PODCAST: “Freedom to Learn” | Jason Bedrick on School Choice Whoppers, New Hampshire’s EFAs, & What Happens Next
School choice trailblazer Jason Bedrick joined the Freedom to Learn podcast this week to explore the evolution of education freedom in New Hampshire and beyond. From his roots as a young legislator to his role in passing groundbreaking policies, Jason has been fighting to expand educational options for families across the country. Jason is very effective at debunking myths, so we tackled a few: Do school choice programs break budgets? Favor the wealthy? Leave special needs students behind?
Jason is a prolific writer and analyst, a Research Fellow in the Center for Education Policy at The Heritage Foundation, an adjunct scholar with the Cato Institute, and he previously served as Director of Policy at EdChoice and as a member of the New Hampshire House of Representatives.
Ginny’s conversation with Jason has been lightly edited and condensed. For the full Freedom to Learn discussion, listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube.
When you were a state legislator, did New Hampshire have school choice programs?
Jason Bedrick: No, they did not. And actually I ran because of the issue of school choice. I had done a paper on it in college and there was a public school choice bill going through the legislature at the time that failed by a vote of 171 to 172. And I remember after class complaining to my professor about this, he said, ‘what are you gonna do about it?’ And I was like, ‘what am I gonna do? I’m gonna go back to my dorm room and have a beer and eat some pizza. What do you mean, what am I gonna do?’
But that question haunted me until I decided to run. So I lost my first race, but I won the second time at age 23. My school choice bill went down in flames in 2007. This was still considered a radical fringe idea. So I did not succeed while I was there. It was only a few years later, the legislature had switched hands and I was in grad school at the time. And some friends of mine reached out and said, ‘Hey, we’re going to try another school choice bill. We think we have the votes. Could you help us write it?’ And so I reached out to the local free market think tank, got a position there, and worked with the Cato Institute to get a tax credit scholarship for low income students passed in 2012. And so that was New Hampshire’s first private school choice program.
You say that this was a fringe issue or a topic or idea at the time, but I had been working in Florida for a few years before this period, running the school choice programs in Florida. So there were some states around the country, Arizona, where you live now, Florida, where I lived at the time, that did have a tax credit scholarship program in place as well as other school choice options. So why was this considered controversial in a live free or die kind of state?
Jason Bedrick: So the Overton window doesn’t shift nationally. Things that are possible in Florida are not possible in California. And yes, New Hampshire had that live free or die ethos generally, and you would think that school choice applies to that. But it was also a state that for a long time, the public school lobby was very, very strong and any attempt to tinker with it was immediately just swatted down. And it took a number of years for people to get comfortable with the idea.
To some extent, the overheated rhetoric of our opponents, although it helped keep the program at bay for a long time, ended up backfiring on their side and really helping us because they kept claiming you know this is going to destroy public education. I showed a chart with the spending over time of the public schools and the maximum possible spending under this program. And I stretched the chart out so it filled up the entire page. And you had these big blue lines going all the way to the top, which was public school spending, and these little tiny red slivers at the bottom that you could barely see that was our program. And the legislators looked at this and they just started laughing.
Anytime opponents tried to bring out that talking point in a hearing, one of the legislators would just hold up the graph and say, ‘this is what you’re telling me? This is going to destroy public education in the state?’
And then once the program went into effect, the people who were participating in the program loved it–it was constantly 95%, 98% satisfaction with the program. People saw how happy people were with the program and it helped us expand the program over time.
When you’re saying tax credit scholarship, can you explain a little bit about the mechanics of that?
Jason Bedrick: It works a little differently in different states. They don’t have a personal income tax in New Hampshire, so corporate taxpayers will make a contribution to a scholarship organization, like Children’s Scholarship Fund in New Hampshire, and they’ll get a tax credit. In New Hampshire, it’s 85%. In some states, it’s dollar for dollar, it varies. And then the scholarship organization funds usually low and middle income kids to go to the school of their choice.
Do schools have to register to participate or is every school available to families who want to take advantage of this?
Jason Bedrick: In New Hampshire, any school that is recognized by the state as a private school is eligible to participate. They don’t have to be accredited. If you can fulfill your compulsory education requirement by going to the school, then you can receive scholarship funds. And actually, New Hampshire was the first tax-credit scholarship program that homeschoolers could benefit from. And the homeschoolers could use it for a variety of homeschooling expenses: tutors, textbooks, homeschool curricula, online courses, and things like that.
Was the homeschooling community pushing for that?
Jason Bedrick: There were some homeschoolers that were involved in that fight. And actually, maybe it was a year after Arizona’s ESA; but it was certainly one of the first states to do it. But yeah, there were homeschoolers that were involved in the push, including one of the senators that was pushing for the tax credit scholarship.
