Gov. Jared Polis plans to opt Colorado into a federal tax-credit scholarship program, opening the door to private school choice in a Democratic state where lawmakers and voters have rejected previous proposals.

Conservatives, children’s advocates, and supporters of school choice praised the decision for its possibility to raise money for all students’ education. Meanwhile, a coalition of public school advocates sent a letter to Polis in December asking him to reconsider.

The voucher-like program, part of President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful” budget bill, has the potential to generate billions of dollars for private school tuition and other educational expenses, such as tutoring, but governors have to decide whether to participate.

Polis appears to be the . North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein did so in August under pressure from state Republican lawmakers who have dramatically expanded the state’s voucher system. Polis also is the second governor to opt in from a state where voters rejected a school choice measure at the ballot. Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen, a Republican, , setting the stage for Nebraska’s first private school choice program after voters there overturned voucher legislation in 2024.

School choice supporters had hoped the federal program would expand educational opportunities in states where politics made it difficult or impossible to pass voucher legislation. Polis, meanwhile, said he saw other potential benefits.

Polis spokesperson Shelby Wieman said in a Dec. 5 statement that the governor would not have voted for the budget bill, but he is not interested in leaving hundreds of millions in federal money on the table that could provide additional funding for after-school programming, summer school, scholarships, and academic tutoring.

“This tax credit creates an immense opportunity for Coloradans to support students in our state, but only if we opt in,” she said. “He welcomes the opportunity to work with school districts and other education stakeholders to help ensure this credit can benefit the greatest number of students across our state with evidence-based programs that supplement school days. He encourages the administration to ensure these tax credits lead to improved student outcomes.”

The tax-credit program allows taxpayers to reduce their tax liability if they donate to eligible scholarship-granting organizations, which then pay for students’ educational expenses.

The law allows donations to benefit public and private school students alike, but how feasible it might be to harness donations for public school students will depend in part on rules that the Treasury Department has yet to issue.

that Polis plans to opt Colorado into the program. He expressed openness to the idea last summer and earlier in his career. Polis said in a statement that he doesn’t believe vouchers are a good use of public funds and that this tax credit is not a voucher.

States officially opt in by presenting a list of eligible scholarship-granting organizations to the Treasury Department, a step that must wait until rules are finalized next year.

Polis’ decision doesn’t necessarily mean Colorado will participate in the tax-credit program over the long term. Polis is term-limited, and the winner of the governor’s race next year could make a different decision.

Supporters of Polis’ decision agreed that the tax credits present an opportunity for the state to raise millions for students, including to support them in out-of-school opportunities and to pay for transportation and school supplies. Advocates say the tax-credit scholarship program helps students in underperforming schools attend other school options.

Tony Lewis, executive director of the Donnell-Kay Foundation, which works on education policy, said he hopes the tax credit rules allow scholarship-granting organizations the ability to pay for a wide range of activities, such as sports, after-school programs, theater classes, and summer camps. (The Donnell-Kay Foundation also has provided funding to Chalkbeat. Read more about our supporters and our ethics policy .)

“If we pass up this opportunity to opt in now, we close any possibility of doing good work for public school kids,” he said. “Why not keep your options open?”

The Colorado Children’s Campaign, an advocacy organization, also expressed optimism about the potential to benefit public school students.

And Ready Colorado Executive Director Brenda Dickhoner said the decision means more opportunities for kids, especially those wanting to participate in enrichment programs. The conservative organization focuses on school choice and education reform.

“It’s a way for us to solve this problem of closing this opportunity gap, and making it more equitable for kids to access after school enrichment, whether it’s band or sports or any type of tutoring,” she said in an interview.

The program doesn’t require state investment. Instead, it allows states to decide whether taxpayers can donate funds to scholarship-granting organizations and receive a dollar-for-dollar federal tax credit. Individual taxpayers can claim a credit of up to $1,700 starting in 2027.

Those organizations would give the money to parents to pay for education expenses, such as a students’ private school tuition, books, transportation, and uniforms. Families earning up to 300% of area median income would qualify. That threshold includes well-off families in expensive urban areas but might exclude middle-class families in some rural communities.

, which would have enshrined the right to school choice in the state’s Constitution. In 2021, they .

Polis reiterated his decision to opt in despite pleas from a that delivered a letter to Polis saying the state should not participate.

