As a result of strong opposition, Republicans who control the New Hampshire legislature decided to postpone consideration of their “number one priority,” school vouchers. Under consideration was the most sweeping voucher bill in the nation. Thousands of people signed up to testify against the legislation.
A bill to create a school voucher-like system in New Hampshire is poised to be kicked to 2022, after Republicans on the House Education Committee said that it needed more time.
In a 20-0 vote Thursday, the committee recommended that the bill be retained, a move that if approved by the full House next week would put off any decision-making until next year’s session.
House Bill 20, named the “Richard ‘Dick’ Hinch education freedom account program” after the late House speaker, was a top priority for House Republicans this year. The proposal would allow parents to withdraw their children from public school and take the per-pupil state money with them.
Under the bill, that state funding, which amounts to $3,700 to $8,000 per student depending on the school, could then be used by the parents for a number of alternative expenses, such as private school tuition, college preparatory courses, school supplies, or transportation.
But a deluge of opposition to the bill from public school advocates and Democrats had slowed down its progress, resulting in contentious hearings and deliberative sessions that stretched through the day. Opponents argue the bill would drain resources from public schools and prompt cutbacks and increased property taxes; proponents say that it would provide new opportunities to families whose public schools aren’t working for their children.
Despite numerous tweaks and amendments, the bill didn’t have the votes to pass out of the GOP-controlled committee.
It is unclear if the committee would have had the votes to pass the bill even if the amendments were drafted correctly. Last week, NHJournal reported James Allard (R-Pittsfield) was likely to vote against the measure.
House insiders tell NHJournal that had a vote on the bill been held, the best-case scenario would have been a 10-10 tie vote in the committee, sending the bill to the floor with no recommendation. That would have set up a heated floor battle.
Attempts to sway Allard and other concerned Republicans included adding income-caps to the EFA eligibility formula. The cap would limit participation to those earning less than 375 percent of the federal poverty limit — roughly $99,000 for a family of four. That proposed income-cap would cut the number of eligible students in half.
Democrats on the Education Committee were pleased with the outcome.”HB 20 contains no protection for students against discrimination, little oversight, and is ripe for fraud…and would act as a tax-dollar giveaway to wealthy families. There has never been as much vocal opposition to a piece of legislation in NH,” Democrat leader on the committee Mel Myler said in a press release Thursday morning.
There’s still an Education Freedom Account bill in the Senate, giving supporters hope the legislation can still be amended and passed this year. In 2017-2018, the Senate passed SB193 – an education savings account program. That bill died in the House, after being heavily amended. The Senate then scrapped a separate bill and reintroduced SB193, the original version. Again, the proposal failed in the House.Democrats and teachers unions argued EFAs would increase property taxes, defund local district schools, and wreak havoc on New Hampshire’s education system. They celebrated Thursday’s win.
It has been well documented that students who leave public schools for voucher schools lose ground academically. Vouchers will not only hurt the state’s poorly funded public schools, it will hurt the children who use vouchers. It is a lose-lose for everyone except the religious schools that win public funds.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“. . . after Republicans on the House Education Committee said that it needed more time.”
More time?
So it could putrefy that much longer?
Why the drumbeat of conservative state legislatures pushing big voucher bills in Jan-Feb? Is this per the ALEC schedule or something?
It’s amazing that the voucher legislation is roaring across the red states. The GOP picked up seats in the 2020 election, and they are all marching to the same drummer. Probably DeVos, Koch, and ALEC.
Somebody is going to make a ton of money if and when this passes.
The new bills are much, much more expansive than “school vouchers”. They create private “scholarship committees” who develop a list of contractors, the contractors are then paid by the public for almost any service that can be deemed “educational” by the scholarship committee. The scholarship committees are regulated by a “meeting” twice a year by the same lawmakers who wrote the voucher laws- little or no regulation.
The only way the scholarship committee can lose the right to expend public funds is by “intentional misuse” of funds (fraud).
Fraud is a very high bar. One would have to show the misuse of funds was intentional and not just poor management of the funds.
They’ve set this up so it’s impossible to regulate. Deliberately.
Ed reformers are moving to a “public education system” that consists of handing each family a voucher with a value between 3200 and 7000 dollars and sending them off to purchase services.
We’ll end up with a fragmented, unregulated marketplace that loses all the benefits of scale and essentially purchases public services at “retail”- an individual rate. Consumers in this marker, students, will be paying higher rates for each component of their “education” so the “education” will have to be dramatically narrowed as compared, for example, to a comprehensive public high school.
You won’t be able to just “stay” in a public school system to avoid this radical restructuring because of course K-12 schools are systems and pulling out 20% of the students profoundly changes the system. Public schools will ALSO get more narrow, because they too will be affected by no longer having the economies of scale that allow or things like advanced courses and extracurriculars.
It’s set up to be a cheap labor market, too. The contractors won’t hire “employees”, they’ll hire independent contractors and pay them a “piece rate” for teaching or instruction, like the market for tutors operates now.
The designers of this had to find savings somewhere because they’re trying to replicate a service that costs 10k a year with 3200 a year- the savings will come from paying instructors less and not offering benefits. They’ll be replacing a teacher who makes 60k a year plus benefits with a contract employee who makes 15 to 22 an hour with no benefits, so about 30k to 40k, much less than that if the contractor has to purchase health insurance.
It’s funny because you can HEAR the next stage of this in the sales pitches ed reformers make to sell it to lawmakers.
They tell lawmakers the vouchers are cheaper than public schools. That’s part of how they justify putting the schemes in.
The next round will involve a political campaign telling the public they can cut public education costs in half by privatizing and fragmenting and giving everyone a low value voucher. Public schools will be portrayed as the “expensive and unaffordable” system- the system that should be abolished and replaced with a voucher.
The school systems that will be harmed most by this are not extremely low income systems. The schools that will be diminished and harmed the most are lower middle income schools. Schools like my public school, where most people make between 30 and 60k.
Ed reformers operate under this conceit that they are “leveling the playing the field” between high and low income, but that isn’t how it works. What they do is push down middle income schools and level them with low income schools. High income schools will stay the same- it’s lower middle schools that will be diminished.