I live in the Hopkinton school district. My son attends the Green Valley Montessori school in Pembroke and my daughter attends the Maple Street public middle school in Contoocook.

There are several points in Rep. Marjorie Porter’s argument against school choice (Monitor Forum, March 16) where I offer rebuttal.

While U.S. News and World Report may indicate that New Hampshire public schools rank among the top in the country, this is a relatively feeble basis of judgment. U.S. News is not a credential-bearing body that sends a staff of objective evaluators to each state to render their rankings. It processes surveys submitted by those who wish to be ranked. There are inherent risks to relying on the results of this kind of process, and we shouldn’t merely accept a news magazine’s rankings about education as anything more than entertainment. The absence of full-day kindergarten statewide is a major comparative shortcoming.

Porter said, “Choice proponents want to use our taxpayer dollars to pay for the cost of sending these children to private and religious schools.” I would like to reclaim that statement by suggesting that it isn’t “our” taxpayer dollars, it is “my” taxpayer dollars.

Our family’s decision to send one of our children to the Montessori school was driven by the harsh reality that the public school he attended simply did not work for his needs. Even with an Individualized Education Program, the environment his school offered was too distracting and inflexible to consider his own passions for learning. For other students, it was fine. But not for him.

Thus, I pay my property taxes toward the public school system and tuition for a private school whose philosophy is geared more toward successful learning for him. School choice funding enables me to reclaim a piece of what would go toward his public school education.

And let’s also be clear that we are nowhere near a wealthy family. We cut out many other nonessential expenditures to do this.

Porter claims that there is an existential risk associated with students being paired with noncredentialed teachers. Her concern is valid but overblown. There are credentialed teachers who are dreadfully inexperienced or simply have not adopted effective modern teaching strategies (we have encountered several). And there are noncredentialed instructors who are highly qualified, passionate and committed to their craft but who simply cannot make the monumental commitment to the certification process. Porter’s concern is unfairly generalized.

Finally, the private road versus the public school argument is clever but too simplistic. I understand the point Porter is making. However, the “road” we encountered in our son’s public school experiences was filled with potholes and dead ends, and was intractably stuck in a mandated course and curriculum design. Had it not been this way, we would not have had to turn onto a “toll road.”

The public school system works perfectly well for our daughter. It just didn’t line up well for our son. I fully understand the case against the school choice proposal.

However, while I am absolutely certain of the positive effects of this proposed legislation in terms of my financial reality and my son’s needs, the opponents of this legislation can offer only speculative warnings without research to substantiate their concerns. For example, do we know what the effect might be of smaller classes in public schools, despite a smaller budget? The outcome might be more beneficial than anyone anticipated.

Porter’s warnings may indeed be true, but they are thinly supported. Consider me undecided on this issue.

(Steve Covello lives in Contoocook and is an instructional designer for Granite State College.)