NH: Vouchers Subsidizing Religious Education
Tiny New Hampshire has been the poster child for just about every bad education reform idea to come down the pike.
An unqualified politician as head of education? Check. Far-out libertarian attempts to gut schools? Check. Unsupervised charter schools wasting money? Check. Shafting students with special needs? Check. Shady shenanigans to install vouchers by circumventing the actual taxpayers? Double check. That voucher program turning out to be wildly more expensive than originally promised? Triple check.
And now Jeremy Margolis at the Concord Monitor reports that the state's Education Freedom Account school vouchers are servings as a huge windfall for religious schools-- specifically a small set of Christian schools.
Looking at the figures from 2022-23, researchers at the Monitor found that a quarter of the tuition dollars paid out went to just five schools-- all of them religious schools. The top ten recipient schools are all religious schools (either Christian academies or parochial schools).
In fact, 90% of the taxpayer dollars distributed by the voucher program went to religious schools.
The Monitor reports that the program currently spends $27.7 million on 5,321 students (about 3% of all NH students). They list 115 schools collect taxpayer dollars via voucher. 25 of those schools receive at least $100K.
Those top 5 schools are Laconia Christian Academy ($372,496.62), Concord Christian Academy ($370,783.22), Portsmouth Christian Academy ($331,605.83), Mount Royal Academy ($322,463.29) and Trinity Christian School--Concord ($265,567.39). Bringing up the rear are Capital Christian School ($1000), Salem Kid Start Kindergarten ($960) and Holderness, a prep school, with a measly $70.
Are these schools open to all students? Well, Concord Christian Academy student handbook notes that going against the sex God gave you, or premarital sex, or public displays of affection, or engaging in LGBTQ-- this "sexual immorality" could result in suspension or expulsion. Mount Royal devotes the month of October to the virtue of "docility." Trinity elementary admissions include the requirement that parents "are willing to support our statement of faith and who share the mission and purpose of the school" and high schoolers require a pastoral recommendation.
So as is often the case, New Hampshire taxpayers are supporting not just religion, but religious discrimination.
One striking bit of info-- New Hampshire taxpayers are footing the bill for 29 students to attend school in another state ($310K total). But many of the schools receiving vouchers have grown with the new income.
And so New Hampshire demonstrates as clearly as any state that the major purpose and function of modern school vouchers is to get taxpayers to subsidize religious schools.
This is infuriating. Vouchers aren’t just screwing over public education—they’re gutting it. Public schools, already gasping for air with teacher shortages and underfunding, now have to compete for talent in a rigged game where taxpayer dollars are being funneled into private religious institutions. And let’s not sugarcoat it: these schools aren’t open to everyone. They’ve got discriminatory policies baked into their handbooks, funded by public money, while public schools are left to do the heavy lifting of educating *every* kid who walks through their doors.
This isn’t about choice—it’s about dismantling public education under the guise of “freedom” and letting taxpayers foot the damn bill for exclusionary practices. Public schools are hemorrhaging resources and losing their ability to hire and retain quality teachers because the system is being stacked against them. If we keep this up, the future of equitable, accessible education is toast, and it’ll be on all of us for letting this happen.
Rant over.
Great read.