The letter said the state should focus on providing more resources to schools and respect voters’ wishes to keep vouchers out of the state.

The group added that the state can and must do better when it comes to public education. “But publicly funded school vouchers are not the way to achieve this,” the letter says.

The letter says studies have shown vouchers provide mixed results in improving student achievement. It also says the program lacks public accountability and allows discrimination against children with disabilities or who identify as LGBTQ+.

“Unlike the private or religious schools that vouchers support, our public schools are obligated to teach all students, holding fast to the American ideal of public education as a springboard to success and as necessary to a well-functioning democracy,” the letter says.

The list of organizations calling on Polis to reject the plan include the Colorado Education Association, Colorado Fiscal Institute, Colorado PTA, Movimiento Poder, and The Bell Policy Center.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. This story was originally published by Chalkbeat on Dec. 5, 2025. Sign up for their newsletters at .

was originally reported by Ebony JJ Curry of . .

Seventy years have passed since Rosa Parks refused to surrender her seat on a Montgomery bus, and yet the country still tries to shrink her into that single moment — a tired seamstress who’d simply had enough.

Detroit, the city where she chose to continue her life, insists on remembering her differently. Not as an icon frozen in time, but as a Black woman whose lifelong organizing stretched from sexual violence cases in rural Alabama to open housing fights on Detroit’s west side.

That fuller story  — truth beyond the myth — is exactly what the Rosa Parks Scholarship Foundation has fought to tell for 45 years.

The Rosa Parks Scholarship Foundation (RPSF) has awarded more than $3 million in scholarships to more than 2,250 high school seniors since its founding by The Detroit News and the Detroit Public Schools (DPS) in 1980.

“Most people actually don’t know the story of Rosa Parks,” said Dr. Danielle McGuire, RPSF board member, historian and author of “At the Dark End of the Street”, whose research permanently shifted how historians write about Parks and the civil rights movement. “She’s so much more interesting, so much more radical, and so much more involved in all kinds of things that we forget about. We keep her stuck on the bus in Montgomery in 1955.”

According to Kim Trent, a  Detroit civic leader and former board president, the foundation, created through a racial discrimination lawsuit settlement involving Stroh’s Brewing Company, became one of the rare instances where federal accountability for racism produced long-term investment in Black futures.

A judge, DPS and The Detroit News agreed the money should honor Parks — who was living in Detroit and working for Rep. John Conyers at the time — by funding scholarships for Michigan students devoted to service and social change.

It is a statewide program, reaching students from Detroit to Grand Rapids to rural school districts where scholarship dollars often determine whether higher education is possible at all.

That framing makes her legacy active, not ceremonial.

“As part of her family, I feel grateful to be able to work together with my fellow board members to keep fighting for more opportunities to continue to provide scholarships,” said Erica Thedford, Parks’ great-niece and a foundation trustee. “I think Auntie Rosa would be extremely proud of what the Foundation has been able to achieve.”

The numbers tell one story — more than 1,000 scholars, millions awarded, forty $2,500 scholarships each year — and the essays tell another. Applicants must identify a modern social issue and explain how they would confront it using principles Parks embodied: discipline, non-negotiable dignity, community before self.

“Reading the essays of the students who apply is a great reminder that each person doing one act, no matter how small, creates a stronger network of love and kindness,” Thedford said. “Some of these students come from extreme hardship and still find the time and resources to volunteer at food banks, shelters… Some even take it upon themselves to be the organizer of ways to help the less fortunate at their schools.”

The award is one-time, not renewable, yet its impact stretches across decades.

“Once you become a Rosa Parks Scholarship Foundation recipient, you are a Rosa Parks Scholar for life,” Thedford said. “These students are now part of a network of people who root for each other, and that kind of support system is important.”

Trent knows that firsthand: She was a Parks Scholar herself when she graduated from Cass Tech High School.

“I received the scholarship in 1987,” she said. “Ironically, not only did I get it, but my best friend… also received the same scholarship. And then her son got the scholarship like 30 years later.”

Trent said the scholarship’s origin mirrors Parks’ life — created in response to injustice and sustained through community action.

“It’s one of those rare occasions where something beautiful grew out of an instance of racism and oppression,” Trent said.

Over the years, some Parks Scholars attended community college. Others enrolled at flagship universities. All had to articulate how their education would serve a community beyond themselves.

