Setting the record straight on educational choice in Arizona

More than 1.1 million children in Arizona attend schools their parents picked. Yet some so-called “experts” want Kentuckians to believe that the Grand Canyon State has devolved into a bankrupt, smoldering version of Mordor thanks to its latest universal choice program—the Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) program.

The reality is Arizona families have benefited from universal educational choice programs for 30 years. Statewide public-school open enrollment and charter school laws were enacted in 1994, followed by a private-school tax-credit scholarship enacted in 1997. Then in 2022 Arizona enacted its third universal educational choice program when all schoolchildren statewide became eligible to participate in the Empowerment Scholarship ESA. 

Opponents’ dire predictions still haven’t materialized. 

Under Arizona’s ESA program the state deposits just a fraction of the funding that would have gone to participating students’ public schools into their ESAs instead. With those funds parents pay for allowable education expenses such as private school tuition, homeschooling or online curricula, special education therapies and tutoring. Currently, just over 80,000 students are using ESAs.

For all the fearmongering about a massive public-school exodus should parents be allowed to pick non-public-school options, public-school choice remains the most widely exercised form of educational choice in Arizona. In fact, nearly one-third of all students statewide (about 340,000) attend public schools determined by their parents—not their zip codes. 

Today, Arizona is a national leader in student academic growth overall, as well as across various student socioeconomic demographics, thanks in no small part to its public school performance. Moreover, Arizona has had some of the largest score gains on the Nation’s Report Card in fourth- and eighth-grade mathematics and reading, gains that “were roughly double the national average from 2005 to 2017.” Importantly, Arizona achieves such success despite spending far less per pupil than most states, including Kentucky, which spends $5,000 more per pupil than Arizona.

Rather than highlighting how Arizona gets more bang for every education buck, opponents’ standard refrain is that educational choice programs like Arizona’s drain funding from public education. For example, Arizona opponents insisted that the ESA program would “bankrupt” the state budget, and some Kentucky opponents claim the Bluegrass State would suffer a similar fate if lawmakers enacted one, too. Once again, the facts disprove the fearmongering.

A new analysis of 48 private educational choice programs in 25 states finds that for every dollar spent on them, these programs generate an average estimated savings of between $1.70 and $2.64. As for Arizona’s universal ESA, the analysis also found that fears of it “blowing a hole in the budget” were wildly exaggerated. The estimated upfront net cost of $37 million in 2022 represented just 0.2 percent of taxpayer funding for Arizona K–12 public schools. The longer-term savings more than make up for that initial cost.

Conservative fiscal estimates suggest Arizona’s ESA program will yield annual net fiscal savings of $244 million. In fact, actual savings have already accrued. Contrary to opponents’ doomsday predictions, not only did Arizona education funding, including for ESAs, finish at $4.3 million under budget, state revenue was $412 million higher than the enacted budget. Additionally, average Arizona per-pupil funding reached a record-breaking high of nearly $15,000 per pupil amidst the historic expansion of the state’s universal ESA program.

Then there’s the notion that universal educational choice is a “giveaway to the rich.” The Brookings Institution, for example, dubbed Arizona’s universal ESA program “a handout to the wealthy.” The reality is nearly half of all Arizona ESA students (47.6 percent) were previously enrolled in public schools, and significant proportions of them are from moderate-income households, have special needs or live within the boundaries of failing public schools. This is a significant finding since Arizona has long had additional public and private educational choice programs serving students with similar backgrounds. Thus, universal ESAs are helping even more—not fewer—students who need different education options.

Kentucky Lt. Gov. Jacqueline Coleman likewise insists that educational choice programs such as Arizona’s “were always intended to pad the pockets of the privileged” and not intended for “marginalized” students. Not only does the empirical evidence show otherwise, choice opponents’ silence about just how many “privileged” students taxpayers subsidize in the public-school system is deafening. A recent analysis of this phenomenon in Arizona found that “taxpayers spend 10–20 times more money subsidizing public school instruction for children from households earning over $150,000 than they do on similarly situated families who have joined the ESA program from a private or home-based school under universal expansion.”

So, after 30 years and three universal educational choice programs is Arizona devastated? Hardly. The future looks even brighter for another generation of Arizona students—and there’s no good reason it couldn’t be just as bright for Kentucky students.

Vicki Murray-Alger, Ph.D., is a Visiting Fellow with the Bluegrass Institute for Public Policy Solutions.