I feel like sometimes people think, ‘well, you passed the school choice program and that’s that.’ And you’re saying, no, even in the early years of the program, there was a continual effort to grow the program, stretch it various directions, expand eligibility.
It was a huge fight. Initially, we got it passed with a simple majority, but the governor vetoed it. But we were able to cobble together a veto proof majority that ended up overturning the governor’s veto. Then the following year, the Democrats took over the House and the Republicans had a two vote margin in the Senate, but there were two Republican senators who had voted against the program. So the expectation was that they were going to be able to repeal it and kill it in the crib, essentially. But we persuaded those two senators to, even though they voted no on the bill, they also voted no on the repeal. And they said, ‘look, now that it’s passed, let’s see it go into effect. Let’s not take this away from kids.’ So it was repealed in the House, but narrowly we won in the Senate.
Then there was a lawsuit. The ACLU and some local groups sued and the program was struck down at the trial court level. When it went up to the state Supreme Court, the Institute for Justice, Dick Komer, served as intervener defenders and they won because the attorney general who was defending the program just granted that the other side had standing. But Dick Komer made a case, no, they don’t have standing. And we actually won unanimously at the state Supreme Court on the standing issue. So I this was like a real roller coaster back and forth.
But yes, over time we were able to expand the program and then in 2021 pass education freedom accounts. So this is a publicly funded program through the state Department of Education that operates like an ESA in other states that families in this case originally low- and middle-income families could use the funding for tuition, textbooks, homeschool curricula, all that all that same sort of thing. But it was a little bit better funded.
And then just this year, we were able to expand it to every child in the state is now eligible. I’ve been working on this issue for 21 years in New Hampshire and I’ve seen it go from a fringe issue that was overwhelmingly defeated to a universal program. It was easier to get it to universal this year than it was to pass the little tiny program for 50 kids back in 2012. It’s amazing what has changed.
You say all that so humbly and calmly, but this is a huge victory, Jason, both professionally and personally for you and for all who have been involved in the state for the last two decades. We wanted to ensure that listeners were familiar with the history because people might think ‘it’s a libertarian kind of community there. Of course they were on board.’ No, this took two decades.
It did. And look, mean, some of the same legislators were there from the beginning, especially Representative Glenn Cordelli, Kate Baker, who was an activist fighting for it and then started the first tax credit scholarship organization, which was called the Network for Education and then merged with Children’s Scholarship Fund. She’s still there on the ground giving out scholarships on the front line.
It’s a real team effort. I’ve worked with school choice coalitions all across the country and New Hampshire’s is one of the best. During legislative session, they meet once a week, people get along, they collaborate very well, everybody knows what their role is, and you know, because some people need to provide the research, some people are doing the lobbying, some people are doing the grassroots. Some people are collaborating with the schools to make sure that the schools know what’s going on and are activating their families, you know, and alumni. So they are a well-oiled machine and it really shows.
Before, Governors were not so interested in touching this issue and now Governor Sununu and now Governor Ayotte were really out in front. And in part because the coalition had done such a good job messaging the issue, going around the state, educating voters about it, that it became a winning issue for them. And this is something that Milton Friedman always used to say, “You can’t count on having the right people in office. You want to make it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right things.”
Generally speaking, you want it to be in the interest of politicians to support your issue. And so for that, you can’t just have an under the dome strategy where you’ve got lobbyists that are trying to persuade 50% plus one of the legislature to go with you. You need to be out meeting folks around the state and educating them about the issue. And then the politicians are going to follow.
And you have the polls to show the politicians that you have widespread support. And then you mentioned the parent satisfaction surveys from participants that you can show. And just demand for the program. What kind of interest did you see or application numbers did you see in the earlier years?
Jason Bedrick: It was slow when we first passed the tax credit scholarship. But by the time we passed the ESA, more than 1% of kids in the state signed up in the first year. Most states toiled in that under 1% for many, many years. Just a few years ago, I think there were only two states that were above 5%, and that was Florida and Arizona. And they’re above 5% now in New Hampshire.
It’s incredible how quickly they were able to scale up the second time around, but that’s because they spent all those years, right? It’s like that famous expression from Ernest Hemingway: How did you go bankrupt? Two ways, gradually and then suddenly. So it was gradual, but now the fruit of all of their labors is really paying off. And you have a huge jump in the number of students who are participating. And I expect we’re going to see another huge jump as the eligibility period opens up and all the students who weren’t eligible just a month or two ago are now going to be eligible for next year.
So families participating in the EFA, the Education Freedom Accounts, can use the funds for tuition, but also for other expenses. Could you give some examples of the other expenses?
