YOUR COMMENTS

We need to be a competitive education state--and all over the country states have a combination of district schools and choice, charter, and magnet schools.

By many estimates about 30% of students in district schools...just are not thriving and need something different. Why not redistribute the available resources to have a few choice schools in each region and try harder to make sure every student thrives.

It's not in the state's interest to be stuck with a 20th century vision of public education. Let the NEA open a few charter schools--they are in other parts of the country now.

Looks like the committee to resolve this was stacked on the Senate side with people committed to these schools dying off. Very disappointing.
- Susan, Concord, NH

I believe that vouchers for charter school students are a more important alternative for lower middle income students who can’t afford to live anywhere but in failing school districts, more so than a ‘freebie’ for higher income students who take advantage of vouchers. These folks pay taxes too so the ‘freebie’ isn’t free and the dollar amount of vouchers could be adjusted based on income or property taxes. If federal funding dries up every time the economy hits a bump then it is more of a hindrance than a help because it creates programs that state and local government have to fund or axe whenever their funding gets tight. So lets abolish the Federal Department of Education.

It is a fact that public schools are pushing homosexuality and do have worse student behavioral problems, including adolescent high risk sex, than most private and charter schools. So TB, if you want to denigrate Judy for wanting to protect her kids from as much of that as possible, well, I think your making a mistake on several levels. School environments should promote moral character development but our public school environments to the opposite.

On a side note, Kyle and Robert; The level of polarized rhetoric and personal attacks, both from you and our national politicians, disgusts me. Government for and by the people requires respectful political discourse, are those 2 things something you are interested in having? If its true we get the government we deserve, then your little spat here helps explains why our government is increasingly dysfunctional.

Jim
Manchester, NH
- Jim, Manchester, NH

Thank goodness there is someone like Kyle to tell everyone what they think and feel, why they think it and why if they disagree with Kylism they are unpatriotic, unhelpful and stooges of whichever enemy his paranoid fantacies currently cower to defeat. Now about that waking up stuff. Have you looked at the poles lately? The state went blue in the last election and is getting bluer. I can just hear your fingernails on the blackboard. Rich Republicans living in Bedford, trying to get the rest of us to pay more taxes to build gates around your privilege. Charter schools are just a small part. The federal government provided initial funding knowing full well that down the road, all the people who had put the enormous effort into their creation would scream and yell when they had to find some other funding source - another tax. How Republican. The only change you would allow in the air is the loose change from your pockets. Education is very expensive but ignorance is costing everyone much more. You're already rich how about letting someone else have a few crumbs?
- Robert, Deerfield

Please support our Charter Schools!!Please help provide choices for our children and our future leaders. (Along with being the change we wish to see and knowing that the only true wisdom is on knowing you know nothing, I am constantly humbled by hoping that the better I nurture our children, the better they will nurture their elders.)

By the way, I pay taxes and I vote.

A society grows great when you plant trees whose shade you will never sit in" ancient proverb
- Hope I Batchelder-Roach, Nottingham,NH 03290

Jeez Robert, why are you so sensitive today? Why is it bad when corporations raise their prices in a competitive free market but you look the other way when the government continues to raise the cost of services every yr and they own a monopoly? Hmmm. Does it have anything to do with your connections to the teachers union or your connections to a state rep who votes yea on spending bills?
Its come right down to control doesn't it Robert? You like the fact that the youth of this country can be indoctrinated to the left's beliefs. You could care less about the falling test scores as long as the Democratic Party's base expands. You also feel all warm and fuzzy when the school administrators use our children as political tools to get their way. You understand the full repercussion of school choice and it scares you.
Fortunately, people are waking up to the debacle we call our public school system and change is in the air. When more and more data is released about the charter schools, it will continue to show how outdated and out of touch the public school system has become.
- Kyle, Bedford

Judy,

I guess I missed the posters in my high school advocating sodomy and pregnancy termination. I'm more inclined to think that danged Rock n' Roll music is the cause of all of society's ills. Darn that Elvis Presley and his gyrating hips!
- TB, Manchester

Charter schools have not succeeded in NH because of a lack of funding and nothing else. There are additional costs with a charter school such as a building, staff and supplies. Both local districts and the state are reluctant to come up with the additional money needed for charter schools. It is a funding issue, not the actions of the teachers unions that hold charter schools back. Both the NEA and AFT support public charter schools.
- Tom, Manchester

