At Porcfest, learning scientist and longtime Croydon, NH school board member Jody Underwood makes a New Hampshire–centric case that public schooling is failing on outcomes and fit while costs are sky-rocketing. She notes flat NAEP reading and math scores, despite decades of reforms. She also notes that ~54% of American adults read below a sixth‑grade level. Jody argues that the main problem with public schools are that they are judged on intentions while alternatives are judged by worst‑case anecdotes.

Underwood’s reform lens is practical and local: expand legal pathways and help families navigate them. She shepherded NH’s expansion of town tuitioning (2017) to allow private—and, after subsequent court rulings, religious—schools, with Croydon using tax dollars for parent‑chosen religious schools. Jody favors ability grouping and mastery over age‑graded seat‑time. She also critiques training that treats state standards as checklists rather than guides.

Her nonprofit, Education Options New Hampshire (EdOpt), tackles the ‘navigation bottleneck.’ EdOpt maintains a filterable provider map (over 1,000 entries), runs statewide school choice fairs, offers family consultations, and encourages entrepreneurship to launch learning centers/micro‑schools. Jody highlights NH’s ‘Learn Everywhere’ (credit for approved out‑of‑school learning) and dual enrollment, plus EFAs and tax‑credit scholarships. She also flags that some homeschoolers avoid EFAs to keep maximal autonomy. 

Demand is rising—homeschooling has roughly doubled since 2019. And surveys show most families now explore alternatives—yet many still don’t know what’s possible. 

The pitch: free up rules, focus on readiness and completion, and build a dense local ecosystem of options.

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