Jason Bedrick: So a wide variety of homeschooling expenses. You can purchase curriculum, can purchase educational software, you could do some online courses. Let’s say you go to a museum or other sort of educational activities outside the home. These are all things that you could spend your ESA funds on.
You mentioned the ACLU and local groups sued in the early years of the program. Who were some other opponents in New Hampshire?
Jason Bedrick: The main ones were a group called Defending Public Education New Hampshire. There was a local wealthy person who started this group and he worked very closely with the unions. So was essentially a union front group that was supposedly representing parents in the public school system, but was really just one guy and a few people he had hired.
They didn’t do a whole lot of grassroots. So they were actually quite ineffective. Mostly, they were the ones behind the lawsuit. They were doing some government relations in the state capital. But where they I think really failed was to actually mobilize anybody. So even though you have a huge base to start from, the public school system, they weren’t really able to get people out. The unions did get their people out, but the school choice supporters did a much better job of getting ordinary constituents out there, calling their state legislators, going to rallies, coming to hearings and filling the hall. And the legislators noticed. They saw that there was a groundswell of support and that I think really made the difference in the end.
What happens next in New Hampshire?
Jason Bedrick: I think New Hampshire is at the place where they have to focus on implementation. Kate Baker and Children’s Scholarship Fund have been doing a fantastic job, but it’s a very small state, it’s a very small program, and it’s likely going to double or more in the next year or two. So that is going to be an implementation challenge.
This is the place where a lot of these states are in. I think politically, they are relatively safe now. I think of it as a constituency building exercise. A program is safe when you have a large number of happy people participating. I don’t see the school choice movement going out there and asking for anything else, at least in the near future other than maybe some little tweaks to the program. And I don’t think the other side really has the appetite to push back against it. Even right now, it was almost pro forma for the opponents. They voted no, they gave their speeches, but they didn’t actually pull out all the stops and try and stop it like they had in years past. They basically gave up on the issue. They realized it was a loser for them. Like, let’s just get it over with and move on to the next thing. But you have a lot of states like that right now, Florida, Arizona, Indiana, that I think the focus for the next probably decade or so is just going to be getting the implementation right.
Our last two episodes have been with folks from Tennessee and Texas. Similarly, they have expanded programs or created programs that are universal. But in Tennessee this year, it was just 20,000 scholarships and Texas was capped by a funding amount. Are there any limitations like that in New Hampshire?
Jason Bedrick: We want to make a distinction between universal eligibility and true universal. So you could have universal eligibility where every child is eligible, but you’ve got some sort of cap, either on the number of students or the amount of money. That means not everybody can participate. So true universal would be a state where every eligible child can actually receive an education savings account.
So Arizona is like that, Florida is like that, there’s Arkansas, there’s only a few states that you can do that. New Hampshire now, technically speaking, does have a cap, but it’s only a cap on new students, it’s not an overall program cap, and the cap is so high it’s not gonna be possible for them to ever reach. And it automatically goes up if you come within 90% of the cap. It increases by 25% for the next year. So it’s a cap on paper, but practically speaking, they have true universal school choice in New Hampshire right now.
So other states like Texas, they need to improve to get to that point. Texas is going to have a problem because of their accreditation requirement and a few things like that are gonna restrict supply. What happens when you dramatically increase demand but keep supply practically constant? Prices go up. This is Econ 101. We don’t want to see tuition go through the roof. Jay Greene, Lindsay Burke, and I did a study a few years ago looking at the tuition increases around the country. And the states that had school choice had less tuition inflation than the states that didn’t have school choice. But It really does depend on the design. So I’m afraid we’re going to see tuition inflation in Texas unless they can come back and address some of these things that are introducing artificial constraints to supply.
I get why you might want to have an accreditation requirement, but you could say that the school has to be either accredited or in the process of obtaining accreditation, which usually takes about three years. And then you could, you could say you have like a five-year window where you could be in that process or something like that. But if you want new schools to open, you’re going to need to allow them to open and participate. Otherwise you’re saying you need to open at a disadvantage where families that choose any of your competitors can get a tax credit scholarship or ESA, but not at your school. And you’ve got to do that for three years while you’re trying to obtain accreditation. It’s crazy. So that’s not going to work. You’re going to have to make those little tweaks and those little in the weeds issues, which you didn’t hear at all on the campaign trail or in the op-eds about the program, but those things really make a difference. And it’s important.
I want to tackle a few of the school choice myths that you’ve been hearing over the last two decades in New Hampshire and where you live now in Arizona. There is a full throttle attack on well-established programs in Arizona that seems kind of unhinged from the perspective of somebody who’s familiar with the issues, but maybe it makes sense to people when they hear it and they just haven’t had the opportunity to actually get the facts. Which are the myths that you’re hearing the most?
