Do Teahadists Love the State Constitution as Much as They Do School Vouchers?

Tim White in the Fayetteville Observer takes on the Republican scheme to shift spending from public to private schools in North Carolina:

When we elected a new, Republican majority in the General Assembly, I expected conservative principles to be a guiding force. To me, that means paying attention to what the Founders had in mind -- in this case, North Carolina's founders.

That's not what I'm seeing as our new legislative leaders tackle education reform. What we're getting instead is a dose of dogma that's popular with some folks on the right, but doesn't at all square with what our state constitution's framers had in mind....

House Majority Leader Paul Stam has filed a bill that would provide $2,500 tax credits to many parents who move their children from public to private schools. The measure would essentially subsidize private schools and would surely cut funding to public schools. Critics of the plan also point out that it's a fine recipe for funding "white flight" and creating a new system of segregated schools....

Let's go back to basics here. Let's go to the state constitution, Article IX, Section 2: "The General Assembly shall provide by taxation and otherwise for a general and uniform system of free public schools, which shall be maintained at least nine months in every year, and wherein equal opportunities shall be provided for all students."

And then there's Section 5: "The State Board of Education shall supervise and administer the free public school system and the educational funds provided for its support ..."

I don't pretend to be a legal scholar, and Rep. [Paul] Stam [House Majority Leader] will doubtless disagree with my conclusions, but my simple reading is that the state is not empowered to subsidize private schools, and that is exactly what a tax credit would do. It's a passive variation on vouchers. Nor is the state in a position to create an unlimited number of charter schools that aren't accountable to the State Board of Education....