Nine years ago, New Hampshire adopted a right-to-try law. It allows terminally ill patients to access medications that have cleared Phase 1 clinical trials but are not commercially available.  Since that law passed, huge gains have been made in the treatment of rare illnesses. New Hampshire’s law has fallen out of date. A bill working […]

Average per-pupil spending in New Hampshire district public schools has nearly doubled this century, as student enrollment declined sharply and reading and math assessment scores fell, a new Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy study finds.  Total public school district spending in New Hampshire increased by an inflation-adjusted $1.25 billion, or 45%, from 2001-2024 as […]

Though expanding Education Freedom Accounts to all New Hampshire students is a top Republican Party priority for this legislative session, differences between three competing plans produced an impasse. For weeks, doubts grew about Republicans’ ability to expand the program even though they controlled the governor’s office and both legislative chambers. On Wednesday, the House Finance […]

After years of making little progress on housing affordability, the Legislature finally is moving forward in large strides. As significant reforms near the finish line, a surge of advocacy has emerged for an old, failed method of addressing the state’s housing shortage: government subsidies. New Hampshire’s primary method of addressing housing affordability has long been […]

  Join the Josiah Bartlett Center, Americans for Prosperity–New Hampshire and EdChoice on Thursday, May 29th at 6:00 p.m. at the Artisan Hotel in Tuscan Village (Salem, NH) for a conversation about the importance of expanding educational freedom to every student in the state regardless of income, zip code or background. You’ll hear directly from […]

Every time legislators propose ending New Hampshire’s annual auto inspection mandate, opponents allege that inspections are common in Northern states because cold weather hazards (road salt, frost heaves) make them necessary. In fact, most cold-weather states, like most states overall, don’t require annual auto inspections. Mapping the states that require annual inspections reveals that culture […]

It’s Teacher Appreciation Week and Granite Staters are again being subjected to the claim that teachers here earn less than they should because legislators are stingy. Given current market conditions, average teacher pay in New Hampshire is lower than it should be to recruit the best candidates. But the state’s contribution isn’t the reason.  The […]

In 2021, New Hampshire created Education Freedom Accounts (EFAs), a new way of providing families with access to a publicly funded education.  In addition to assigned public schools, chartered public schools, and tax credit scholarships, EFAs offer students the option of purchasing an education from a variety of state-approved vendors.  EFAs are exclusively for New […]

The movement to shift public school funding from local governments to the state is driven by a core belief that the shift will bring more funding. But that assumption is almost certainly wrong. The National Education Association’s latest annual report on public school data drew media coverage this week for its finding that New Hampshire’s […]

Home building is tough throughout New England, but Massachusetts gives its builders an advantage that builders in New Hampshire don’t enjoy. Massachusetts uses a uniform building code statewide. Builders there know exactly what every town’s code is because they’re all the same. That’s not so in New Hampshire, where municipalities can tack their own rules […]