In the past few weeks, Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs and top Republican lawmakers have engaged in some public mudslinging. 

The reverberations are echoing across Arizona, and across the whole nation – the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office announced last week that teachers unions’ last-ditch effort to overturn the state’s landmark universal school choice reform has failed. Now, America can look to Arizona’s first-in-the-nation model of a groundbreaking, statewide expansion of school choice to any family that wants it.  

In the eleventh hour of this legislative session, Republican majority lawmakers delivered a massive blow to Arizona voters by passing recently rejected universal Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) vouchers.

Most of us want the same things for Arizona’s schools: the opportunity for every child to succeed, transparency, accountability and flexible options for the unique needs of families. But two issues deeply threaten the ability for Arizona to achieve those goals – the AEL (Aggregate Expenditure Limit) and ESA vouchers (Codename: Empowerment Scholarship Accounts). 

The 2022 legislative session started and ended with concerns about a constitutional provision voters approved in 1980 that limits public school spending – even if the legislature has already allocated the money. 

Only an elite few will benefit from an unprecedented and unpopular expansion of education savings accounts, while more than one million Arizona public school students will continue to attend some of the lowest-funded schools in the country.

School choice is not a weapon to take down public schools but a tool to allow parents to choose their child’s means of education and ensure a pathway to success.

The Arizona State Board of Education tabled accepting a quarterly report from the Empowerment Scholarship Account program on February 28 after parents submitted 49 pages of comments and spoke at the meeting about their problems with how the program is ...

Public school advocates’ frustrations with the state budget go beyond Gov. Doug Ducey’s tax plan – the rebirth of zombie bills and expansion of empowerment scholarship account eligibility are an added blow to groups that say the Legislature should prioritize traditional public education.

The Senate’s passage of a massive voucher expansion will test the resolve of two Republican House members who killed the expansion earlier this year.