They include Tabitha Sue James, whose son has been following an online curriculum at home since 2020. 

“I applied the first day,” she said. “I’ve paid thousands of dollars in property taxes to schools. Why shouldn’t we be able to have … homeschool choice?

While families won’t know until early April whether they have received funding, she could be among the nearly two-thirds of homeschooling families who say they use public dollars to educate their children, according to from the Rand Corp., shared exclusively with The 74.  

Of those who live in a state without education savings accounts or tax credits for private education, more than 70% said they would use public funds to offset homeschooling costs if they could, the data show. 

RAND’s American Life Panel on homeschool ESA use of parents who homeschool at least one child:

The similarity between the two figures is significant, said Angela Watson, a researcher at Johns Hopkins University and director of the Homeschool Research Lab.

“That gives some confidence that these responses are accurate,” she said. “Sometimes people will say they might do something when in reality, they wouldn’t actually do it. But here we see that people say and do things at the same rates.”

The lab commissioned Rand to ask the questions as part of its American Life Panel, a nationally representative sample of more than 2,400 parents with K-12 students. While homeschoolers only represented about 10% of the respondents, the data are among the first to independently measure their views on ESAs. The results follow from the ​​Arkansas Department of Education and the University of Arkansas showing that about a quarter of students who used that state’s ESA program last school year were homeschoolers. 

Most existing data come from advocates who private school choice, an issue that still sharply divides homeschoolers. Some remain strongly opposed to ESA programs and warn that they threaten parents’ rights to educate their children as they see fit. “Government cheese always comes in a trap,” one parent posted in the Texans for Homeschool Freedom Facebook group. 

On the topic of ESAs “there are not a lot of indifferent people,” said Kevin Boden, director of legal and legislative advocacy for the Home School Legal Defense Association. “They either think it’s the greatest thing that’s ever happened in education, or they think that it’s the thing to be most feared.”

James, for one, is grateful for the financial support. She wants to add music lessons and buy materials for STEM projects. The Texas program “makes those opportunities possible for us.”

Under the program, she’s eligible to receive $2,000 annually. But parents who choose an accredited private school will receive $10,474 or up to $30,000 for a child with a disability. 

While James prefers the “low-stress” environment of homeschooling, that funding gap is enough of an incentive to make some homeschoolers rethink their educational model.

“Maybe the family has always wanted to get into an accredited private school and now they can,” said Jeremy Newman, vice president of policy and engagement with the Texas Homeschool Coalition, which supports the state’s new program. “There are other families who say ‘Homeschooling is what would have been best for my child but we can’t afford what the child needs, so we’re going to have to go to this other option.’ ” 

Erin Flynn, lead instructor at , an Austin-area microschool for seventh through 12th graders, said she’s received several calls over the past few months from homeschooling families inquiring whether she will be accepting Education Freedom Accounts for tuition. 

Operating out of a converted house with a large porch, she offers a twice-a-week option for $600 per month and a full-time program for $950. She described the curriculum, which focuses on humanities, STEM and art, as “self-directed.” 

“We want to put the power back in students’ hands so that they aren’t just learning the canon; they’re learning how to identify what it is that they love,” said Flynn, a former English teacher. She was the principal of a charter school until she founded Hedge during the pandemic.

Microschools, she said, can be “a bridge” between homeschooling and traditional private school because they often allow students to attend part time. 

‘So many options’

According to Travis Pillow, spokesman for the Texas comptroller’s office, which runs the program, there’s no “seat time requirement.” As long as students are enrolled in a on the state’s list and take an annual assessment, they qualify as a private school student. 

To Pillow, who previously worked for the nonprofit running Florida’s school choice program, the different funding levels in Texas have been an adjustment. Florida’s program doesn’t differentiate between homeschoolers and private school students.

“I saw a lot of virtue in that idea because there are just so many options that don’t necessarily fit in a traditional box anymore,” he said. ����’s hard in some cases, he said, to draw “a bright line” between schooling and homeschooling.

Some applicants educating their kids at home, he said, will likely enroll in approved online schools, which would qualify them for the larger award. But Newman, with the Coalition, also expects homeschoolers to pressure lawmakers to increase the amount for their children’s educational expenses. He thinks the proportion of homeschool applicants would be “dramatically higher” if the funds weren’t capped at $2,000.

“Many families homeschool because they have special needs children,” he said. Some types of therapy, “can very quickly surpass $2,000.” 

‘Out of necessity’

Texas isn’t the only state that offers different amounts for private school students and homeschoolers. Alabama’s awards $7,000 per student toward private school tuition and $2,000 for a “home education program.” Homeschooling families are capped at $4,000 even if they have more than two school-age children.

Texas and Alabama are “incentivizing people to go to private school and not to homeschool,” said Watson, with Johns Hopkins. But that could be a challenge for families living in rural areas without a lot of private school options, she said.

Like Florida, Arizona took a different approach when it passed the nation’s first universal ESA program in 2022. The base funding amount, which typically ranges between $7,000 and $8,000, is the same whether parents choose homeschooling or private school. Arizona parent Kathy Visser, whose son has disabilities, said $2,000 wouldn’t cover a month of his tutoring costs. In total, he receives about $40,000. Her daughter, formerly homeschooled, is now in a private school and receives $9,000.

“For families who choose to homeschool out of personal preference, I am sure the $2,000 is welcome,” she said. “For families like mine who homeschool out of necessity, because we could not find any traditional school that came close to meeting either of our kids’ needs, it wouldn’t go far.”

Arizona, however, is the state ESA critics most often point to for examples of a lack of guardrails on spending. A of expenditures turned up a number of “unallowable” items, like diamond jewelry, expensive gaming consoles and designer purses. State Superintendent Tom Horne of the program, but his methods for determining whether purchases violate the letter, or at least the spirit, of the law. 

Pillow said Texas limited homeschool awards to $2,000 because those families don’t have the “big ticket expense” of tuition. But another reason was to avoid “politically hard-to-explain purchases.” Parents also have to shop for supplies and materials within a “closed marketplace.” 

“Legos are legitimate educational items,” he said, noting purchases that have in Arizona. “But are we going to curate that marketplace with the latest and greatest collectors’ item? The $500 Harry Potter set is not necessarily going to be available.” 

Newman, with the Texas Homeschool Coalition, added that there’s much less “administrative weight” on the program when parents primarily spend the money on tuition. But both he and Pillow agreed that the state is likely to revisit the issue.

Don Huffines, who won the Republican nomination for comptroller, and is expected to easily win the general election in November, has said he the program. 

But the staunch conservative is also a . Newman said he hopes that means Huffines’ will be open to addressing the “disparities.”

“People have this idea of what they think homeschooling is,” he said. “It’s the people who have done it who really understand.” 

In Arizona, our nation’s 48th state, that question is no longer rhetorical. 

Last year, the state took a bold and uncommon step: Leaders across early childhood, K-12, and higher education, workforce and economic development, business and industry, nonprofit, philanthropy and government came together to create a vision for what every Arizona graduate should know and be able to do by the time they earn a diploma. 

After 15 months and thousands of surveys and conversations, the result is the , a shared, statewide profile of success that reframes high school graduation as both a milestone and a launchpad — not the finish line.  

At its core, the profile makes two declarations: First, Arizona must redefine what students should achieve by the end of 12th grade to remain competitive; and second, educating our children is a shared responsibility –- beginning on day one.

The State 48 Graduate Profile defines readiness across four futures and eight essentials. It first calls out four equally viable and rigorous future outcomes that every Arizona graduate should be prepared to pursue: enrollment in college or postsecondary education, enlistment and service, employment and entrepreneurship. It then outlines eight essentials which acknowledge the enduring importance of academic knowledge and literacy while elevating the digital fluency, human skills and real-world competencies required in a rapidly changing, AI-accelerated economy.

With its statewide release, Arizona has set a new north star, from day one to diploma, for students, families, educators, employers and policymakers alike.

Technology and work here are advancing at gigabit speed. The state’s economy is thriving, and nearly every sector is evolving. But education seems to be stuck on dial-up. We are not making the progress we need: Graduation and post-secondary attainment rates fall well short of our stated goals. 

The challenge is not a lack of effort, innovation or even school choice — Arizona boasts some of the top performing K-12 and higher education institutions in the U.S. and is home to some of our nation’s most talented educators. At the core, Arizona’s challenge is a lack of a shared vision and direction. Without agreement on what success looks like, it is all but impossible to make progress here. 

The State 48 Graduate Profile is Arizona’s response to that challenge. It is a common definition of success around which an entire state can align and, ultimately, begin to modernize our education system to meet the needs of our students, families and economy. 

Getting there required a fundamental shift in how the problem was framed.

From the outset, leaders involved in the effort made a deliberate decision to set aside the debates that so often derail progress in Arizona: funding, school choice, accountability, and governance models. Those conversations matter, but they are nearly impossible to resolve without first answering a more foundational question: What do we want for our children?

The conclusion was clear: The traditional version of school most of our children now attend and we once experienced — what we call School 1.0 — was built for a different era. That world no longer exists. Neither should that version of school. Arizona needs to start with School 2.0 today and pursue even more boldly School 3.0 tomorrow. Modernizing and even futurizing our education system requires a new vision, not only for learning but also for how we organize ourselves to get there.

That reframing catalyzed a movement.

In late 2023, a small group of school superintendents, college presidents, CEOs and nonprofit and philanthropic leaders convened as H5: a coalition focused on the intersection of high school, higher education and the high-skill, high-demand, high-wage workforce of the future.

Two years later, the coalition has grown to include more than 200 organizations representing every county in Arizona. Its scope now spans early childhood, PK–12, community colleges, universities, business and industry, workforce and economic development, faith-based and nonprofit organizations, military, government, and philanthropy. 

Just as important as its size is its diversity: Indigenous, rural, urban, and suburban communities are represented. Leaders from the wealthiest ZIP codes work with those from the most under-resourced. Republicans, Democrats, and Independents share tables at coalition convenings. Competing institutions temporarily suspend individual agendas to focus on a shared future for Arizona’s children.

Perhaps most notably, leaders from traditional school districts charters, private schools, career and technical schools, and micro schools — often divided in public discourse — come together to solve Arizona’s biggest challenge.

While convening senior leaders from across sectors, the effort also centered the voices and lived experiences of students, parents, educators, employers and community members. Over 15 months, thousands of Arizonans were surveyed, and hundreds of focus groups, summits and listening sessions were held. Workforce trends, industry needs, and emerging technologies — including artificial intelligence — were studied alongside community aspirations.

The State 48 Graduate Profile is the synthesis of that work.

Publishing a statewide graduate profile is a significant milestone, but it is not the destination. The real work now shifts from design to adoption: building awareness, galvanizing support and driving alignment across every corner of Arizona. 

In practice, what will that look like? 

Childcare providers weaving the profile into kindergarten readiness. PK-12 systems embedding it into curriculum, instruction, advising and accountability. Out-of-school programs reinforcing mindsets, habits and skills beyond the classroom. Higher education and industry evolving credentials, internships and work-based learning around the same vision. Government agencies and philanthropy aligning policies and investments to this shared north star.

Additional tools are on the horizon: a statewide playbook called Permission Granted, a push for a regulatory sandbox to support innovation, evolving AI guidance, and other efforts to help Arizona move from ideas to impact. Students, parents, educators and employers will be involved every step of the way. 

This work won’t be quick, and it won’t be owned by any single entity or sector. As educators, employers, communities and institutions align around the profile, it will become part of our state’s DNA, shaping the learning experiences of Arizona’s youth from day one to diploma and strengthening the state’s economy and competitive advantage. 

As of this past April, nearly three-fourths of the more than 64,000 students eligible for the state’s universal education savings accounts were homeschooled or enrolled in a private school before they participated in the program, researchers from the Rand Corp. found.

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ESA students are also more likely to live in districts with higher median incomes, more white families and schools with better test scores.

“If the goal is to have tax dollars follow students, then a universal policy can achieve that,” said Susha Roy, lead author of the report. But if the goal is to reach the neediest students or those in failing schools, she added, “what we’re seeing in Arizona suggests that a universal policy is not the best way to expand access.”

To skeptics of ESAs, who see them as handouts to wealthier families, the findings provide further evidence that conservatives’ preferred school reform policy often leaves lower-income families behind. But supporters predict that use will spread over time to those with greater needs. In Arizona, for example, 57% of students who enrolled in the ESA program over the past year attended a public school just prior to switching — up from 21% in 2023, state data shows. In Indiana, over half of ESA students live in families earning $100,000 annually or less. Advocates working to promote school choice in lower-income communities say Rand’s findings just mean there’s more work to do.

“We’ve seen the national studies and we’re not dissuaded at all,” said Ryan Hanning, a fellow with the San Juan Diego Institute, a Phoenix-based organization that supports faith-based and nonprofit groups. “How do we make sure that ESA is fully adopted by marginalized communities, specifically Spanish-speaking and Black communities?”

Application windows too early

One consistent argument against ESAs is that the dollar amount doesn’t cover the costs at many private schools. of parents who didn’t use their ESA showed that nearly 20% said the funding wasn’t enough to afford tuition at their preferred school. Another 20% of parents were concerned that even if they could pay the tuition, they would struggle to afford additional fees, and almost 10% said lack of transportation would be a barrier.

Stephanie Parra, executive director of All in Education, an education advocacy group focused on Latino families, sees the same challenges in Arizona, which she called “the most choice-rich school environment in the country.”

“Eighty-five percent of our families are choosing their neighborhood public schools,” she said. “It is really a choice rooted in logistics and what is accessible to them.”

Proponents of private school choice say one solution is to build up the supply of schools, like those in the rapidly expanding microschool sector.

The San Juan Diego Institute promotes school choice to underserved communities, but has also provided start-up funds for new private schools where tuition costs no more than the amount of the ESA, generally in the $7,000 to $8,000 range. They include Hands2Teach in Peoria, which serves deaf and hearing students and teaches American Sign Language, and Vita High School, a Montessori-style program in Phoenix where students learn A.I. skills.

“Awareness is the biggest barrier. Many families don’t know ESAs exist, and early materials weren’t in Spanish, limiting accessibility,” said Andrew Lee, Vita’s founder and CEO. “Documentation requirements, such as proof of residency, can also create obstacles.”

The school provides scholarships to cover additional costs like transportation and school supplies.

The Indiana-based Drexel Fund has a similar mission and has helped launch new, mostly faith-based schools in multiple states that primarily serve students who qualify for free- or reduced-price lunch or have disabilities.

Microschools are more approachable to parents who have no experience with private schools, said Naomi DeVeaux, a partner with Drexel. Another way to open up ESAs to lower-income families, she said, is to allow parents to apply as late as a month before school starts, or to add late application windows.

“In some states, the window to apply for your voucher is too early. Families that are mobile or who just aren’t thinking ahead to the next school year will miss it,” she said. “That’s a big thing that states really could improve upon.”

The growth of super small schools has expanded access to private education, said Douglas Harris, an economics professor at Tulane University. He published research earlier this year showing that voucher-like programs have led to a 3% to 4% increase in private school enrollment. Most schools that receive ESA funds enroll about 30 students.

But he warned that more schools doesn’t always mean better student performance. In fact, with microschools, there’s no way to tell, according to another recent Rand study. Researchers concluded that there is insufficient data to determine how students who attend microschools compare academically to their peers in traditional public schools.