What tired spewing of talking points. Hasn't it occurred to any of you that all the underfunding of literally everything, schools, bridges, education, retirement funds, has a cause. Gloat over being the lowest taxed state in the union if you want but know that this has a cost. The reprehensible thing here is that the kids are paying for it. Now it is compounded by the federal deficit which means that the federal government - that one you want to drown in a bath tub, isn't funding your charter schools, or providing block grants for highways etc. Instead, they are dropping bombs on people which makes the cost of gasoline for the state go up. So this bait and switch accounting scheme. Where do you think the money is going to come from? You're certainly not going to pay for it. You're from New Hampshire after all where the state motto is "just say no."
- Robert, Deerfield

Every public school should be a charter school. They cost less and outperform the union schools (oops, I mean "public schools").

And they don't take money from the public schools as so many disingenuously claim. Every student who leaves a public school to attend a charter school saves money.

Robert, class size limitations are old fashioned featherbedding applied to unionized teachers. The NEA has been the greatest threat to educational quality in our country. It would take tremendous reductions in public school funding before they would actually become "underfunded".
- Jim Peschke, Croydon, NH

"the Union which has been somewhat successfully defending teacher pay and educational quality for your kids."
In which universe are you referring to Robert.
The union has done nothing to further the educational quality for our kids and has prevented the best teachers from receiving the compensation they deserve because they don't use a merit system to determine pay.
If they have done a successful job of improving the educational quality for our kids, why do the unions fight with every tooth and nail about holding teachers accountable for their students performance. Why did Richard C. Iannuzzi, the president of the NY State United Teachers complain when the NYC School Chancellor wanted to consider using student performance as a criteria when granting a teachers tenure. Iannuzzi whined, "Student assessments are designed to assess students, not teachers." United Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten said, "There is no independent or conclusive research that shows you can acccurately measure the impact of an individual teacher on a student's academic achievement."

So the union wants it both ways. They want more money because they are shaping our future generations. When taxpayers want to hold them accountable like any other job, they kick and scream bloody murder. All the while they help dumb done standards each yr so the test results don't appear as bad as they really are. Then on top of it, we hear of examples where they use the children as political pawns to get their way in budget discussions.
Take the power away from the Union bureacrats and return the power and money back to taxpayers and parents as we have much more to lose/gain then these parasites.
- Kyle, Bedford

I take offense to "They are cheap alternative schools for kids -- many from moderate-and low-income homes -- who don't fare well in the regular public schools"
First it is not a "cheap" alternative.
Second why are you labeling charter school students as not doing well in regular public schools. My daughter goes to a charter school she is in K. She would do just fine in "regular public school" but I prefer for her go to the charter school because the school choices in my town stink!
- Laurie, Allenstown

Robert, what educational quality? Public schools have increasingly become more interested in socially engineering children into having no morals only values espoused by left-wingers.

The NEA has always voted democrat; that says it all. Parents no longer have rights over their own children, schools encourage abortion, homosexuality, etc. The Federal Dept. of Education is a failed experiment that began during the Carter administration, I think, It's time to change the curriculum back to reading, riting and rithmetic and start over. Public education is broken, and even the Gov. doesn't know how to fix it. It's a spending problem not a funding problem. Unions have outgrown their usefullness especially when you can't fire bad tenured teachers. Let's put teachers' on incentive pay instead of protecting the bad with the good.

Let me guess, you're a unionized teacher and you need more money?
- Judy Paris, Bradford

Many of us grew up in the local one or two room school, back then they were governed by teachers every one new,,,,,and trusted. Many of us would give 100 dollars to see them running again.
- Fred Bosworth, Bow, NH

Now let's see. Do charter schools have to have buildings, supplies, supervisors, teachers, class sizes control? How can we make it cheaper? Cut out the union which has been somewhat successfully defending teacher pay and educational quality for your kids. Well, the heck with that. We can do it cheaper with smoke, mirrors and accounting gimicks. Just get rid of all those bundles of cash in the school closets cut a few more sports and music plans. Shazammm. Pretty soon public schools will be so underfunded that you rich people can put your kids in private schools and pay for it from public funds in the form of vouchers. Is anyone fooled by this subterfuge?
- Robert, Deerfield