Arizona’s Universal Education Savings Accounts Are a Win for All Students

Arizona students are finally free to pursue the best education of their choice, regardless of their family’s zip code, background or beginnings, through the nation’s most expansive school choice opportunity — the state’s now-universal Empowerment Scholarship Account program.

But perhaps even more important to those outside Arizona, the Grand Canyon State has clearly demonstrated how state lawmakers can lead, in a victory that can be replicated in any of the more than 20 states that have conservative majorities. How?

It takes only a single vote.

Arizona emerged from the 2020 election with a 31-29 conservative majority in the state House of Representatives and a similarly narrow 16-14 majority in the state Senate. Confronted with virtually universal opposition to school choice among the left-wing minority party— and without a lieutenant governor position to break a tie — proponents of expanding the ESA program to nearly every Arizona child had not a single vote to spare to advance this legislation.

Read the rest of the op-ed at The 74.

Matt Beienburg is the Director of Education Policy at the Goldwater Institute. He also serves as Director of the Institute’s Van Sittert Center for Constitutional Advocacy.