‘A case study’

Rand’s latest findings, said lead researcher Roy, have implications not just for states with existing ESA programs, but for those considering whether to opt in to a new federal tax credit scholarship program included in President Donald Trump’s tax cut and spending package.

The Treasury Department and the IRS are now collecting public comments in advance of issuing regulations for the program next year. ����’s unclear whether governors will have a say in how the programs operate or whom they serve.

“It’s our hope that we can use Arizona as a case study for other states that are now potentially considering ESA programs because of the federal policy,” she said.

The potential to open more educational options for underserved students has captured the support of some Democrats, a departure from how the party typically views vouchers and ESAs. Arne Duncan, education secretary during the Obama administration, and Democrats for Education Reform CEO Jorge Elorza urge states to participate.

“For both current and incoming governors, it’s a chance to show voters that they’re willing to do what it takes to deliver for students and families, no matter where the ideas originate,” they wrote in The Washington Post.

There are key differences between ESAs and the new federal program, which won’t start until 2027. ESAs, like most voucher programs, are state funded. Taxpayers will fund the federal Educational Choice for Children Act by donating up to $1,700 annually to a nonprofit scholarship-granting organization in their state. In exchange, they’ll get a dollar-for-dollar credit on their taxes.

The size of the scholarships will depend on how much those groups can raise. Families earning three times their area’s median gross income will be eligible for funding, meaning that those making as much as $500,000 in some parts of the country will be able to participate.

Critics argue that the tax credit is still expected to cost the government at least $10 billion annually and will increase over time. Additionally, if higher-income families end up benefitting more from the new program, that would “totally run contrary to the way that we have understood the federal role in education to be for decades,” said Jon Valant, director of the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution, a center-left think tank.

He added that there’s no guarantee that private and religious schools would offer the same civil rights protections for LGBTQ students or those with disabilities as public schools.

“What are we losing when we move away from what has been our universal public education system?” he asked. “Who could really slip through the cracks?”

Talking about college

In a September paper, he pointed to North Carolina as an example of a state that is ensuring lower-income families get first crack at school choice dollars. The state gives its highest Opportunity Scholarship payment of $7,686 to the lowest-income families and gradually reduces the amount for families who earn more.

Until the state made its program universally available in 2023, “private school was never an option for us,” said Tabitha Lofton, whose two younger sons attend Amandla Academy, a microschool with locations in Greensboro and High Point.

She moved Jamaal and Jackson out of Dudley High School in the Guilford County district, where they often skipped class and struggled to keep up. As a welder who often travels for work, and had to stretch her income to pay the bills, Lofton felt she couldn’t devote enough time to her kids’ education.

All Jamaal wanted to do was play basketball — at churches, local gyms, wherever he could, Lofton said. It was that passion that caught the attention of a coach who worked for Amandla and recruited Jamaal to play. Eager to get her boys out of Dudley, she applied for the Opportunity Scholarship and soon realized that they were thriving in the smaller environment.

“I see A’s and B’s and C’s on their report cards, which is something I’ve never seen,” she said. “My children are talking about going to college. Before going to that school, that was not a conversation at all.”

Marcus Brandon, a former state legislator who pushed for the universal program, founded Amandla in 2022. As executive director of CarolinaCAN, part of the 50Can advocacy network, he’s well-versed in ESAs.

As in the Rand study, state data still shows that most students in North Carolina’s program were already enrolled in private schools before they received state funds, but that doesn’t deter him.

“You still have people who were making sacrifices,” Brandon said. Maybe they were working two jobs or put off buying a second car, he said. “Just because they were [paying tuition] doesn’t mean they were doing it comfortably.”

For the 29th time so far this year, Arizona is suing the Trump administration, this time to block the U.S. Department of Education from cancelling public service student loan forgiveness for employees of government agencies and organizations that help undocumented immigrants, promote diversity, equity and inclusion or take part in political protest.

“Public service should never be weaponized for political games,” Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes said in a statement. “This rule undermines the very spirit of the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program and threatens workers who dedicate their careers to public service. I’m proud to join my fellow attorneys general in suing to block it.”

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On Monday, Mayes joined a coalition of 21 other Democratic attorneys general challenging the new rules from the U.S. Department of Education. The states asked a federal judge in Massachusetts to declare the rule unlawful and block the department from implementing it.

The rule, finalized Oct. 31, allows the department itself to decide that agencies or organizations are ineligible for student loan forgiveness if the Trump administration says they have a “substantial illegal purpose.” The rule is scheduled to go into effect in July 2026.

But the Department of Education’s description of an illegal purpose is based on its own ideological agenda, the attorneys general wrote.

“In seeking to crack down on specific activities disfavored by this Administration, the true intent behind the Rule is clear,” the attorneys general wrote. “The Department seeks to chill the activities of public service employers by discouraging their employees from what it deems objectionable forms of public service.”

The Public Service Loan Forgiveness program was created by Congress in 2007 to encourage professionals to go into public service careers with lower pay than private sector jobs, where they might not otherwise be able to pay off their student loan debt. After 10 years of regular payments while working in public service, the federal government forgives remaining student loan debt for those in the program.

“Over the years, (the program) has enabled more than one million public servants to pursue careers that might have otherwise been out of reach,” Mayes’ office wrote in a statement. “For state governments, (the program) is a critical tool to recruit and retain qualified professionals in vital fields like education, health care, and law enforcement.”

In addition to the lawsuit from the attorneys general, a group of more than a dozen cities, labor unions and nonprofit organizations from across the country in federal court in Massachusetts on Monday seeking “to restore the promise that a bipartisan Congress made to public-service workers and their employers in establishing the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program nearly 20 years ago.”

The Arizona Education Association, the largest teachers union in the state, was unavailable for comment, but its parent organization, the National Education Association, joined in the suit alongside other labor unions.

“The new rule imposes harsh and illegal restrictions, makes repayment less affordable, and silences the voices of educators and other beneficiaries of the programs,” NEA President Becky Pringle said in a statement. “We refuse to stand by while politicians trap dedicated educators in generations of debt.”

Congress was clear, the attorneys general wrote in their lawsuit, that all government employees — except for elected members of Congress — were eligible for public service student loan forgiveness.

The states have benefited greatly from the loan forgiveness program, Mayes and the other attorneys general argued, because it helped them to recruit “first responders, early childhood educators, librarians, nurses, public defenders, and public prosecutors” who might otherwise have gone to work in the private sector to ensure they could pay off their student loans.

“Residents and State employees have planned their lives and careers around receiving (federal student loan) forgiveness,” the attorneys general wrote.

The loan forgiveness program applies to a wide range of workers beyond those employed by state government and municipalities, including those who work for some nonprofit organizations.

“To be clear, (the public service loan forgiveness program) is not merely a convenient recruitment tool for State employers,” the attorneys general wrote. “For many employees with debt loads that reach into the tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars, (the program) is the only reason they can afford to work in public service in the first place.”

In March, Trump issued an executive order instructing the U.S. Department of Education to change eligibility rules for the public service loan forgiveness program based on the administration’s view of “substantial illegal purpose.” The new rule disqualifies employees of government entities or organizations that “aid and abet” violations of federal immigration law, support protests against the Trump administration or back gender-affirming care for transgender youth. (The administration denigrated health care for trans children as  the “chemical and surgical castration or mutilation of children or the trafficking of children to so-called transgender sanctuary States for ‘purposes of emancipation from their lawful parents.’”)

The attorneys general argue that Trump’s executive order and the Department of Education rule attempt to give power to the department that has not been conferred to it by Congress.

“The Department redefines ‘qualifying employer’ in a sharp departure from the corresponding definition of ‘public service job’ that Congress put in place in 2007 — and that has remained substantively intact since then — but provides no adequate justification for this grant of unfettered discretion,” the AGs wrote.

The rule also targets state government entities while exempting federal government entities, without explanation, the attorneys general claimed.

“Put simply, the Final Rule is nothing more than a laundry list of this Administration’s policy priorities designed to attack lawful conduct it does not agree with,” the attorneys general wrote.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arizona Mirror maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jim Small for questions: info@azmirror.com.

Among the biggest wins of her tenure, she counts increases in charter funding and twice electing Democrat and school reformer Gov. Jared Polis as governor. After serving as chief of staff for the Denver Public Schools, she fully expected to finish her career at DFER.

“We worked hard to build power in the Democratic Party specifically around accountability, choice and the role of public charter schools,” she said. “Everything had always been grounded 100% in public education.”

But last year, she said she “saw the writing on the wall” when the organization’s leader embraced Education Savings Accounts and other forms of private school choice. She is among several who have since left the group over the issue.

In a , DFER CEO Jorge Elorza, former two-term mayor of Providence, Rhode Island, suggested that instead of “rejecting them offhand,” his party should explore how ESAs can advance Democratic values like uplifting needy families and protecting civil rights. Eighteen Republican-led states now have such programs, which parents can use for private school tuition or homeschooling. Most Democrats say vouchers and ESAs lack accountability and threaten funding for public schools.

To Alisha Searcy, who just last year, Elorza’s about-face felt like a betrayal. 

“DFER has done extraordinary work to get courageous Democrats elected to push bold policies that would truly improve public education,” said the former Georgia state legislator. She was hired last year to expand the organization’s reach into her state, Alabama and Tennessee, but resigned in May. “We need a strong Democratic voice, now more than ever. This move to embrace vouchers and ESAs is the exact opposite.” 

The issue has brought bubbling to the surface a debate that was previously restricted to Democratic backrooms. Elorza took the helm of DFER at a time when polls began to show that voters were losing confidence in Democrats as the party they most trusted on education. Parents, the surveys suggested, were more preoccupied with whether their kids were recovering from pandemic learning loss than how schools were teaching issues of race or gender in the classroom. The only intensified in the aftermath of President Donald Trump’s election.

Founded in 2007, DFER always advocated for . Leaders worked with the Obama administration and reform-minded Democrats to support like magnet schools, dual enrollment and lifting state . Now, Republicans and their push for parental rights are dominating the education conversation, including a recent to enact a national tax credit for private school choice. Elorza is among those who say the party needs to be open to more options for families if it’s going to regain its edge with voters, especially parents. But he recognizes the risks.

“There are a lot of Democrats who are choice curious,” he told The 74. “They’ll say privately that they’re open to the idea of choice, including private school choice, but that the politics of it are just so darn challenging.”

In a , he pointed to Pennsylvania as the best opportunity for a swing state to pass an ESA program. Democratic came close to supporting such a bill in 2023.

Some observers say Shapiro and Elorza are outliers in the party. During the Obama years, DFER “nudged” the party toward school reform policies like and maintaining strong, said David Houston, an assistant education professor at George Mason University in Virginia. But now it’s “further from the center of Democratic politics.”

The recent departure of other DFER staff offers further evidence that Elorza’s position doesn’t reflect the Democratic mainstream.

Will Andras served as political director in Colorado for Education Reform Now, a think tank affiliated with DFER that Elorza also leads. Andras left last year, shortly after DFER joined the , a group of organizations that advocate for open enrollment and removing school attendance boundaries. 

The member organizations, funded largely by the conservative Koch network, also support vouchers and ESAs. In his resignation letter, Andras referenced the change in direction since Elorza came on board in 2023. 

“The last six months have shown that the organization I have devoted a substantial portion of my professional career to help build no longer aligns with my political or personal values,” he wrote.

Jessica Giles, who led the D.C. chapter, similar words when she walked away in May. ����’s one of several chapters to close since Elorza became CEO. The Colorado, Connecticut, Massachusetts and DFER South chapters have also shut down. 

Elorza said he respects their stance.

“There are a lot of folks who put a great deal of stock into this public-private distinction, and I think it comes from a principled place,” he said. “But I truly believe that it is in the party’s political best interest to be open minded to any approach that moves the needle for kids and families.”

‘Political winds are shifting’ 

Backed by , the private school choice movement has been on a winning streak since 2022, when Arizona passed the first universal ESA.

“The political winds are shifting,” Corey DeAngelis, a self-described “school choice evangelist” and fellow at multiple think tanks, said at a conference in Atlanta in April. “If Democrats are smart, they’ll stop the Republicans from being able to pick up the football and win on this issue.”

He pointed to Louisiana, where six House Democrats — one-fifth of the party’s caucus — for the LA GATOR Scholarship, an ESA that starts this fall. One of them, Rep. Jason Hughes, passionately defended his vote on the House floor. 

“As I watch children in poverty, trapped in failing schools, who can hardly read, I’ll be damned if I will continue to defend the status quo,” he said. 

Rep. Marlene Terry, a Missouri Democrat, delivered an equally heartfelt speech in May after caucus leaders when she supported a $50 million increase to the state’s ESA program. 

“I will vote how I please, when I please and where I please,” she said. “No one can take away my voice. I will not be silent.”

While her own children attended public school, she said families in the St. Louis-area district she represents are frustrated that their schools have for 15 years. 

“That’s a long time for families to wait for improvement,” Terry told The 74. Riverview Gardens, a majority Black, high-poverty district, regained local control from the state in 2023, but leaders are still working to make continued gains in . “That’s why I support giving families a range of high-quality public options, including public charter schools, and — when absolutely necessary — scholarships to attend other schools if no viable public options exist.”

Some Democrats agree with Elorza that the party shouldn’t distance legislators like Terry. In a , Virginia Board of Education Member Andy Rotherham, who served in the Clinton White House and co-founded Bellwether, a think tank, said Democrats need to welcome “a much wider range of perspectives on these questions,” given school choice’s surge in popularity since the pandemic.

“This is America — we like choice,” he wrote. “Being on the wrong side of that culturally and politically is not a great place to be.”

‘Solidly entrenched’ 

Using an ESA can be particularly uncomfortable for a lifelong Democrat — especially In Arizona, where Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs has called the program a “” and wants to on families using it. Kathy Visser, who administers a ESA Facebook group for parents and vendors, knows some who left the forum because they felt that it was “not a safe space for Democrats.” 

“I hate election time because it’s always a mess in the group,” she said. “People think we should be able to talk about ESAs without talking about politics, but when you’ve got one party so solidly entrenched against it, it’s really hard.” 

Some Democrats who use ESAs say they hold their noses when it comes to other aspects of the Republican agenda. 

Christina Foster, whose daughter has used an ESA in the past, said she gets “heart palpitations” when she has to decide on a candidate. She’s board chair for Arizona’s , which runs microschools serving students using ESAs, and wants to protect the program. But in the 2024 election, she voted for Democrats. 

“Some of those Republicans were not supportive of minority rights, immigration rights, women’s rights. Those are very important to me,” she said. “I said ‘OK, unfortunately, I’m going to have to vote against the ESA.”

For those within the traditional K-12 system, the choice to use an ESA can be tricky. As a kindergarten teacher in Arizona’s Peoria district, Melanie Ford is familiar with about how the program undermines funding for traditional schools and is susceptible to waste and fraud. 

But she overlooked those arguments when public school no longer seemed like a safe place for her transgender son Ash. He avoided using the bathroom all day because students said he didn’t belong in the boys’ or the girls’ restroom.

For the 2023-24 school year, Ash used an ESA to attend the , a microschool for middle schoolers in Phoenix that incorporates into the curriculum. Ford told her colleagues that despite her support of public schools, she had to think first about her son. Ash has since returned to a public high school, where he plays on a drumline in the marching band and has straight A’s, his mother said. But using the ESA allowed him to transition in a more supportive setting.

