How many voucher recipients were already in private schools? Here’s a look inside new report

The State Board of Education closed out the school year by discussing new reports on opportunity scholarships and school calendar dates before saying farewell to three advisors. 

A long-awaited report, discussed by the Board on Wednesday, includes information on the number of private school vouchers awarded to prior public-school attendees who accepted funds through the Opportunity Scholarship program. According to that report, which includes award recipients for the 2024-25 school year, 6,710 of the 80,325 Opportunity Scholarship students attended public schools the prior school year — or 8.4%, suggesting that most new voucher recipients were already attending private schools.

DPI previously predicted that most recipients of the newly expanded opportunity scholarships would be students who were already attending private schools, based on trends in other states and waitlists at North Carolina private schools.

In 2023, the Republican-led General Assembly expanded funding for opportunity scholarships, removed income eligibility requirements, and stopped requiring that new recipients previously have attended public school.

According to the report, a prior public-school attendee is defined as “any student receiving an Opportunity Scholarship who was enrolled in a North Carolina public-school unit for a majority of either the first or second month of the school year immediately before enrolling in a nonpublic school.”

Board Chair Eric Davis said that there was difficulty in developing the Department of Public Instruction’s (DPI) report since the North Carolina State Education Assistance Authority (NCSEAA) is not required to collect or use unique statewide identifiers to differentiate students in their data. That is one of the reasons why DPI and the Board said the report is about 90% accurate, Davis said. 

The report was formed by verifying data collected from the NCSEAA in March 2025, including information for all students who were awarded scholarships in the fall and spring semesters of the 2024–25 school year. The NCSEAA is the state agency designated by law to administer K-12 scholarship programs, including Opportunity Scholarships and Education Student Accounts (ESA+).

The DPI report also analyzes the differences between the voucher funds awarded and the average state per-pupil allocation for students enrolled in public school units.

The 2023 budget said it is “the intent of the General Assembly to reinvest in the public schools any savings realized by the State each year, beginning in the 2025-2026 school year.”

It was found in the report that 5,955 students received scholarships in the fall or the full 2024-25 school year. This group collectively received $34.4 million in opportunity scholarships. In comparison, the report found the average per-pupil allocation for this group would have been $44.5 million if those public school students hadn’t left.

“The amount needed for reinvestment in FY 2025-26 is $10,092,663,” the report says.

Spring-only recipients received about $2 million in voucher funds, but the report did not factor that funding into the recommended savings number.

For the sake of the report, the base year for tracking the grants is the 2023-24 school year. Year One is delineated as when the student would have received the scholarship and enrolled in private school. Year Two is when the opportunity scholarship recipient would have been at private school for a year already, or for only the spring semester. 

According to the report, “because public schools are funded in arrears starting this school year, 2024-25, a public school would not see any impact from the student no longer being in membership until Year Two” (FY 2025-26).

Scholarships are awarded, by income tier, as a percentage of the average state per pupil allocation, which came out to $7,468 in the 2024-25 academic year. The next year, that amount increased to $7,686. Only students in Tier 1 were offered that full amount, with maximum scholarships decreasing by higher tiers. Students also only received funding equal to the cost of tuition at their private school.

“If a student received an award amount of $7,686 but tuition at their school was only $5,000, the student would receive $5,000 in scholarship funding. This report would then treat their ‘scholarship grant award’ as $5,000, not the full scholarship amount they could have received based on their income tier,” the report says.

You can read the full report here.

First draft of new strategic plan 

The Board also unveiled the first draft of DPI’s strategic plan on Wednesday, which will drive the Board and DPI’s work from 2025-30. The goal is to finalize the plan during the Board’s August 2025 meeting. 

The draft was formed based on ideas from the Board and individuals state Superintendent Maurice “Mo” Green spoke with during his “Mo Wants to Know” tour. Green’s reflections from the conversations he had can be found here. 

The overarching vision of the plan is “Achieving Educational Excellence.” The draft said this can be achieved through three components: High academic achievement, character development, and making the state’s public school system the best in the country. 

Once the plan is approved, Green will form an Office of Strategic Planning and a Strategic Plan Monitoring and Accountability Committee to help with the implementation. Several working groups and reporting processes will also be developed to track progress. 

Board member Jill Camnitz said that one of the things she liked most about the plan was that most of it was in the Board and DPI’s power to accomplish. 

“We are not putting things out there that we hope districts will do, which we sort of did last time. This is really under our control,” Camnitz said. “I think we can go a long way with this.” 

Green said he is not asking the Board to agree with every single part of the plan, but with the essence of it. 

“When we have that essence of the plan, and we’re able to agree to it around this table, we will bring people along in a way that folks can’t even imagine,” Green said.

The plan is broken down into eight pillars, which were explained in depth in DPI’s presentation. Each priority is listed below: 

• Prepare each student for their next phase in life,
• Revere public school educators,
• Enhance parent, caregiver, and community support,
• Ensure healthy, safe, and secure learning environments,
• Optimize operational excellence,
• Lead transformative change,
• Celebrate why public education is the best choice, and
• Galvanize champions to fully support and invest in public education.

You can read Green’s full report on his listening tour on DPI’s website, and the full draft report here.

Early graduation requirements

Sneha Shah-Coltrane, senior director of advanced learning and gifted education academic policy at DPI, explained in her presentation why the Board should amend the Early Graduation and Accelerated pathway policies.

Early graduation has many complexities. Prior to 2023-24, students could graduate high school in less than four years if they met both the state and local requirements. Most students who did this graduated a semester early, Shah-Coltrane said.