Some, like Emmy-winning actor Courtney B. Vance, who’s from Highland Park, Michigan, went on to shape national culture. Others are now attorneys, educators and nonprofit leaders across the state.

“What gets lost in what she did is the reason she did it,” Trent added. “It wasn’t just so she could sit on a bus. It was because she was trying to open up opportunity for people who had been denied opportunity.”

That is the heartbeat of the foundation’s lineage.

Parks was not simply resisting segregation. She was rejecting the entire machinery that kept Black women from safety, education and economic autonomy.

McGuire’s research highlights how Rosa Parks was investigating sexual violence cases long before #MeToo, defending Black girls whose voices were dismissed in courtrooms and newspapers. She worked alongside the NAACP on equity cases. When she left Alabama under threat of death and moved to Detroit, she became the neighbor who knew everyone’s children, the church member who attended every meeting, the woman who collected information and names and needs.

“She was the person in the neighborhood who knew all the kids, who worked in almost every community organization you can imagine, to make life better for her people,” McGuire said. “The scholarship foundation is an example of that — just one of many.”

Every year, nearly 400 applicants encounter that fuller history — the Parks who fought for open housing in Detroit, who believed in Black self-determination, who, as McGuire notes, “never stopped fighting for equality and justice for people who didn’t have a voice that was being heard.”

That is not accidental. It is by design.

“We ask our applicants to become familiar with Rosa Parks and the tactics and strategies she used to make changes in her community and how they will do the same,” McGuire said. “I think it gives them hope. It links them to a tradition and a history of hope and change.”

This anniversary of Parks’ arrest arrives as school boards strip Black history from K-12 classrooms and as scholarship programs for marginalized students come under attack. Thedford sees the foundation’s work as a refusal.

“During this time, when we are hearing of funding being pulled from schools and programs that are needed to serve our youth, the Foundation is able to continue its provision of funds,” she said.

McGuire is blunt about what that represents:

“No matter how hard people try to cancel the past, the past is very much alive,” she said. “Rosa Parks’ history gives us so much honesty about America… and studying her is paramount to getting through any difficult time.”

Seventy years later, the lesson remains unchanged: Rosa Parks did not fight for a place to sit, she fought for the generations who would rise. Today, those students are still applying, still studying her strategies, still refusing to yield.

This was originally published on .

She and 15 other students had started at the college that fall in the hopes of studying to become highly effective educators. Many of them planned to return to their rural communities after graduation to help fill a gaping teacher shortage. They were all recipients of full-tuition scholarships through the , a three-year, federally funded project meant to diversify and increase the number of teachers in Nebraska and Kansas.

What they learned that February afternoon has left many of them reeling and questioning what comes next: Abrupt federal cuts from the Trump administration — meant to root out ��෡��” practices — resulted in every one of them losing their scholarships, effective immediately. They’d be able to finish out the spring term, but as of May, the money would be gone. Of the 16 students, 14 are first-time freshmen, just beginning their higher education journeys.

“I knew we were going to get told something terrible, but I couldn’t put a stop to it,” said Vianey, who asked to be identified by her first name only because of concerns that speaking out in the media could have negative ramifications. “To me, this scholarship was my way out. It was my way to be something. To contradict all the odds that were placed on me,” she added as her voice broke and she began to cry.

“I’ve wanted to be a teacher my whole life. Now, with all of this happening, I don’t know if I can recover.”

Amanda Morales, associate professor at UNL and principal investigator on the RAÍCES project, said telling her group of undergraduate students about the funding cuts was “by far, one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do.”

“When you see young people’s dreams just shattered in an instant because of something you said or this message you had to give, how do you bounce back from that?” she asked. “What is happening to these projects and these programs is unprecedented, and it is really inhumane. There’s no other word for it.”

RAÍCES, whose name is derived from a Spanish word meaning “roots,” was one of many teacher preparation programs that suddenly lost their funding when the Education Department canceled more than in grants. The programs, meant to increase the number of teachers in high-need and hard-to-staff schools, were accused by the department of discriminating against certain populations and embracing “divisive ideologies” which aligned with diversity, equity and inclusion and “social justice activism.”

