Arizona Is Just the Beginning for Universal School Choice

L ast month, the Arizona state legislature passed the most robust school-choice program in American history. The state’s 1.1 million students will soon have access to state-funded education savings accounts (ESAs), giving their families $6,400 that they can spend at any school they please — public, private, homeschool, or charter.

Corey DeAngelis, senior fellow at the American Federation for Children, is the country’s leading advocate of the program. He discussed the future of state-funded school choice in a recent interview with National Review.

To begin with, it’s important to note that “the money doesn’t belong to the government schools,” he said. “Education funding is meant for educating children, not for protecting a particular institution. We should fund students, not systems.”

At the heart of his pitch for universal school choice is the idea that America’s K–12 system would operate the way other government-funded programs do. For example, families participating in pre-K programs such as Head Start can use those funds at any institution, just as college students can use Pell Grants to attend any university or families can use food stamps at any grocery store.

“Choice is the norm with higher education, pre-K, and just about any other industry in the United States,” said DeAngelis. But with K–12, “choice threatens an entrenched special interest that would otherwise receive children’s education dollars regardless of families’ preferences. And that special interest fights as hard as possible to keep that funding and power.”

That special interest is, of course, the teachers’ unions, which have been entrenched for decades, much to the detriment of the nation’s students. The Covid-19 pandemic and its aftermath were a great awakening of sorts for parents. Study after study has indicated that school closures, largely driven by the demands of the unions, resulted in massive learning loss and social isolation for children.

“All of the battles we’ve seen bubbling up in education over the past two years,” DeAngelis told NR, “whether it be disagreements about remote instruction, curriculum, or mask mandates, are just symptoms of the larger problem: We force millions of families to send their kids to a one-size-fits-all government school system that, by definition, will not meet their unique individual needs.”

Taxpayers and the politicians who represent them are discovering the problems with the traditional public-school model. The bill that passed in Arizona failed just last year because three Republican legislators in the state house sided with Democrats to kill it. This time around, however, those same three representatives voted in its favor.

“For far too long in K–12 education, the only special-interest group has been the teachers’ unions. Now,” DeAngelis noted, “there’s a new interest group — parents. They are never going to unsee what they saw in 2020 and 2021, and they’re going to fight to make sure they never feel powerless when it comes to their children’s education again.” He offered good advice: “Policy-makers would be wise to listen to them.”

It would seem that they are starting to. Thus far, 47 out of 59 candidates supported by the American Federation for Children Action Fund, a PAC run by the AFC, have found success in their primaries. DeAngelis called opposing educational freedom “a form of political suicide.” After their largest victory yet, he and his allies will look to take advantage of the shifting political tides on school choice in other states.

“Keep your eyes on Iowa,” DeAngelis said. “Governor Kim Reynolds is a staunch supporter of parental rights in education, and she is committed to funding students instead of systems.” In the Iowa senate, her party “easily passed her bill to fund students instead of systems in a vote of 31 to 18, with only one Republican joining the Democrats in opposition.”

The problem in Iowa is the state house, where, though Republicans hold a 60–40 majority, Reynolds was unable in late May to garner enough support for a measure similar to Arizona’s. Still, given that school-choice advocates in Arizona rebounded from a 2021 defeat, Reynolds may be able to do the same next year. Four Iowa house members who opposed the education bill lost to challengers whom Reynolds endorsed in the state’s June 7 primary.

Another state to watch is Florida. Although Governor Ron DeSantis and his legislature instituted a school-choice expansion last year, it was not as sweeping and robust as Arizona’s, so they may “feel extra motivation to fund all students directly, regardless of income,” DeAngelis said.

Finally, Texas currently has no state-run voucher programs for private schools; the state senate passed an Arizona-style program in 2017, but the bill failed in the house. More recently, however, Governor Greg Abbott came out in favor of an Arizona-style scholarship program. “Empowering parents means giving them the choice to send their children to any public school, charter school, or private school, with state funding following the student,” he said in a speech in early May.

By giving proponents of educational freedom their largest victory yet, Arizona has created a rivalry among Republican-controlled states to create the best program. The Grand Canyon State won the race to universal school choice, but other states will have the opportunity to maximize the program’s efficiency.

“This is the kind of friendly competition I can get behind,” DeAngelis said.