New Hampshire has a Republican Governor, Chris Sununu, who appointed the state Commissioner of Education, Frank Edelblut. The commissioner home-schooled his children. He hates public schools and would like to defund them. If you thought Betsy DeVos was bad because of her zeal for privatization, Edelblut is far worse.
At the first public hearing about Edelblut’s radical voucher plan, public turnout was huge and onerwhelmingly opposed to the destruction of public schools.
Members of the public registered resounding opposition to HB 20, a bill that would create a universal school voucher program, at a public hearing on Tuesday afternoon. Due to the unprecedented and historic turnout, with 85% of it in opposition, the House Education Committee recessed and will continue the hearing on Thursday, Feb. 11, to hear from all 131 people who had signed up to speak at the virtual hearing, and they are accepting additional registrations to testify for those who have not signed up already.
About 30 people — including parents, educators, lawmakers, experts, and one student — testified over the course of four hours, and another 3,800 signed on to indicate their position on the bill: 600 in favor, 3,198 in opposition and five testifying as neutral, or not taking a position.
“That’s more than we’ve experienced in bills in the time I’ve been in the house,” Committee Chair Rick Ladd (R-Haverhill) said of the turnout. He has set aside the entire day on Thursday, February 11, for testimony, saying, “that’s the only way we’re going to get through this.” They’re expecting another record turnout on that day, and have said that they’re already receiving a flood of emails on the bill...
“This bill provides absolutely no oversight or accountability,” said Deborah Nelson, a Hanover resident and parent of grown children. “This bill almost certainly dismantles public education in New Hampshire, and I fear it opens us to ridicule. … it should be called the Dismantling Public Education Bill.”
Vouchers won’t help kids who need it the most, said Monica Henson, interim superintendent for SAU 44 (Northwood, Nottingham, and Strafford). “The truth is that these accounts are subsidies to affluent families.”
Having regained control of the legislature, Republicans have made vouchers their top priority.
CONCORD — Proponents and opponents of “education freedom accounts” Tuesday debated if the bill would benefit students or special interests, and if it would provide greater educational opportunities or be an invitation to commit fraud.
A multi-hour public hearing before the House Education Committee drew testimony from as far away as Arizona and as close as Manchester as both sides turned out in force to make their case for or against House Bill 20, a priority of the Republican legislative leadership.
3,198 people signed in to oppose HB 20 while 600 people signed in support and five signed in as neutral. Due to high turn out, the hearing was recessed and will resume next Thursday, February 11.
The bill has the backing of Department of Education Commissioner Frank Edelblut, and Gov. Chris Sununu supports education choice or vouchers.
Many parents of students with special needs or disabilities supported the bill saying it would provide the flexibility to best suit their children’s needs, but educators and others said it would seriously jeopardize public education and drive up already high property taxes in property poor school districts with high poverty levels.
No one mentioned that students who enroll in private voucher schools abandon their federal IDEA rights and protection.
Others said the bill would allow the use of taxpayer dollars without any accountability or state oversight, taking that money away from public education, which needs more state money not less.“House Bill 20 undermines the public school system,” said Rep. Mary Heath, D-Manchester, who is also a former deputy education commissioner. “I am deeply troubled by the fact it takes money from our public schools when we already have a source of revenue for children through the scholarship program.”
That program is funded by business tax credits for companies and interest and dividends tax credits for individuals and is capped at $1 million a year.Heath said the voucher proposal would place an unconscionable burden on taxpayers.
Edelblut recently did a financial analysis indicating the cost to state and local property taxpayers would be minimal and would give school districts a three-year window to adjust their budgets to the loss of state aid when students leave public schools.
In his analysis, Edelblut claims it will save state taxpayers about $360 million to $390 million over 10 years by lowering public school costs.
He touted the program in light of the pandemic and its effect on children, but committee member Rep. David Luneau, D-Hopkinton, who chaired the Education Funding Commission which met last year, questioned what the program would do to help students who underperform in property poor districts, which the commission found to be the biggest driver of educational inequity.
Edelblut claimed the bill would close the performance gap between students from higher income families and low-income families, but Luneau disagreed.
Voucher studies have never reported a single instance where vouchers closed the gap between poor and rich kids. Typically, the students who leave public school to take vouchers lose ground compared to their peers in public schools.
Edelblut is either ignorant or lying.
Good post, Diane. This is my neck of thew woods and I’ve been following the issue for almost 30 years. I write a newspaper column there and will address this issue next week.