Eight attorneys general have since filed alleging the cancellation of the congressionally approved grants was unlawful. On Monday, a federal judge ordered the administration to in those eight states, which don’t include Kansas or Nebraska. Three teacher prep programs have also filed  

The scholarship, whose name stands for Re-envisioning Action and Innovation through Community Collaborations for Equity across Systems, had been promised $3.9 million through a grant, which sought to train more highly effective educators. It was housed at UNL and Kansas State University, which were required to match at least 25% of the federal funding.

RAÍCES was designed to be a comprehensive program that addressed the intractable teacher shortage in rural areas from recruiting novices to retaining veterans. It began with a high school-based program called Youth Participatory Action Research, providing students with the opportunity to explore careers in the classroom and investigate problems affecting their own education and communities. A number of students who ultimately received the full undergraduate scholarships, including Vianey, were recruited from this program. 

It also included funding for graduate-level scholarships, mentoring for teachers and ongoing professional development — meant to help educators stay in the profession long term. 

On Feb. 10, at 8:55 p.m., Socorro Herrera, professor and executive director of Kansas State’s Center for Intercultural and Multilingual Advocacy and the project’s lead principal investigator, received an email with an attached letter from the Education Department, telling her the grant would be terminated because it “is inconsistent with, and no longer effectuates, Department priorities.” 

She was shocked. 

“My thought is,” she said, “it’s not ‘department priorities,’ but it is community priorities. It is state priorities. It is the priority of human beings who want to go back into those public schools in which they grew up to give back [and] to be the most highly qualified teacher they can be for all students — but also for students who are like them.”

Morales said the letter and “blanket termination” of all SEED grants “left all of us just reeling with no clarity, no support, no one to call. Even our program officers are inaccessible. We were just left in the lurch — left to just flounder and try to pick up the pieces of this shattered project.”

‘[The] teacher that I wish I had’

Vianey was born in Mexico and came to the U.S. as a toddler with her parents and three siblings. The family spent their first decade or so in Washington state, where Vianey attended school as an English language learner. Even as a kid, Vianey was aware of the shortfalls of her school’s program and the negative impact it had on her and her English learner classmates.

“I just want to be that teacher that I wish I had when I was growing up to others,” she said.

She noted it was particularly challenging to not have any teachers who looked like her or shared her life experiences. At the time, this made her feel like her dream of becoming an educator might not be attainable, a narrative she hopes to combat.

“It gives you a sense of belonging when you see somebody that looks like you in the classroom,” she added.

When Vianey was in high school she moved to Nebraska with her mom, where she attended Lincoln High School and participated in the youth action program, which allowed her to do research on English language programs in her state. Eventually this led her to the RAÍCES scholarship at UNL, where she’s studying secondary education for Spanish, in the hopes of eventually returning to her own high school. 

As of December 2024, Nebraska schools had about , meaning they were staffed by someone other than a fully qualified teacher or were left totally vacant. About half of districts that responded to the state’s request for data reported complete vacancies. 

At roughly the same time, Kansas had almost — an 8%  increase from the previous spring, according to the teacher licensure director for the Kansas State Department of Education.

Nationally there were almost according to the Learning Policy Institute’s most recent analysis, likely a significant undercount because only 30 states and Washington, D.C. publish such data. 

has shown that rural schools face distinct difficulties filling their teaching positions, and that teacher turnover is especially common in high-poverty rural schools. And hiring foreign language and bilingual education teachers is especially hard.

“The money, explicitly and intentionally, was about increasing the number of teachers in rural schools,” said Herrera. 

Vianey had acute ELL teacher shortages in her own district in mind when she decided to apply to RAÍCES. Getting accepted into the full scholarship program “meant everything” to her and to her parents, whose formal education ended after third grade. 

“[My mom] felt like she succeeded and she was finally being able to achieve what she came here to do, and that is to give us a better life,” said Vianey.

‘We’re not rolling over here’

Vianey is among the at least 70 high school students, 26 undergraduates and 40 master’s students across the two universities who have been impacted by the cuts, along with the almost 1,000 teachers in partnering districts who were receiving ongoing education and professional development.

The ripple effects are far-reaching, potentially impacting thousands of students whose chances of getting a highly qualified, fully certified teacher have now been diminished.

When the funding runs out this spring, Tiffaney Locke — a 42-year-old career changer who has spent the past 12 years working in community mental health — will be just two courses shy of her master’s degree. 

