New Hampshire has become a new battleground over church-state issues. Conservatives want to divert public funding to support of religious schools.
Defenders of public education are taking action. A group called Advancing New Hampshire Public Education is a valuable resource of information and research about this stealth attack on public education. Some of those behind this project want nothing less than to dismantle public education.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I don’t think this is news, unfortunately.
In my school district (in WI) there has been a charter school for home-schoolers for at least 8 years that has parents choosing and teaching the curriculum for their own kids. So public funds are used to support these very sectarian, fundamentalist instructional programs taught by parents who are, in almost all cases completely untrained as educators, most of whom are not college grads and some of whom are not even HS grads.
Everyone on the board of trustees goes to the same church, many of the classes are held in that church and the history and philosophy classes are taught by a pastor from that church. I talked to a representative from my state Dept. of Public Instruction about it and he said it is totally up to the district superintendent to monitor what goes on in the district’s charters. Wanna guess where the superintendent goes to church?
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The NEO is about as far out there as you can get. They are quite up front about wanting to dismantle public education. I don’t quite know how to fit them into this whole debate.
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Well, you know me, Al. I think public education is based on a religion sorta, so we have two religions competing for state funding. I don’t think the religion of the state should have preference over other religions. Best, of course, would be for all education to be private, with no taxes collected to support education at all. That almost sounds reactionary, even to me. But really, why should the state support education unless it expects education to support the state?
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Bill Duncan is working very hard to swing votes to repeal this bill, which was passed by LAST year’s ultra-right wing legislature. I hope people who read his op ed pieces and letters to the editor heed his advice.
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Those who don’t deserve the good name, “Conservative”, are destroying the very concept of difference between public and private institutions when they promote or avail themselves of charters, voucers, or charter home schools. Government schools need not be concerned that all of the above will privatize public schools. Quite the opposite is the inevitable, some say planned, objective for providing tax money for private schools. Parents and institutions, especially religious instituions, who avail themselves of government $$ are in fact, committing suicide by ignoring the inevitable that what government funds, government ultimately controls and regulates, and rightly so. Otherwise, the whole concept of accountability to tax payers is out the window.
Lining up at the government money trough will public-ize private schools, not privatize public schools. Self idenified conservatives, especially those professing religious principles, need to take another look as they climb into bed with oracles for charters, vouchers, opportunity scholarships, i.e., Obama Administration, Arne Duncan, Republican Party, Libertarian Party, Gates, Broad, and Walton Foundations, and no less than the Council on Foreign Relations per CFR Report last year. Something is really wrong with the whole picture.
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