state to join the program when the General Assembly overrides the veto of Cooper’s protege, Josh Stein, later this month.
Radical left Democrats nationally continue to defend the status quo while math and reading scores for 13-year-olds are at the lowest level in decades, 6 in 10 fourth graders and nearly three-quarters of eighth graders are not proficient in math, and 7 in 10 fourth and eighth graders are not proficient in reading, while 40% of fourth grade students don’t even meet basic reading levels.
Democrats today firmly stand in the doorway between students and the education they deserve. It’s no wonder, then, why Roy Cooper wants to join Randi Weingarten and his fellow radical left activists in Washington.
