The Network for Public Education (NPE) released a new report detailing how well state lawmakers across the nation (and the District of Columbia) treat public schools and the children who depend on them: Public Schooling in America. North Carolina’s score put our state behind all others except Arizona and Florida.
The data reveal a troubling and consistent pattern that highlights what we are seeing in North Carolina. “The states most aggressively redirecting public funds toward private alternatives — charter schools, voucher programs, and education savings accounts — are the same states most neglectful of their public schools, their teachers, and their students. Our analysis found a strong, statistically significant negative relationship between the expansion of privatization and public school support (p < 0.0001). Privatization and disinvestment, it turns out, go hand in hand.”
All of the states in the southeast region earned an overall F grade with the notable exception of Mississippi. Mississippi has been in the national news for leading the nation in NAEP reading and math score gains and also its resistance to voucher expansion.
Researchers evaluated state-level policies that represent lawmakers’ commitment to public education. Each state was scored out of 102 possible points divided among four categories:
- Privatization: Voucher and Charter Expansion and Student Protections (58 points)
- Protections for Homeschooled Students (4 points)
- School Funding (16 points)
- Conditions for Teaching and Learning (24 points)
The state’s (+ DC) total scores were converted to an A-F letter grade.
15 states earned an A or B
13 states earned a C
23 states earned a D or F
Only two states—Nebraska and Vermont—received an A, with Kentucky and Connecticut scoring closely behind but both receiving a B. It’s worth noting that these high-scoring states are split evenly between politically conservative and liberal states, showing that strong support for public education can be nonpartisan.
Florida and Arizona were the lowest-scoring states, followed by North Carolina and Louisiana. All received failing grades.
Collectively, the four reporting categories shine a spotlight on state policies that work to improve—or harm—conditions for public education.
Privatization: Voucher and Charter Expansion and Student Protections examined the degree to which state lawmakers have pushed voucher programs (including educational savings accounts), charter schools and other market-based alternatives to public schools. It also evaluated the quality of the legal and regulatory guardrails established to safeguard students and families who choose one of the alternatives to traditional public schools. It also examined protections for the taxpayers whose dollars are funding the programs.
The report found that states with little voucher regulation created fertile ground for fraud: “A recent audit of the Arizona ESA program, the Empowerment Scholarship Account, flagged almost 84,000 cases of misspending between December 2024 and October 2025. ABC15, an Arizona news service, identified purchases that included “diamond necklaces, lingerie, jet ski rentals, gaming consoles, and designer purses.”
In addition to highlighting findings of fraud and abuse, researchers also noted that in every voucher state, students with disabilities lose their rights under IDEA when they agree to take a voucher to attend a private school.
Only the District of Columbia prohibits discrimination based on religion, and 68% of voucher states (including NC) don’t require background checks for teachers in private schools or homeschools.
Protections for Homeschooled Students evaluates how well lawmakers protect students who don’t attend formal schools. As homeschooling gains popularity, how are states responding to prevent educational or physical neglect? Researchers found that only two states (NE and TN) had policies in place to prevent parents from removing students from school and starting homeschooling during a Child Protective Services investigation. They also found that no state monitors homeschooling families that have a history of interactions with social services.
School Funding ranks states based on how responsibly they fund public education and whether they pay teachers a living wage. The report used Education Law Center’s Making the Grade rankings as well as a state’s average teacher salaries to determine each state’s score. North Carolina earned only two points, making it one of the five lowest-scoring states.
Conditions for Teaching and Learning ranks states on multiple factors that enable teachers and students to thrive. These include the proportion of qualified teachers, teaching attractiveness, student-to-teacher ratios, student-to-counselor ratios and protections against discrimination and physical punishment.
The report found that, “The relationship between the percentage of qualified teachers and the state’s teacher attractiveness rating was both positive and statistically significant (p < .001). That means that states that are more attractive to teach in have higher percentages of qualified teachers. Kentucky, Nebraska, North Dakota, and Wyoming were in the top decile on both ratings. The states with the worst scores in both were Arizona, the District of Columbia, Louisiana, and North Carolina.”
The report found clear patterns that show a strong connection between the push toward educational privatization and disinvestment in public education. North Carolina is experiencing the effects of this as voucher programs are overfunded and public education is underfunded by state lawmakers.
The stakes are high: “Public schools remain the only institutions in American life constitutionally obligated to welcome every child, regardless of circumstance. They are governed by elected boards, funded by public taxes, and accountable to the communities they serve in ways no private alternative is required to be. That is not a weakness — it is their defining strength, and it is worth defending.”
Now is the time to take action! Public Schooling in America describes multiple avenues for action:
Parents and community members must show up — at school board meetings, at legislative hearings, and at the ballot box. Organized, sustained community pressure has stopped harmful legislation before and can do so again.
Educators must continue to speak out — about what their students need, about what their working conditions have become, and about the consequences of policies that their legislators may never see firsthand. Their voices carry authority that no think tank report can replicate.
Advocates and organizers must connect the dots — between the voucher bill in the statehouse and the school that closes the following year, between the charter scandal in the news and the students left without a school.
Policymakers who believe in public education must act with the same urgency as those who seek to dismantle it. That means not only defending existing programs, but advancing affirmative legislation: stronger accountability for charter schools, tighter oversight of voucher spending, meaningful protections for homeschooled children, restored funding for teacher preparation, and policies that make teaching an attractive and sustainable profession.
North Carolina’s public education system has been under assault for more than 15 years. We’re seeing the effects of state-level disinvestment and laws that push educational privatization. Contact your lawmakers and urge them to act to save public education in our state. Our communities, families, and children depend on it!