New Hampshire Republicans are determined to use their new majority in both houses to jam through a generous voucher bill that would offer public money for students to attend any school they wanted, including religious schools, private schools, and homeschooling.
Down party lines, the Senate approved an expansive school voucher bill Thursday that would allow parents to use state education aid for a wide range of alternative educational opportunities for their children. The bill was then immediately tabled on another 14-10 party line vote – a move that enables the body to consider bills with a fiscal impact during the budget process.
Opponents have called Senate Bill 130 the most expansive voucher bill in the country with little accountability and say it would increase local property taxes, not reduce them as supporters claim.
They said the bill is the latest attempt to privatize education at the expense of the children remaining in the public school system.“Public education should be treasured, we should treasure the public education that all of us went through,” said Sen. Lou D’Allesandro, D-Manchester. “All this legislation does is carve public education apart and that is not a good thing.”
Supporters said the bill seeks to help those students left behind and those who do not perform well in the public education setting.
They said the program would not only help students it would save state taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars.
Sen. Bob Giuda, R-Warren, said the current situation in public education is like rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic.“The opposition centers on the preservation of an institution even if it is at the expense of the children who attend,” Giuda said. “This bill attempts to care for the children whom our schools don’t work for.”
He said the top reason parents apply to the current business tax credit school scholarship fund are for bullying and discrimination.
The program allows parents who best know their children to find the best fit for their children’s needs, Giuda maintained.
Under the bill, a parent seeking to establish an account would receive between $4,500 to $8,500 per pupil to spend on tuition to any private, religious, or alternative school and on other related educational costs including home schooling, computers, books etc.
The student’s parents would receive the basic state adequacy grant of about $3,700 as well as additional money if the student qualified for free or reduced lunches, special education services, English as a Second Language instruction, or failed to reach English proficiency.
The average grant is estimated to be $4,600.
The program is open to the parents of a student in public —traditional and charter — private or religious school, home schooling, or other alternative educational programs.
New Hampshire has some excellent private schools, some are day schools, some are boarding schools.
The most elite is Phillips Exeter, a boarding school, where the tuition is $55,402. Not likely to accept a single voucher student.
Then there is Brewster Academy, tuition $64,950.
The Dublin School has day students who pay $38,450 and boarding students who pay $66,800.
But if a parent can raise the difference, they might sent their child to Portsmouth Christian Academy, for $15,945 or Concord Christian Academy for $11,200. However, these schools have very small student bodies and are unlikely to find space for a student who is failing in their public school. (Concord Christian Academy has 216 students, perhaps they can make room for one more.)
The state grants will instead underwrite the tuition of students already enrolled in religious schools or being home-schooled. And perhaps a few who are able to find low-quality religious schools with uncertified staff and meager facilities, typically inferior to the public school that the students left.
The Republican legislators don’t care about the experience of other states, where vouchers attract small numbers of students but lead to budget cuts in public schools across the state. If they care to make up for the loss of revenue to public schools, the Legislature will have to raise property taxes. There is no way that vouchers for students currently paying their own way or leave public schools for private schools will reduce the cost of schooling.
It is a shame that none of the legislators consider the research on vouchers. It is not promising. Independent evaluator Mark Dynarski has reviewed many voucher studies and conducted the official evaluation of the D.C. voucher program. He finds that students who use vouchers fall behind their peers in public schools. Voucher schools typically have high attrition rates because the students or their parents realize that the miracles promised never happened. Reviewers at the Center for American Progress described the harm that vouchers do to students. CAP also warned of the dangers that vouchers pose to the civil rights of students. And they warned of the racist origins of school choice and the segregating impact of vouchers.
The Republican legislators are ignorant of the research. They keep repeating Betsy DeVos’s weary cliches, none of which have proven true.
How sad for the children of New Hampshire! How sad for the future of the state.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This is so hideous on so many levels that it is breathtaking, literally. Thank goodness that NJ has not fallen down this black hole of blatant anti-public schoolism. The NH GOP really HATES their public schools.
So odd that NH GOP hates public schools because most are public school graduates and have children in public schools. They are following the DeVos-ALEC script.
I looked at the Center for American Progress links. None of these authors are among the recent appointees to the Department of Education. Thank goodness.
But the studies also have limited definitions of achievement and rely on dubious methods of estimating effect sizes as “days of learning” gained/lost.
This statistical fiction persists in too many analyses, many of these intended to support charter schools.
CAP is pro-charter, anti-voucher. They refuse to see that school choice paves the way for more school choice, and it divides up a stagnant funding pie.
The name of CAP’s Ben Miller (formerly of Eric Schmidt’s New America) has been mentioned for a Biden position. The AFT could take an interest in an article Miller posted in Forbes that called for a diminished role for faculty in college accreditation. Miller’s article appeared at the about the same time that Marco Rubio proposed similar legislation.
If this really takes hold, and over time changes the funding in NH public schools, it may cause some families to move across borders and access healthier public schools. If so, the ME and MA public schools systems will be impacted as well.
How sad for the country we live in as the “reform schoolers” viciously, ruthlessly and fraudulently destroy OUR community-based public schools one district and one state at a time.
Homeschool tuition is through the roof! Good thing your public funds, with no sales tax and next to no income tax, could soon be chipping in for all that homeschool tuition, Republican Senators! You looked at fiscal conservatism and said, “Nah. Let’s take peyote and go with fiscal surrealism instead.” Nice.
“Fiscal surrealism” is a good term to describe conservatives that are under the influence of libertarian ideals.You might enjoy this post from an NYU professor of marketing, Scott Galloway. He is a good writer, and he supports his claims with evidence. He talks about how our twisted concept of individualism made us unable to contain Covid. Our institutions are so weak they cannot serve the public, and that is the goal. https://www.profgalloway.com/institutions/
Seriously does anyone think this is about education and not power for an ultra right agenda. Also lets also stop referring to Neo liberal billionaires as progressives they are not.
Ah Bill and Malinda the vaccine heroes , who talked Oxford into not open sourcing its vaccine. Which would have allowed billions of doses to be made generically.
Look at what else was passed in New Hampshire
https://www.concordmonitor.com/New-Hampshire-Senate-passes-right-to-work-bill-advancing-Republican-priority-38825698
Both Bills
Ed reformers are really reaching their goals with the hundreds of privatization bills they’re all enthusiastically backing.
Remember how this “movement’ denied for twenty years that they were about privatization? How they insisted they would “work to improve public education”?
They flim-flammed the public. They haven’t done anything to improve public education except privatize huge swathes of it. They have accomplished absolutely nothing that benefits any public school student. anywhere. Huge windfall for charter and private schools, though.
If you’re hiring or electing these people just know that you’re hiring people who do nothing other than expand charters and vouchers. They perform no other work.
If you want more charters and vouchers hire ed reformers in government and as consultants. If you want stronger public schools don’t hire them.
In the article it says that the ed reform lobby and the ed reformers in the state legislature tabled the ONE part of the bill that had anything to do with public schools- it was an “equitable funding measure”
Once again, the ed reform movement fails to do anything positive or worthwhile for students in public schools because they’re consumed with advancing their Right wing ideological priorities.
This isn’t about students. It’s about advancing ed reform’s Right wing economic and governance policies. These people never accomplish anything that is even relevant to public schools or public school students, let alone “improving” anything.
They’re all lockstep on vouchers now too- no dissenters, as usual. The echo chamber marches along like lemmings, as usual.
Public schools are about to get an infusion of federal funding and the ed reform lobbyists and consultants and think tanks will be lining up to get a piece of the funding pie.
Public schools shouldn’t hire people who lobby against public schools. Charter and private schools don’t hire people who lobby against their schools- public schools shouldn’t do it either.
We already know this “movement” returns no value to students in public schools- please don’t hire the same group of lobbyists and consultants and think tanks who got us here. Widen the net. Hire from OUTSIDE the ed reform echo chamber. If you hire from INSIDE all you’ll get is the same Right wing economic theory and privatization they’ve pushed for the last 20 years. Public school students will get nothing.
U.S. Department of Education
Mar 18
ED
SecCardona’s goal is to open schools for in-person learning as quickly and safely as possible. He joined former ED secretaries Arne Duncan and John B. King at #CAAamplify to discuss preventing a lost generation of students due to the pandemic.
I hope Cardona doesn’t rely on Arne Duncan and John B King for advice on public schools. The Obama Administration didn’t support public schools or public school students. Public school students shouldn’t get stuck paying consultants who are ideologically opposed to public schools and contribute nothing of positive or practical value to public schools.
No charter chain would hire a consultant who lobbied against charters. Why are we hiring ed reformers who lobby against our students and schools? Can’t we find people who support public schools and hire them instead of funding more and more ed reform echo chamber members?
Why are we hiring the charter/voucher cheerleading section to set policies for public schools? They don’t support our schools- they do a lousy job with them.
The Cardona Department of Ed is filled with appointees he did not make but were active in promoting the Obama/Arne Duncan/ John King “reforms,” including Race to the Top nonsense.
Cardona must be awed to be in a room with Arne and John, even though they both failed
Here’s another ed reformer with advice for public schools after the pandemic:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/what-to-teach-after-pandemic/2021/03/19/5de5e77c-8752-11eb-bfdf-4d36dab83a6d_story.html
Why are we taking advice from a “movement” that doesn’t support our schools or students?
This “movement” hasn’t lifted a finger on behalf of public school students in the last twenty years- their only “contribution” to our schools and students is standardized test mandates.
So why are public schools still hiring them and taking direction from them?
Published 8-14-2018, available at Amazon, “Get Out Now: Why You Should Pull Your Child Out of Public School Before It’s Too Late”, written by the wife of the founder of the Beckett Fund (religious “liberty” law cases).
Mary Rice Hasson and her husband Keith (Seamus) Hasson, parents of 7 children, received the St. Paul II Award for New Evangelization.
Mary Hasson is a subject of the Human Rights Campaign’s posted article, “Senate Judiciary Republicans will use ‘women’ to justify attacks on TransPeople, but a brief review of GOP’s radical opposition to women’s equality reveals their real motivation and hypocrisy.” (3-17-2021)
Beckett Fund’s lawyers were involved in the Hobby Lobby and Little Sisters of the Poor
cases.
The American Conservative, 2-9-2021, interviewed Mary Hasson in an article that provided an anecdote about Planned Parenthood ‘s alleged response to trans gender youth clients. Hasson referenced the Person and Identity Project as a reference for those who share her view.
Keith Hasson attended Catholic University of America, Ave Maria University and Notre Dame. Mary Hasson graduated from Notre Dame. Her bio states that she is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in D.C. In her role at the Catholic Women’s Forum, she “serves the Church by amplifying the voice of Catholic women…”
There is reason to believe the campaign for conservative public policy is being carried out at the state as well as federal level. Hasson was quoted in an article written about New Hampshire and school choice.