There are three certainties in life: death, taxes, and scaremongering that school choice will destroy public education.

Whenever a state legislature is considering a measure to create a new education choice policy, or expand an existing one, the proverbial Chicken Littles inevitably start squawking that the sky is falling.

Take New Hampshire’s popular Education Freedom Accounts (EFA). State legislators are considering a bill to expand eligibility for the EFA, which empowers families to use their child’s portion of state funding to choose the learning environments that work best for their children. Predictably, opponents of education freedom are predicting utter ruin.

Left-wing columnist Gary Rayno screeched that making EFAs open to all children would “do away with public education as we know it.” Likewise, Liz Tentarelli of Manchester, president of the League of Women Voters New Hampshire, called the EFA expansion, “One more step in defunding public schools.”

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These Chicken Little claims are nothing new. When the EFA program was first enacted in 2021, state Sen. Lou D’Allesandro wailed that it was “carving public education apart.” For that matter, when Granite State lawmakers were considering enacting a tax-credit scholarship program in 2012, state Sen. Sylvia Larsen warned offering families more school choice options was “ruining the very basis of our society.” Left-wing activist Bill Duncan, who later served on the New Hampshire State Board of Education, called the scholarship program “an IED, an explosive device planted in our school system.”

Yet more than a decade later, the sky hasn’t fallen. New Hampshire public schools are still going strong. In fact, they’re better funded than ever. According to the New Hampshire Department of Education’s latest figures, the state’s public schools spent, on average, $26,320 per pupil last year. By contrast, last year’s average EFA award was only $5,204 and the average tax-credit scholarship was a measly $2,825.

Indeed, although the EFA and tax-credit scholarship policies serve 4 percent of Granite State students, the total spending on the two policies combined is less than 0.8 percent of the nearly $4 billion spent on New Hampshire public schools annually—barely a drop in the bucket.

There is no evidence that school choice harms public schools, let alone “destroys” them. In fact, the best available evidence shows that—like in nearly every other area of life—more choices and healthy competition lead to better outcomes.

Researchers at the University of Arkansas found a “strong and statistically significant association” between education freedom (including the robustness of a state’s school choice policies) and “both academic scores and academic gains.” Indeed, 26 out of 29 empirical studies on the effects of education choice policies on the academic performance of students who remain at their traditional public schools find statistically significant positive effects. One found no visible effect, and only two found a small negative effect.

But evidence doesn’t matter to the Chicken Littles. Nor do they have any sense of proportionality. As we detailed in a new EdChoice report, there is no correlation between the size and scope of school choice proposals in states nationwide and the rhetorical intensity of school choice opponents.

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In other words, opponents of education freedom tend to throw everything they have against such proposals, regardless of their size and scope. It doesn’t matter whether the proposal would offer school choice to all students or to very few students—opponents of school choice will claim that the proposal will harm public schools, and some will even claim that it will destroy public schools, regardless of the evidence to the contrary.

Fortunately, New Hampshire Gov. Kelly Ayotte knows to ignore the Chicken Littles.

“I believe that parents make the best decisions for their children,” Ayotte stated during her campaign last year. “I’m a strong believer in education freedom, and the reason for that is that every child learns differently. And parents know what is best for their children, and we want to give every child in this state the opportunity to go to the school or the educational setting that is best for them.”

In August, Ayotte made her support for universal EFAs explicit, declaring. “I support universal education freedom.”

The New Hampshire legislature should follow Gov. Ayotte’s lead. Policymakers should resist calls to scale back the EFA expansion. There is no reason to expect that reducing the size and scope of the EFA expansion will reduce the intensity of opposition. Instead, they should stay the course, be bold, and ensure that every child gets access to the quality education they deserve.