“He didn’t have to deal with the comments from peers that slowly rip a person apart from the inside out,” she said. “He could grow into himself without judgement from others and this was so important for his mental health.”

While some Democrats, as Elorza suggested, may think an ESA is the best option for their children, that interest hasn’t risen to the national level. No Congressional Democrats, for example, have endorsed the federal Educational Choice for Children Act, the tax credit scholarship program tucked into the Republicans’ reconciliation bill.

In some states, vouchers remain unpopular, said Joshua Cowen, an education professor at Michigan State University and a strong opponent of directing public funds to private schools. 

He points to Kentucky, where a private school choice measure last November. Coloradans also defeated a school choice-related , and voters in Nebraska .

While the Democratic party may embrace vouchers in the future, that day is a long way off, said Ravi Gupta, a former Obama staffer who runs a nonprofit media company. On an intellectual level, he’s intrigued by ESAs. Democrats, he said, would never say Medicaid should only be used at a public hospital or Section 8 vouchers only in a housing project, so why doesn’t the same principle apply to education? 

“Twenty years from now, do I think that could be the reality?” he asked. “I think it’s very likely, but it will take some time.”

Disclosure: The Charles Koch Foundation funds Stand Together Trust, which provides funding to The 74. Andy Rotherham sits on The 74’s board of directors. 

In submitting her updated budget proposal in March, Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs lamented the rising costs of the state’s school vouchers program that directs public dollars to pay private school tuition.

Characterizing vouchers as an “,” Hobbs said the state could spend more than $1 billion subsidizing private education in the upcoming fiscal year. The Democratic governor said those expenses could crowd out other budget priorities, including disability programs and pay raises for firefighters and state troopers.

����’s a dilemma that some budget experts fear will become more common nationwide as the costs of school choice measures mount across the states, reaching billions of dollars each year.

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“School vouchers are increasingly eating up state budgets in a way that I don’t think is sustainable long term,” said Whitney Tucker, director of state fiscal policy research at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a think tank that advocates for left-leaning tax policies.

Vouchers and scholarship programs, which use taxpayer money to cover private school tuition, are part of the wider school choice movement that also includes charter schools and other alternatives to public schools.

Opponents have long warned about vouchers draining resources from public education as students move from public schools to private ones. But research into several programs has shown many voucher recipients already were enrolled in private schools. That means universal vouchers could drive up costs by creating two parallel education systems — both funded by taxpayers.

In Arizona, state officials reported most private school students receiving vouchers in the first two years of the expanded program were not previously enrolled in public schools. In fiscal year 2024, more than half the state’s 75,000 voucher recipients were previously enrolled in private schools or were being homeschooled.

“Vouchers don’t shift costs — they add costs,” Joshua Cowen, a professor of education policy at Michigan State University who studies the issue, recently told Stateline. “Most voucher recipients were already in private schools, meaning states are paying for education they previously didn’t have to fund.”

Voucher proponents, though, say those figures . Arizona, like other states with recent expansions, previously had more modest voucher programs. So some kids who were already enrolled in private schools could have already been receiving state subsidies.

In addition to increasing competition, supporters say the programs can actually save taxpayer dollars by delivering education at a lower overall cost than traditional public schools.

One thing is certain: With a record number of students receiving subsidies to attend private schools, vouchers are quickly creating budget concerns for some state leaders.

The rising costs of school choice measures come after years of deep cuts to income taxes in many states, leaving them with less money to spend. An end of pandemic-era aid and potential looming cuts to federal support also have created widespread uncertainty about state budgets.

“We’re seeing a number of things that are creating a sort of perfect storm from a fiscal perspective in the states,” said Tucker, of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Last year, Arizona leaders waded through an estimated $1.3 billion budget shortfall. Budget experts said the voucher program was responsible for of that deficit.

A new universal voucher program in Texas is expected to cost $1 billion over its next two-year budget cycle — a figure that could balloon to nearly $5 billion by 2030, according to a legislative fiscal note.

Earlier this year, Wyoming Republican Gov. Mark Gordon signed a bill expanding the state’s voucher program. But last week, he acknowledged his own “substantial concerns” about the state’s ability to fund vouchers and its public education obligations under the constitution.

“I think the legislature’s got a very tall task to understand how they’re going to be able to fund all of these things,” he in an interview with WyoFile.

Voucher proponents, who have been active at the state level for years, are gaining new momentum with support from President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans.

In January, federal agencies to allow states, tribes and military families to access federal money for private K-12 education through education savings accounts, voucher programs or tax credits.

Last week, Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee voted in favor of making available over the next four years for a federal school voucher program. Part of broader work on a bill to extend Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, the measure would need a simple majority in the House and the Senate to pass.

Martin Lueken, the director of the Fiscal Research and Education Center at EdChoice, a nonprofit that advocates for school choice measures, argues can actually deliver savings to taxpayers.

Lueken said vouchers are not to blame for state budget woes. He said public school systems for years have increased spending faster than inflation. And he noted that school choice measures make up a small share of overall state spending — nationally about 0.3% of total state expenditures in states with school choice, he said.

“Public schooling remains one of the largest line items in state budgets,” he said in an interview. “They are still the dominant provider of K-12 education, and certainly looking at the education pie, they still receive the lion’s share.

“����’s not a choice problem. I would say that it’s a problem with the status quo and the public school system,” he said.

Washington, D.C., and 35 states offer some school choice programs, according to EdChoice. That includes 18 states with voucher programs so expansive that virtually all students can participate regardless of income.

But Lueken said framing vouchers as a new entitlement program is misleading. That’s because all students, even the wealthiest, have always been entitled to a public education — whether they’ve chosen to attend free public schools or private ones that charge tuition.

“At the end of the day, the thing that matters most above dollars are students and families,” he said. “Research is clear that competition works. Public schools have responded in very positive ways when they are faced with increased competitive pressure from choice programs.”

Public school advocates say funding both private and public schools is untenable.

In Wisconsin, Republican lawmakers are considering a that would alter the funding structure for vouchers, potentially putting more strain on the state’s general fund.

The state spent about $629 million on its four voucher programs during the 2024-2025 school year, according to the Wisconsin Association of School Business Officials, which represents employees in school district finance, human resources and leadership.

The association warns proposed legislation could exacerbate problems with the “unaffordable parallel school systems” in place now by shifting more private schooling costs from parents of those students to state taxpayers at large.

Such expansion “could create the conditions for even greater funding challenges for Wisconsin’s traditional public schools and the state budget as a whole,” the association’s research director in a paper on the issue.

In Arizona, Hobbs originally sought to the universal voucher program — a nonstarter in the Republican-controlled legislature. She has since proposed by placing income limits that would disqualify the state’s wealthiest families.

That idea also faced Republican opposition.

Legislators are now pushing to enshrine access to vouchers in the state constitution.

Marisol Garcia, president of the Arizona Education Association, the state’s 20,000-member teachers union, noted that vouchers and public education funds are both sourced from the general fund.

“So it almost immediately started to impact public services,” she said of the universal voucher program.

While the union says vouchers have led to cutbacks of important resources such as counselors in public schools, Garcia said the sweeping program also affects the state’s ability to fund other services like housing, transportation and health care.

“Every budget cycle becomes where can we cut in order to essentially feed this out-of-control program?” she said.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org.

That finding comes from a hodgepodge of state documents and research reports. With the caveat that those sources may count things in slightly different ways and at different time periods, the pattern that emerges is consistent. 

In fall 2020, the country was still in the thick of the COVID pandemic. The economy was on uncertain footing, many schools stayed remote and teacher turnover rates fell. That is, more educators stayed put. 

But as the world began to open up, teachers started leaving in higher numbers, first in 2021 and then again in 2022. That fall, the country hit modern highs in the percentage of teachers leaving their positions. 

But those moves were temporary. Last year, Wall Street Journal (and former 74) reporter Matt Barnum found that teacher turnover rates in 2023 for each of the 10 states for which he was able to find data. Not all the changes were big, but the trends were all falling. 

For fall 2024, the current school year, I was able to find data from six states: Colorado, Delaware, Arizona, Texas, South Carolina and Massachusetts. All but Texas experienced year-over-year declines in teacher turnover. 

The federal Bureau of Labor Statistics’ survey shows similar trends nationally. For a broad category that includes all state and local government education employees, employee quit rates surged in 2022, fell in 2023 and then decreased again in 2024. Similarly, the American School District Panel from found turnover rates falling among teachers and principals in the fall of 2023 and 2024. Notably, the biggest declines were seen in the places where turnover had surged the most during the initial pandemic years. 

You could squint at the data closely and note that turnover rates are still a bit higher than where they were pre-pandemic. But zoom out, and the numbers look broadly similar to historical trends. For example, Dan Goldhaber and Roddy Theobald looked at from 1984-85 to 2021-22 and found that total turnover, including teachers who left the profession, switched schools, or left teaching but stayed in education, has ranged from about 14% to 20% in Washington since the mid-1980s. It did indeed hit a modern peak (of 19.8%) in 2021-22, but Goldhaber and Theobald’s in Washington showed turnover was again starting to fall in 2023. 

How should we put these figures in context? First, despite its recent surge, public education has maintained than any other industry except for the federal government. In any given month, less than 2% of public education employees leave their jobs, compared with rates twice that high in the private sector. 

Within public education, teachers tend to have lower turnover rates than other employees do. Colorado, for example, has published by role since 2007. The chart below shows the results. Teachers (in red) tend to have similar turnover rates as principals (light blue), but those are much lower than the turnover rates in other roles. Paraprofessionals, in dark blue, typically have turnover rates that are 10 to 15 percentage points higher than teachers do. 

How should we square this with soft data coming out of teacher surveys? Those results are messier, but they could fit the same basic trajectory. One high-quality study out of Illinois found that teacher working conditions worsened substantially from 2021 to 2023. And research looking at a range of survey and pipeline indicators suggested that the state of the profession was as of data ending a couple years ago. More recently, Education Week’s Teacher Morale Index a significant rebound in 2024-25 over the prior year.  

None of this is to say that policymakers should be content with the status quo. And indeed, there continue to be problem spots. Rural schools, those in low-income areas and certain teaching roles, especially in special education, tend to have higher turnover rates than others. But those call for more specialized and tailored solutions rather than universal policies.  

Moreover, policymakers can at least take heart that the worst of the teacher turnover surge appears to be in the rearview mirror. 

Arizona Autism Charter Schools, whose founder Diana Diaz-Harrison has been tapped to oversee the education of children with disabilities in President Donald Trump’s second administration, has used controversial, potentially dangerous disciplinary practices on its students at an unusually high rate. 

In the 2020-21 academic year, the latest for which federal data is available, school staff physically restrained 41% of its students and put 20% in seclusion, which is defined by the U.S. Department of Education as the involuntary confinement of a child, typically in a locked room. That’s 50% higher than the rate at which students are restrained and confined nationally. 

For 35 years, the U.S. Government Accountability Office and have documented in which students as young as 4 were injured, traumatized or even killed while being isolated or held down — often in response to nonviolent behavior. In states that ban the practices, educators typically are allowed to intervene if there is imminent danger of serious physical injury to the student or to others.

Many states — including Arizona — have outlawed or severely curtailed the circumstances under which the practices are allowed. In 2017, federal education officials warned that in restraint and seclusion likely constitute discrimination. Eighty percent of U.S. students who are physically restrained have disabilities, as do 77% of those secluded.  

In 2019, then-Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to address inappropriate restraint and seclusion in U.S. schools. In January 2025, her outgoing successor, Miguel Cardona, called on states and school districts to entirely. 

At the time the data was collected, the charter network founded by Diaz-Harrison had two schools serving 283 students, 116 of whom were restrained and 57 secluded. Ninety-nine of the schools’ 146 K-5 students, or 68%, had been restrained.

Located in the same area served by the Arizona Autism Charter Schools, the 27,000-student Phoenix Union High School District restrained three students in 2020-21 and secluded none. The nearby Mesa Unified District, with more than 50,000 students, restrained 93 and secluded 67. 

In August 2020, in the midst of the COVID pandemic, schools to reopen for students who had no other safe place to spend the day and to prioritize serving children with disabilities, many of whom had missed months of crucial special education services. Schools to in-person schooling on March 15, 2021.

Of Arizona’s 1 million K-12 students, 675 were restrained in 2020-21, as were 28,000 of 49 million children nationally. 

Ron Harrison, the interim CEO of Arizona Autism Charter Schools, noted that unlike most other schools, the student population of Arizona Autism Charter is comprised almost entirely of children who have autism or learning differences.  

“Our intervention rates may be higher than traditional schools because of the distinct student population we serve and our practice to err on the side of reporting every applicable incident, regardless of how minor,” wrote Harrison in a statement. “By comparison, underreporting of similar interventions is rampant nationally – especially among large school districts – and has been the subject of federal scrutiny.”

Harrison added that independently tracked parent satisfaction scores at Arizona Autism Charter schools “have never fallen below 92%” and most recently were higher than 97%.

Diaz-Harrison, who has taken a leave from Arizona Autism Charter to focus on her new federal role, did not respond to requests for comment.

Since 2020-21, Arizona Autism Charter Schools has grown to five schools enrolling nearly 1,000 students. The schools use a controversial intervention called applied behavior analysis, or ABA, that is opposed by many autistic adults as coercive and traumatizing. Created by the researcher behind LGBTQ conversion therapy, ABA attempts to train children to appear and behave like their neurotypical peers. It is widely depicted as the gold standard despite scant independent evidence of its effectiveness and mounting research documenting its harms. 

For a story announcing her appointment as the U.S. Education Department’s deputy assistant secretary for special education and rehabilitative services, Diaz-Harrsion provided a statement to The 74 applauding the approach. “For the autism community, specifically, many families seek schools that integrate positive behavioral strategies,” she said. “The evidence supporting behavioral therapy is extensive and well-established. It has been endorsed by the U.S. surgeon general and the American Academy of Pediatrics as an effective, research-backed approach for individuals with autism.”     

In 2010, the Association for Behavior Analysis International opposing “inappropriate” restraint and seclusion but supporting the interventions when used by ABA practitioners as part of a formal plan. 

“When used in the context of a behavior intervention plan, restraint in some cases serves both a protective and a therapeutic function,” the organization wrote. “These procedures can reduce risks of injury and can facilitate learning opportunities that support appropriate behavior.”

There is that restraint and seclusion have a positive effect on student behavior. Indeed, if the discipline is traumatizing, a child can manifest new behaviors, according to guidance from federal education officials.

“All of our teachers and staff members who interact with students are specially trained,” Harrison said. “When a behavioral intervention is required to ensure the safety of students or staff members, we follow strict protocols which are never punitive and always designed to de-escalate the situation.”

Federal education officials have school systems to train staff on de-escalation and to institute protocols for addressing inappropriate behavior without resorting to punitive measures. When a student with a disability is restrained or secluded, U.S. officials warn, it could mean that their special education plan may be insufficient or not providing the right services.

Editor’s Note: This story was updated on May 15, 2025 to include statements from Ron Harrison, the interim CEO of Arizona Autism Charter Schools.

Diana Diaz-Harrison, whose son is autistic, said that in she hopes to continue her efforts to help others launch autism charter schools throughout the country. Her schools, she said in remarks captured on , are a testament to what happens “when parents like me are empowered to create solutions.”

