Do ESAs pose a threat to public education?
Sorting through the rhetoric about school vouchers
ESAs are difficult to talk about in the public square because even the name is controversial.
ESA stands for education savings account. That’s the general term, but states typically invent a fancy name, like the Arkansas Children’s Educational Freedom Account Program. In Arizona, our education savings accounts are called Empowerment Scholarship Accounts.
The name is ESA, but every time you write about ESAs you need to include an explainer about the term because it’s not very intuitive. So most media outlets, even sympathetic center-right outlets like The Dispatch, will write about “school vouchers.”
The term “voucher” is more intuitive for what the accounts do … which is to purchase educational stuff outside the public school system.
From the Arizona Department of Education website:
An ESA consists of 90% of the state funding that would have otherwise been allocated to the school district or charter school for the qualified student (does not include federal or local funding). By accepting an ESA, the student's parent or guardian is signing a contract agreeing to provide an education that includes at least the following subjects: reading, grammar, mathematics, social studies and science. ESA funding can be used to pay private school tuition, for curriculum, home education, tutoring and more.
ESA proponents hate the term “voucher” and they are defensive about it, probably because the term is more easily attacked by voucher opponents.
Technically, ESAs are not vouchers, because the money goes directly to parents to control and the money can be spent on a variety of educational stuff. A true 100% certified voucher would be a private school tuition coupon. The account mechanism, with parents controlling the expenditures, also effectively dodges the state constitutional prohibition of public money being appropriated for religious instruction.
We’re left with a situation where people argue about nomenclature before they start to talk about the policy itself. And there’s plenty to argue about when it comes to the policy itself.
Performance metrics for thee, but not for me
ESAs started out in Arizona as a limited program with strict eligibility requirements. In 2022, state lawmakers expanded the program to make it universal. Right now any student in Arizona can get $7,000 from public coffers to opt out of public schools.
Doug Ducey, who signed the universal ESA law in his eighth and final year as governor, recently appeared on the Politics Unplugged podcast and defended the program. He repeated a common mantra: “I don’t want to see any kid trapped in a failing public school.”
I never liked this argument because it didn’t really apply to Arizona. We already had a robust school choice environment, with open district enrollment and an abundance of charter schools.
Additionally, the metric used to disparage the “failing” public schools won’t be required for those who leave. ESA students won’t be taking state tests. Private schools won’t receive a state letter grade.
For ESA proponents, parental satisfaction is the ultimate barometer of success.
The Dispatch recently wrote about a voucher program touted by (but later vetoed by) Democratic governor Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania. In the story, school choice activist Corey DeAngelis is quoted saying,
There’s a lot of reasons why parents are choosing private schools for their kids, and not all those things can be captured by a standardized test. So when you’re seeing these large positive effects on things like safety and satisfaction, I think those are better metrics of success, particularly when parents are choosing based on a whole host of different factors that go into what they perceive as school quality.
Well, public school choice was already baked into Arizona’s system. Nobody was trapped.
And now, with universal ESAs, students have the additional option of private school enrollment.
Every family is making a choice. Every school is using taxpayer money.
Do state tests matter or not?
As policymakers meditate on this question, Arizona public school students will spend countless hours of class time next year practicing for and taking state tests. Public school teachers and administrators will spend boatloads of valuable time preparing for and administering state tests.
Budget math
Dennis Welch, host of the Politics Unplugged podcast, asked Ducey about ESAs and the state budget.
Question: Maybe if a public school student switches to an ESA it will save the state money, because an ESA is less than the cost per pupil of public school enrollment … but what about the tens of thousands of private school students now getting ESAs who never attended public schools before? These are new and additional costs to the state.
Answer: It’s their money, isn’t it?
Meaning that taxpayers who send their kids to private schools are getting “their share” of public dollars by using ESAs.
This is tricky because the logic doesn’t apply to many other public services. If I don’t like the options at my public library, the government won’t give me an Amazon gift card. I can’t get a public safety voucher to pay for private security.
Maybe public education is different. The state allocates money to schools per pupil. If it works, why not divvy up funds individually to optimize educational versatility?
The opposition will claim that, by diverting funds away from public schools into privatization, we are doing active harm to the public schools, making them a worse product compared to private options. This will bankrupt the state or destroy public education, whichever happens first.
Katie Hobbs, in an interview with Fox News shortly after her inauguration as governor, said,
Regardless of your philosophy on whether taxpayer dollars should go to public or private schools, this is going to bankrupt our state, and many independent analyses have shown that. We're not calling for a repeal of the entire program. We're just calling for a repeal of the universal expansion.
The bankruptcy claim is disputed. Proponents argue that universal ESAs will actually save the state money.
