Something historic is happening across New Hampshire, and it is time to step back, take a well-deserved victory lap, and celebrate a massive win for our families.
For decades, the default rule in education was simple: your address was your destiny. If you lived on one side of a town line, your child was assigned to one specific building. If you lived on the other side, they went to another. It did not matter if your child was thriving, struggling, bullied, or falling behind. Unless your family was wealthy enough to buy a house in a different zip code or pay thousands out of pocket, you were stuck.
We decided to change that outdated status quo, and the results are blowing everyone away.
Last school year, more than 10,500 New Hampshire students learned in their best chosen environments through our wildly successful Education Freedom Account program. This upcoming school year, that number will grow to 12,500, with nearly a thousand on the waitlist. That is more than 12,000 real kids who are no longer forced into a one-size-fits-all model, but are instead thriving in environments picked directly by the people who know them best: their parents. In fact, this makes the EFA program New Hampshire’s largest school district.
The core philosophy behind this success comes down to five simple words: we need to fund students, not systems.
For far too long, education funding focused on preserving administrative structures instead of focusing on the individual child. But education funding was always meant to educate children, not protect bureaucracies. The money belongs to the student. All the EFA program does is take the state adequacy dollars already set aside for a child’s education and allow parents to direct those funds to wherever their child learns best.
And despite what opponents try to tell you, this is not just about private schools. Every child learns differently, and EFAs give parents the flexibility to build a customized path. A family can use their EFA to homeschool with specialized curricula and hands-on materials, hire private tutors, pay for speech or occupational therapy, go to private school, or even pay for specific out-of-district public school classes and vocational programs.
Best of all, this program achieves these incredible results for just a tiny fraction of the state’s total education budget.
New Hampshire is incredibly generous when it comes to funding public education. In FY 2027, the state will invest more than $1 billion, $1,062,203,356 to be exact, to support 148,918 students in traditional public school districts. By comparison, this year the EFA program served 10,510 students for $51,619,550.
Think about what those numbers actually mean: 6.6% of New Hampshire’s students are educated through the EFA program, using just 4.8% of the state’s education dollars.
We are transforming over 10,000 young lives for less than five cents on the dollar compared to what the state sends to public districts. Yet, even when we save money, empower parents, and help children succeed, Democrats in Concord still find a way to complain.
More than 75% of EFA participants come from low-to-moderate-income families. This program is not for the wealthy, it gives working-class parents in neighborhoods the exact same educational choices that others have enjoyed for decades. This program levels the playing field, and ensures that every child has the chance to learn in their best chosen environment.
Critics promised this program would fail. They claimed parents would not know how to make the right decisions for their own kids. But thousands of Granite State families proved them completely wrong. They raised their hands, seized control of their children’s academic futures, and showed everyone that parents know what is best for their children.
New Hampshire has always been a state built on freedom, personal responsibility, and practical common sense. There is nothing more common-sense than funding students over systems and letting parents choose the right path for their child.
To every parent, student, and advocate who fought for this vision: spike the ball. To all the students who are learning thanks to this wildly successful and incredibly popular program: work hard, study hard, and know that Republican state representatives are rooting for you every step of the way.
We built something truly special in the Granite State. More than 12,500 kids are going to learn in their best, chosen environments, at home, in private settings, and in public classrooms. Our students’ futures have never looked brighter.