“My vision is to expand school choice for special needs families — whether through charter schools, private options, voucher programs, or other parent-empowered models,” she said in a statement to The 74. .

The five-school network uses a controversial intervention that attempts to train children to appear and behave like their neurotypical peers. Created by the researcher behind LGBTQ conversion therapy, applied behavior analysis, or ABA, is widely depicted as the gold standard despite scant independent evidence of its effectiveness and mounting research documenting its harms. 

Diaz-Harrison opened the network’s first school in 2014 as a free, public alternative to private schools for autistic children, which are popular in Arizona but typically charge tens of thousands of dollars a year in tuition. Her Arizona charter schools are a 501(c)3 nonprofit financed by state and federal per-pupil funds. ABA is specifically endorsed by Arizona education officials as a strategy to use with autistic students.

In the time since those charters opened, ABA has grown to be a national, multi-billion-dollar industry, with for-profit companies tapping public and private insurance to pay for as much as 40 hours a week of one-on-one therapy. The intervention uses repeated, rapid-fire commands that bring rewards and punishments to change a child’s behavior and communication style.

A 74 investigation last year showed that most data supporting ABA’s effectiveness is drawn from research conducted by industry practitioners. Independent analyses, including a years-long U.S. Department of Defense review, found little evidence the intervention works. Former patients who underwent the therapy as children reported severe, lasting mental health effects, including PTSD.

Diaz-Harrison told The 74 the therapy is both valuable and sought-after. “For the autism community, specifically, many families seek schools that integrate positive behavioral strategies,” she says. “The evidence supporting behavioral therapy is extensive and well-established. It has been endorsed by the U.S. surgeon general and the American Academy of Pediatrics as an effective, research-backed approach for individuals with autism.”

During her visit, McMahon told students and staff she was eager to tell President Donald Trump about the schools. “He doesn’t believe any child, whether they have neuro-difficulties or any other problems, should be trapped in a school and not have the facilities that they need,” she said. 

Since Trump’s second inauguration, he has issued numerous orders that have alarmed disability advocates and the autistic community. Though both edicts contradict longstanding federal laws, in March he ordered the closure of the Education Department and said responsibility for special education will be transferred to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

About half of the Education Department’s staff has been fired, including most of the people responsible for investigating what had been a backlog of some 6,000 disability discrimination complaints. Though it’s unclear whether Trump and McMahon may legally disregard special education funding laws and allow states to spend federal dollars as they see fit, both have said they favor giving local officials as much decision-making power as possible.

Meanwhile, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has stoked fear in the autistic community by announcing a new effort to tie autism to vaccines or other “environmental toxins” — a hypothesis discredited by dozens of studies. The man he appointed to head the study has been cited for practicing medicine without a license and prescribing dangerous drugs to autistic children. 

Last week, the new head of the National Institutes of Health announced that an unprecedented compilation of medical, pharmaceutical and insurance records would be used to create an autism “disease registry” — a kind of list historically used to sterilize, institutionalize and even “euthanize” autistic people. HHS later walked back the statement, saying the database under construction would have privacy guardrails.

Among other responsibilities, the offices Diaz-Harrison will head identify strategies for improving instruction for children with disabilities and ensure that as they grow up, they are able to be as independent as possible. The disability community has raised concerns that the administration is retreating from these goals.   

Advocates have said they fear the changes pave the way for a return to the practice of separating students with disabilities in dedicated special ed classrooms rather than having them attend class with typically developing peers. The Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act guarantees special education students the right to instruction in the “least restrictive environment” possible.          

Families’ preferences vary widely, with some parents of autistic children refusing any form of behavior therapy, while others want their kids in settings with children who share their needs. Many insist on grade-level instruction in general education classrooms 

Diaz-Harrison has a master’s degree in education and worked as a bilingual teacher in California early in her career. From the late 1990s until she began supporting her son full time, she worked as a public relations strategist and a reporter and anchor for the Spanish-language broadcast network Univision. 

In 2014, frustrated with her son’s school options, she who applied for permission to open what was then a single K-5 school serving 90 children. The network now has about 1,000 students in all grades and features an online program. 

At the end of the 2023-24 academic year, of the network’s students scored proficient or highly proficient on Arizona’s annual reading exam, while 4% passed the math assessments.      

In December 2022, the network won a $1 million , an award created by Jeff and Janine Yass. The billionaire investors have a long track record of donating to Republican political candidates and organizations that support school choice. 

One of the award’s creators, Jeanne Allen, is CEO of the Center for Education Reform. The center nominated Diaz-Harrison for the federal role. 

Yass award winners were featured at the 2023 meeting of the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, a conservative forum where state lawmakers are given model bills on education and other policies to introduce in their respective statehouses. 

Diaz-Harrison has partnered with a Florida autism school to create a national to help people start schools like hers throughout the country. She told The 74 the effort has so far supported teams of hopeful school founders from Louisiana, Texas, Florida, Alabama and Nevada. 

Parents of young autistic children and autistic adults often disagree about ABA. Told by their pediatrician or the person who diagnosed their child as autistic that they have a narrow window in which to intervene, families fight to get the therapy. Adults who have experienced it, however, report lasting trauma and have lobbied for research — much of it now at risk of being defunded by Kennedy — into more effective and humane alternatives.

Republican politicians who accuse public school teachers of indoctrinating students with a “woke agenda” are pushing to bring religious chaplains into the same schools to provide counseling to students.

“I think Jesus is a lot better than a psychologist,” Rep. David Marshall, R-Snowflake, said during a March 11 meeting of the Arizona House of Representatives’ Education Committee.

Marshall said that he’s been a chaplain who provides counseling for 26 years.

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, sponsored by Flagstaff Republican Sen. Wendy Rogers, was modeled after similar legislation passed in recent years in Texas and Florida.

The proposal would give school districts the option of allowing volunteer religious chaplains to provide counseling and programs to public school students. Districts that decide to allow chaplains would be required to provide to parents a list of the volunteer chaplains at each school and their religious affiliation, and parents would be required to give permission for their child to receive support from a chaplain.

Despite ample concerns that the proposal violates the and that it would open up schools to legal liability for any bad mental health advice a chaplain might provide, the bill has already passed through the Senate on a party-line vote. The House Education Committee also approved it along party lines.

Rogers told the Education Committee that the existence of any requirement for the separation of church and state in U.S. law “was a myth,” adding that she sees no harm in bringing religion into public schools.

Rogers, a far-right extremist, has , and in 2022 , calling the attendees “patriots” and advocating for the murder of her political enemies.

She has also said she is “honored” to be and regularly trafficks in antisemitic tropes. And Rogers has , appeared on and aligned herself with .

Democrats on the committee raised the alarm that Rogers’ bill would violate the Establishment Clause by allowing chaplains with religious affiliations to counsel students, while not providing the same kinds of services to students who don’t follow a religion or who follow a less-common religion with no chaplains available to the school.

An amendment to the bill, proposed by committee Chairman Matt Gress, a Phoenix Republican, requires that the chaplains be authorized to conduct religious activities by a religious group that believes in a supernatural being. The amendment would also allow a volunteer chaplain to be denied from the list if the school’s principal believes their counsel would be contrary to the school’s teachings.

Both of these changes would allow districts to exclude chaplains from The Satanic Temple of Arizona, a group that and has chapters across the country that challenge the intertwining of Christianity and government.

Oliver Spires, a minister with The Satanic Temple of Arizona, voiced his opposition to Rogers’ bill during a Feb. 5 Senate Education Committee meeting.

The legislation, Spires said, would disproportionately impact students from minority religions who see Christian chaplains providing support to their peers while no chaplains representing their religion are available.

“If a district listed a Satanist on their chaplain list, would they have your support?” he asked the committee members.

Gress’s amendment would preclude that.

Gaelle Esposito, a lobbyist for the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona, told committee members on Tuesday that school counselors are required to undergo specialized training to prepare them to help students — requirements that religious chaplains wouldn’t have to meet, even though they’d be providing similar services.

“They will simply not be equipped to support students dealing with serious matters like anxiety, depression, eating disorders, self harm or suicidal ideation,” Esposito said. “Religious training is not a substitute for academic and professional training in counseling, health care or mental health… Even with the best intentions, chaplains may provide inappropriate responses or interventions that could harm students.”

But as Democrats on the House Education Committee argued that Arizona should provide more funding for trained counselors and social workers to help students with mental health issues, the Republicans on the panel said that students are actually struggling with mental health issues because they don’t have enough religion in their lives.

“I’ve heard that there is a mental health crisis afflicting kids,” Gress, a former school board member, said. “Now, I don’t necessarily think in many of these cases that something is medically wrong with these kids. I think, perhaps, there is a spiritual deficit that needs to be addressed.”

Rep. Justin Olson, R-Mesa, said he’s been frustrated by the federal courts’ interpretation of the First Amendment to require the separation of church and state, claiming it has made the government hostile to religion instead of protecting it.

“I heard comments here today that this is going to harm kids — harm kids by being exposed to religion? That is absolutely the opposite of what is happening here today in our society,” Olson said. “We have become a secular society, and that is damaging our society. We need to have opportunities for people to look to a higher power, and what better way than what is described here in this bill?”

Democratic Rep. Nancy Gutierrez, of Tucson, called SB1269 “outrageous” and “incredibly inappropriate.”

And Rep. Stephanie Simacek, of Phoenix, pointed out that the courts have repeatedly ruled against allowing religious leaders to be invited to share their faith with public school students. She described Rogers’ bill as indoctrination that gives preferential treatment to students who have religious beliefs over those who don’t

“No one is saying that you may not go and celebrate your God, however you see fit,” Simacek, a former teacher and school board member, said. “But this is not the place, in public education, where our students go to learn math, reading and writing and history.”

Florida’s school chaplain law, which went into effect last July and is similar to Rogers’ proposal, has from First Amendment advocacy groups, as well as some church groups who said that allowing untrained chaplains to provide mental health support to students would have unintended negative consequences.

The option to bring chaplains into schools in Florida has not been particularly popular, with several large school districts deciding not to implement a program allowing them.

Proposed legislation similar to SB 1269 has been introduced in red states across the country this year, including in , , , and .

The bill will next be considered by the full House of Representatives. If it passes the chamber, it will return to the Senate for a final vote before heading to Gov. Katie Hobbs.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arizona Mirror maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jim Small for questions: info@azmirror.com.

In some versions of dual enrollment, students take college classes on top of their required high school course load. Requiring extra courses in order to reap the benefits of early college creates a disadvantage for those who work, help with siblings at home or have long commutes to and from school. It can also be a challenge for students already struggling to keep up with advanced courses.

In addition, while some states pay for or subsidize college courses for high schoolers, others make parents shoulder the financial burden. Postsecondary institutions may offer financial aid for economically disadvantaged high schoolers, as they do for their own students, but this adds just another hurdle to what should be a seamless early college experience.

Taken together, this lack of equal access to the time and financial resources needed to pay for, and do well in, college courses can skew participation and successful completion.

By contrast, concurrent enrollment — swapping a college course for a high school class instead of adding it on top of the regular course load — increases students’ opportunity to pay little to nothing for the advanced coursework while enhancing their readiness for college and a future of work.  

The terms dual and concurrent enrollment are often used interchangeably. But in their purest form, they are quite different. Policies that prioritize concurrent enrollment can have a substantial impact on student outcomes and postsecondary access. 

 In Arizona, for example, state law defines concurrent enrollment to mean a student enrolls in a state university or local community college course instead of the high school course he or she would otherwise take. It also requires that the student cost be as close to free as possible. 

In the context of public policy and program design, the seemingly semantic distinction between dual and concurrent enrollment can help improve lifetime outcomes and deliver a future-ready workforce.

Swapping college for high school courses also makes it easier to integrate workplace and college campus experiences into students’ normal school day. Instead of taking extra classes, students can spend their time in career-aligned projects and clubs or even commute to a nearby college to take courses on campus. 

In addition, concurrent credit can limit financial burdens on schools and districts by relieving them of the burdens of having to pay for doubled-up coursework, educators and space, as well as the costs of procuring college-equivalent programs in lieu of actual college courses.

A related policy change — simple, yet critical — would allow for the smooth transfer of earned concurrent credit. When students move from one high school to another, they must often retake courses or submit to a test to transfer college credits they have already earned. ����’s a hiccup that adds cost across the system while slowing high school graduation or postsecondary attainment. States can ensure that these concurrent credits transfer when students move or otherwise change schools, and require that the new schools accept credits earned in these rigorous classes without onerous testing. Inefficient transfer policies not only threaten early college, but on-time high school graduation.

Concurrent enrollment can also respond to the increased demand from families and students for a transformed high school experience that is more relevant in today’s world. As the leader of a college prep network, I know firsthand how concurrent enrollment is meeting the demands of a new generation of parents and students.

Millennial parents are seeking ways to save on college costs, and their children want high school to be more engaging and relevant to their futures. Offering them postsecondary opportunities aligned to a career does just that.

Policymakers around the country should adopt equitable policies and funding for concurrent enrollment while helping educators implement these models. This will accelerate the efficiencies, economic mobility and work readiness that postsecondary learning provides. 

Large investments in dual enrollment have boosted interest in and access to postsecondary education. But after decades of implementation around the country, clarity is developing on how best to accelerate these gains, eliminate redundancies and deliver a future-ready workforce. Concurrent enrollment is that promising path forward.

Many stories also picked up on the fact that achievement gaps are growing, as lower-performing students have fallen further behind. For instance, in eighth grade math, the scores for the top 10% of students rose 3 points, while the bottom 10% fell 5 points.

But these national numbers are hiding the fact that achievement gaps are growing in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. While they vary in magnitude, the extent of the divergence playing out in schools across the country is alarming. 

Before going into those state-level results, it’s important to acknowledge that this is a uniquely American problem. The separation between the higher- and lower-performing students in the United States has over the last decade, and there’s no signs yet of that slowing down. 

Last spring, I did an analysis that showed that before 2013, achievement scores were rising, and those gains were broadly shared across student performance levels. 

Consider the left side of the graph below, which shows the NAEP results in eighth grade math, updated through 2024. It is clear that something happened around 2013: On average, scores fell a little bit, but lower-performing students (in red) fell off a cliff. 

Meanwhile, the scores of higher-performing students (in blue) suffered a bit in the wake of COVID-19, but they improved noticeably last year, while the lowest performers did not.

A similar pattern shows up across a wide range of national and international tests, grade levels and subject areas. 

It is also evident in state after state. After the latest results came out, I looked to see how these gaps were changing at the state level. I looked specifically at eighth grade math, and the numbers were shockingly bad. In fact, in every state, the achievement gap has grown over the last two years. 

But those short-term changes don’t explain the full extent of what has happened to American children over the last decade. Each state has seen its achievement gap increase significantly.

To see the full state-level results, check out the table below, which shows the changes from 2013 to 2024. It breaks down the gains (or losses) for students at the 90^th percentile, the midpoint of all students in the state (the median) and the bottom 10^th percentile. It also shows how much these groups have diverged over time and the gap that has grown. 

And those gaps have increased in every state, most dramatically in Massachusetts, California, Texas, Arizona, Washington, Rhode Island, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. In all of these, the gap widened by 20 points or more.

How meaningful are these changes? Depending on the year, the average student gains about 10 points per year on the NAEP math tests. As a rough comparison, that means  achievement gaps have grown by the equivalent of one to two years’ worth of schooling. That’s substantial.

