The rules update pitted school administrators and board members against the State Board of Education and the Department of Education. (Dana Wormald | New Hampshire Bulletin)
After a two-year process, lawmakers approved a broad package of state rules last week governing how public schools should operate. But many public school educators say they aren’t happy.
Known as the “minimum standards for public school approval,” the rules govern virtually every aspect of public school administration, from class sizes to curriculum requirements. They must be updated every 10 years or they will expire.
This year’s update has divided lawmakers along party lines and pitted school administrators and board members against the State Board of Education and the Department of Education.
The department, which crafted the rules, says they provide flexibility for school districts around curriculum and other areas, and create new opportunities for innovative types of learning in public schools.
Critics – who include teachers unions, the New Hampshire School Administrators Association, and the New Hampshire School Boards Association – say the rules dilute the state’s curriculum requirements for schools by removing some specific mandates. That could pave the way for schools in lower-income, higher property tax towns to cut back on instruction in order to contain costs, critics say.
“Our specific concerns remain as well – including the removal of class size maximums, the removal of subject area requirements, and inconsistent application of competency terminology and differentiated instruction,” wrote the Manchester Board of School Committee in a Sept. 23 letter to the State Board of Education asking that it reject the latest changes.
Members of the Joint Legislative Committee on Administrative Rules (JLCAR) met Thursday and approved the final rules on a party-line vote, with Republicans voting in favor of the rules and Democrats opposing them.
Here’s a guide to major changes in the rules.
A focus on competency-based instruction
Under the new rules, high school students will still need 20 credits in order to graduate. But the types of classes and the way in which they are assessed will be slightly different.
According to the current rules, in order to pass a course, a student must demonstrate “knowledge and skills on an assessment” approved either by the school district or the Department of Education if no school district exists.
The new rules have different metrics: Students could complete either “a collection of evidence” demonstrating their achievement of competency, or an assessment approved by the school district or state department.
The approach adheres to a broader philosophy held by the National Center for Competency-Based Learning, a nonprofit advocacy group based in New Hampshire that has advised the Department of Education under a contract and helped craft the new rules. The center’s president, Fred Bramante, joined State Board of Education members for a series of listening sessions across the state in 2023 to talk about the competency-based approach and explain its benefits.
Moving forward, the rules echo the philosophy: “Credits shall be awarded for achievement of competencies. Credits shall not be awarded based on time spent achieving these competencies.”
Bramante says the format will ensure that instruction is thorough and not constrained to an assessment or a number of hours of class time. But some educators have complained that the approach is not always feasible for every school’s budget, and that the standards for what counts as competency can be vague.
Expansion of ‘extended learning opportunities’
The new rules also include a greater emphasis on “extended learning opportunities,” part of a policy shift in recent years that aligns with the school choice movement.
Extended learning opportunities (ELOs) allow students to obtain credits for classes outside of the school classroom. A program known as Learn Everywhere – implemented in 2020 – allows the State Board of Education to approve programs that can count toward credits, without the power for local school boards to override the decision.
And while the current rules include a basic requirement for school boards to pass policies laying out how the school district will engage with students on creating and supporting ELOs, the new rules go into more detail over how the school district should implement ELOs.
The use of the word “opportunity” extends beyond ELOs; in the section of the new rules outlining middle school and high school curriculum requirements, subject areas and courses are referred to as “learning opportunities.” The new rules require school boards to require a “program of studies with learning opportunities offered to high school students” in arts education, English language arts, mathematics, science, and a number of other common subjects.
State Board Chairman Drew Cline and department officials say the change is rhetorical. Critics have claimed it is part of a shift toward external private sector educational opportunities for students.
A change to class size determinations
One of the most contentious changes in the new rules involves class sizes. Currently, the state’s rules state that class sizes “shall be” capped at certain amounts for different grade levels: 25 for kindergarten to grade two, and 30 for grades three to 12.
The new rules are somewhat more nuanced. They include the same caps, but they also say “the local school board shall establish student-educator ratios that promote student learning for each learning opportunity and learning level based upon school safety policies, content, instructional method, (and) the characteristics of learners.”
By changing the language from “shall be” to “shall establish” ratios “based upon,” critics say the department has given wiggle room for school boards. State Board Chairman Drew Cline says that interpretation is false.
Addressing the legislative committee, Cline said an earlier version had removed the class size caps and allowed school boards much more flexibility – a move meant to respond to the post-pandemic reality for many school districts. But after pushback, the State Board relented.
“We incorporated the existing class size caps into the rule, and they are still there,” he said.
Subject descriptions ‘aligned to’ curriculum frameworks
The current rules describe a number of curriculum areas for specific subjects, such as arts education, mathematics, and English language arts, and lay out specific requirements for each subject that school boards are required to follow.
The new rules largely eliminate those lists of required elements. Instead, they simplify the direction to school boards. “Each school’s arts education program shall have (competencies) and curriculum aligned to ‘K-12 Curriculum Framework for the Arts,’ April 2001 edition, as referenced in Appendix II,” the new rules for arts education state.
The State Board of Education is supposed to update the academic standards for each of those subjects as well. Cline said the board is planning to do so, but has been slowed down by the process of updating the minimum standards. Each subject can take a while, he said; the board started work on the social studies framework before the pandemic.
The academic standards are not as stringent as the rules passed by JLCAR last week and are not as high a priority, Cline said.
“It’s a conveyor belt, right?” he said. “So every state board meeting, we have new rules that have expired or are going to expire that we have to update, and that’s a lot of work.”