Reporting for the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting, Maria Polletta points out that Project 2025 uses Arizona as a model. Then she explains why that’s not such a great idea.
Project 2025 paints a rosy picture of an educational marketplace where parents hold the ultimate power to customize their child’s learning experience. As Roberts puts it in his introduction, “Schools serve parents, not the other way around.”
Indeed, parents of some public school students—from those with disabilities who needed special instruction, to those from lower-income families who felt trapped at failing or unsafe schools—have successfully used vouchers to find and afford placements better tailored to their children’s learning styles.
“A family may have three children, two of whom thrive at their neighborhood public school, but one struggles, and the parents choose to get ESA funds to send that child to a school that meets his needs,” Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne said. “I believe school choice options should be available to parents throughout the country as decided on a state-by-state basis.”
At the end of the day, though, only public schools must be open to all. Private schools can generally pick which students to accept or reject, meaning they ultimately do the choosing, not families.
In Arizona, that has left some parents who’ve pursued vouchers for children with disabilities unable to find spots for them. Those who do secure private school placements give up certain anti-discrimination and disability protections present at public schools.
These considerations apply to the minority of Arizona ESA recipients who’ve left district or charter schools in favor of private schools since the state universalized eligibility. Over the past two school years, more than 60% of ESAs went to students who weren’t previously enrolled in public school, state data shows, indicating families are likely using vouchers to subsidize expenses they had formerly covered.
Rather than saving the state money, as school choice advocates claimed ESAs would, both of these shifts have created budgetary strain. School districts, which rely on consistent enrollment for state funding, have seen cash disappear alongside students, even as fixed costs have remained steady. The state, meanwhile, has taken on hundreds of millions in new spending for kids who were already attending private school, a trend that contributed to a $1 billion-plus budget deficit this year.
Under Arizona’s existing laws, it’s almost impossible to see how students who use vouchers for private schools or homeschooling are performing, since they generate very little data. They don’t have to participate in state or national assessments, for instance, and their grades, graduation rates and postsecondary attainment go unreported.
Levin cited a lack of accountability metrics as a key concern if vouchers go national, particularly given the associated price tag. In 2021, National Education Policy Center researchers estimated U.S. education spending would increase by anywhere from $67 billion to $203 billion a year to accommodate universal vouchers, depending on program parameters and enrollment.