Do not underestimate the extent to which this, like most voucher schemes, is about diverting public funds to religious schools.
Yes, Steve. It is a direct subsidy to religious schools, most especially the low-quality ones with low tuition.
Republicans want to create fundamentalist madrasas because they are concerned: young people overwhelmingly oppose them on the issues, and half of them approve of the dreaded “Socialism.”
https://news.gallup.com/poll/268766/socialism-popular-capitalism-among-young-adults.aspx
I doubt that anyone in the poll was ever asked to consider an accurate definition of socialism. Is it socialism for government to build highways? How about mass vaccination in the way we wiped out polio? How about public schools? Regulate the economy through a central bank? Medical Care?
What about collective ownership of industry by government?
I do not trust polls unless they are simple. Questions like whom did you just vote for are OK. Questions like do you believe in… are worth less than a standardized test score. Gallup Schmallup.
Here, the questions and responses: Just off the top of your head, would you say you have a positive or negative image of each of the following?
But it is significant that even without any definition of “socialism,” young people gave the responses they did.
Here’s the Gallop comment on these results:
Socialism as a concept is open to many interpretations. Gallup was describing socialism in questions asked in the 1940s in terms of government ownership of businesses — something that Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez and most other left-leaning Democratic candidates have not advocated. Instead, socialism today seems to embody sets of programs by which the government helps regulate and in some instances run and pay for social programs focused on basic population needs in health, education, housing and employment.
Socialism clearly sounds better as a concept to young people than to those who are older, as it has over the past eight years. Evidence for this is found in the strong support younger voters gave Bernie Sanders during his 2016 presidential campaign (despite his septuagenarian status) and in the candidacy of Ocasio-Cortez (who is herself 28 years old). Whether the appeal of socialism to young adults is a standard function of idealism at that age that dissipates as one grows older, or will turn out to be a more permanent part of the political beliefs held by the cohort of millennials who have come of age over the past decade, remains to be seen.
Sanders and AOL are not advocating for a government takeover of industries and “the means of production.”
They are arguing for social welfare programs to house the homeless, feed the hungry, and provide medical insurance for all.
Those programs are found in most democratic countries in Europe.
They echo FDR’s New Deal.
a statement both depressing and optimistic 🙂
It strikes me that a mushy definition of an ism is a politically convenient construct. If you are a republican trying to scare a voter, you want to be able to label an opponent as socialist without a potential voter asking the obvious question: What makes them a socialist?
We may live to see the day when socialist will be a positive label. It has not been so in any recent history. When it does become a positive, it will probably have nothing to do with government ownership of the means of production. It will rather be a label put on some mutually beneficial governmental activity.
What’s in a word? A socialist by any other name would smell as sweet.
government ownership of the means of production
or
worker ownership of the means of production
Big Difference
“government ownership of the means of production
or worker ownership of the means of production”
“Big Difference”
Depends on the system of government as to what either one of those alternatives looks like, doesn’t it?
yup
Government owned and operated: much of our nation’s highway system, our military, our public schools, our fire and police departments
Worker ownership: Mom and Pop shops that employ family, companies with Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs)
Oh. May. Soooo scary!
Things are changing dramatically in other parts of the country, Roy. Have a look at this. It’s breathtaking. You can skip the introductions and start at 9:20.
Don’t forget to stress that students give up their rights under IDEA when they leave public schools. As a former special education teacher, I can’t imagine going back to a time where students with special needs were denied a quality education.
New Hampshire should respect the will of the voters without some top down scheme to subvert the will of the people. Research has shown that these vouchers harm public schools while they provide worse education for students.
I am struck by the tendency of bureaucratic language to always couch the desired policy in terms of a positive outcome for some group when the actuality is always for a few individuals that have some relationship with that group.
Political leaders want to give money to their supporters, but want to look like a paragon of virtue to the voting public. So politicians regularly call giving money to private schools by phrases like “bridging the performance gap,” which sells much better than “giving money to our supporters surgically so our opponents do not receive any of it.”
Republicans have long counted on the ignorance of the population that they purport to be serving when they are actually serving them up.
But me no buts, Addled butt.
You want public education cuts.
“Edelblut is either ignorant or lying.”
Who not both?
Being ignorant and lying all the time, even when asleep, is the flimsy foundation of the house of cards that is Trumpism and/or the Conspiracy Theory Loving Fascist Alt-Right.
Correction:
“Edelblut is ignorant and lying.”
Correction accepted.