Just days after Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs announced a plan to toss tens of thousands of families off the Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) program, a new Goldwater Institute report finds that universal ESAs have successfully made private education affordable to all families, regardless of income.
Indeed, contrary to the narrative of Gov. Hobbs and her acolytes—who have proposed a government takeover of tuition rates after accusing Arizona private schools of “price gouging” families—new findings reveal that the state’s private school providers have kept tuition rates far lower than the cost of public school per pupil. Additionally, ESAs now cover nearly 100% of tuition at the majority of private schools throughout the state. Among other findings, moreover, private school tuition rates have risen less amid ESA expansion than have the costs to taxpayers of public schools—all as explored in the new report: Universal Opportunity: How Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Accounts (ESA) Defied Critics and Unleashed Affordable Private Education for All, Part I.
Indeed, through an analysis of over 160 private schools operating before and after the 2022 expansion of Arizona’s ESA program, this report offers the first direct, substantive analysis of the impact of universal ESA eligibility on the affordability of private education. Specifically, among its key findings, this report documents the following:
ESA opponents have suggested that children should be restricted to government-operated schooling options unless their families can independently buy their way out of them. Failing that, ESA opponents have sought to bring private school providers under the control of the state—subject to the same artificial barriers to quality erected by teachers unions and their allies that have kept America’s educational achievement stagnant for decades.
But now, thanks to the growth of universal school choice in Arizona and across the nation, students and their families have access to high-quality, private education without the financial barriers they have faced for so long.
Matt Beienburg is the Director of Education Policy at the Goldwater Institute. He also serves as director of the institute’s Van Sittert Center for Constitutional Advocacy.
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