James Thibault: Forcing schools to compete will ultimately benefit students

To The Daily Sun,

Our country is built upon a system of capitalism, and capitalism is built upon competition in a free and open market, so why aren’t our schools? Right now, if a student is stuck in a bad school and can’t afford to move to a private school, they’re stuck in that terrible school, like in Franklin, which has one of the worst schools in the state. Only 36% of Franklin High School students are proficient in English, and only 14% are proficient in math, with the state goals for those subjects being 60.45% and 49.14%, respectively, according to the latest available standardized test data from the NH Department of Education for the 2018-19 school year. That is ludicrously low, but because about 57% of Franklin students are economically disadvantaged, a majority of their families cannot afford to move to a new district.

School districts have educational monopolies over their towns or regions, and because they have no competition, they have no incentive to improve, so they just stay the same, or sometimes get worse, because they can without losing the student body. Sure, some parents might move, but not everyone has that luxury. This is where the concept of school choice comes into play. If parents have the right to request that the tax dollars going for their child to go to a particular school be reallocated to a different, better school, not only does the child get a proper education, but the schools are forced to compete academically in order to maintain a student body. This is a win-win because the students that may move schools get a good education, and the ones who stay will as well because the school is forced to improve.

New Hampshire already has two school choice programs implemented; the Town Tuitioning Program (found in NH Revised Statute 193:3-4) and the Education Tax Credit Program (NH Revised Statute 77-G:1-10). But the scope of these programs is very small, with the former only allowing the reallocation of school tax funds for families that live in towns without district schools, and the latter is just a scholarship program, so it can only help a small amount of students. The NHTTP would be a great framework to go from to create a new, more widespread school choice program available to all NH K-12 students.

States that have already implemented such laws have seen major improvements in the quality of education, yet it still isn’t a widespread idea. This is because the teacher unions have been fighting against the idea so that they can get more funding; the exact same reason they have a vendetta against charter schools; yet another option parents should have for their kids, but usually don’t because there aren’t many of them. The kids who happen to be in towns with poor schools shouldn’t be forced to have their futures ruined just because they didn’t get a proper education.

James Thibault

Tilton