Theoretically it’s true that any extra dollar spent on private school vouchers could alternatively be spent on public schools. I agree that public schools can be improved with more money, even though I scratch my head when the teachers’ union reflexively opposes a plan for higher teacher salaries.
On paper, state funding for public schools increased this year in concert with ESA expansion.
The final numbers will depend on how many students leave public schools for an ESA. Right now there are about 60,000 students with an ESA in Arizona compared to just over 1,000,000 students enrolled in public schools.
Even though it will add hundreds of millions of dollars per year to the state budget assuming current trend lines, there’s no reason why, on paper, universal ESAs can’t coexist with public charter and district schools.
State budgets are always a matter of prioritization within the constraints of tax revenues. Universal ESAs will be another piece of the puzzle so long as they exist.
Mind the affordability gap
Pennsylvania’s vetoed voucher program would have been available only for families with incomes less than 250% of the federal poverty line.
That’s not what Arizona’s program does.
In Arizona, both rich and poor families can get ESAs.
Maybe that makes sense. It would add a layer of administrative complexity to include an income cap. Family income can fluctuate year-to-year. Private school tuition can be a serious financial burden even for an upper-middle class family. If we can divvy up a fair share, why not?
However, universal ESAs will probably cause tuition inflation, watering down the value of the ESA while private schools collect more overall per student. Indeed, tuition increases are already happening in other ESA-providing states.
Some private schools charge less than the ESA amount, others charge more.
Gaps between the ESA amount and the full cost of private school tuition will probably increase due to the government subsidy, undercutting the argument that ESAs are a great equalizer.
Opponents will cite affordability gaps as evidence that the program doesn’t serve the needs of low-income students in the first place. Proponents will argue that maybe we should actually increase the amount of the ESA.
This is besides the question of what kind of private options will be available and where they will sprout up. Homeschooling communities and microschool networks will also operate thanks to ESAs.
It’s impossible to know exactly what will happen in our new education ecosystem. The states are sometimes called laboratories of democracy. We will see how this experiment in Arizona plays out.
Final thoughts
Public education is the mechanism in which our society aims to form a literate, skilled, and knowledgeable citizenry. It is the mechanism in which a free and pluralistic nation teaches the ideas that hold us all together.
District schools are governed democratically by localities. Charter schools are privately operated, but they still comply with a host of state regulations to ensure public accessibility and accountability.
Private schools are not public schools. But if a private school is pocketing $7,000 in taxpayer money per student, maybe they should at least take the same state tests as public schools do. If that is too unseemly, maybe we should pare down the burdens of state testing.
There are additional points of controversy besides those discussed in this post. Both public school advocates and ESA proponents will accuse the other system of reckless spending. Both will accuse the other system of teaching weird stuff.
Maybe a fragmented approach is the best adaptation for these divided times. The question is whether we can adapt and still retain the fundamental purpose of public education.
Now injected into the education ecosystem, ESAs are likely here to stay. But it’s hard to imagine there won’t be reforms made down the road.
Personally, I would like to see a shared civic mission involved in all public spending on K-12 education. Not the citizenship test, but a civics curriculum of some sort. Something about the idea of America to attach to public education dollars.
Something we can all agree on, if there is anything left to agree on.
My objection, as a childless tax payer, is that private schools are not accountable to people like me.
Public schools have some accountability to people without children. We benefit from a good education system just like people with children, and our votes in the public system count for just as much as someone with a child. We can attend board meetings, vote for members of the board, and prioritize educational reforms when selecting candidates for other offices.
Private schools, as I understand, are broadly accountable under ESA rules and to the parents they serve directly. They are not very accountable to the broader public.
Parents with children in public schools face the same issue: They get to vote on one system while parents with children in private schools get to vote in two systems.
We can disagree about the level of public school accountability, but private schools are much less accountable to the general public than public schools are. Ducey was partially correct when he said "It's the parents' money" because it's the non-parents' money as well. We aren't well-served by shuffling money from a public system with some accountability measures to a system that is not accountable to us.
Ok, I have a grandson who has learning disabilities and that money goes with him to his private school. He is 16 and struggled at very good district schools. Not their fault as school districts in this state have been starved for decades. Vouchers (I understand the semantics) are just another cut in the system which will continue to dwindle by many cuts. It’s all a sham. Call it choice, I call it how to destroy an institution that has rules and regulations that strangle administration, (physical plant) facilities and teachers. Decades ago, Republicans decided to rebel against teachers as most voted Democratic. The camels nose under the tent, then charter schools, tedious audits, now vouchers. Why not give district students $7000 to spend on tutors, supplies, cultural and sports activities and transportation need? Why can’t district student show their preference?