Imagine you’re the parent of three lovely, school-aged children, each of whom possesses a unique set of characteristics, personality traits, and educational needs: The eldest might do best in private school. He’s sharp, he’s up for the challenge — if only you could pay for it. Your middle child has some special needs, and you’d love for her to receive the extra care she requires, but therapy is so expensive. Your youngest daughter would prefer to be home-schooled, learning subjects at different paces, but curriculum these days isn’t cheap.
Impossible? Not in Arizona.
ARIZONA AND NEVADA VOTERS BELIEVE THEY WOULD BE BETTER OFF WITH GOP WINNING CONGRESS: POLL
At least not since Republican Gov. Doug Ducey signed H.B. 2853, the Empowerment Scholarship Account program, which operates like an education savings program and is now the most expansive school choice law in the nation. A form of it has been operating since 2011, but only children with special needs, about 23% of school-age children, were eligible at the beginning. Now, it applies to 100% of Arizona’s K-12 children, no qualifications necessary. Parents of children with special needs can apply for an ESA even earlier.
“Arizona has cemented itself as the No. 1 state for educational freedom,” Corey DeAngelis, a senior fellow at the American Federation for Children, told the Washington Examiner. This win is “the biggest school choice victory in U.S. history.”
In the past, conservatives often referred to school choice as a “voucher” system. This is not entirely accurate, at least for Arizona. A voucher system would be like a “coupon” that can be redeemed at a specific kind of school, such as a private school. ESAs are more like special bank accounts reserved for anything related to a child’s education. Proponents say this makes Arizona’s program superior in many ways.
“Every single family, regardless of income, will be able to take their children’s taxpayer-funded education dollars to the education providers of their choosing. Arizona has figured out that education funding is meant for educating children, not for propping up and protecting a particular institution,” DeAngelis said. DeAngelis, also the executive director of the Educational Freedom Institute, has been championing Arizona’s expansive school choice program for years. He’s fond of saying that “states should fund students, not systems.”
Sponsored by Republican state Rep. Ben Toma, H.B. 2853 ensures that any parent who wants to choose a different education path for their children, one that veers from the public school the child is zoned for, for any number of reasons, can do so. Here’s how it works.
Once families apply and are accepted, the state takes 90% of what it would have used for public education and places the funds in a restricted-use bank account. Parents then can access this and use it for everything from online courses and tutoring to private school tuition and home-school curriculum. The average student receives about $7,000, and unused funds can be rolled over into the following year. All the local and federal funding stays with the local schools.
Sounds great, right? Who would balk at this? Arizona school choice advocates have discovered there are always critics.
The school choice movement in Arizona has faced opposition: A group called Save Our Schools Arizona tried to gather enough signatures to challenge the law via the ballot this November, but failed to do so.
Jenny Clark is relieved the issue didn’t make it to the ballot. All five of her children have benefited from Arizona’s ESA program. Clark liked it so much that in 2018, she founded Love Your School, a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting ESAs. Believe it or not, as of June 2022, there were only 12,127 active students in the ESA program — that was before the law was expanded to include 100% of K-12 students with no previous qualifications.
One specific qualification proved to be a significant obstacle, so lawmakers removed it. In Arizona’s previous ESA program, children had to have logged 100 days of online or in-person public school. Down the road, that number decreased to 45 days. Now, children don’t have to do that at all to be considered qualified for an ESA. This prevents children from needlessly bouncing around. Since Ducey signed the expansion stripping this component and making it available to children without special needs in addition to those with, the Arizona Department of Education has received more than 23,000 new applications in the last six weeks. The program ostensibly doubled overnight. Before the expansion, it had slowly grown by about 10% per year.
Clark has chosen to use the ESAs to fund her children’s home schooling. Her family purchases curriculum, books, and online programs. She uses the funds to pay for therapists and even tuition to Elon Musk’s Synthesis online enrichment program, which, for $180 monthly, helps teach children problem-solving and critical thinking skills.
Clark knows families that make a variety of choices for their children, including using the ESA to cover private school tuition. Some choose to opt out, just sending their child to a public charter school. If parents choose that route, they need not apply for an ESA since the school is already publicly funded.
She said the concept of choice is new to parents and that they may try a few things for their children.
“Sometimes, it does take time for families to figure out what works,” Clark told the Washington Examiner. “Families are usually trying to do everything they can to make sure the school they’re using is a good fit. We don’t see this crazy fluctuation. Most families that get on the ESA program stay on it.”
Of course, even the basic concept of school choice is still criticized, too. Or, at the least, people are wary about it and assume this will be the end of public education as we know it. Clark tries to assuage critics. “I tell them, listen, this program is for the kids whose traditional public school environment is not working for them. You should want this. We are not going to see a mass exodus of public schools.” She’s right. Even with approximately 23,000 children in the ESA program, the numbers indicate not all families simply drop out of public school.
Jason Bedrick knows this all too well. A research fellow in the Center for Education Policy at the Heritage Foundation, he told the Washington Examiner he doesn’t think school choice is at odds with public schools but rather a “fulfillment of the promise of public education.” Education is one of the few marketplaces where choice is discouraged and competition is seen as the enemy.
But in states where there are various school choice programs — right now there are 10 states with some form of education savings accounts — the idea of choice, coupled with competition, has encouraged, some might say forced, public schools to improve. Under the pressure, they have. Bedrick writes and speaks often about how raw standardized test scores and other data show educational choice has a small but positive effect on the way public schools perform. It makes sense, thanks to the basic laws of a free market economy applied to education.
Rather than project the end of public education, Arizona’s ESA program has shown this can be a win-win for parents who keep their children in their zoned public schools and parents who take their ESA money and send them to private schools.
Bedrick hopes other states will look at Arizona, feel emboldened, and follow suit. “There is no one school that best meets the needs of all school children who live nearby. It’s time to move to a system where families have lots of options so they have the best chances of doing what’s right for their kids’ learning needs.”
DeAngelis agrees. He’s already moving on to Texas and other states that are heavily considering similar programs. “School choice is on the Republican Party platform,” he said. “Arizona has the slimmest of GOP majorities. If Arizona can get it done, so can every red state.”
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Nicole Russell is a contributor to the Washington Examiner‘s Beltway Confidential blog. She is a journalist in Washington, D.C., who previously worked in Republican politics in Minnesota. She is an opinion columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