Jason Bedrick: The number one myth we’re hearing in Arizona is that it’s busting the budget. The governor for the last three years has been coming out saying, ‘this is going to destroy the state budget.’ Even though it’s a very small fraction of the state budget and you’re spending a lot less per pupil on the ESA than you are on the public schools, but they target this program.
And the governor says it over and over and then the Department of Ed says, we have a multi-million dollar surplus. Now, I’m not great at math, but I can tell you that surpluses don’t contribute to deficits. And if they’ll say, ‘we spent more on this program than we had anticipated.’ And that’s true because more kids enrolled in the program than they had projected. But they’re doing single-entry bookkeeping. They’re only looking at one side, they’re not looking at the other side. What is happening with the total shift in enrollment? You’ve got to look at the number of kids that are enrolled in the ESA program, in tax credit scholarships, in the traditional public schools and the charter school sector. And what you see is that if you look at all of them, they actually were $300,000 below projections. The Joint Legislative Budget Committee was very close in terms of their projections, but actually they came in under budget.
So that is not busting the budget. Now all the legislators here locally know this. And when the governor comes on television and is saying this is going to blow up the budget, the local legislators know she’s blowing smoke. So what is this for? It’s not for domestic consumption. It’s to scare away Republican legislators in other states. It’s to go to folks in Texas and in Tennessee and in Missouri and Mississippi and say, ‘don’t do this because it’s going to blow up your budget and you’re going to have a big problem.’ But that’s not the reality in Arizona.
A big one that came out of Arizona, and I actually was asked about this in congressional testimony soon after the ESA program in Arizona went universal, is the claim that vouchers (they call everything vouchers) are just going to wealthy individuals or students who already were enrolled in private school.
Jason Bedrick: First of all, they don’t collect data on income. So there’s no way of knowing. they very confidently make these claims.
Well only billionaires send their kids to private schools. So it must just be wealthy people.
It’s no problem if we’re spending more per pupil for a wealthy family to send their kids to the public school. But if you give them less to choose a school, then suddenly it becomes a problem. Yeah, so one of the talking points that you hear is this is only going to families that are already in private school.
First of all, who cares, right? Part of the promise of public education is that every child gets access to a quality education that works best for him or her. So we are expanding that to really include every child, including ones that are going outside of the system. But the reality is that initially when the program first expanded to universal, only about 20% of participants had switched from a public school in the previous year. And why is that? Well, because the kids who are already in the private school, the private schools have an incentive to tell them, ‘by the way, you should sign up for this program.’ Whereas the public schools are not telling their families, ‘by the way, if you want to leave, here’s a link. Here’s how to do it.’
But three years after the expansion, the Department of Education just released their quarterly report, and 57% of the new students were switching out of a public school in the prior year. So now more than half of the new kids are coming from the public school system. So don’t worry, the other side will eventually update their talking point and they will go from, ‘oh, this is only benefiting kids who already in private school’ to, ‘oh my gosh, there’s a mass exodus from the public school system.’ Heads I win, tails you lose.
They’re going to be unhappy no matter what. Legislators should just get used to that. Like there’s nothing you can do to please those people and they’re just going to be carping about something or other. What you should care about is that kids are getting access to a better education, families are happier, and over time organically you are going to have more options, a wider diversity of options, and better options for kids to obtain an education.
One more myth, and I know this is a big topic: Can students with special needs, students with disabilities benefit from school choice? The claim always in these congressional hearings is that you’re robbing them of their IDEA rights. They’re losing FAPE. How could you do this to these families?
Jason Bedrick: Yeah, you hear this all the time. And interestingly, in that same quarterly report, 19% of kids in the ESA program are students with a disability compared to 14% in the district school system. So the ESA program per capita is serving more kids with special needs. What we’ve seen in Arizona over the last couple of decades is a vast expansion of private options available for students with special needs. Schools that are entirely dedicated to kids with autism and other learning disabilities, kids who have deafness or blindness, and they’re doing amazing things. I went to visit a school run by the Foundation for the Blind where all the kids in 8th grade, blind kids, climb a mountain. It’s absolutely incredible. And 90+% of their kids are either going off to college or getting a job coming out of the high school.
When you empower the families directly, if you speak to the families, they’ll say, would you rather your IDEA rights or would you rather the money? They want the money because so often the public school doesn’t respect the IDEA rights or their plan. And In that case, you’ve got to hire an attorney and fight with them for a number of years and it’s dragged out. And then maybe you get most of what you want. Or, you can take your money, you can go to a school, a private school, and say, ‘here’s my money, this is what I expect from my kids,’ and either they provide it or they don’t, and then you’ve got other options. There is no perfect system, but parents tend to be much happier with that second system. because they have a lot more control, they have a lot more options, And it seems to be working very well for Arizona families of children with special needs.