These gaps may seem daunting, and policymakers might be tempted to throw up their hands. But they should take heart from the fact that this recent period of academic stagnation is unusual. Until about a decade ago, small but steady gains were the norm. When researchers M. Danish Shakeel of the University of Buckingham and Paul Peterson from Harvard University looked at this question a few years ago, they that, “average student achievement has been increasing for half a century. Across 7 million tests taken by U.S. students born between 1954 and 2007, math scores have grown by 95% of a standard deviation, or nearly four years’ worth of learning.” They found smaller but still positive results for reading and a narrowing of gaps across racial, ethnic and socioeconomic status. 

In other words, progress is possible. At the moment, American achievement scores are falling and gaps are growing, but it wasn’t that long ago when the data were going in a much more positive direction.

Her youngest two attend the Mesa Public Schools, Arizona’s largest district. But public school wasn’t a good fit for Kain, who at nearly 11 still doesn’t speak. He needs constant supervision and requires help with tasks like handwashing and opening snacks.

The state’s education savings account, held up among conservatives, allows Pihlman to spend state funds on private school tuition or homeschooling costs. But that program didn’t work for her either. Schools that accept the ESA only offered to put him on a waitlist. For now, they’re homeschooling.

“He’s not aggressive. He’s not violent. He just has high support needs,” she said. She used ESA funds for a music therapy program, but her husband had to attend class with him in case Kain tried to leave or needed to use the bathroom. “They tried their best to work with him, but they weren’t able to accommodate his needs.”

For parents like Pihlman, school choice hasn’t lived up to its promise as an alternative to traditional classrooms. With states like and aiming to pass voucher programs next year — and President-elect Donald Trump vowing to nationalize — a from the Center for Reinventing Public Education focuses on the families that choice has left behind. Confusing admission policies, transportation challenges and inadequate supply means that minority students, kids from low-income families and those with disabilities often miss out. 

“You can’t use choice as a solution to the quality problem,” said Ashley Jochim, the author of the study and a principal at CRPE, a think tank. “Policymakers should make it so there aren’t any really bad choices. That’s priority number one.”

Jochim examined more than 30 years of research on the competitive education landscape, from district lotteries to education savings accounts, with an eye toward challenges faced by families trying to access such programs. 

She points to Milwaukee as an example of the limitations of market-based education. Home to the nation’s first private school voucher program, launched in 1990, the city has a reputation for “robust competition” between the public, private and charter sectors. But involving charter operators and a among private schools participating in its voucher program has sent families scrambling for other options. In a separate, forthcoming paper for Education Next, Jochim notes that between 1990 and last school year, 41% of the private schools participating permanently closed.

Overall, she said, Milwaukee families are left with a system of schools that is “quite middling.” 

A from the Wisconsin Policy Forum, a think tank, echoed that assessment. It shows that the city’s Black students are the least likely to attend high-performing schools. Almost three-quarters of Black students in grades three through eight, in both district and charter schools, score below grade level in math, compared with 29% of white students and 59% of Hispanic students. 

But national data tells a more promising story. A from Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes concluded that on average, charter students — including Black, Hispanic and poor students — perform better than their peers in traditional schools. 

To Karega Rausch, the president and CEO of the National Association of Charter School Authorizers, CRPE’s report means two things can be true at the same time: Charters have improved outcomes for poor and minority students and there are still “real barriers” to increasing the number of high-quality schools. 

A meant to encourage innovative school models and efforts to extend credit to Colorado charters waiting on federal grant funds are examples of policies that can help meet the demand, he said. 

‘High-cost mistakes’

But the momentum building around private school choice demonstrates that parents can sometimes get lost in an abundance of options, Jochim wrote.

Florida, for example, added 1,700 private schools to its voucher program between 2010 and 2020, and Arizona families using an ESA can choose from thousands of , including private schools, tutors, and sports or arts programs. 

“Navigating this rapidly evolving landscape without reliable information increases the risks that families will make high-cost mistakes,” Jochim wrote. “The search for a ‘good’ school can be time consuming, and when the chosen school disappoints, families must begin their search again.”

Families whose children have disabilities often end up in a “holding pattern,” said Lauren Morando Rhim, executive director of the Center for Learner Equity, which focuses on ensuring that students with disabilities receive needed services from charters.

“I’ve spoken to parents who said ‘I tried a district school and they couldn’t serve my child. I tried a charter — they couldn’t serve my child,’ ” she said. Out of “desperation,” they sometimes turn to an ESA-funded private school, but that often means their children won’t be able to interact with non-disabled peers. “They say, ‘I’m not happy about it, but it’s the least bad option right now.’ ”

Jochim supports choice “as a means to introduce some competition and improve all schools,” but thinks that for its most passionate advocates, it has become “a value unto itself.” She recommends that states collect data on students who exit school choice programs to get a fuller understanding of what is driving turnover. 

She also urges policymakers and foundations to fund what school choice experts call “navigators” —those who can help families evaluate options, stay ahead of key deadlines and go into the process more informed. 

‘People trust people’

That’s the work that Colleen Dippel, of Houston-based Families Empowered, has been doing for 15 years. Even with public school choice, she said parents remain confused about how lotteries and magnet schools work. And with Texas likely to pass a voucher bill next year, families are looking at even more options. 

With ESAs also come multimillion-dollar state contracts for payment systems, websites and online vendors marketing supplies and curriculum. Dippel said that parents benefit from having someone to field their questions.

“We have underinvested in people in the school choice space and overinvested in technology,” she said. “People trust people, not institutions.”

Funded largely by donations, Families Empowered is neutral about which models work best, she said, and might steer a family toward a traditional school if its a better fit. She once lost a funder because she wouldn’t agree to direct families to IDEA Public Schools, a large charter network with over 100 schools in Texas. 

She also hopes that Texas learns from other states about how to ensure families can use the programs without having to spend their own money and wait for reimbursement. 

“That would be very concerning for us,” she said. “We believe that’s a barrier that does not need to be in place for low-income families.”

Families using ESAs often wait months to get paid back or say they have to jump through bureaucratic hoops to get . In Arizona, Pihlman uses an ESA debit card to buy books, Legos, puzzles and other supplies for Kain, who is just beginning to write. But she worries that months later, state officials will deny a purchase and she’ll have to pay it back.

Some ESA proponents argue those obstacles aren’t a mark against school choice — just evidence of birthing pains as states explore new options. 

During the pandemic, Kevin Gemeroy relocated to Scottsdale, Arizona, from Seattle, where in-person school wasn’t an option. He uses the state’s ESA program to send his oldest son, a bright student with dyslexia, to a private school, but is considering public school for his youngest. 

“Having a system where you can choose between public school, private school, homeschool, religious school — and be able to use your lifetime of education tax dollars — is a huge advantage,” he said. “Just because some people have problems using the resources available or some people are abusing them doesn’t mean that the other 98% of people that aren’t should have their options limited.” 

“This is the most conservative legislature in history. We will continue to deliver a conservative agenda that will protect liberty and promote prosperity,” Senate President wrote on X. “With our expanded majority we will make sure our communities are safe and that our kids have the best educational opportunities possible.”

The swing state’s legislative prospects garnered the and a flood of campaign spending, with nearly being spent to elect lawmakers across both parties in 13 races. Democrats focused most energy in five close races in suburban Tucson and Phoenix that could have shifted the Republicans’ previous two-vote majorities. 

Now with the control of both houses, the Republican party can act on their promise to grow the Empowerment Scholarship voucher program, which sends tax dollars to private schools and reimburses families for homeschooling expenses. 

Democratic Governor Katie Hobbs has ESA growth, stating when she took office it “would likely bankrupt the state.” Arizona is considered an unofficial beacon for school choice, the first in the nation to offer families anything resembling a voucher in 2011.

The ESA program, expanded to all families under Republican leadership past its original design to support kids with disabilities or in underperforming schools, was last year. 

The state’s schools chief has said it’s impossible to credit the program, which most recently cost the state about $718 million to support 78,000 students, as causing deficits in the state budget, pointing to an overall surplus in the Department of Education because of declines in projected charter spending. 

Whether or not the state’s budget will be further strained by Republicans’ legislative agenda to expand the program, in its current iteration, it’s also been criticized for lack of accountability. Parents were able, for example, to reimburse $800 driving lessons in luxury vehicles, golf merchandise, and visits to . 

“While you may think this may not be a good use of that family’s ESA funding, at the end of the day, they get a fixed amount of money, and if that’s how they’re going to choose to use it, that’s their prerogative,” ESA director John Ward . 

Today, the nearly 80,000 families enrolled in the program receive about $7,500 for their childrens’ educational expenses. According to the , the vast majority of funding went to schools that specialize in serving kids with disabilities, particularly autism, and private, religious schools. 

Roughly are students with disabilities, a higher proportion than the average in traditional public schools statewide. 

A revealed low-income families are using the program far less frequently than families in wealthier enclaves. For families living in poverty, the location of private schools and financial responsibility of taking on additional transportation, research, and meals costs makes “school choice” an unrealized promise. 

Each of these states offers students access to education savings accounts, which give families education dollars so they can customize and personalize children’s learning experiences, from school tuition and tutoring to educational products or services. 

Now school districts in these states are enabling families to use their funds to purchase individual public school classes.

Early examples have emerged in Utah’s Canyons School District, Arizona’s Vail and Pima school districts and Florida’s Glades County School District. 

In Canyons School District, families can use ESA funds to enroll in public school programs, including , through the Utah Fits All Scholarship. Vail School District developed a that outlines costs for homeschool families who want to purchase individual school courses, enroll in clubs, access sports or engage in other extracurricular programs using Arizona’s ESA program. And Pima School District lets students use their ESAs to pay for .

In Florida, the Personalized Education Program allows homeschool families to access the nation’s largest universal school choice program — and this year, districts are starting to respond by allowing families to purchase one-off courses. In one recent example, let a student use education savings account funds to buy honors biology and American history classes. And students using Florida’s education choice scholarship program . This shift mirrors a change that began in 1996, when Florida passed the nation’s first law making available to homeschool families.

These initiatives demonstrate a profound shift in how public schools can serve students. Traditionally, ESA funding has been spent on providers such as private schools and tutors. By embracing the customization ESAs offer, public school districts no longer treat student funding as all-or-none. Rather, these districts are demonstrating a future where public schools compete in the education marketplace to better serve individual students and families.

This evolution in education mirrors the transformation I saw while working at Uber. When Uber first emerged, it was viewed as a threat to the taxi industry. to to Uber and other ridesharing companies. And when customers kept coming, lobbying efforts got them banned from airports and . But today, 13 years since Uber first rolled out its app in major cities, you can in  nearly every city, from Miami to Helena, Montana. And at nearly every major airport, travelers will find signs directing them to rideshare pickup locations as well as traditional transportation options — a result of the industry as a whole embracing the apps.

Just as transportation companies have adapted to offer better overall service to riders, public schools are making a similar shift in education to meet the demands of today’s families, improving their offerings and attracting more students.

More than 80% of families surveyed by want a customizable education experience for their child, yet only 38% say they can currently achieve this. The lesson is clear: Rather than resisting ESAs, public schools should see them as a tool for innovation. By providing services families want — whether it’s advanced academic courses, specialized arts programs or extracurriculars — public schools can thrive in this new, competitive marketplace.

The future of education in America is not about pitting public and private schools against one another. ����’s about giving families the power to choose what’s best for their children — and public schools have every opportunity to be part of that solution. Just as Uber transformed transportation by focusing on what customers wanted, public schools can revolutionize education by listening to families and providing the services they need. ESAs are the tool that can make this vision a reality.

Their calls have been mounting for decades, but the remarks marked a milestone: the first time a U.S. President ever acknowledged and apologized for the system where federal agents removed children from their parents, often at gunpoint, sending them to schools thousands of miles from home, stripping families of their language and culture.

The exact number of children who were forced into boarding schools in the U.S. for over 150 years is unknown, due to poor record keeping, but nearly 19,000 have been confirmed. Physical, sexual and psychological abuse was rampant at the schools often run by religious institutions. Some children were referred to only as numbers, pre-teen girls were raped and sent home pregnant. Thousands never returned home.

Addressing the public on the Gila River Reservation outside of Phoenix, Arizona on October 25, President Joe Biden fulfilled a long-delayed promise to visit Indian country and called the boarding school system a “sin on our soul,” adding there was “no excuse” for how long-overdue the acknowledgement was and that “no apology can or will make up for what was lost during the darkness of the federal boarding school policy. But today, we’re finally moving forward into the light.”
The timing of the visit has also been noted as a to to cast votes for Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris. But many Native Americans are by government inaction to adequately protect lands, provide access to quality education and healthcare, and enact an .

Survivors and descendants both acknowledge how meaningful Biden’s speech was after centuries of fighting for recognition from the federal government, and call on the administration to act swiftly on the apology. 

“In his last two weeks in office, we demand that President Biden also pass S.1723/H.R.7227: The Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policies Act,” said the Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, a nonprofit that has worked with survivors and Tribal leaders for over a decade to educate about the system and facilitate repatriations. 

The legislation would provide a path for investing in language and culture revitalization efforts, educating the American public on the system via museums or curricula, and establishing trauma-informed mental health resources. 

It would also enable subpoenas to be used to investigate the scale of the system: Catholic entities have been able to hold onto private records for decades, some of which contain the only known photographs or remnants of survivors’ ancestors. Reintroduced in both the Senate and House last year, the bill has yet to reach a vote. 

The mental and physical health concerns of survivors and lack of widespread reconciliation reached national spotlight earlier this year when the Interior Department released its final on the system, which revealed at least 1,000 Indigenous children died or were killed. The schools operated using over $23 billion federal dollars, adjusted for inflation. 

Thousands were subject to child labor to operate facilities and be “outed,” working without wage for white families near the schools.

Angelique Albert, a member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes and chief executive of the nation’s largest direct scholarship provider for Native students, Native Forward, referred to the boarding schools not as places of education but as places of “extermination.” 

Just as slavery was used as the tool to harm Black people across the Americas, “education was the tool to harm us, to assimilate us. That’s the tool where we lost our children,” Albert said, adding that the apology is a testament to the work done by Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, the nation’s first Native American cabinet member and former recipient of their scholarships, to unearth survivor testimony and investigate the system. 

“She’s in the very position that implemented the boarding schools. Do you understand? It gives me chills,” Albert said, emphasizing how critical it is for the federal government to maintain close relationships with Tribal nations and put more funding behind college access for Native youth so their voices can be heard in positions they’ve been historically excluded from. 

While the apology, however late, is a “critical first step in the truth and reconciliation process for Native and Indigenous communities,” Albert stressed, “Indian boarding school policies are not a horror of the past — these institutions operated through 1969, and many Native people who were subjected to these cruel policies are still living today.”

The boarding school system, while the focus of President Biden’s remarks, was not the only widespread, forced removal of Native children. Throughout the 60s and 70s, over a third were removed from their families and overwhelmingly placed in non-Indian homes after discriminatory welfare investigations. 

In Washington, Native children were placed in foster care and adopted at rates 19 times greater than their peers. The practice was widespread until 1978’s Indian Child Welfare Act was passed by Congress, who stated “wholesale separation of Indian children from their families is perhaps the most tragic and destructive aspect of American Indian life today.” 

