AZ: Pushing Vouchers By Ignoring Voters

Arizona has been on the forefront of privatizing education. They're also at the forefront of demonstrating how voucher programs depend on legislators who will ignore the will of the voters. And they're at it again.

Arizona’s first voucher law passed in 2006, but in 2009 that program was thrown out by the state supreme court.

In 2011, the legislature tried again with education savings accounts (ESA), which redirected taxpayer money from public schools to parents who in turn could give the money to private or parochial schools, or spend it on education-related expenses. That extra set of hands in the money chain washed enough of the “public” off the funds to satisfy the courts, and ESA vouchers for special needs were established.

The vouchers were expanded over several years until 2017, when Gov. Doug Ducey signed a bill to make taxpayer-funded school vouchers available to any Arizona students. But when legislators moved to make vouchers universal, grass roots group collected signatures and forced the measure to go on the November 2018 ballot.

The proposal to expand vouchers was heavily defeated at the ballot box. The voters had spoken, but the Arizona legislature simply ignored them and in June of 2022 passed the most expansive school voucher program in the nation. (For the moment, we'll skip over the program's history of massive fraud and abuse.)

Save Our Schools Arizona has been an absolute MVP in trying to thwart the voucherphiles in the state that is, after all, the home of privatizing groups like the Goldwater Institute. This year, they teamed up with the Arizona Education Association to launch a ballot initiative to implement some voucher program accountability (because "history of massive fraud and abuse").  Included in the measure:

Safety measures to protect students, including a requirement that voucher-funded schools follow fire and safety codes and require background checks for all staff.

Bans on use of voucher funds for luxury and non-education items.

Return of unused voucher funds to public school district. Currently, families can bank unused voucher funds indefinitely, so those taxpayer dollars can end up filling a family’s college fund. In July 2025, Harris reported that around 10,000 accounts had banked over $10,000; over $440 million was sitting in accounts.

Reporting requirement to show how much voucher money is going to the private schools that accept taxpayer-funded voucher money.

Creation of a subsidy cap. Require that taxpayer-funded vouchers be available only to those families with income at or below $150,000.

Require academic measures. Voucher-funded schools would have to administer and report results on the same sorts of standardized tests used by public schools. Currently, private schools have no requirements to show how well they are actually educating the students whose tuition is subsidized by taxpayers.

Privatizers tried a new approach to resist this initiative. Betsy DeVos's American Federation for Children launched its own ballot petition under Fortify AZ that promised accountability and transparency but not, you know, too much. Not since the fox offered to reform henhouse security operations has anyone taken such a noble stand. Did Fortify expect their petition to win? Or did they just hope that dual petitions would dilute the thirst for reform enough that neither would go through? 

Doesn't matter, because Fortify has now bowed out. There was almost a deal with legislators to drop all the petitions in exchange for some reform (but not too much), but that didn't happen and now Fortify has dropped its petition and will concentrate on what we can assume has always been its goal: "Fortify is focused on ensuring that the teachers union initiative does not become law,'' said spokesman Barrett Marson.

But don't count those wily legislators out yet. They pushed through their own last-minute initiative that would serve as a poison pill, invalidating the voucher reform initiative even if the majority of Arizona voters voted for it. The heart of their bill is a masterful piece of PR-- the Military Protection Act says you can't confiscate funds from military families. The SOSAZ proposal includes (see above) a requirement to return unused voucher funds (currently, voucher families are banking piles of taxpayer funds, collected to fund K-12 education, as college funds). But that would count as "confiscating" funds from military families' children, thereby invalidating the entire reform package. Now watch [privatizers work hard to make sure that the voters don't understand what is actually happening.

There's a whole lot of energy and money being put into not giving the voters of Arizona an actual say in what their legislature is going to do. But, you know, democracy is such a pain in the butt when you have your own ideas about dismantling institutions and selling off the parts. Stay tuned for the next chapter.