She said as a Black student in Kansas City schools, she was able to find success because of educators who believed in her. Her plan was to return to a similar school to be that teacher for kids who look like her. She quit her full-time job to complete what she thought would be a fully funded program and is now scared about what comes next but hopeful that her teaching career is still within reach.

While the population of the scholarship recipients is diverse, the only requirement for application was that students come from one of the six partner districts in Nebraska and Kansas, all identified as difficult to staff and, in most cases, rural. One of the districts they partnered with had almost 120 vacancies.

Of the 16 undergraduates at UNL who were supposed to receive full scholarships — including housing, meal plans and a laptop — one quarter identified as white and half identified as Hispanic or Latino, according to Morales. Three-quarters were first-generation college students and over half came from rural communities. They were all high-achieving high school students and 15 of the 16 had GPAs just over 3.5 in their first semester, well above the program’s 2.0 requirement.

“The fact that the government doesn’t think you’re worthy to be here is tragic,” Morales said.

Morales and Herrera are now scrambling to find external funding, making any attempt they can to keep the program alive, but “this may be the end of the road for many of [the students] because just loans and Pell grants wouldn’t be enough to see them through,” Herrera said.

These across-the-board cuts have also had a chilling effect, she said, making those at the university level scared to speak out for fear of retribution from the federal government. Their concern is not baseless: the Trump administration recently in funding from Columbia University and halted payment on in grants to the University of Maine system.

“Everybody’s in this silent mode, like ‘Don’t call attention to yourself, go under the radar, keep doing the work,’” she added.

But the leaders of RAÍCES aren’t done.

 “We’re not rolling over here,” said Morales. “We’re not tucking our tail and just saying, ‘OK, I guess this is just the way it is.’ We’re fighting on every front we possibly can and [are] continuing to fight up until the very last moment. I’m not giving up.”

And Vianey isn’t quitting either. She wants to send a clear message to the people who took away her scholarship: “It’s not going to stop us from achieving our dreams. We will find a way out … my purpose is to become a teacher — and I’m not going to stop until I’m able to.”

Katelan Crowder woke up in her childhood bedroom. Her dog, Daisy, was still snoring.

A year had passed since she graduated from high school, and the University of Texas student returned to her West Texas home for an unexpected reason: a summer internship.

The rising sophomore’s passion for design could have kept her in the ever-expanding metropolis of Austin or sent her to either coast. But living in those larger cities is expensive. And as much as she wanted to escape Odessa, a program that reconnects UT-Austin students with businesses for summer internships in their hometown appealed to her.

“We used to bond over hating Odessa,” Crowder said, referring to her high school friends. “But being here made me realize the good. I bonded so well with the people during the internship.”

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Crowder, who is ending a nine-week research internship at the Ellen Noël Art Museum, is one of four UT students who returned to the Permian Basin this summer as part of the university’s Home to Texas program. It’s the third year businesses in Odessa and nearby cities have partnered with UT to bring students back to the blue-collar region known for high school football and oil fields.

Smaller industrial cities and rural towns in Texas and across the nation have long struggled to attract talent, much less retain bright-eyed students. To combat the phenomena of “brain drain,” organizations from rural chambers of commerce to school districts and universities have worked to establish programs that encourage young people to keep their talents in their backyards.

UT-Austin piloted an earlier version of the program in 2019, aimed at diversifying internship opportunities for undergraduate students. The program — which includes a $5,000 scholarship — attracted roughly 100 applications that year, said Dustin Harris, the program’s coordinator. Four years on, the program has only grown. This year, 420 students applied. Sixty-seven were placed in more than a dozen Texas towns, including nearby Midland and Big Spring.

“It’s never been more competitive to be a homegrown student,” Harris said during a recent reception for the West Texas interns.

At the museum, Crowder worked on several marketing and research projects. She even helped curate an exhibition.

Megan Baeza, director of internships and employer relations at UT-Permian Basin, said these internships are a boon for rural communities with limited access to a deep talent pool.

Sheila Perry, the executive director of Ellen Noël, said having summer interns reinvigorates her faith in the future.

“Katelan taught us to have a fresh perspective,” Perry said.

UT-Austin’s program has included more placements in the state’s largest cities, but Harris said he hopes the success in Odessa, Midland and Big Spring will inspire other smaller cities and towns.