Native populations now face , including the highest rates of substance abuse, suicidal ideation and chronic illnesses, which researchers have linked to centuries of genocide, disinvestment and generational trauma. 

Following Biden’s address, an Indigenous collective gathered to pray, mourn, sing and in South Dakota, on the lands of what will soon be the , a “culture-based school” for Lakota, Dakota and Nakota children.

“, we took to the land and reminded the world that we are the children of survivors … We will honor our ancestors by holding this country accountable for what it has done to our people,” NDN Collective president Nick Tilsen said in a release. “The U.S. government tried to exterminate and erase us. We will continue to remind them they have failed at doing so, and the warrior spirit of our ancestors lives in all of us.” 

Historically, the majority of this funding was only available to students who were low income, had special needs or attended poorly performing public schools. 

Over the past three years, that’s shifted: Today, at least 33 states offer private school choice programs, and of those 12 are “universal,” meaning any student, regardless of income or need, can apply for government funding to subsidize private, religious and — in some cases — home schools. 

Comprehensive analysis of the scale of these initiatives and their implications — both for students and state budgets — has been sparse. But a released earlier this month by , a research think tank based at Georgetown’s School of Public Policy, looks to change that. 

Policy Director Liz Cohen and analyst Bella DiMarco studied the evolution of established or emerging universal programs during the 2023-24 school year across eight states: Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, Indiana, Ohio, Oklahoma, and West Virginia. 

Their research comes on the eve of an election where school choice measures are on the ballot in three additional states and when disagreement continues to spark over whether these programs give freedom and choice to families who have been historically locked out of private schooling or are part of a larger movement meant to undermine and defund public schools. 

FutureEd’s major finding about how universal choice has played out so far? “Policy design really matters,” Cohen said, in an interview with The 74.

While all of the studied programs are universal in that anyone can apply, whether families end up actually receiving money, how much they receive and what accountability measures the participating schools are held to varies greatly state by state. 

They calculated that in total, 569,000 students received subsidies across these states, representing 55% of the students attending private schools with public funding and costing taxpayers an estimated $4 billion. About 40% of the nation’s 50 million elementary and secondary students are now eligible.

Here are five key takeaways.

“Universal” is not necessarily universal, and no two states’ policies look the same. 

“We talk about [universal programs] as such a monolithic thing,” said DiMarco. “I expected there to be more similarities between the programs and to see more similarities in the data. But that just wasn’t necessarily the case.” 

In Ohio for example, families receive funding on a sliding scale based on need, private schools can’t charge low-income families more than what they receive from the state and participating private schools must use the same graduation requirements.

On the other end of the spectrum, in Florida and Arizona no student who applies for funding is turned down and participating private schools don’t need to be accredited. 

“If you listen to the sort of politically charged descriptions of these initiatives you get one fairly stilted perspective— both from proponents and opponents of these,” said Nat Malkus, the deputy director of education policy at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute. “And when you look at them piece by piece, there’s a good bit of daylight between the arrangements from one city to the next.”

But there are a few overarching themes, some of which shouldn’t come as a surprise.

All states give participating families similar amounts of money, with the average award amount coming in at around $7,000, which is approximately 90% to 100% of state per-pupil funding. 

Most states require some sort of accountability testing — but not all. And most of the students who received the funding across all eight states were already attending private schools.

For example in Arkansas, 64% of students who received funds through the Education Freedom Act in its first year, the 2023-24 school year, were already enrolled in private schools. The majority were students with disabilities. 

“So much of the attention in general has been paid to the fact that the majority of kids are already in private school,” said Cohen. “But that’s actually the expected outcome if you are giving money to kids to go to private school, and anyone can get it.”

She said the bigger question moving forward is examining if that pattern will persist beyond the first wave of funding.

Josh Cowen, education policy expert and author of said he doesn’t anticipate the demographics of participating students to shift much over time, meaning he isn’t expecting an exodus of low-income students from struggling public schools to private school alternatives..

“Put me down for projecting that the next version of this [report] is going to find something very similar and even more stark… [because] no policy that isn’t directly targeted toward at-risk children or families, will remain primarily benefiting at-risk children or families.“

The income level of participating families is murkier than people think: Well-to-do families are signing up, but so are more modest ones.

While these programs continue to serve predominantly lower- and middle-income families, the researchers found that participation among higher-income families increased last year, in every state where eligibility expanded and data was available.

“One of the big sort of headlines you keep seeing around these programs is that it’s all affluent families,” said Cohen. “And I just think the nuance to that is that that’s not actually accurate.”

While it’s true that there are many more affluent families than in previous means-tested programs, there are still significant numbers of lower-income families who are entering these programs. She pointed to Florida where 30% of families participating are low income. 

DiMarco said they saw a lot of middle-income families taking advantage of the funds who were “sort of just above the line” under previous, means-tested programs.

Impacts of funding on state budgets remain unclear.

Because the majority of families who took advantage of this funding were not coming from public schools — and therefore not bringing their per pupil public funding with them — these subsidies represent a new state-level cost.

“They’re new expenses,” said Cohen, “which could ultimately down the road — if state lawmakers don’t really think this through — end up [putting] states in a position where they have to say, ‘We’re not going to build this highway … because we have to pay the bill on this private school choice thing.’”

Goals of the programs are rarely — if ever — clearly stated, making accountability tricky. 

Some states, like Arizona and Oklahoma, have no standardized testing requirements or other performance metrics, making it, “nearly impossible to gauge how much learning is taking place under the state’s private school choice programs,” according to the report.

Other states do have more stringent requirements, although Florida is the only state the researchers studied which has mandated funding to evaluate academic performance of participating students.

“The step it feels like a lot of these states skipped is identifying a clear goal for the program and then a clear metric of how you’ll know if you achieved your goal,” said Cohen. “And without stating those things up front, what are we even trying to measure?”

Malkus sees more of an effort to track student outcomes, though he emphasized additional data would help parents make better-informed choices. 

“I don’t think the testing requirements are as strict as some people would like them,” he said, “but the idea that there’s zero accountability for these isn’t true either. ����’s somewhere in the messy middle.”

Two years ago, Katie Switzer for a new school choice program that grants homeschooling families in West Virginia up to $4,900 annually to educate their children.

She was on the winning side when opponents sued to stop the program. But now, she says, the story of the Hope Scholarship has entered a frustrating new chapter. 

Glitches in a new online purchasing system mean she can’t spend funds to order headsets for her three children in online classes. Her kindergartner received the wrong laptop and she spent weeks trying to get a refund. Her kids are among thousands whose learning has been disrupted this school year because orders for curriculum and supplies are backed up. Families have been forced to wait or spend their own money and ask the state for reimbursement. 

“We fought so hard to get this program,” said Switzer, a mother of five and founder of a that has become a forum for dozens of families frustrated with the payment system. “Now we have a number of parents that haven’t received what they ordered.”

In April, the West Virginia State Treasurer’s Office, which runs the Hope Scholarship, awarded a to Indiana-based Student First Technologies to manage purchases and payments to education providers, replacing a non-profit the state contracted with last year. But the system has struggled to keep up as enrollment in the education savings account program jumped from about last year to over 10,000. In late September, almost 3,000 of the 9,000 orders submitted through the company’s platform had not been processed, according to the state. By Thursday, the system had gotten that number down to 1,600 out of 11,300 — or roughly 14% of orders.

Last week, the treasurer’s office held a forum to allow parents to voice their concerns. But Switzer said the meeting was short on hard information.

“I’m like, ‘We want answers; we don’t just want to yell at you,’ ” she said.

Student First’s problems aren’t limited to West Virginia. In a Sept. 16 letter, Arkansas Education Secretary Jacob Oliva told CEO Mark Duran that his company failed to meet deadlines, including one for delivering a “fully operational” purchasing platform for homeschool families participating in the state’s Education Freedom Account program. He followed up with a second Tuesday, canceling the company’s contract as of Dec. 31 and requiring Student First to pay an estimated $563,000 in damages. 

On Wednesday, the state also posted a  for another vendor.

“The failure of Student First to perform its obligations under the contract requires the agency to procure a new contract that, based on the circumstances, will increase the cost to operate the same program,” Oliva wrote.

Student First officials have not returned phone calls or emails for this article.

As Republican-led states continue to adopt and expand ESAs, they are building centralized  systems for homeschooling parents to buy curriculum, services and supplies. Controversy surrounding ESAs has largely focused on isolated cases of fraud, including funds for “ghost students” in Arizona and extravagant parent-purchased items and . But school choice advocates argue that one of the biggest threats to the programs is poor customer service, including online platforms that malfunction or block orders for items that should be allowable. 

Parents are complaining about “long approval wait times and issues with getting invoices paid,” said Mike McShane, director of national research at EdChoice, an advocacy group. “It is tough to say whether it is the platforms or the states that are causing the problems. I imagine if you ask the platforms they’ll blame the states, and if you ask the states they’ll blame the platforms.”

The West Virginia treasurer’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

Last year, McShane states not to skimp on the “slow, laborious and dull work” of implementation. He called the difficulties “teething pains” as states open programs to more families.

‘Through the roof’

Under ESAs, parents can use their accounts to pay for tuition at private schools, or to fund homeschooling expenses or a mixture of in-person and online learning.

Recent data from and other shows that homeschooling rates remain above pre-pandemic levels. In the 2022-23 school year, nearly 6% of students were homeschooled, compared with 2.8% in 2019. ESAs “will potentially expand homeschooling practice even more.” 

While it’s relatively simple to use ESA funds to pay tuition to a private school, advocates say Student First probably didn’t anticipate the flurry of activity from homeschooling families who often place dozens of orders for curriculum and supplies.

“The demand for these programs has been through the roof,” McShane said. “So scaling up the tech and infrastructure is going to take time.”

Critics, however, argue that such “middleman” vendors are not only causing headaches for families, but raising the costs of running the programs themselves. Iowa, for example, upped its contract with Odyssey, a similar payment company, to reflect additional charges for on purchases.

Josh Cowen, a Michigan State University professor and leading voucher opponent, said it’s typical for states to contract with third-party providers to manage publicly funded programs. But Cowen, who recently published about some of the wealthy donors behind the school choice movement, pointed to a “chronic problem” with vendors running ESA programs, especially as the list of allowable items grows.

“I think that the burden should be even higher on states authorizing vendors to explain why we need them and why they’re worth the cost,” he said. 

Arkansas, where the ESA program provides $6,800 per student, awarded a to Student First in April, replacing ClassWallet, the largest company in the sector, with contracts in 11 states. 

The program began in 2023-24, but this is the first year some homeschoolers can participate, including the children of first responders, servicemembers and those in failing schools.

“Not all homeschool families are eligible this year, and it’s really a good thing” given the processing delays, said Lisa Crook, director of Education Alliance, a network of Arkansas homeschooling families. Parents are calling her for answers, but she said the state is reimbursing expenses as fast as it can. “It has been frustrating, but I don’t feel like they have turned a blind eye to us or anything.”

The West Virginia treasurer’s office has also created some temporary workarounds. In a Sept. 23 email, the state said it would reimburse families that had to pay up front for expensive items like school uniforms and musical instruments. But advocates note that not all families can afford to pay for items out of pocket and wait for reimbursements.

In addition to the backlog of orders, Student First’s “TheoPay” platform, for now, only works as an extension to Chrome — a violation of its the program to work across multiple browsers and be mobile-friendly. 

Switzer said parents who lack Chrome or home internet service have come to her house to place orders. 

“This is a high-poverty state,” she said. “Parents can’t use their phones [to place orders] or they can’t use the local library computer to order stuff because you can’t install the Chrome extension on a library computer.”

As director of education partnerships and strategy at the Cardinal Institute for West Virginia Policy, a right-leaning think tank, Tiffany Hoben is an advocate for ESAs. 

She also has an 11-year-old son on a Hope Scholarship. She uses the funds to purchase science, math, and reading materials from different vendors and to pay for tutors. Student First’s website promises “frictionless technology.” But the system is blocking orders for some parents while green-lighting purchases from other families for identical items.

“It’s hard for families,” she said. “����’s like, ‘Well, dang it, I should be able to have this because it’s on the list.’ ”

‘In the dark’

Most states with ESA programs have had some challenges with their payment systems. But in Arizona, which contracts with ClassWallet, many of the kinks have been worked out, said Kathy Visser, who runs a Facebook group for ESA parents. If there are delays with approvals, it’s usually due to a backlog at the state level or because officials have changed the rules about what’s allowed. 

“For the most part, if you contact ClassWallet with an issue, they’re very responsive,” she said. “And if it’s their fault that you had an issue, it’s quickly resolved.”

She worries that problems with vendors in other states will bolster critics’ arguments that ESA’s drain state resources.  

“They’ll say, ‘Look, you can’t even manage the programs,’ ” she said. “They want to make sure parents quit using it. If parents get fed up, then the program fails.”

Hoben, with Cardinal Institute, said in the rush to get West Virginia’s purchasing system in place, families have been kept “in the dark” about why their orders aren’t being processed. 

“Other states,” she said, “are watching us out of the corner of their eye, like ‘God do we even want to mess with this?’ ” 

Dominique Bryant made the switch for her 10-year-old after two years of watching him struggle with reading. She first noticed how far behind Malcolm was in second grade when he couldn’t read the instructions on a homework assignment. 

“I looked in his face and he just was so defeated. I said ‘I’ve got to do something else,’” she said. Now her two daughters, Ebony and Aviana, attend the school as well.

One way Burbrella stands out in a growing marketplace of unconventional school options is by grouping students of similar ages and learning needs together in pods — a format that a lot of families became familiar with during the pandemic. The school, however, takes a more mainstream approach to measuring how well students learn math and reading. Teachers turn to some of the same assessments still used in traditional public schools, like the Iowa tests to pinpoint students’ skills when they first enroll and i-Ready to monitor progress throughout the year. 

“We look for their strengths, their interests, and we integrate that into play, nature and projects — just to really make learning fun — but also to close the gaps they have academically,” said Dominique Burgess, the school’s founder.

Her reliance on widely used assessments is not unique in the expanding universe of school choice options, according to a from Vela, a nonprofit that promotes and provides grants to such programs. Most leaders of unconventional schools use methods like observation, student presentations and projects to track progress, but more than half also use standardized tests or assessments built into online curriculum — like DreamBox and Zearn. Leaders of such programs say parents are their number one audience for the data. But with more states allowing families to use public funds for tuition at microschools and other private school programs, there’s also for greater transparency into how students stack up against their peers in district schools.

Burgess, previously a public and charter school educator, doesn’t have a problem with that. 

“I think we’re at a very pivotal point in this whole movement,” said Burgess, who also has an online program that serves students from 19 states. “A lot of what we’re doing needs a light shined on it — not just for parents to say ‘Oh, it’s something different. Let me go try it’ — but more so the country can see this might be the new way of educating kids and providing families with choice.”

Vela, with a network of 3,000 founders of alternative schools, was “uniquely positioned” to survey leaders on how their schools define and measure student success, said Meredith Olson, president and CEO. 

Of the 223 programs that responded, 70% said they track academic progress, but ranked developing students’ critical thinking and problem-solving skills as more important than reading and literacy skills — 74% and 66%, respectively. Nearly 40% of the school programs said they measure math skills, and 13% said they don’t track anything. 

Programs using digital tools are more likely to capture student assessment data using education technology from Khan Academy than any other program, Vela found in its survey. More than half of school founders said they use the popular website, with much smaller percentages using Lexia for reading (24%) or Zearn for math (15%).

