This is in response to the article about Croydon’s budget battle, which appeared on the front page of the New York Times a couple of weeks ago. I don’t think they’ll be printing it, though. So I thought I’d reproduce it here.
Dear Editor,
Since the publication of your article by Dan Barry about the budget drama in Croydon, NH, my wife and I have been the recipients of anonymous emails and telephone calls from people who are eager to tell us what horrible people we are, how terrible our parents must have been, and how awful our views on education are.
The problem is, they don’t know anything about us, or about our views on education. They know only what they’ve read in the article, which are caricatures.
Anyone who takes a moment to look at the things I’ve been writing for years (on the GraniteGrok website) will see that my primary concern was, and continues to be, getting a better education for the kids of Croydon (and every other town in New Hampshire). The following is just a small sampling:
https://granitegrok.com/blog/2018/11/rethinking-fairness-in-education
https://granitegrok.com/blog/2020/02/schools-first-do-no-harm
https://granitegrok.com/blog/2019/04/a-standard-for-school-standards
Here is the pamphlet that I handed out at our annual town meeting:
https://granitegrok.com/blog/2022/03/budget-or-ransom
As I point out in the pamphlet, and as I stated at the meeting, decades of data show that we can’t improve education by spending more money. We can only do it by spending less, because that will require us to consider seriously the justification for public education laid out by our state supreme court 20 years ago. That in turn requires asking some fundamental questions that have been ignored for too long, and requires making some serious decisions about what to prioritize.
That was the whole point of proposing the smaller budget. To force a serious discussion about educational issues. But with the help of journalists like Mr. Barry, that was turned instead into a discussion about personalities.
I find it ironic that when I simply quote our state supreme court, the typical response is to call what I’m saying ‘a crazy Free Stater idea’, ‘detrimental to society’, ‘selfish’, ‘stupid’, and so on.
But who is more selfish? Someone who is trying to bring about genuine reform in a public institution where it is desperately needed, to benefit both students and the people footing the bill for their education? Or someone who wants to continue with a system that has a 50-year track record of failure, and a simultaneous 50-year track record of rapidly escalating costs — especially when he’s able to force his neighbors to pick up the tab for 90 percent or more of those costs?
And who is more stupid? Someone who wants students to benefit from the advances in technology and pedagogy that have occurred during the last few decades? Or someone who wants to keep sending them to centralized locations — the educational equivalent of video arcades — where they have fewer resources, of lower quality, and vastly higher cost, than the ones they have access to virtually everywhere except when they’re in school?
Note that in New Hampshire, which consistently ranks as one of the ‘best’ states for education, only about 40 percent of students are performing at the most basic level of proficiency by the time they graduate — even though 90 percent of them do graduate.
Note also that every district in New Hampshire is now spending more, adjusted for inflation, than even the richest districts were 20 years ago. That is, every district in New Hampshire is a ‘rich district’, in terms of spending. But student achievement hasn’t improved at all.
Finally, note that all of this has occurred in a system that requires teachers and administrators to be certified, a system in which taxpayers are presented with ransom demands by districts, instead of districts being presented with budgets by taxpayers.
Could it, maybe, possibly, be time to try something different?
Which should we be more afraid of: Trying something that might not work, or continuing with something we know for sure won’t work?
Again, anyone who reads what I’ve written will see that I’m not against using taxes to pay for education. I’m in favor of that, and am on record as saying that, many times, in many different ways. What I’m against is making taxpayers pay for things that public schools are doing instead of education, things that actually displace education, and things that in many ways prevent education from occurring.
And I’m especially against that when it forces people who are poor to subsidize people who are rich — which is one of the essential features of our current school funding system.
It’s unfortunate that Mr. Barry chose not to discuss any of this in his article, choosing instead to present cartoon versions both of people who disagree with him, and of their views. And it’s unfortunate that you gave him such a prominent platform for doing it.
Ian Underwood
Croydon, NH