EFAs save taxpayers millions
You would not know it from Maureen Prohl’s Jan. 20 column, but Education Freedom Accounts are among the most closely structured, transparently administered and cost-effective education programs in New Hampshire. Educating roughly 10,500 students through EFAs costs the state about $51.6 million. Educating those same students in district public schools would cost approximately $263 million. Put plainly, EFAs save New Hampshire more than $200 million in a single year.
Prohl describes the program’s $52 million cost as “over budget,” but that claim rests on a misunderstanding of how education funding works in this state. New Hampshire has long funded education based on real enrollment, not preliminary projections. When more students enroll than anticipated, funding adjusts automatically. No one accuses a school district of fiscal irresponsibility when more kindergarteners show up than expected. EFAs operate under that same enrollment-driven model.
Seen in that light, the numbers tell a very different story. A program educating more than 10,000 students at roughly one-fifth the cost of the traditional system is a boon for taxpayers.
That structure also helps explain why the program’s administrator, Children’s Scholarship Fund New Hampshire, continues to earn national recognition for transparency and fiscal stewardship, including a clean, unqualified audit from Grant Thornton LLP, an administrative rate of just 7.83 percent, and back-to-back recognition from EdChoice as the nation’s most effectively implemented ESA program.
Accountability should be judged by structure, transparency, and results. By those measures, New Hampshire’s EFA program is operating exactly as designed.