Republican Sen. Ruth Ward argued  at a meeting for the Education Freedom Accounts oversight committee Tuesday that EFAs – and the outcomes for students who use them – are measured well enough already.

“The kids who are using EFA money to go somewhere else are in a school where the kids in their school are assessed on a regular basis,” said Ward, whose district includes Antrim, Bennington and Francestown.

Democrats disagreed, saying they want more oversight on what those roughly 5,300 students are learning. 

“No, they’re not,” Debra Altschiller, a Democratic senator from Stratham, argued back. She said some students attend schools that don’t have the same curriculum requirements as New Hampshire’s public ones. “Some kids go to independent schools, some go to religious schools, some homeschool.”

The issue with that, Democrats said, is that the oversight committee has no way to measure student learning or keep tabs on whether students are meeting state education requirements. Children who receive state-funded school choice vouchers are supposed to complete either federally recognized or state assessment tests, but committee members say they haven’t seen any aggregate data that shows what students who receive EFA funding are learning.

“I think that’s problematic,” said Concord Rep. Matthew Hicks. He, along with Altschiller, pushed for the five-member committee to obtain more information about student outcomes.

The state-funded vouchers, which began in 2021, give money to families who wish to pursue alternative education for their children like private school or homeschooling.

Democrats have tried to curtail EFAs, saying they take badly needed money away from traditional public schools, while Republicans have been keen to expand it, arguing it supports choice beyond a one-size-fits-all education model.

Since Republicans came out victorious on Election Day with control of the governor’s office and expanded majorities in both the state Senate and House of Representatives, EFAs appear likely to be extended through the upcoming legislative session.

Currently, any household with income at or below 350% of the poverty level is eligible for these state-funded grants. Many Republicans, including Gov.-elect Kelly Ayotte, have made a case to eliminate the income requirement entirely. Democrats want to restrict eligibility for the program further. 

Already, several pieces of legislation are in the works to adjust the income eligibility level. One, which Ward co-sponsors, would make the vouchers universally available.

Meanwhile, the program continues to grow – it started out with about 1,600 students and now has 5,321 statewide, though it only constitutes about 3% of New Hampshire students. Costs started out around $9 million to run it. This year, state spending totaled $27.7 million, according to a draft of the committee’s annual report.

A majority of students who receive EFA grants were never enrolled in public education in the first place, Altschiller said, despite the program’s original selling point as a way to empower families to opt out of public schools and explore alternative education.

What was supposed to be a meeting to finalize the committee’s annual review turned into a back-and-forth discussion on whether and how to monitor student progress and outcomes, as well as whether to compel an EFA advisory commission to operate as a public body. The committee will meet again to finalize other aspects of its report.

The parent and educator advisory committee, a seven-member group created in a state statute that’s charged with providing input on the school choice vouchers, has operated out of the public eye, according to Matt Southerton, the director of policy and compliance for the Children’s Scholarship Fund, which runs the EFA program.

That violates New Hampshire’s “Right to Know” law, which mandates government meetings to be announced and open to members of the public, Altschiller said. The commission has met without inviting the public, which Southerton said is because lawyers have advised them not to – the advisory commission handles some individual appeal cases that would need to be dealt with in closed session to maintain privacy.

Altschiller pushed for wording that would directly recommend in the committee’s report that the advisory commission comply with the Right to Know law.

“That’s not squishy language. I mean, that’s the law,” Altschiller said. “It has to comply, as every other advisory commission in the state of New Hampshire does. Why are we giving them a free pass?”

Ward pushed to delay that recommendation, saying that with this new information, they’d need more time to sort things through.

For now, committee members agreed to recommend that lawmakers “review and address the effectiveness and process” of the advisory commission.

Charlotte Matherly is the State House reporter for the Concord Monitor and Monadnock Ledger-Transcript in partnership with Report for America. Follow her on X at @charmatherly, or send her an email at cmatherly@cmonitor.com.