A Victory for Educational Freedom in Arizona

As Arizona students head back to school, more than 100,000 of them can do so knowing their families will continue to have access to the state’s universal ESA program. An effort to dramatically scale back the program has failed to qualify for the ballot.  

On Tuesday, Arizona’s Supreme Court ruled in Clark v. Fontes that the opponents of school choice did not have enough valid signatures to put Proposition 212 on the ballot. 

This means more than 100,000 Arizona students and their families can continue using the nation’s oldest ESA program to find the education that works best for them. Today’s victory protects a program that has become a model for educational freedom across the country. 

From the First ESA to the Gold Standard 

Arizona created the nation’s first education savings account program in 2011. It began as a small program serving targeted groups of students and steadily expanded before lawmakers opened eligibility to all students in 2022. The response from families was remarkable: A program that took roughly a decade to reach 10,000 students grew tenfold in just a few years and now serves more than 100,000. 

But size alone isn’t what makes Arizona special. Arizona comes closer than any other state to realizing Milton and Rose Friedman’s vision of educational freedom: All Students, All Options, All Dollars. 

Every K–12 student eligible to attend an Arizona public school can apply for an ESA. Families can use those dollars for a wide range of educational options, including private school tuition, tutoring, curriculum, online learning, therapies and other approved educational expenses. And unlike programs limited by arbitrary enrollment or budget caps, Arizona’s ESA is funded through the state’s education funding formula. 

Arizona still has room to improve, particularly when it comes to funding parity with public school students. But it remains one of the strongest examples of what a truly universal ESA can look like. 

What Happens When Families Have Real Choice? 

Arizona gives us years of evidence about what happens when families have meaningful control over education funding. Susan Pendergrass’ Beyond Tuition shows that Arizona families are increasingly using ESA funds to customize their children’s education beyond private school tuition, including tutoring, online learning, curriculum and other services. 

The marketplace is responding, too. Pendergrass’ The Supply Side of ESAs found that schools and education providers are growing in response to family demand, with Arizona ESA families using their funds across more than 100 types of educational providers. This is an important part of the Arizona story: educational freedom doesn’t just give families access to existing options; it creates opportunities for new ones to emerge. 

What About ESA Spending? 

As Arizona’s program has grown, so has scrutiny of how families spend ESA funds. That’s appropriate. Taxpayers should expect public funds to be used for their intended educational purposes. However, that scrutiny should be informed by the full picture rather than a handful of unusual purchases. 

Recent EdChoice research examining Arizona ESA transactions estimates that approximately 2% of total ESA spending is unallowable, with truly fraudulent or egregious purchases representing an even smaller share. The research also found that questionable spending is concentrated largely within one purchasing channel, suggesting targeted administrative and technological improvements could address much of the problem without restricting educational freedom for everyone else. 

No large public program will operate without mistakes or opportunities for improvement. Arizona should continue strengthening safeguards, clarifying rules for families and improving its systems. But isolated examples of questionable purchases are not evidence that a program serving more than 100,000 students needs to be dismantled. 

What Arizona Families Nearly Lost 

That’s what made this attack so consequential. The proposal would have imposed an income limit on participating families, added new accreditation or assessment-related requirements for participating schools, and prevented families from rolling unused ESA dollars forward for future educational expenses, among other restrictions. 

Those aren’t minor administrative changes. They strike at features that have helped make Arizona’s program distinctive: broad access, flexibility and a diverse marketplace of education providers. 

The initiative was presented as an effort to make the program more accountable. But Arizona does not need to choose between accountability and educational freedom. It can improve administration and address specific problems without erecting new barriers between families and the educational options they choose. 

The Arizona Lesson 

Arizona pioneered the ESA model, and today states across the country are following its lead. When the state created the first ESA in 2011, the idea that families could direct education dollars toward multiple educational expenses was novel. Today, 21 ESA programs serve more than 700,000 students nationwide, and educational choice programs of all types serve approximately 1.5 million students. 

More states are also moving toward universal eligibility, but Arizona’s experience demonstrates that simply declaring a program “universal” isn’t enough. Real educational freedom means making choice available to all students, allowing families to choose from among a broad range of educational options and providing predictable, sustainable funding so eligible families aren’t turned away when demand exceeds an arbitrary cap. It also means leaving enough room for educators and entrepreneurs to create new options in response to what families actually want. 

Arizona has shown what’s possible when families are given real educational freedom. Now other states have the opportunity to build on that example.