The last time Republicans controlled a chamber of the North Carolina General Assembly was during the 1995 and 1997 legislative sessions, when they held a majority in the state House.
The first state budget written by Republicans came to the House floor from the Appropriations Committee June 30, 1995 and like every spending plan it was a mixed bag and reflected the priorities of the new majority.
One provision included in that budget that very few legislators had seen was a $20 million reserve fund for tuition tax credits for parents with children in private schools, in other words education vouchers.
Once the voucher language was discovered, Republican leaders quickly removed it from the budget with an amendment on the House floor and the issue was not seriously discussed again in the 1995 session.
But the point was made. Key Republicans supported dismantling and privatizing public education with vouchers, but balked in the face of overwhelming opposition once the secret plan was discovered.
Vouchers are back and not just in secret backroom budget plots. Many conservative candidates for the General Assembly this year talk openly about their support for education tax credits or vouchers for private schools, bringing it up in debates and featuring various forms of the idea on their websites. It is part of the platform of the North Carolina Republican Party.
Conservatives and the think tanks they support them have championed a long list of ideas that would do serious harm to public education including increasing class size, abolishing teacher assistants, defunding the Disadvantaged School Supplemental Fund, wiping out huge sections of the Department of Public Instruction that support teachers and schools, and reversing last session's approval of both comprehensive sex education and a meaningful ban on bullying in school.
It's not clear what the conservatives have in mind for standardized testing. They were among the strongest supporters of strict accountability measures and tests in the 1990s, including when they controlled the House, but in recent years have complained that students are being forced to take too many tests and that too much emphasis is being placed on test scores.
Teachers are not likely to fare well. The conservatives not only seem determined to rush ahead with ill-defined merit pay plans, they are also resistant to attempts to increase teacher salaries to the national average, citing misleading research from anti-public education right-wing think tanks in Raleigh.
Maybe they will try again to ban the teaching of evolution as fact in schools. The House passed legislation to do that the last time the Republicans were in control but it went nowhere in the Senate.
But if you are really wondering what's likely to happen to public schools next year if conservatives gain control of the House and Senate in November, the 1995 budget and the current widespread Republican support for vouchers are the places to start.
It makes all other issues almost irrelevant, from student assignment to teacher pay, because it would effectively end public education as we now know it. That's the goal, not to fix public schools, but to privatize them and turn education over to the free market.
Education scholar and former Bush Administration official Diane Ravitch used to support vouchers but now has completely changed her mind.
Ravitch told an interviewer recently that "the free market doesn't work as the basic mechanism for providing education. Schools are not like shoe stores, opened and closed in response to consumer demand. Or should not be."
Ravitch is right of course. Vouchers have not worked where they have been tried and leave many students behind. But judging from their actions the last time they were in control and their rhetoric on the campaign trail this fall, that doesn't matter much to folks poised to take over the General Assembly.
Vouchers may be here soon in North Carolina. That means the state's longtime commitment to public education could be fading away.
