Written by Don Byrd
North Carolina’s school voucher program was revived in 2015 by the state Supreme Court, after a lower court judge ruled it unlawful because it sends public funds to schools that discriminate on the basis of religion. Now, a new study by the League of Women Voters has determined that the system primarily funds schools with a religious “world view.”
The 2018 study, which investigated curricula in schools receiving voucher funds from the program’s inception in 2013 concluded that “76.7% of voucher funding is going to schools with a literal biblical worldview that affects all areas of the curriculum.”
The News & Observer’s Ned Barnett references the study to argue that religious education shouldn’t be funded with tax dollars. Here is an excerpt:
Taxpayers are paying for students to be taught that the world is 6,000 years old, that the Genesis flood created the Grand Canyon, that evolution didn’t happen and that environmentalism is a liberal plot. UNC-Chapel Hill professors who reviewed history and science textbooks used at the schools describe them as inaccurate “nonsense” and said they fall far short of educational standards.
The Baptist Joint Committee has long opposed school vouchers because they use public funds to support religious education.For more on why school vouchers are a bad idea for both the church and the state, see this 2011 column from the BJC’s Holly Hollman.
