Vouchers 2.0

Vouchers were just the beginning.

Vouchers paid private schools. Education Savings Accounts (ESAs) go directly to parents. ESAs are government debit cards loaded with tax dollars, spent on private school tuition, homeschool curriculum, tutoring, devices, therapies, whatever's approved.

North Carolina began our rollout in 2014. The Opportunity Scholarship voucher started small, expanded twice, and went universal in 2023. SB 990 and SB 1006, filed in Raleigh on April 30 by Republican senators, are the next steps: a new ESA pilot and the digital foundation for a full rollout.

We're following Arizona, where universal ESA eligibility opened in 2022. Florida and Iowa went universal alongside us in 2023. Indiana raised its income cap that year to cover nearly all households, with full universal eligibility scheduled for 2026-27. Texas and Louisiana authorized similar programs in 2024 and 2025; both launch this fall. We're all following best practices championed by ExcelinEd and the Heritage Foundation.

Every state that's gone all-in has blown past its first-year budget.

• Texas. $1 billion appropriated for the program’s first biennium (FY 2026-2027), with the Legislative Budget Board projecting $7.9 billion by 2031 in the same fiscal note.
• Arizona. Sold to legislators at $65 million for Year 1. By Year 2, actual cost hit $738 million. Eleven times the original projection.
• Iowa, West Virginia, Utah. All three blew past their initial projections.
• ExcelinEd's own implementation guide warns states about underestimating the practical obstacles to launching and growing ESA programs.

Arizona approved the chicken-coop curriculum. It drew the line at the live chickens. EdChoice's own guide documents the decision.

• Spending routes through private platform vendors. State agencies can't compel disclosure of household-level expenses.
• EdChoice estimates fraud at 0.3 percent of spending. That number is only what was caught and reported.
• Arizona ADE approved most of an ESA family's chicken-coop curriculum because each item was listed in the curriculum as a key component of the educational experience. It “did not approve the purchase of live chickens, consistent with previous decisions to deny the purchase of animals.”
• From the same passage in EdChoice's ‘ESA Implementation Guide’: “ESA opponents will use unusual expenditures to create doubt about these programs.” The architects anticipated the political vulnerability in writing.

Don't worry about standards.

Florida 8th-grade reading scored 252 on the 2024 NAEP, the lowest since 1998. ExcelinEd's own chairman won't claim Florida anymore.

The voucher is not the only thing that happened to Florida schools in those years. But if the voucher were the rocket fuel its architects claim, the results would not be running in the opposite direction.

• Florida launched the country's first voucher in 1999. Went universal in 2023.
• Eighth-grade reading: 252 on the 2024 NAEP, the lowest since 1998.
• Eighth-grade math: below 2003 levels.
• Four straight NAEP assessments: declining.
• When ExcelinEd's chairman published his post-NAEP ‘success states’ list in January 2025, Florida wasn't on it. He pointed to Louisiana, Mississippi, Indiana, South Carolina, and Tennessee instead.

Even more money out of public education.

• A school's costs don't shrink with enrollment. The buses still run. The buildings still need heat. Teachers are already under contract.
• A rural NC district that loses 50 of 500 students still has the same bills.
• Per-student cost rises for every kid who stayed.
• 80 of NC's 100 counties are rural. They have the least room to absorb the hit.

Approved even if you're already in private school.

The GRIFT Card isn't real yet. SB 990 and SB 1006 are.

I'm Andy Bowline, running for NC State Senate, District 31. Every state that has gone universal followed the same path. Florida. Arizona. Indiana. West Virginia. Iowa. Utah. Pilot. Expand. Universal. NC is one step earlier on the same trajectory.