We publish reports on the state and national level, including original empirical research, surveys, public polls, syntheses and more.
To learn more about what we do, visit our Research page, or our Fiscal Research and Education Center.
Research Library
Spending in Arizona’s ESA Program: A Multi-Stage Transaction-Level Analysis
After Arizona opened its Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) program to all families in 2022, a program that took a decade to enroll 10,000 students ballooned to ten times that number in just three years. The 100,000 families spending ESA funds in 2025-26 have over 2 million transactions worth over $1 billion for education goods and services. Stakeholders are catching up to the scope of this program and beginning to ask important questions about whether those dollars are in fact going to educational expenses. Our new report digs into the transaction-level data to find out. Our results demand more nuance than many recent headlines want you to have.