Arizona’s push for universal private school choice has run into trouble in the Legislature. Members of the state House have repeatedly declined to take it up, amid concerns about public-school funding.
The sponsor of the bill that would the state’s Empowerment Scholarship Accounts, Rep. Justin Olson, R-Mesa, tried responding to those fears, the Arizona Republic reports.
He said criticism that the program could destroy public school districts by taking away unlimited millions of dollars is unreasonable.
“There are fewer students taking advantage of the current system than are capable to take advantage of that system,” he said. “It’s not going to be some earth-shattering change to our current system.”
Right now the number of students is capped about about 5,000 statewide, but the caps would come off in 2020 just as all public-school students would become eligible for the program under the proposed bills.
Olson insisted the program does not take money away from public schools.However, Empowerment Scholarship Accounts allow parents to take tax money that would otherwise go directly to their local public schools and put it toward private-school tuition.
There’s also an issue of timing. Arizona voters will soon decide on a referendum to steer more money to the state’s public schools. Referendum supporters contend that expanding the private scholarship program could complicate those efforts.
Arizona funds public schools at a lower rate than almost any other state in the country, and the referendum came about after a lawsuit successfully claimed schools weren’t adequately funded. But the state’s education system has performed admirably in the face of jarring budget cuts, and where’s the evidence that ESAs harm public school funding?
In a report about the coming fiscal strain on states, Matthew Ladner of the Foundation for Excellence in Education projects Arizona’s school-age population could grow by nearly 33,600 a year on average through 2030. That’s a lot of new schools that would need to be built, and a lot of new teachers that would need to be hired in a state already grappling with shortages.
By letting parents pay for private schools, tutoring or other services, ESAs could help absorb some of that growth outside the public school system, reducing the fiscal strain and helping the increased funding for public schools go further. Private school choice programs tend to generate savings that can be plowed back into the public system.
Another finding in a Republic funding analysis — that the ESAs are more heavily used in wealthy and high-performing districts than in high-poverty or struggling ones — should be cause for concern. Eligibility for the program has gradually expanded beyond low-income and special needs students, and perhaps parents in high-poverty areas need better information or more help navigating their options. Or perhaps disadvantaged students need more funding in their accounts to truly take advantage of the program. Sometimes, money does matter.
