A school district that doesn’t offer instruction in a particular grade can tuition a student in that grade to a public school outside the district, or to a private school. In order for that to happen, the school has to be ‘approved’ by the Department of Education.
A school can be approved for program and attendance, or just for attendance. The difference is largely one of how many of the state’s hoops the school has to jump through. But in either case, for purposes of town tuitioning, the goal is the same: to provide some assurance that tax money isn’t going to be wasted on a sub-standard school.
But a public school, approved for program and attendance, can still deliver sub-standard performance, even if all its paperwork and facilities are in order. And so some districts that have tuitioning programs are considering a third type of approval, which we might call approval for achievement.
The idea is to provide a better way of meeting the same goal as before: to avoid wasting money on sub-standard schools, regardless of whether they happen to be public or private. That is, if a public school is providing unsatisfactory results — for example, if a majority of students are performing below basic proficiency in English and math¹ — the district would be prohibited from tuitioning students to that school.
It’s a better way of meeting the goal because this approval depends, not on what a school promises, but on whether its promises are kept. It’s a way of avoiding the usual double standard that arises when comparing public and private schools, where public schools are judged by what they hope to do right, while private schools are judged by what they might do wrong.
Approval for achievement is informal for now. But the Department of Education should formally adopt it as a third type of state approval. This would give districts with tuitioning programs one more tool to help them educate their students, while giving failing public schools one less way to hide their failures.
¹Which is actually typical of public schools in New Hampshire.
