By GARRY RAYNO, Distant Dome
America’s traditional institutions, the foundation for the greatest political experiment in history, are under attack from the social safety net to food regulations, and from the court system to environmental protection.
The drive to create doubt and even rejection of these long-standing pillars of our society is to eventually destroy the underpinnings of government to create a new order where the rich will flourish even more with all the advantages, while everyone else will fight over the crumbs of the plutocrats.
The current large target in this fight to turn democracy into an oligarchy is the public school system.
The first blow to the public school system in New Hampshire was the push for charter schools, which are still public schools but without the regulations and requirements traditional public schools must meet.
Charter schools have had to ask the state for more and more per pupil money to stay afloat, about double the per pupil adequacy grant amount for traditional schools.
The charter schools that found a niche have been successful, but many have fallen by the wayside over the years even with federal grant money approved during the Trump administration for start-ups and expansions.
And until recently, they have not strayed into the Christian Nationalist area that has been widely promoted by Hinsdale College in Michigan and adopted by some states.
Then came the voucher push sold as a way of helping low-income families find a more suitable education environment for students who do not do well in the public-school setting.
After several unsuccessful attempts, proponents, who include Education Commissioner Frank Edelblut and State School Board Chairman Drew Cline, lawmakers successfully approved the Education Freedom Account program as a rider to the 2022-2023 biennial operating budget after it failed to pass the House and was retained.
Since then attempts to expand the eligibility of parents by raising the income cap passed two sessions ago, but failed in the recently completed session.
Instead of helping the low-income families with educational options the program has largely been a subsidy program for parents with children who were already in religious or private schools and homeschooling.
Only about 10 to 15 percent of the increasingly expensive draw on the Education Trust Fund have left public schools for alternative education programs.
What proponents ultimately seek is a “universal program” which would be open to any New Hampshire student regardless of his or her parents’ income, although a similar program has nearly bankrupted Arizona and put public education at risk in Ohio, where it is being litigated.
New Hampshire is not alone in the push to do away with public education as we know it.
A letter from many national figures seeking to privatize education like Betsy DeVos and Edward Bennett; the CEOs of organizations pushing for privatization; former federal and state governors; sitting governors from almost all southern states; two state education commissioners including Edelblut, and state elected officials most from Republican controlled states was sent to Republican Congressional leaders saying, “The task before the next Congress is clear and unambiguous: bring education freedom to millions of students across America who desperately need it!”
The letter also touts the GOP’s platform approved at its recent national convention “to cultivate great K-12 schools, ensure safe learning environments free from political meddling, and restore Parental Rights. We commit to an Education System that empowers students, supports families, and promotes American Values… Republicans believe families should be empowered to choose the best Education for their children. We support Universal School Choice in every State in America.”
The political meddling the platform contends is that “Lessons about American values have been displaced by political or cultural trends of the day,” without noting several states have recently required the Bible be taught in public schools.
Children whose faith is Muslim or Buddhism or are Native Americans may believe those state’s Biblical requirement is political meddling.
What the proponents of universal vouchers seek is to have Congress do what some state legislators, including Texas, have failed to do and that is approve universal private or religious education on the public’s dime.
This push to do away with public education has attempted to tarnish what has always been the great equalizer, by saying schools are failing, teachers are indoctrinating students and withholding information from parents.
You would think public schools are a far-reaching conspiracy to destroy family values, while ignoring the fact that 90 percent of students are in public schools and many are very successful.
New Hampshire public schools ranked sixth in the nation this year, down from the number two spots five years ago.
The number ranking was before the push to privatize education became successful with the help of Gov. Chris Sununu who put both Edelblut and Cline where they are, in charge of the public education system in the state, although both seek to diminish its reach.
Edelblut focuses on the learning disparity between well to do school districts and the poorly performing ones that lack the property values to support schools in the same way property wealthy communities do as the reason to seek alternatives.
Yet when the state education funding system is raised as a possible culprit for the disparity, Edelblut is quick to dismiss that as a different issue when it isn’t.
One of the major concerns about the Education Freedom Program, the Business Tax Scholarship Program and charter schools, is the lack of accountability.
How do taxpayers know their money is being used wisely if there is no way to determine those students are receiving “an adequate education,” as the state Supreme Court ruled?
Attempts to bring more accountability have failed in the Republican controlled legislature.
At the same time, Cline this week in his column “The Broadside” touts the state as doing pretty well for educational entrepreneurs according to a recent ranking.
“There’s more that can be done to make New Hampshire a freer state for education entrepreneurs looking to start small, decentralized, and unconventional educational environments, but so far the state is doing better than most,” according to Cline.
He cites the Education Entrepreneur Freedom Index released by the yes.every kid.foundation for the ranking.
It shouldn’t be surprising that according to Wikipedia, “Yes. every kid. (YEK) is a 501(c)(4) advocacy group that is a part of the Koch Network. Launched by the Charles Koch-funded Stand Together in June of 2019, YEK supports the privatization of education. The organization is a proponent of the school choice movement, advocating for subsidized private school vouchers and charter schools.”
The Koch Foundation has long advocated for ending public education and installing a private education system where you pay for what you get. Not exactly the great equalizer.
Cline argues New Hampshire should be looking to encourage more private education.
“States with more relaxed homeschool and nonpublic school laws/regulations score higher, as entrepreneurs have an easier time getting started in these states,” he notes.
Cline and the Koch organization suggest relaxing state requirements for non-public schools and also zoning regulations to make it easier to locate educational facilities including child care businesses by allowing education in all zoning districts in a municipality.
“Though New Hampshire lost a point for rules requiring state approval for non-public schools, the state could become much more friendly to education entrepreneurs, the study’s authors conclude, primarily by relaxing some child-care rules and local regulations,” Cline writes.
Supporters of Education Freedom Accounts are fond of saying the best accountability is if parents are satisfied with the education their children receive, which you would hope is the case or why would you leave your child in an unsatisfactory educational environment?
But that is not what the state Supreme Court said in its Claremont I decision. It said the state has a responsibility to provide an adequate education to every student in the state and to pay for it. Parents have choices but the state defines an adequate education.
The state legislature has yet to live up to its responsibility and allowing a bypass through religious and private schools and homeschooling is not constitutionally fair to those children.
If you believe public education is failing in this state, you should begin looking at the top: the governor, the commissioner and to the state board of education chair.
Their priority is not public education.
Garry Rayno may be reached at garry.rayno@yahoo.com.
Distant Dome by veteran journalist Garry Rayno explores a broader perspective on the State House and state happenings for InDepthNH.org. Over his three-decade career, Rayno covered the NH State House for the New Hampshire Union Leader and Foster’s Daily Democrat. During his career, his coverage spanned the news spectrum, from local planning, school and select boards, to national issues such as electric industry deregulation and Presidential primaries. Rayno lives with his wife Carolyn in New London.
