The coming year will be a critical time for the school choice movement in Arizona and nationally.

A national organization filed suit Wednesday against an Arizona charter school with ties to a member of the state Board of Education, accusing it of using state funds to illegally teach religious doctrine.

Republican lawmakers are moving to use state funds to help privately run charter schools borrow money at better interest rates.

Ducey and lawmakers have perennially touted charter schools’ highest achievements, including the reputation by some as among the best in the country. But a new study by the Grand Canyon Institute, a centrist research group, claims that charters are financially inefficient.

Two decades after Arizona helped pioneer the charter school movement, enrollment data show the schools don’t match the school age demographics of the state and, in many cases, their neighborhoods. White - and especially Asian - students attend charter schools at a higher rate than Hispanics, who now make up the the greatest portion of Arizona’s school age population.

Nestled between a taco shop, a gas station and a church lies the Gilbert campus of Leading Edge Academy. A former Albertsons grocery store on the strip mall is what the small public school calls home.

The Arizona Department of Education will use a federal grant to support new and expanding charter schools.

The students of Phoenix Collegiate Academy are used to high expectations. “Our students come to school at 7:30. They’re late if they’re there at 7:31,” said Rachel Bennett Yanof, the charter school’s executive director.

Within days of the new fiscal year’s commencement on July 1, the Arizona Department of Revenue announced that Arizona businesses had claimed more than $51 million in tax credits for their donations to School Tuition Organizations. The state had reached the legal cap on the tax credits in lightning-fast fashion.

The Arizona Supreme Court ended the nearly six-year bid by charter schools today to get funding for their students on a par with students from traditional public schools.