Laurie Hensley, who runs the Learning Essentials microschool on an acre of property southeast of Phoenix, doesn’t let her students move to the next level until they score at least 90% in Lexia. Sometimes she “has a little chat” with parents if their child still can’t master a lesson after multiple attempts.

“But most of the time kids are progressing,” said Hensley, who worked as a paraprofessional in a charter school before launching her own program five years ago. “The whole point of being out of a public school is that they progress, even if it’s slower. As long as they’re moving forward, I don’t worry about them.”

Doug Harris, a Tulane University economist who studies school choice, including education savings accounts, said he’s not surprised that many microschool leaders rely on Khan Academy to tell them how students are performing. 

“Microschools have only one or two teachers and they can’t be expert in, or create assessments for, such a wide variety of material,” he said. But even if public funds are paying for students to attend a microschool, the public won’t necessarily see that data. “Khan doesn’t provide useful info to anyone but those families and educators in the school.” 

That’s not good enough for many opponents of ESAs, especially those in Arizona, which places no academic requirements on private programs that serve students with public funds. Criticism has spiked in recent months as the state makes to accommodate growth in the program. 

Holding microschools accountable

“Microschools propped up by taxpayer funds should be held to the same standards as public schools, which means they should take the same tests and post the same level of results,” said Beth Lewis, executive director of Save Our Schools Arizona, a public school advocacy organization that strongly opposes the state’s ESA program. “Otherwise, it’s not really about school choice at all, since parents don’t have access to any information about the microschool’s academics. And taxpayers have zero information about their return on investment.”

Jenn Kelly, who runs Education Through Adventure microschool in Scottsdale, agrees that ESA-funded programs should be held accountable for student achievement. But she thinks portfolios full of student work provide a more accurate picture than tests. The question, she said, is who would review the assignments.  

The state education department’s ESA staff “is already overloaded with purchasing and vendor pay requests,” said Kelly, a former special education teacher in district, charter and Catholic schools. “What happens if a child does not show any growth … from year to year? Does the state pull the ESA funding for that child? Every answer raises more questions.”

Unlike Arizona, some states with ESAs or vouchers, like West Virginia and North Carolina, require programs to administer either state tests, or another standardized assessment, and submit the data to the state. 

In West Virginia, Michael Parsons, who runs Vandalia Community School in Charleston, said he’s interested in how students in his school compare with those in other microschools, as well as those in public schools. But he’s most concerned about his students making progress. 

“Most important as a teacher is accountability to my students and their growth, and as an administrator, accountability to my staff,” he said. “If I can keep those two things on par, then accountability to parents, taxpayers, regulators happens by default.”

At Burbrella, Burgess said she could have given the same end-of-grade assessments that students in North Carolina public schools take, allowing for a direct comparison, but she described them as “not kid-friendly” and decided against it. 

One reason parents seek out is because they feel public schools have a narrow focus on testing. 

Bryant remembers how stressed her oldest daughter Ebony would get before state tests in New York City, where they lived before relocating to Burlington.

“She freezes up and does terribly. Compared to her performance in school, it was like night and day,” she said. At Burbrella, assessments don’t create the same level of anxiety. “It’s more like, ‘We’re going to assess where you are, and then we’re gonna work from there.’ ”   

Disclosure: Walton Family Foundation, Stand Together Trust and the Beth and Ravenel Curry Foundation provide financial support to Vela and to The 74. 

A pioneer of sorts, the state became the first in the nation to offer education savings accounts, or ESAs, in 2011. A decade later, it was the first to make those programs — which offer parents roughly $7,500 to spend on their children’s educational expenses, including private school tuition — available to any family. 

But following a wave of copycat laws that have subsequently brought ESAs to in the last few years, Arizona voters might set another precedent this fall: becoming the first electorate to hand over governance of its system of private school choice to the state’s Democratic Party, led by Gov. Katie Hobbs. Doing so could pose a serious test to ESAs’ political sustainability, but also to their detractors’ powers to stymie them.

Republicans currently hold in both the Arizona Senate and House of Representatives, a narrow enough edge for Democrats to dream of capturing one or both chambers for the first time in decades. With Hobbs approaching her third year in office, the party would enjoy its only period of unified control of government in Arizona since 1966. 

Just two or three seats in each chamber are considered highly competitive, and public polling is rarely conducted in legislative campaigns. The Democratic presidential ticket of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz in a recent poll, and is expected to increase Democratic turnout on Election Day, but it is impossible to guess whether such a surge would move votes in lower-profile races.

What is in little doubt is local Democrats’ opposition to ESAs. In her first state budget framework, submitted last spring, to repeal the statewide expansion enacted the previous year, which extended eligibility for the program even to well-off families already enrolling their children in private schools. But the idea floundered at the statehouse.

Earlier this year, Hobbs a package of much more modest reforms aiming to bring “accountability” to the system by, among other things, requiring private schools receiving ESA money to fingerprint their teachers (as traditional public schools must). That mandate, along with one preventing ESA families from using their accounts over summer vacation, in the FY 2025 budget passed in June, but that they would do little to stem the growth of private school choice. 

Since eligibility was made universal, enrollment figures show that the number of Arizona students receiving ESAs from 12,000 to 75,000. 

Paul Bentz, a Republican pollster at Highground Public Affairs Consultants, said that legislation to make ESAs more transparent was “overwhelmingly popular.” 

“Democrats could pass more accountability measures tomorrow,” said Bentz. “All the polling demonstrates that voters support requiring schools that receive ESA support to have the same reporting requirements, the same teacher verification and school safety, as public schools.”

Still, he added, the party probably wouldn’t be able to shackle the sector — at least, not without claiming sizable Democratic majorities in November. More likely, Bentz predicted, the party would win one chamber, or perhaps enter into a 50-50 split that would necessitate some form of power-sharing.

“I don’t think they can outright eliminate [ESAs] at this point. The genie’s out of the bottle for that.”

Marisol Garcia, president of the Arizona Education Association and one of the most influential union leaders in the state, held out hope for a more thorough-going victory. With a big enough legislative advantage, she said, Democrats would gain the ability to “slowly dismantle” the ESA program. While adding that state leaders should proceed with care, given the with special needs, Garcia argued that a better-funded public school system could step into the breach. 

“It has to happen slowly to honor those students,” Garcia told The 74. “But at the same time, those students should be cared for by the public schools to make sure they’re getting their needs met.” 

Financial debate

For Garcia and many other educators, the principal downside to the program is financial.

According to estimates from the Arizona Department of Education, its total cost over the last fiscal year. That figure was equivalent to roughly half of the state’s deficit, in the recently passed budget through a mix of spending cuts. 

Accounts differ sharply over the total fiscal impact of private school choice, with opponents of ESA recipients as a major driver of debt; meanwhile, that the lower cost of the accounts relative to the annual per-pupil spending on public school students (about $7,500 vs. $10,000) will actually yield savings over time.  

Matthew Ladner, a veteran researcher at the Arizona Charter Schools Association and a defender of ESAs, characterized any linkage between the program’s growth and the state’s challenging budgetary projections “completely and utterly false.” 

“The Arizona ESA program’s budget is within the budget of the Arizona Department of Education, and last fiscal year, that department put out a press release ,” Ladner said. He added that it would be “impossible” for the department, run by Republican State Superintendent Tom Horne, “to be running a surplus and to have simultaneously caused a budget deficit.”

Yet many in the local education policy community still lament the state of K-12 finances, which could prove a headache over the next few years in either divided or unified government. Arizona has consistently ranked near the bottom of the United States for school spending, placing at over the last academic year. 

That reality resulted partially from that were enacted during the Great Recession and never fully reversed. Prolonged dissatisfaction with stagnant teacher pay led to the 2018 #RedforEd school walkouts, which helped awaken a major progressive movement in what had been a reliably red state. 

Democrats have benefitted from that organizing energy, winning the state narrowly in the 2020 presidential election and seizing a string of statewide races that culminated with Hobbs’s election in 2022. But without repeating their successes in the legislature, they haven’t been able to slow the growth of school choice or transform education funding. Even a voter-supported ballot measure that would have raised taxes to generate more revenue in state court. 

Indeed, some dollars that have previously been considered safe may soon be in jeopardy. Proposition 123, an initiative passed in 2016 to school districts each year from the state’s land trust, will sunset next year unless it is reauthorized by voters. While both parties agree that the proposition should be renewed, Hobbs’s own bid to increase the outlay with a GOP counterproposal to direct funds solely to teacher salaries. The deadline to place it before the voters expired, though lawmakers can still call a special election before the money disappears.

Rich Nickel is the president of , a nonprofit group advocating for educational improvement in the state. He also believes that ESAs are likely to stay in place, though he believes more data should be collected to study the effectiveness of schools receiving money through them.

More pressing, Nickel continued, was the need for further resources in school districts struggling to emerge from years of COVID-disrupted learning. But it’s unclear whether that realization has broken through to the state’s leadership. In of the public’s views on education policy, the organization discovered “a gap between what voters tell us they want and what they’re getting” out of their elected officials, he said.

“There’s wide agreement among both parties, all races and ethnicities, that our leaders should be doing more to increase our achievement and attainment rates. But we’re not seeing any investments in that in this current budget, and there’s not a lot of optimism that we’re going to see that in the next couple of years.

Indigenous students enrolled in schools run by the Bureau of Indian Education (BIE) will have access to more comprehensive, culturally relevant agricultural training and education as part of a new partnership the BIE established with the Native American Agriculture Fund (NAAF).

“This partnership furthers BIE’s commitment to provide a high-quality, culturally relevant education while empowering Native communities and paving the way for a brighter future in Indigenous agriculture,” Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Bryan Newland said

NAAF is a private, charitable trust created by the settlement of the class-action lawsuit Keepseagle v. Vilsack, NAAF provides grants to eligible organizations for business assistance, agricultural education, technical support, and advocacy services that support Indigenous farmers and ranchers.

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“Agricultural education is a fundamental focus for NAAF, offering a pathway for students, producers, and Native communities to engage in tribal agriculture, sustain food systems, bolster credit and lending opportunities, and support tribal economies,” Native American Agriculture Fund CEO Toni Stanger-McLaughlin said in a press release.

As part of this partnership, the educational resources will explore Native agricultural history as well as modern practices, according to the BIE. The lessons will focus on topics such as origins, leadership, and plant science within Indigenous communities.

“Increasing agricultural education through business and lending experiences, vocational education programs, youth initiatives and outdoor agricultural exposure helps to create increased interest and new opportunities for Native students to develop career pathways in agriculture and related fields,” Newland said.

As part of the partnership, students can participate in project-based learning, according to the BIE. Students will engage with traditional agriculture principles and practices, fostering an understanding of Indigenous agricultural systems.

“This collaborative lifelong agriculture education effort addresses a crucial gap in agricultural education,” Stanger-McLaughlin said. “It aims to empower Native students with education to preserve generational knowledge and sustain holistic agricultural ecosystems.”

The BIE and NAAF entered into a partnership in June and will launch educational resources at BIE-operated schools in Wingate, New Mexico, near the Navajo Nation and Zuni Pueblo.

NAAF’s sister organization, the Tribal Agriculture Fellowship program, will be leading the collaborative efforts with schools, according to the BIE, and they will be developing and tailoring resources to meet the needs of each school utilizing the educational resource.

“We are thrilled to embark on this journey with BIE schools,” Nicole De Von Jackson, director of the Tribal Agriculture Fellowship program, said in a press release.

“This partnership represents an incredible opportunity to create customized resources that truly reflect each community’s unique needs and strengths,” De Von Jackson added. “We are excited to see how this initiative will inspire and empower Native students to become the next generation of leaders in agriculture.”

The partnership will also support the , according to the BIE, which provides culturally based healthy nutrition education and boosts training for healthy and culturally appropriate food preparation.

“From our Food Hubs program to community growing efforts and new degree programs, BIE has increased agricultural education opportunities from early childhood to post-secondary,” Bureau of Indian Education Director Tony L. Dearman said in a press release.

were launched in 2022 by the BIE and the Department of Interior. Since its inception, it has been established in four BIE-operated schools.

The hubs use Indigenous knowledge to develop holistic approaches to support Native Food Sovereignty movements, according to the BIE, which incorporates culture, social determinants of health, food, nutrition, land management, and regenerative agriculture.

“This partnership will build upon those efforts and support Indigenous agriculture, furthering our commitment to including Indigenous knowledge in the BIE curriculum and providing career pathways in agriculture,” Dearman stated.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arizona Mirror maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jim Small for questions: info@azmirror.com. Follow Arizona Mirror on and .

Kim, a 12th grade student at West Lafayette High School, discovered his dog, Joy, had heartworm disease and ordered medicine through an online pharmacy.

But the medicine Kim ordered would not only be ineffective but also aggravate Joy’s illness even more.

Motivated by his dog’s health scare, Kim designed a way for people to verify the authenticity of pharmaceutical products — by printing an edible QR code directly on the medicine.

Kim was one of in middle and high school who presented their inventions and research projects focused on solving key global issues at the in Washington, DC.  

“There have been countless tragedies and deaths caused by either substandard, falsified or diverted pharmaceutical products,” Kim told The 74. “So I’m glad to have had this opportunity to raise more awareness of counterfeit medicine.”

Hosted by and the , student innovators were selected from an array of nationwide competitions, including the where more than 2,500 students submitted projects across six categories: Environmental Stewardship, Future Foods, Health & Medicine, Powering the Planet, Tech for Good and Space Innovation.

Here are five student innovators featured at the National STEM Festival:

Joshua Kim, 18

West Lafayette High School · West Lafayette, Indiana

Among more than 50,000 online pharmacies worldwide, Kim found only 3 percent operate and distribute medicine legally — contributing to the annual deaths of over one million people.

Kim said the measures most pharmacies use to reduce counterfeit concerns are “limited by low security,” such as only tracking medicine through its exterior packaging.

“It’s easy for medicine to be removed from their packaging…and dose level securities are either limited by the need for expensive technology or trained personnel,” Kim said.

“So this means patients at home do not have access to ways of verifying their medicine.”

Kim believes his edible QR code will allow people to ensure they are receiving genuine and legitimate medicine.

Ashley Valencia, 17

Harvest Preparatory Academy · Yuma, Arizona

Self-conscious about her crooked teeth, Arizona high schooler Ashley Valencia saw how expensive dental care can be growing up in a low-income family. But it wasn’t just her family that couldn’t afford dental care — many of her neighbors also struggled to afford it. 

Valencia, a 12th grade student at Harvest Preparatory Academy, channeled her insecurity to help students in developing countries who have even less access to proper oral hygiene products — by creating an affordable toothpaste and mouthwash using their native plants.

“I always knew I wanted to do something in medicine so when I thought about different [research] topics close to me, I started to think about my past experiences,” Valencia told The 74.

“That’s why I created my own oral treatments that were easily accessible and affordable to people who might not have access to the things I had,” she added.

Valencia said she shared her research with public schools in the Philippines to address their students’ dental concerns.

At the festival, Valencia said she plans to travel to developing countries across South and Southeast Asia to share her oral hygiene products.

“Because I come from a school that doesn’t have a lot of resources…being able to attend the festival and present my research to all of the important people that were there was really exciting,” Valencia said.

