Jeanne Diestch, a former Democratic state senator in New Hampshire, recently wrote about the attention showered on the state’s new voucher program by Republican conservatives like Mike Pompeo, a likely Presidential candidate, and Betsy DeVos. Republicans took control of the New Hampshire legislature until 2020; its Governor, Chris Sununu, is a Republican, and he appointed the state’s commissioner of education, Frank Edelblut, who homeschooled his children. Republicans wasted no time in passing a sweeping voucher bill.
US Conservatives Eyeing NH Vouchers
Diestch wrote in her newsletter:
Why the GOP hates the world’s top education models
When a former Secretary of Education and a future Presidential candidate come to New Hampshire for the rollout of a new state educational policy, you know something important is afoot. The candidate, Mike Pompeo, stated at the event that US schools are falling behind because we have a “public-school monopoly”; adopting NH’s “Education Freedom Accounts” [EFAs] would allow the “free market” to correct this problem. This change is so important to conservatives that the Koch-founded Americans for Prosperity is handing out supportive pamphlets door-to-door in Bedford. So let’s look at three questions:
- Why do conservatives want the free market to control education rather than local public-school districts?
- Why are so many outside the state so interested in a change inside New Hampshire?
- How will all this impact us, the people of the state?
WHY DO CONSERVATIVES WANT FREE-MARKET EDUCATION?
Nations with top education scores all rely on public schools. If the US followed their examples:
- Teachers would be highly educated, well-paid and respected. In Finland, for example, acceptance for an education degree can be more competitive than medical school.
- Schools would have shorter vacations, but also shorter school days. In China, elementary students take 90-minute lunch breaks. In Singapore, teachers use the additional time for planning lessons and collaborating on how to improve students’ performance.
- After the regular school day, learning would continue at home or in tutoring sessions, especially for secondary students. Parents’ role in most successful nations is to ensure children do their three hours or so of assigned homework.
All these top-scoring countries rely on
public-education systems.
(Note that China is not really first; it only submits scores from 4 wealthy provinces.)Why don’t conservatives want to follow these successful models? More school days with highly qualified educators cost more. Companies want to sell high-margin educational software, supported by low-paid trainees, rather than pay education professionals’ salaries. New Hampshire’s EFAs potentially shift millions from public-school teachers and administrators to corporations seeking shareholder profits. In addition, church-based schools are seeking their share of EFAs. Then there is the fact that more-educated people tend to vote Democratic.
WHY SO MANY EYES ARE WATCHING NH EFAS
That is why so many outside New Hampshire are focused on EFAs here. National and international commercial and religious interests will be contributing to Mr. Pompeo and other conservative candidates. Donors hope that if a highly ranked state like New Hampshire can be convinced to hand their taxpayer dollars to unsupervised scholarship funds (see inset below), the rest of the nation will follow.EFAs hide spending detail from taxpayers
EFAs move millions in taxpayer funds from local school board oversight to an independent contractor. The contractor only has to report three things to the Department of Revenue
Administration: amount spent on administration, total number of scholarships, and average scholarship size. The state has no knowledge of who receives how much.
— NH RSA 77 G:5(g)HOW EFAS WILL CHANGE NH
EFAs impact far more than students. When EFAs substitute a $4600 payment for a year of public-school education, someone has to make up the difference. A religious school might charge only $2000 more per year in tuition, but how many low-income households can afford $2000 per child? The upshot is that poor neighborhoods will still need to rely on public schools, but those schools will have fewer per-student dollars to support them. Property taxpayers will have to make up the difference or close schools. The hit will be especially severe in Coos County, where thousands of educators comprise a significant segment of employees. When those schools are forced to close, most educators will move out, worsening Coos towns already dwindling populations and decreasing property values. Our most diverse populations in Manchester and Nashua are also more likely to suffer from the shift in funding caused by EFAs because they have lower incomes. In southern New Hampshire, the census showed that population did increase due to in-state migration. But what families will want to move into a state whose public schools are foundering? The answer is, those families for whom $4600 is enough to send their children to low-tuition religious schools, those families who can already afford expensive private school but would like taxpayers to subsidize them, and those families who want taxpayer funding for parent-guided home education programs. These differ from the workers attracted over the last decade to New Hampshire for its highly rated public schools. How will this affect companies struggling to find employees? No one knows, but the answer will certainly impact our economy.
EFAs will also impact New Hampshire society. Communities forced to close their schools will become less cohesive. Children educated only alongside others with similar backgrounds will have less understanding of the world and their place in it. They will be less able to succeed in the diverse demographics that will make up our nation’s future.
Perhaps conservatives have decided not to follow successful models for improving public education because they do not want the public to be educated. They would prefer people who let corporations and the wealthy take advantage of them, who have been taught to villainize a government that protects public interests.
The new mantra of the Republican Party…grifters gotta grift…
Did the ed reformers in New Hampshire get anything done for public school students when they were all lobbying for private school funding?
This is what public school students got in Florida in the Florida “public education” plan:
“And don’t forget: Florida lawmakers continue to commit to public schools, budgeting $285 million in teacher bonuses this year as well as an almost $250 per-student funding increase. Gov. Ron DeSantis, Senate President Bill Galvano, Florida House Speaker Jose Oliva and lawmakers from both parties can be proud of their work in ensuring that every Florida student has better access to educational options.”
The ed reform “movement” managed to secure 250 dollars per student. The public school students in the state were an afterthought. They tacked on a tiny increase for public school students to a massive voucher bill just to say they did something.
It isn’t just that the ed reform echo chamber promote and market private school vouchers in their ideological pursuit of privatization. It’s that they deliver absolutely nothing of value to students and families who attend public schools. They simply don’t do any productive work for public school students. I don’t know if they’re just lousy advocates or they aren’t interested in students who attend the unfashionable “government schools” but does it matter? May public school students have advocates in government or is that now forbidden? Could we perhaps look outside this echo chamber and find some?
