Redefining “Adequacy” in Education

Less than four years after a bipartisan measure in the Legislature met the New Hampshire Supreme Court’s order to define an “adequate education,” a Litchfield lawmaker has filed a bill to change that definition.

Republican Rep. Ralph Boehm, vice chair of the House Education Committee, will present House Bill 39 for a public hearing in the committee on Tuesday, Jan. 25. Among other changes, Boehm’s bill would eliminate education in the arts, world languages, health and technology as part of the adequate education requirement for school districts that was passed in 2007 as part of House Bill 927.

That measure was the first time the N.H. Legislature had defined an adequate education. The precedent was prompted by Supreme Court rulings stretching back to 1993 (the so-called Claremont lawsuit rulings) that required the state to define and cost an adequate education to meet its constitutional public education obligations. In 2008, the Supreme Court dropped its court order when it said the Legislature had met its obligations.

The bipartisan sponsorship of HB 927 included two current Republican members of the Senate — Robert Odell of Lempster and Nancy Stiles of Hampton, who at the time served in the House. When Gov. John Lynch signed the bill into law in June 2007, he said, “passage of this definition is a significant step toward ensuring that all of New Hampshire’s children will have the broad educational opportunities they need to compete in today’s world.”

The 2007 bill said “the general court embraces its duty to define the opportunity for a constitutionally adequate public education for every child in the state.”

But Boehm, who was elected to his fourth term in November, told the Nashua Telegraph that although schools are likely to provide the subjects he would eliminate from the adequacy list, they shouldn’t be required to do so. Consequently, funding for those subjects need not be provided if districts don’t want them. “We don’t need the state telling us what is an adequate education. Let’s let local districts decide,” Boehm said in the article.

In addition to paring down the definition of adequacy, HB 39 would prohibit state education agencies “from implementing or enforcing” the education standards of the national Common Core State Standards Initiative without legislative approval. In July, New Hampshire joined the volunteer initiative to improve language arts and math proficiencies of elementary and secondary school students. But Boehm believes that local school districts should make their own determinations and that the issue is “local control and unfunded mandates.”

>> The House Education Committee meets, Tuesday, Jan. 25, in the Legislative Office Building, Room 207, at 10:30 a.m. Per new House rules, an executive session may follow.

This Daily Dispatch was written by Michael McCord.

Posted by Hilary Niles on Jan 20 2011. Filed under adequacy, Education, funding, Weekly Briefing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry