Banging drums, clapping hands, dancing waltzes, and even flying batons were all part of a celebration of New Hampshire’s Education Freedom Accounts (EFAs) at a school choice event in Concord on Wednesday.
EFA students, parents, and staffers from schools and programs across the state gathered at The Grapponetto to show off their talents as part of a National School Choice Week event.
Asked about the importance of the EFA scholarships, which allow families to use the state portion of their child’s education funding for their own education choice, Esther Fleurant offered to “speak for my family.”
“It gives me the flexibility to be home to see what they’re learning, to be involved more, to pick out books with them. The kids have options to pick the curriculum that works for them, go to different schools that work for them,” Fleurant said.
Kate Baker Demers is executive director of the Children’s Scholarship Fund NH, which oversees the EFA program. She said school choice advocates have a lot to celebrate, both in New Hampshire and across the nation.
“We have public school choice, charter schools, CTE (career and technical education) centers, private schools, homeschooling, co-ops, micro-schools — the options in New Hampshire are amazing. That’s why I call it an ‘edutopia,’” Baker Demers said.
While public school enrollment has been declining for two decades, participation in school choice has been soaring.
Nationally, the number of charter school students has grown from about 400,000 in 2000 to roughly 3.7 million, or 7.4 percent of the total public school population.
For private school choice through private scholarships or public support, the organization EdChoice reports it took nearly 24 years to reach the 1 million student mark in the 2024 academic year. That total then jumped from 1 million to 1.3 million in just one year, from 2024 to 2025.
Homeschooling is also on the rise, with an estimated 4.8 percent of all U.S. students — about 2.4 million children — homeschooled nationwide.
At the state level, choice programs have gone from policy outliers to common options. There are now at least 67 distinct private school choice policies operating across 30 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico.
In Concord, the schools participating in the celebration ranged from Holy Family Academy, a Catholic high school in Manchester, to Evergreen Elementary, a new private, nonprofit school in Hudson serving pre-K through third grade.
“EFAs are extremely important to our school,” said Tiffany Diamond of Evergreen Elementary. “One of our big initiatives is to have one-third of underserved children in our enrollment, and EFAs allow us not only to bridge that scaling model but to achieve sustainability.”
Asked about criticism that EFAs and school choice undermine the traditional public school system, Diamond said, “I’ve worked in public schools, I’ve worked in charter schools, I’ve worked in private schools. And I think the biggest thing is that children get lost in the educational system.
“There’s so much red tape, and it has to do with unions and staff members, and it’s students who end up coming last on the totem pole.”
Highlighting the range of education choice in the state, Eleganza Dance Studio also participated in Wednesday’s celebration, with two students, Elijah and Esme, performing the official National School Choice Week dance. There was also a solo baton performance by twirler Lizzy Campillo, an eighth-grader at Concord Christian Academy.
Baker Demers said there are currently about 10,600 EFA students, a number that would rise to 12,500 when the current cap is increased next year — or potentially higher.
“The legislature did something right when it passed the legislation. It allows us to add low-income kids and special-needs kids beyond the cap. But a student who isn’t in those groups gets turned away.
“There is a bill in the legislature that would remove the cap, and I’m hopeful lawmakers will see the 700 kids on the wait list this year and lift it. Those students should be able to get the help they need and the education they deserve.”