Is “Like dissolves like”,an expression used by chemists,
in play here? Is the game plan, better living through
chemistry?
Dissolve free-market BS with score BS???
Is it stuck between a rock and a hard place, where
you cannot give up on the score bs, without giving up
score based avatars???
New Hampshire isn’t alone in the ed reform “movement” not serving public school students.
Here’s what they accomplished in Ohio this year:
https://fordhaminstitute.org/ohio/commentary/overview-ohios-recently-enacted-family-friendly-voucher-changes
Another huge voucher expansion. I don’t really object to this “movement” performing no work at all on behalf of public schools or public school students but I think truth in advertising is important and they should probably drop “public education” from all of their resumes. They don’t do anything at all for public school students, unless you count testing them. Seems like we could just keep standardized testing contractors (if we want them) and cut the rest of the “movement” loose and public school students wouldn’t even know they were gone.
Can any of you point to anything they accomplished this last year that benefits any public school student anywhere? It seems to me that the only people who delivered for public schools were some Democrats in Congress and Joe Biden.
It is sad when a state abandons its common good in favor of the free market. The free market has repeatedly failed in education, but that fact does not deter the greedy privatizers. The end result is often snake oil salesmen and con artists with bogus plans that fall flat. Even today New Hampshire has one of the highest opiate addiction rates in the nation. If we add lots of unaccountable public dollars to an area with a high rate of drug addiction, it is likely that the outcome will further denigrate society at large, and the young people will suffer the consequences of bad decisions.
“After the regular school day, learning would continue at home or in tutoring sessions, especially for secondary students. Parents’ role in most successful nations is to ensure children do their three hours or so of assigned homework.”
Three hours of homework is excessive. Given a healthy lifestyle that includes at least an hour of vigorous exercise, how does this fit into the transportation and family responsibilities of the average child? Someone make a realistic day for me. with Classes from 8 to 3 plus 3 hours of Homework.
Three hours of homework is insane, especially for the lower grades. Finns don’t assign homework. From Education in Finland web site: quote, “The truth is that there is nearly no homework in the country with one of the top education systems in the world. Finnish people believe that besides homework, there are many more things that can improve child’s performance in school, such as having dinner with their families, exercising or getting a good night’s sleep.” end quote
https://in-finland.education/homework-in-finland-school/
Freedom from Education Accounts is what they are, not Education Freedom Accounts. Conservatives eschew their responsibility to pay for education. They want to be free to buy that eleventh yacht. Betsy only has ten. Sad. Diestch wrote three questions: why do they want free market education, why are so many outside interests involved, and how will vouchers impact the people of the state. The answers respectively are: more money, more money, and less money. That’s it. That’s all. Simple. PISA scores and national rankings have nothing to do with it. It’s just the money. New Hampshire is being fleeced by wolves from far and wide. What will the wolves will eat when all the caribou are gone? Free market means dog eat dog.
and the “free-er” kids are from education, the more likely they are to grow up enthusiastically sucking at the political manipulation teat
Mike Pompeo? Seriously?! Mike Pompeo and education, that’s some kind of other worldly joke or oxymoron. But wait there’s more, he’s considering a run for president? President of what, Afghanistan? Texas?
Who is Mike Pompeo? Do I remember him from a bad dream? Did he not serve as Secretary of the abomination under Trump? He must know about education, being tied so closely with school.
The question is not who Mike Pompeo is; the question is who Mike Pompeo has been. He is not an is. He is a has been.
Mike Pompeo has been a captain of tank maintenance in the Army in Germany and a lawyer who worked closely with Koch Industries and Bain & Company. Then, Koch Industries funded his campaign and he was a House representative from Kansas. After that, everything got really surreal and I don’t remember much about him except needing to be somewhat inebriated, no obliterated when reading about period events in the news for a few years. There was something about everyone in the CIA and the State Department getting really upset and quitting, and dictators holding hands and singing songs together.
Donors from around the world will be funding Pompeo’s next campaign. I wonder who they will be and from what countries they will heil— I mean hail. I’ll be putin on my thinking cap to guess.
China should not be on any PISA list. Not only because the tests are only given in China’s most and best-educated provinces but also because the students that take it are literally the cream of the crop.
Mandatory education in China runs to the end of middle school and if students want to be eligible to go to high school they have to take a competitive test. Those that score the highest may move up and China will pay the bill. Those that do not score in the highest bracket either go to a trade school that trains them for a job that doesn’t require more education or their parents have to pay to send them to a private high school that doesn’t administer the PISA.
PISA tests 15-year-olds. In China, mandatory education ends in 9th grade and most of the students are 14 by the time they leave. Tuition is free up to the end of 9th grade. the only way to have tuition paid in high school is to scare really high score on the Senior High School Entrance Examination, or commonly known as Zhongkao (中考), is the academic examination held annually in the mainland of the People’s Republic of China to distinguish junior high school graduates.
“Zhongkao: Senior High School Entrance Examination”
https://www.chinaeducation.info/standardised-tests/k12-tests/zhong-kao-examination.html
My sister-in-law grew up in China and went to school there. She she hated high school. First of all, the HS that she was expected to attend was not near her parents’ home. She was lucky that she could stay with her grandparents. Otherwise, her parents would have had to pay to board her at someplace nearby. even so, she had a long walk every day. The HS did not provide free bus service. The choice was to walk or pay a taxi. Not only that, but after dinner with her grandparents, she had to walk back to school for additional class time. The evening walks to and from school were often in the dark–she found this frightening. She also told me that she thought that everyone graduated regardless of whether or not the did the work and that there were some students who just didn’t care.
These same people send their own kids to private schools.