AZ: Money-Sucking Vouchers

Arizona has expanded their state's education savings account voucher program so that anybody can use it, regardless of how wealthy their family is. 

The folks at Rand just released some research about that metastasizing clump in the state's education program, and while there are plenty of findings to sift through, here are a couple that really jumped out.

When Arizona made taxpayer-funded school vouchers available to everyone, the use ballooned from 12,000 to 90,000. Students with special needs used to make up the largest part of that; now they are 18%. The researchers also found that the voucher users "tend to come from school districts that have higher achievement levels, serve students from more-affluent backgrounds, and have larger White populations, on average." In other words, taxpayers are funding vouchers for families that don't really need them (unless getting your white children away from non-white children qualifies as a "need"). 

And boy are the taxpayers being hosed for this. Note the following details from the researchers:

Taxpayers funded vouchers in 2024-2025 to the tune of $888,000,000.

In that same year, vouchers users were 7% of Arizona's school students.

$888 million for 7% of the students. If vouchers were taking a proportional amount of the taxpayer's dollars, then total spending on education in Arizona would be $12,371,428,571.43 (yes, I was forced to do actual math). 

Close, but not quite. According to the state auditor, the state spent around $10 billion on operating school districts. That includes money for charter schools, money to build new schools, and some special programs. I suppose you could think of that as a $2 billion rounding error, and if you, please send all the proceeds from rounding errors in your household over here to the Institute. A billion here, a billion there-- it starts to add up. The state spends another couple billion on things like debt service for schools, so maybe you want to argue that taxpayers should help private schools not just educate students, but finance their real estate holdings.

But in fact, Rand found that 28% of voucher money awarded wasn't even getting spent. 

That despite another finding-- that private school tuition has gone up (12% for elementary, 5% for high school) since vouchers were implemented. Probably a total coincidence and not private schools cashing in or trying to keep barriers in place to block Those People's Children from getting in. Good work, taxpayers.