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What Arizona Parents Purchase with Education Savings Accounts
To determine exactly how Arizona families are utilizing their Empowerment Scholarship Accounts, the Arizona Department of Education provided the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice with a data set containing the expenditures of families participating in the program. This paper examines the data to determine:
- the types of educational options families are purchasing as a result of an ESA;
- whether families are using ESA funds to send their children to a single educational institution such as a private school or using Empowerment Scholarship Account dollars for a variety of education-related services;
- whether families take advantage of private tutoring and education therapy, allowable under ESA statute; and
- the extent to which families are saving Empowerment Scholarship Account funds forfuture education-related expenses or college costs, and whether it appears that the ESA option encourages families to take “opportunity costs” into consideration, pursuing the best education for the best value.