Dietsch: Senate amends school quality bill

New Hampshire's third-in-the-nation educational quality is at stake with this Thursday's vote on HB 242. Since 2016, the Department of Education has stopped evaluating school quality, required high schools to accept toward diploma any credits they decide to certify, and pressured districts to adopt a program that is being investigated for fraud in another state. The Department of Education is run by someone with a Master's in Divinity and no prior administrative experience. The Board of Education is chaired by the director of a conservative think tank, likewise, with no educational expertise. And Senator Ricciardi will soon vote to pass, and the governor will soon sign, a budget with a school voucher bill hidden in it. Without HB242, the vouchers may be used to pay whatever a parent can convince a pro-choice oversight firm to accept. The firm's board is to be comprised of the very people and companies receiving the vouchers! And the state is denied any right to intercede. (The voucher bill is currently tabled as SB130-FN, for those who want to read the details.)

HB242 tried to fix that. This bill would have returned academic rigor as a requirement for an adequate education, along with appropriate funding. It requires knowledge and skill in logic and the sciences. It defines "rigorous academic instruction and applied learning." And it makes the state, rather than local property taxpayers, responsible for more of the real cost of an adequate education.

Unfortunately, the NH Senate amended the bill to definitively hand over credit certification for alternative programs to the NH Board of Education. If they certify biology courses that teach creationism alongside evolution, or that teach science as a matter of opinion, Bedford High will have to accept them for credit.