Arizona public schools remain ranked last in the U.S. as voucher spending hits $1 billion

Arizona’s public education system has
maintained its dead-last ranking in a survey of all 50 states for the
second year in a row. 

The rankings,
released last week by Consumer Affairs, a product information and
research company, scored states by evaluating graduation rates,
standardized test scores, funding levels, class size, quality of higher
education and safety. 

Arizona scored among the worst on all
of those metrics except for higher education. The Grand Canyon State
was ranked dead last for public school funding, 49th for student
performance and 47th for school safety. The state’s colleges and
universities fared comparatively better, ranking 35th in the nation. 

Contributing to Arizona’s poor
rankings were its crowded classrooms, with an average student to teacher
ratio of 23-to-1, along with its worst-in-the-nation 78% high school
graduation rate.

Consumer Affairs noted the state’s “strong culture around school choice” in its report, highlighting its school voucher program that was expanded in 2022 to be available to all K-12 students in the state. 

The report highlighted the cost of
the program, which is expected to reach $1 billion this school year with
more than 92,000 students enrolled.

The Empowerment Scholarship Account
voucher program, known commonly as ESAs, was created in 2012 to provide
vouchers for students with disabilities. It
was expanded incrementally after that to include students in foster
care and those attending failing public schools until Republicans in the
state legislature, along with Gov. Doug Ducey expanded it to apply to
all one million K-12 students. 

The program gives the parents of
participating students a debit card that can be used to pay for various
educational costs, or reimburses the parents for those costs. Within a
year after the universal expansion, it went from serving around 12,000
students to nearly 70,000. 

ESA money can be used to pay for
private or parochial school tuition, homeschooling supplies — and even
savings for college tuition.

While Democrats and public schools advocate for strict guardrails on the ESA program to avoid fraud and improper purchases, Arizona has the lowest public school per-pupil spending in the country, and has been at the bottom for years. 

Although the state has increased
school funding numerous times over the past decade, it still lags well
behind other states. According to the Arizona Department of Education,
the state spent $11,703 per student in the 2023 fiscal year and $12,371
in 2024.  

Most of the states that spend the
least per-pupil on education are in the south and southwest, while those
that spend the most are in the northeast. 

New York is the top per-pupil spender
at more than $34,000 per student, and has one of the lowest
student-to-teacher ratios, at 12:1 and provides some of the best pay in
the country. It ranked 18th in the nation for K-12 performance in the
Consumer Affairs report. 

Superintendent of Public Instruction
Tom Horne told the Arizona Mirror in a written statement that the ESA
program doesn’t negatively impact public schools, because districts
spend more per student than parents receive in vouchers, adding that
“funding follows the student.” 

But that isn’t true
in almost every case, due to how the state funds public education. The
only voucher students who save the state money are those who come from
impoverished school districts, a tiny minority of voucher recipients. 

In fact, the majority of students who use ESAs never attended a public school
at all, so the costs of their private or home schooling are also
entirely new to the state. How much a student gets for a voucher can vary greatly, with an average of $7,000 to $8,000 but climbing to more than $40,000 for some students with disabilities. 

“The
ESA program is no threat to public schools,” Horne wrote “There are
nearly 1.2 million students in public schools and just over 90,000 ESA
students, which is a very small percentage.” 

Geneva Fuentes, communications
director for the Arizona Education Association, the largest teacher
union in the state, told the Mirror that she’s not sure how Horne could
in good faith make such an argument. 

“There is a decision that’s been made
to direct $1 billion in Arizona state taxpayer money, not to the public
schools that serve the vast majority of Arizona students, but to
programs that end up being more of a black box than anything else,” she
said. “We have very little data on how well students are performing in
the schools that voucher dollars go to.”

Private schools that take ESA
payments don’t have the same academic reporting, public meeting and
background check requirements as public schools. And those private
schools, many of which are religious, can discriminate against students
and pick-and-choose who they allow to enroll.

“There are a lot of pitfalls with the
program that Arizona lawmakers don’t seem interested in addressing,”
Fuentes said. “And at the same time, our public schools are pinching
pennies and struggling to fulfill their mission to serve every child
with funding that isn’t just inadequate, it’s unconstitutionally
inadequate.” 

Fuentes was referring to a Maricopa County Superior Court ruling last month that found Arizona had chronically and unconstitutionally underfunded
both school maintenance and short-term capital needs at public schools
to the tune of billions of dollars over the past 20-plus years.

She challenged any lawmaker who might
argue that more money doesn’t always equal better outcomes to tell that
to principals at the schools highlighted in that lawsuit, where
students have to maneuver trash cans to catch water from leaking roofs
and use bathrooms full of black mold. 

In response to the Consumer Affairs
report, Horne pointed to a list of 15 initiatives he’s started since
taking office in 2023, including raising test scores at schools in the
bottom 5% with the help of “improvement teams” and expanding leadership
training for principals. 

Horne said that districts set their own absenteeism policies, but he’s encouraged them to adopt ones that are more stringent. 

“I have called for schools to adopt
measures that call for nine unexcused absences resulting in a student
failing a course and five tardies counting as an absence,” Horne said.
“The idea that a third of our students are missing 18 days of school or
more is a real catastrophe and an emergency for our state. We need
radical efforts to solve this problem.”

Horne also highlighted an artificial intelligence tutoring program that he implemented. 

“It gives (teachers) the equivalent
of two assistants to do the grunt work so they can concentrate on
creative teaching,” he said. 

Fuentes argued that more funding is
necessary to bring in the best teachers, and to give them the ability to
do their best work. 

“More money gives you the ability to
hire more teachers to lower class sizes,” she said, “and when you lower
class sizes, students get more individualized attention, and it’s easier
for them to make progress. You’re able to raise teachers salaries,
which means that you’re able to recruit the best and brightest
educators.”