“The idea of return migration has been around for a long time,” said Josh Wyner, executive director of the college excellence program at the Aspen Institute, a nonprofit think tank that works across various sectors including education, health and business.

To keep students in their hometowns, colleges and businesses need a strong relationship that produces relevant coursework during the fall and spring semesters and practical on-the-job training during the summer, Wyner said.

Wyner stressed for return migration to work, business leaders must take an active role in partnerships with higher education institutions.

“Employers have to lead,” Wyner said.

The formula UT-Austin and the Permian Basin businesses have established appears to be working. Several of the students who returned home this summer said they’re seeing their hometowns in a new way and are considering returning full-time after earning their degrees.

In Big Spring, William Cole interned this summer at the city attorney’s office. He’d never have the same up-close experience at a big-city law firm, he said.

“It really opened my eyes on being deadset about coming back,” he said.

Elizabeth Aguilar was offered a window into work-from-home life. She spent the summer living in her hometown of Midland but working on a project for the Initiative for Law, Societies, and Justice, a project based at UT-Austin studying different issues affecting Texans, including the criminal legal system and the mental health field.

Aguilar learned about available mental health providers in the Permian Basin by compiling information on the region’s hospitals and treatment centers.

Aguilar and her family moved to Midland in 2012. Like Crowder in Odessa, Aguilar grew up thinking there would be no professional opportunities after college. Now she wants to help break the stereotypes of the Permian Basin.

“This internship caught me by surprise,” Aguilar said. “I want to help build a place ‘little me’ would want to grow up in.”

Still, area business leaders admit they need to do more to make coming home inviting.

“There needs to be more to do,” said Debbye ValVerde, executive director of the Big Spring Area Chamber of Commerce. “A lot of rural communities may not have what they want to do in life.”

Reneé Earls, president of the Odessa Chamber of Commerce, said cities, especially those like Odessa, known widely for a singular industry, must reinvent themselves.

“We can’t do what we’ve always done. We want people invested here,” she said. “The saying in Odessa is that there’s nothing to do, and that’s just not the case.”

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

When COVID struck in 2020, the then-eighth grader’s Upper Valley, New Hampshire middle school campus shut down for several weeks to pivot to virtual learning, like most others across the country. Paige knew then that her daughter Amy — whose name has been changed in this piece for the student’s privacy — was at risk of falling behind even further. Once online school started, live instruction was only on a “part-time basis,” Paige said.

“There was lost learning time,” she said. “Sometimes there weren’t teachers because the teachers were sick.”

Although Paige didn’t know it yet, Amy had dyslexia. For years, the now-17-year-old’s condition went undiagnosed. Meanwhile, it complicated the teen’s part-time job at a clothing store, because she struggled to type in email addresses at the cash register.

In a last-ditch effort to help her daughter, Paige connected with a tutor specializing in phonics-based literacy, who she now works with via a relatively new state program. After beginning tutoring, Amy showed quick improvement on spelling and reading tests administered by her high school, Paige said. Amy’s literacy coach recognized signs of dyslexia and pointed the family toward screening for the disability, which led to her diagnosis and extra services at school.

“I’ve seen progress,” Paige said. “The way [her tutor] works with her is not a way … a teacher would have the time to work with her in a classroom situation.”

That sort of individualized, intensive coaching is a key solution the Granite State has bet on to help students like Amy get back on track after the pandemic. The state is entering its second year offering the scholarship, which uses a digital wallet to provide $1,000 for private tutoring to any young person whose education was negatively impacted by the pandemic. The scholarship is available to all students, regardless of need, and can be applied toward tutoring from state-approved educators.

“When I explain the program to [parents], they become very excited, like, ‘Oh, this is great,’” New Hampshire Education Commissioner Frank Edelblut said. “In some cases, they’re almost like, ‘It’s too good to be true. How can this possibly be?’”

But families in New Hampshire have tapped into less than a third of the available scholarship funds. So far this academic year, 724 young people have received scholarships — accounting for just $724,000 out of a $2.5 million total funded by federal COVID relief cash. Upon inception, the state granted scholarship eligibility only to students from low-income families, but with signups lagging and substantial funds remaining, they made access universal.

State testing in 2022 revealed that more than half of New Hampshire students were not proficient in math and over 40% were behind in English, though scores have rebounded slightly since 2021, according to data provided by the state. Research shows sustained individual or small-group tutoring can be one of the best ways to help children catch up.

