Voters in 3 States Reject School Vouchers. Arizona Should Be Next.

School vouchers in Arizona are funneling cash to rich kids already in private “Christian” schools and paying for their Ivy League college tuition. Riddled with fraud and waste, the voucher program is bleeding $714 million from the state and causing public schools to close.

Voucher recipients have wasted taxpayer money on horseback lessons, televisions, home gyms, kayaks, trampolines, cowboy roping lessons, SeaWorld tickets, ninja warrior training, ski passes, and grand pianos. Meanwhile, $360 million of voucher money has gone unspent, saved up to pay for college and expensive private universities and out-of-state colleges.

According to the state Department of Education, enrollment in Arizona’s catastrophic school voucher program has exploded from 12,000 students to 77,000.

The private schools are unregulated, with no accountability or public board meetings. Criminals – including Arizona Department of Education employees – have looted $600,000 from the voucher program by creating accounts for nonexistent “ghost” children. Voucher frauds are rampant nationwide.

“This is about destabilizing public education,” said Josh Cowen, author of The Privateers: How Billionaires Created a Culture War and Sold School Vouchers. “There is no such thing as a good voucher law. This is about destabilizing public education.”

Voters rebuke school vouchers

Democratic, Republican, urban and rural voters alike are opposed to vouchers.

When school vouchers have been on the ballot, they have always lost. On election day, voters in Nebraska, Colorado and Kentucky delivered a stunning rebuke to school vouchers.

The results weren’t even close. Both rural and urban voters rejected school vouchers.    

• Nebraskans repealed a voucher law with close to 60 percent of the vote.  
• Sixty-five percent of Kentucky voters and all 120 counties rejected a constitutional amendment that would have dismantled language in the state constitution that served as a barrier to vouchers. 
• In Colorado, an amendment that sought to enshrine parents’ “right to direct the education of their child” and open the door to vouchers fell far short of the 55 percent needed for passage. 

The lesson is loud and clear, said President Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association. “Voters rejected diverting public-school funding to unaccountable and discriminatory private schools, just like they have done every time vouchers have been on the ballot. The public knows vouchers harm students and does not want them in any form.”

Arizona was the first state to enact school vouchers in 2011 to help students with disabilities or in foster school. However, in 2018, Arizona Republican legislators put Proposition 305 on the ballot to expand school vouchers into a free taxpayer giveaway for any student anywhere.

It was soundly rejected by Democrats and Republicans statewide by a 30-point margin.

Ignoring the voters in 2022, the Republican legislature enacted universal school vouchers anyway, giving taxpayer money away regardless of a family’s income.

“You’re enabling doctors, lawyers, bankers, and management consultants who already had their children in private schools to get this subsidy that they were not entitled to before,” said Samuel E. Abrams, the director of a University of Colorado research center on school privatization.

Only 1 in 100 kids in low-income areas use vouchers. However, more than 25% of families in affluent areas use them for expensive private schools, whose average tuition is $14,321.

Vouchers wasted on junk schools

The schools don’t report academic performance, don’t hold public meetings, don’t have to be accredited, and teachers don’t need to be certified.

“We’re talking about schools run out of church basements,” author Josh Cowen said.

Half of the voucher money goes to generic “Christian” branded schools, plus Catholic and Lutheran Missouri Synod schools. Some of the schools push extreme beliefs, discriminate against gay students, and proclaim they reject “woke” ideologies.

A prime example is the Dream City Christian School, a megachurch that received more than $1.3 million in voucher funding in 2023—ten times what it was receiving before the universal expansion passed.

The school operates a partnership with right-wing Turning Point USA, which works to organize conservative students on campuses. Dream City is one example of Turning Point’s efforts to build a network of conservative Christian schools. 

The private Valley Christian Schools received nearly $1.1 million in voucher funding last year despite facing allegations of LGBTQ discrimination in federal court. The school teaches creationism as a scientific fact and downplays the harms of slavery.

More than 24,000 students have directly left public or charter schools to join the voucher program, according to state data – taking with them hundreds of millions of dollars that previously flowed to those schools each year.

For example, vouchers have gutted the public Paradise Valley district, only 20 minutes from Dream City. The district was forced to close three schools with “A” ratings because of declining enrollment caused by school vouchers.

School vouchers are so expensive that they have created a $1.4 billion shortfall in the state budget. This has forced cuts in water infrastructure projects, highway expansions and repairs. However, the real damage was to public schools. Now, the state must pay vouchers to children who have never attended public school.

A national disgrace

Arizona is a national disgrace. Arizona schools spend less on K-12 education than the national average. The state government also spends less on education per capita. Arizona ranks 49th in per-pupil spending and 49th in funding.

There will be no relief from catastrophic school vouchers because Republicans have a death grip on the state Legislature.

It’s time for Arizona voters to follow the lead of Nebraska, Colorado and Kentucky. Activists’ best hope is to put a new initiative on the ballot prohibiting school vouchers entirely.

Also read: Arizona Voters Have Spoken: Fund Our Public Schools by Nicky Indicavitch.