According to a report released by the New Hampshire Department of Education (NHED) last month, student enrollment in the school voucher program grew 25% since last school year. The state will now fund 5,321 school vouchers in the 2024-2025 school year, for a total estimated cost of $27.7 million for the year.
School vouchers are taxpayer-funded accounts that families can use to pay for private, religious, and homeschooling expenses. New Hampshire was one of the first states to adopt a voucher law, and special interest groups have pushed similar laws across the country.
By the end of this school year, school vouchers will have diverted at least $73 million in state funding away from public schools in the four years of their existence. Since the vouchers are funded from the state’s Education Trust Fund, which was created to fund public schools, every dollar spent on vouchers is a dollar that will be unavailable to fund public schools.
Additionally, the NHED is under scrutiny for refusing to provide key program data to state auditors, citing a lack of authority. The NHED contracted out the administration and management of the voucher program to the Children’s Scholarship Fund in 2021. As part of the contract, the NHED limited the data that the Fund is required to share with the agency and the state regarding key performance metrics, spending metrics, and other critical data.
The NHED performed a compliance review of 50 total voucher accounts over two years, and found that 25% of them were missing information, including unverified residency and inaccurate income reporting. The Fund will be required to pay the state back for several of the accounts that were awarded in error.
More higher-income students participating
In the 2024-2025 school year, approximately 37% of the students receiving a voucher are classified as being from low-income families. This is a significant drop from the beginning of the program, when 54% of participating students were from low-income families.
It also suggests that the voucher program, which was marketed as a way to help low-income families pay for private schooling, is subsidizing wealthier families.
Under current law, students can receive a school voucher if their family income is below a certain income threshold — approximately the median household income for New Hampshire — in their application year. The income threshold does not apply for subsequent years, meaning that if the family meets the income threshold in a student’s kindergarten year, the student can receive a school voucher for 13 years until high school graduation, regardless of the family’s income level.
Historically, more than 75% of the students receiving a school voucher were already enrolled in private schools or were homeschooled, meaning that most of the state funds are merely subsidizing families’ decisions to send their children to those programs.
Increase in special education
The proportion of students who qualify for special education services increased slightly between 2023 and 2024, from 6% to 7%. Students do not receive services as part of their individualized plan; however, they do receive more state funding.
In order to qualify for the additional money, families must provide a current IEP or verification from a licensed medical provider.
Calculating the school voucher amount
All qualifying students receive a “base” amount of $4,182. Students can receive additional funding if:
- Low-income: If a student is classified as “low income,” as measured by eligibility for the federal Free and Reduced Price Lunch (FRPL) program, they receive an additional $2,346.
- Special Education: If a student is classified as eligible for special education services, they receive an additional $2,142.
- English Language Learner (ELL): If a student is classified as eligible to receive English Language Learner services, they receive an additional $816.
This year, about 37% of students are classified as “low-income,” and about 6% of students qualify for special education services. About 0.1% of students qualify for ELL services.
Because fewer students qualify as low-income than the prior year, the average amount of the school voucher went down slightly, from $5,255 in 2023 to $5,204 in 2024.
About school vouchers in New Hampshire
New Hampshire’s school vouchers are personal accounts that can be used to pay for certain education-related expenses, including private school tuition, homeschooling expenses, tutoring, books and materials, and transportation. Eligible families receive the base amount of state funding per student plus any additional aid for which their student qualifies (eligibility for school meals, special education services, English Language Learner program, or the third-grade reading aid). When participating in the program, families agree not to enroll their child full-time into their resident district school or public charter school; however, families may enroll their children into public and charter schools part-time, depending on the policies of the school.
Currently, students are eligible for participation in the program if they are eligible to enroll in a New Hampshire public school and meet the income eligibility guidelines at the time of application. Students only need to qualify in the first year of the program and do not need to meet the income eligibility guidelines in subsequent years.
Independent studies have found that outcomes for participation in similar school voucher programs in other states are, at best, mixed. However, more recent studies have suggested that these programs have had significant negative effects on student outcomes for the students who participate in them and have diverted funding from public schools. Researchers have stated that school vouchers “cause catastrophic academic harm” and have had a worse impact on student outcomes than any other policy or event in public school history, including the global pandemic.
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