“One student might be struggling with functions. Another is struggling with algebraic equations,” Edelblut said. “Those are the kinds of things that in a one-on-one tutoring session with a teacher that can be drawn out, they can be addressed, they can be targeted, and we can fill in those gaps.”

Soon after the Paige family began tutoring, they saw a post on social media about the YES! grant and realized they qualified. Though they’re still working out the logistics of the digital wallet, the funds will cover more than two months of intensive lessons, which will be “definitely helpful, without a doubt,” Paige said.

The program has also served its purpose for student Sylas Marrotte. The scholarship gave him access to a trained special education teacher for twice-a-week math and reading tutoring, grandmother Sherry Newman said.

“My grandson, who already had learning disabilities, was falling way behind [during COVID],” Newman wrote in an email to ����Ӱ��. “The tutor was very flexible and supportive.”

The program could help to “democratize” the private tutoring market, which often is available only to wealthier families, said Matthew Kraft, associate professor of education at Brown University. 

But in his eyes, the slow uptake among low-income families is a damning indicator, signaling either poor advertising to the neediest parents or failure to alleviate other barriers such as transportation costs. 

It’s possible many families “just never learned about the program or couldn’t figure out how to sign up or didn’t think that they could make it work,” Kraft said. “I don’t think … they’ve met the demand in that group of students.”

Nationwide, parental interest in learning recovery options has been lower than policymakers would have hoped, according to recent from the Brookings Institute. Despite significant gaps in learning for millions of students across the country, less than a third of families said they wanted their kids to participate in tutoring and less than a quarter said they were interested in district-run summer camps.

Even if all the New Hampshire tutoring funds get disbursed, Kraft observed, it will still only serve 2,500 learners — a drop in the bucket compared to the state’s over 185,000 students, including roughly 50,000 who are eligible for free- or reduced-price lunch, a proxy indicator for the number of students living in poverty.

The New Hampshire Department of Education does not “at this time” know the share of low-income students who have taken advantage of the tutoring scholarship money compared to wealthier youth, Edelblut said. Students could opt for virtual sessions in cases where transportation presented a barrier, he noted.

The YES! scholarship is one of three state-funded tutoring options available to New Hampshire families. The state announced this month that it had that will give more than 100,000 students access to the site’s 24/7 digital tutoring services. Since early in the pandemic, the state has also partnered with Khan Academy founder Sal Khan’s initiative, providing the state’s students with free access to the site’s learning resources. That site has seen about 4,300 New Hampshire visitors, said Kimberly Houghton, a spokesperson for the state’s Department of Education, although she did not have figures on how many tutoring sessions students have actually participated in.

Among the 74 individuals and organizations registered by the state as , including specialists in math, literacy, speech and executive functioning, a handful said over email that none or just one student had reached out for tutoring sessions.

But Krista Martin, who runs the Sylvan Learning centers in Portsmouth and Salem, has worked with six students who have used YES! scholarship money to pay for sessions. Two of those families were already paying for Sylvan tutoring services before the grant and now use the funds to offset costs, but the other four enrolled once they received the scholarship, Martin said. 

For the most part, families come in hopes that the sessions will help their kids recover from the pandemic, Martin wrote in an email.

“​​For many of our students, the breakdowns started during the COVID years,” Martin said. “Since the pandemic, we have heard from many families that they want their children to enjoy school again and show interest in what they are learning like they did before COVID.”

For the Paige family, Amy’s struggles began earlier, but YES! has helped — at least a little — along the way. On an August evening in northern New Hampshire, tutor Lynne Howard sat at her dining table and helped the teen break down words into their individual sound components. Howard was a longtime reading specialist in the local schools and now runs a tutoring company called Summit Literacy.

“Say hush,” Howard said.

“Hush,” Amy responded.

“Now say hush but change ‘shh’ to ‘mm,’ ” Howard added on.

“Hum,” Amy answered.

Word by word, sound by sound, Howard and Amy made out ways to fill the student’s learning gaps. They identified prefixes, suffixes, root words, closed and open vowels — steadily making progress to improve her spelling. And their time together ended with praise that, for many years before tutoring, Paige was concerned she’d never hear about her daughter’s literacy.

“And that’s it, you worked hard today,” Howard said at the end of an hour. “Excellent job.”