With the new legislation — that passed in the 2023 budget and went into effect in the 2024-25 school year — students do not have to follow the additional local requirements. Now, about 2,094 students are graduating high school this year after three years of enrollment. The exact number is unknown due to confusion about the definition of early graduation, Shah-Coltrane said.

Shah-Coltrane explained how school schedules can contribute to some students graduating early. For example, a high schooler on a block schedule will take eight classes a year opposed to the traditional six. At that rate, they will complete the 22 credits now required by the state to graduate within three years without manipulating their schedule. Before the 2023 law went into effect, most schools typically required 28 credits for graduation.

Board members discussed the risk of graduating students early. Shah-Coltrane said that students who are under 18 may have a few years where their pathway may be “unclear” due to limited employment options for people their age. 

The Board’s student representative Ian House said the three year pathway is “complicated,” because some students get more support with their goals than others.

“I know people who are on this pathway. Some of them are okay, some aren’t,” House said. 

Alan Duncan, vice chair of the Board, said that the trend highlights the issue of block scheduling versus traditional scheduling. He pointed to the issue of transferring between schools. He also said the amount of instructional time you are getting is different when you are coming from a three-year block schedule and a three-year traditional schedule. 

“And so we cannot, with a straight face, pretend like we prepared that student for whatever path they’re leaving on. We cannot pretend that we have equipped them in the same way we equip students who are on a more traditional schedule,” Duncan said.

Board members also mentioned how the exodus of three-year graduates could impact a district’s Average Daily Membership (ADM) count, and subsequently their budget. 

Kimberly Jones, 2023 Teacher of the Year Advisor to the Board, said that secondary schools offer more than 22 hours of course work. Students have to mature, and take advantage of opportunities to do public service or take courses through the Career and College Promise (CCP) program. 

“But the idea that the bare minimum should become the rule and not the exception is frightening,” Jones said. “It’s frightening, and it is an adultification of young people that I think is to them and to society, it’s a large detriment.”

Changes were also proposed to clarify the wording of policies GRAD-004, GRAD-009, GRAD-010, and CCRE-001. The details were outlined in DPI’s presentation.

School calendar flexibility 

DPI is annually mandated to report the start and end dates of every public school unit in North Carolina to the General Assembly.

Under current law, public school districts are not allowed to start the instructional year earlier than the Monday closest to Aug. 26 and end any later than the Friday closest to June 11. Districts can apply for an exception to the end date if they had to close school due to weather or any other emergencies. Year-round schools, charter schools, and early colleges are exempt from the law.

Currently, the legislature is contemplating a new law that would allow districts slightly more flexibility for when they begin and conclude the school year. Among other things, the new law would also enforce penalties for schools who do not abide by its parameters.  

Last school year, 25% of schools chose to start early without permission from the Board. According to this year’s report, that number is up to 26% this school year, with 30 districts planning to start early without permission.

You can read the full report of each school’s calendar is available here. 

Related reads

Golden LEAF Schools announced

DPI also announced the 15 schools that were selected to take part of the Golden LEAF initiative, a five-year, $25 million program that aims to improve school performance with a focus on mathematics and career development.

In order to be chosen, schools had to be in rural areas located in persistently Tier 1 or Tier 2 counties. Not only did they have to be middle schools that served grades 6-8, but they had to demonstrate readiness to begin at level 3 on the High Reliability Schools progression scale. Districts also had to identify an implementation coordinator to lead getting the initiative underway. 

The Golden LEAF initiative primarily forms a support network of schools. By the end of the process, the project leaders want to have a scalable model for turning around low-performing schools. The key components of the program are core framework resources, job-embedded coaching, mathematics resources, career development resources, participation incentives, and a cohort model.

“I just want to thank Golden LEAF for supporting our middle school math, especially just allowing our teachers to have the support to be able to take what they do every day, but be intentional about what they’re looking at with data and ensuring that we have a curriculum,” said Heather Smith, the 2024 Teacher of the Year Advisor.

The selected schools are split into two cohorts. The Transformative Schools Cohort will be implementing the Marzano High Reliability Schools Framework and the Open Up Resources Problem-Based Math Curriculum. The personalized, competency-based education cohort is meant to help schools prepare to begin a shift toward competency-based education, which focuses on students demonstrating their mastery of a subject.

The following two slides list the 15 schools selected for the initiative:

More on Golden LEAF

Arts standards, EPPs, principal licensure, and more

• On Thursday, the Board recognized three members rotating off the Board: Jones as 2023 Teacher of the Year Board Advisor, 2023 Principal of the Year Board Advisor Donna Bledsoe, and student advisor Josiah Jennings.
• An update was given on the state’s shift towards administering portfolio-based assessments for administrator licensure. Since the last update, the Board hopes to explore using the MA PAL model (Massachusetts Performance Assessment for Leaders) and apply it to North Carolina standards. The handbook for the would-be procedure can be found here. 
• A new model for educator preparation program (EPP) accountability tracking was proposed. Current law only evaluates EPPs based on recent graduate surveys, EVAAS data, and information from the NC Educator Effectiveness System (NCEES). It was proposed that the Board take more factors into account while focusing on continuous improvement. The recommendations are outlined here.
• The wording of the new K-12 arts standards was changed to clarify the theatre standard. The full policy can be read here.
• An interim report on the special needs pilot program in contract with Amplio Learning Technologies, Inc. was presented. Through the pilot, according to the Board’s agenda, DPI will contract with Amplio Learning “to create a new pilot program for a special education digital intervention software platform in Cabarrus County Schools, Union County Schools and Vance County Schools to increase opportunities for students with special needs. The Program shall focus primarily on students receiving interventions for speech language and reading development, including English language learner, to provide more optimized progress for the interventions.”

The Board will reconvene virtually on July 10.