Clarisse Telles Alvares Coelho, 18

New Mexico Military Institute · Roswell, New Mexico

From lion’s mane to king oyster, New Mexico high schooler and longtime vegetarian Clarisse Telles Alvares Coelho loves eating all types of mushrooms.

Coelho, a 12th grade student at the New Mexico Military Institute, said the misconceptions of mushrooms inspired her research project on their health benefits — particularly the abundance of a soluble fiber called beta-glucan.

“I knew many people didn’t like mushrooms…but what if I was able to make them change their minds,” Coelho told The 74. “With beta-glucan acting in your immune system, our metabolism works faster.”

Coelho said she was “very surprised” to have the opportunity to present her project at the festival.

“It was such a great feeling because there was so much hard work and late nights put into researching this project…[so] it was so amazing to be recognized,” Coelho said.

Alicia Wright, 17

Rockdale Magnet School for Science and Technology · Conyers, Georgia

Concerned by our global carbon footprint, Georgia high schooler Alicia Wright discovered the majority of CO2 emissions come from the cement used in construction.

Wright, an 11th grade student at Rockdale Magnet School for Science and Technology, found a way to replace cement with mycelium — a type of fungi that can be transformed into a biodegradable construction material.

“I was inspired by the complexity of mycelium and how fungus works,” Wright told The 74. “This will better the environment so that future generations can enjoy as we have.”

At the festival, Wright said the diversity of students presenting their projects with her felt “empowering.”

“It was very encouraging to see people with my skin color and gender presenting with me,” Wright said.

Haasini Mendu, 16

William Mason High School · Mason, Ohio

Ohio high schooler Haasini Mendu came up with a way to improve medication dosage for Parkinson’s disease — a disorder that causes involuntary body movement, often called tremors.

Mendu, an 11th grade student at William Mason High School, designed a wearable device that quantifies the number of tremors someone has and automatically sends the information to an app she created called “TremorSense.”

She said the information is processed through an “AI-based machine learning” filter to distinguish between tremor and non-tremor movements.

Mendu said the opportunity to meet other students and build connections was her favorite part of the festival.

“It was very easy to make some friends and also learn about their very cool inventions and ideas,” Mendu told The 74.

“Having this recognition…feels motivating to continue working on my skills [because] there were so many people interested in what I’m trying to do with my research.”

But new federal data has given researchers some cause for optimism, suggesting efforts to make teaching more financially viable with strategies such as paying student teachers have helped to move the needle. 

From 2018 through 2022, enrollment in teacher preparation programs grew 12% nationally, or by about 46,231 more candidates, according to a from Pennsylvania State’s Center for Evaluation and Education Policy Analysis.

Nine states lead the pack with notably higher bumps in teacher prep programs in recent years: Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Ohio, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Rhode Island, South Carolina and, with the highest average growth, Maryland. 

The modest upswing, seen both in enrollment and completion rates, during some of the most strained years in American education, has surprised experts.

“It was encouraging to see … at the height of the pandemic, it certainly was not what we were expecting,” said Jacqueline King, research and policy consultant with the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education. 

Only 11 states saw continued enrollment declines in the prep programs during the last three years, among them Montana and Minnesota. 

“I think that all the work that we’ve been doing around grow your own, apprenticeships and residencies… to open up more affordable pathways into teaching are starting to bear some fruit, which is amazing and fantastic,” King added.

Contributing factors also include federal pandemic relief funds and new laws in states such as and that pay student teachers. In Maryland, for instance, some during their year long teaching residency. 

“It’s real,” said King. “It’s enough money that you’re not thinking, how am I gonna do student teaching and have a part time job?” 

Still, researchers caution, the growth is not nearly at the pace required to match hiring demand. Teacher shortages are , and in key areas like special education and math. 

Enrollment in teacher preparation programs in just one decade — about fewer teachers are prepared annually. Compounding social, political and economic strains fueled the decline, including a major recession and education reform efforts that negatively impacted public perception of teaching and America’s schools. 

By 2021, only five areas had bucked the overall trend, with more enrollees than a decade prior: Arizona, Mississippi, Texas, Washington and Washington, D.C. Texas’s growth can be attributed to rapid expansion of a particular alternative program, Teachers of Tomorrow, . 

“Over the last seven years, we’re kind of treading water in terms of the number of teachers,” said Ed Fuller, education professor at Pennsylvania State University and author of the most recent analysis. “We don’t need to be where we were in 2010 because we don’t have as many students, but we need to be a lot closer to that than we are now.”

About in K-12 public schools nationwide in 2022 than before the pandemic. The steepest drops are in the younger grades, partially a result of declining birth rates.

On the whole, districts did not pump the brakes on hiring teachers because of the alarming 2% drop in student enrollment. Flush with expiring pandemic relief funds, schools added 15,000 teaching positions last school year. 

Even as full-time school staffing reached an all time high, a quarter of districts had fewer teachers per student than they did in 2016. 

The demand for teachers is far from met, with about 55,000 teaching jobs open nationwide. Since 2008, the decline of teachers in training has impacted schools in every corner of the country. 

Even places like Pennsylvania, whose supply of teachers historically was so abundant that many newly-credentialed teachers were sent out of state, are of a shrinking teacher workforce. Its surplus has gradually disappeared over six years. 

“People weren’t paying attention,” said Fuller, who recommended that public figures talk up the professions’ value and that the legislature take on teacher scholarships to tailor recruitment for local needs. Scholarships could be earmarked for teachers of color, math educators, or those serving high-poverty schools, for example. 

But if districts and states, tasked with building diverse, robust teaching pools, are focused solely on producing new candidates, King cautioned efforts would be in vain, akin to using a hose to fill a leaky bucket with water. 

By the end of the 2021-22 school year, 10% of teachers left the profession nationally, 4% more than before the pandemic, according to . Experts point to job dissatisfaction, political polarization and exhaustion. 

In Florida, one of the nine states that saw a higher enrollment bump than most, more than 5,000 teaching positions are vacant, the . The job has gotten harder, too — remaining educators teach more students per classroom than they did before the pandemic. While the enrollment data suggest a move in the right direction, it will take years for today’s teachers in training to enter its workforce.

“We’ve really got to think more about the job of a teacher and how we make it more sustainable — financially, from the perspective of work-life balance, and giving people opportunities for growth,” King said. “We need to look at teaching and why it’s such a difficult job to sell.”

A Republican state senator wants to give students at Arizona’s public universities a new way to challenge grades that they believe were handed down due to a professor’s political bias.

Sen. Anthony Kern, of Glendale, who has previously as “not a university guy,” has taken aim this year at the Arizona Board of Regents and the three public universities that they govern for what he says is discrimination against conservative students and speakers.

The Board of Regents governs University of Arizona, Arizona State University and Northern Arizona University.

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�������’s would create a “grade challenge department” within the Board of Regents at all three universities, which would “hear challenges from public university students regarding grades received in any class or on any assignment if a student alleges a grade was awarded because of political bias.”

The departments would be staffed by volunteers chosen by the Board of Regents.

If a challenge department concluded that political bias influenced a student’s grade, it could require the professor who awarded it to regrade the assignment or reevaluate the student’s grade for the class in alignment with the department’s findings.

If a student believed that the department wrongly dismissed their grade challenge, the student could appeal the decision to ABOR, though the legislation doesn’t require that the regents actually consider any appeals.

“A lot of students that I met with at ASU, they do not feel that they can debate issues according to their politics or according to what they believe, because they’re afraid their grades are going to be lowered, and this is trying to help those,” Kern said before voting in favor of the bill on Feb. 22.

The bill passed through the Senate that day by a vote of 16-12, with only Republicans voting in favor.

Kern acknowledged that ABOR already has its own process for students to challenge their grades, but said he criticized it as inadequate. He added that he doesn’t believe that the Board of Regents is necessary at all.

He said he believes the bill would make students “more comfortable speaking on issues that they should be able to speak on.”

During a House Education Committee meeting on Tuesday, Thomas Adkins, a lobbyist for the Board of Regents, told lawmakers that the board opposed the measure for several reasons.

Echoing Kern, Adkins pointed out that the universities already have and academic grievance processes that allow students to contest their grades. The legislation would circumvent and undermine that process, he said.

Currently, the process starts with an informal conversation between the student and instructor, and can escalate to the dean and progress to a review by an academic committee.

Secondly, the bill would create what Adkins said is an unfunded burden on the regents to create and oversee the new departments at each campus, requiring them to open satellite offices there. He said that ABOR only has 40 employees and that taking on oversight of these departments would put a strain on them.

Last summer, Kern co-chaired a legislative committee at Arizona’s public universities. The committee was formed shortly after ASU administrator Ann Atkinson from the university for bringing controversial far-right speakers to the campus for an event.

The university denied Atkinson’s claims, saying that she was let go because the organization that sponsored her position pulled its funding. In an investigation that was ordered by Arizona lawmakers, ASU determined that claims of censorship of conservative ideas and the chilling of free speech .

The event for which Atkinson claimed she was fired wasn’t canceled, and far-right speakers like Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, and Dennis Prager, a conservative radio talk show host and writer, both spoke at the event.

Referencing students who spoke to the committee, Tucson Republican Rep. Rachel Jones told Adkins that conservative students on campus were “feeling silenced.”

“Some of these students are feeling the need to lie about their political beliefs so that they get good grades,” she said.

Adkins said it wasn’t a stretch to say the Board of Regents shares some of her concerns, but that its members believe that disagreements over grades can be resolved by making some changes to the existing processes instead of completely replacing them.

The bill passed out of the House Education Committee by a vote of 4-3, along party lines. Next, it will head to the full House of Representatives for consideration.

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That fact that three former education agency employees were among those indicted shows that the program lacks adequate fraud prevention measures, said Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes.

“It was very easy for these individuals to do this,” Mayes said during a press conference. They’re accused of faking birth certificates and special education evaluations to bilk over $600,000 from the program. “I think we all have to be asking the question: ‘Is it being replicated?’ ” 

But ESA advocates saw little in the news that would lead them to push for more guardrails on Arizona’s system or halt the movement for in other states. Some dismissed it as an “inside job” that reflects more on government corruption than the thousands of families looking for better educational options for their children. To this group, the fact that Arizona investigators uncovered the alleged plot shows that existing safeguards worked.

“I don’t think there’s any program that can regulate out the possibility of bad actors,” said Lisa Snell, senior fellow at Stand Together Trust, a foundation funding school choice initiatives, and one of the leading voices nationally on ESAs. “In any sector, there are people that are taking advantage of taxpayer money.” 

She pointed to the national and as two government programs that have proven vulnerable to corruption. And she noted an investigation last year that found Los Angeles teachers union members received .

“Government employees committing fraud is a tale as old as time, and by no means unique to education,” said Mike McShane, director of national research at EdChoice, an advocacy organization.

‘This kind of abuse’

Unlike their counterparts in several states, Arizona private schools accepting ESA students don’t have to be accredited and their staff members don’t have to pass criminal background checks. There are also no testing requirements for students, and while homeschooling parents are required to use funds to teach core subjects, many pull curriculum materials from the internet. 

Some argue that, with a little over 30 employees, the program lacks the staff to accommodate its rapid growth to nearly 76,000 students since 2022. 

“What I’m most concerned about is how ripe the program clearly is for this kind of abuse,” Mayes said in detailing the .

Suspects Dolores Lashay Sweet, Dorrian Lamarr Jones and Jennifer Lopez were ESA program specialists at the department who allegedly admitted real and fictitious students — some with identical birthdays — to the program and then approved expenses on their behalf. Jadakah Celeste Johnson, and Raymond Lamont Johnson, Jr., also indicted, are Sweet’s adult children. 

In an odd coincidence, just hours after the indictments, educators met in Washington, D.C. at the conservative American Enterprise Institute whether Democrats should get behind the ESA movement. Arizona’s program came up frequently.

“No academic accountability. No financial transparency. No student safety measures,” said Bethany Little, managing principal at Education Counsel, a consulting firm. 

“I agree with you on the flaws of Arizona’s law,” responded Ravi Gupta, a former Obama staffer and charter school leader who said he supports the idea of ESAs, but sometimes questions their implementation. 

In several other states that have embraced ESAs, administrators say they’ve put guardrails in place to prevent fraud and corruption. 

In Utah, where applications for the state’s new ESA program opened last week, advanced software is designed to spot fake documents, said Jackie Guglielmo, vice president of ESA programs at the Alliance for Choice in Education, which runs the program. If the system flags something irregular, a member of the customer support team will manually review it and might ask for additional documentation, she said.

New Hampshire officials employ to differentiate people processing applications from those who approve vendors. A third group approves expenses. A bill to passed the state House last month.

Democratic Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs has proposed for the program by having an outside auditor track how private schools are using ESA money. 

But Snell, with Stand Together Trust, said she doubts there are any reforms that would satisfy most Democrats. She was among the school choice supporters gathered at a over the weekend to highlight the growth of microschools, homeschool co-ops and other unconventional programs. 

Not all of the programs represented accept ESA funds, but many attendees view their success as critical to the future of their movement. John Thompson, a researcher from Kennesaw State University, which organized the event, said the notion that ESAs are a fad is “very crazy and wrong.”

“����’s not going backward,” he said.

Kaity Broadbent of Prenda Learning, a microschool network, said alternative models are responding to parents who feel their children weren’t well served in a typical classroom.

“This generation of parents cares about mental health,” she said. “They don’t just need their kids to get into Harvard. There’s a new vibe.”

While sessions focused on policy and accountability, no one mentioned the indictments.

‘Bigger than any superintendent’

Inside Arizona, however, the news upset advocates who say thousands of children are benefiting from the flexibility ESAs offer.

“This type of thing is just devastating to those of us who really depend on the program,” said Kathy Visser, who administers a Facebook page for ESA families and vendors. “It angers us because accountability matters more to us than anyone else.”

Hobbs has also proposed background checks for staff members at private schools accepting ESA funds and for students to attend public school for a minimum of 100 days before they qualify for the program. But have opposed the measures, likening them to “death by a thousand cuts.”

This was the second batch of indictments involving the program since last summer, when a grand jury in Maricopa County accused of fraud and theft of over $87,000 from the program. 

They allegedly created receipts and claimed reimbursements for “bogus” educational services, according to a prosecution report. When investigators examined one woman’s account linked to the ESA program, they found charges at retail stores, restaurants and companies like Uber and Airbnb. The case is ongoing.

Also last summer, the former head administrator of the ESA program, Christine Accurso, and another high-ranking official, Linda Rizzo, following a “cybersecurity incident” in which student names and their disabilities to a parent through ClassWallet, the program’s online financial platform. 

Superintendent Tom Horne, a Republican and strong advocate for ESAs, hired Accurso when he defeated Democratic incumbent Kathy Hoffman in 2022. After Accurso’s resignation, Horne put John Ward, who has years of auditing experience, in charge of the program. 

While a tip from a credit union alerted officials to large amounts being withdrawn from Sweet’s account, Horne, , said it was his department that raised concerns about Jones and Lopez and that he is working to “root out potential fraud and abuse.” 

But in an email to The 74, Hoffman said the state legislature should reform the program and fund more fraud prevention efforts.

“Ultimately, the problems with this program are bigger than any superintendent,” she said. “The ESA program does not have — and has never had — enough oversight to ensure tax dollars are being spent appropriately.”

Disclosure: Stand Together Trust provides financial support to The 74.