February 27, 2020
By Jason Bedrick and Matt Beienburg
In his 2020 State of the State Address, Governor Doug Ducey highlighted how Arizona has been a national trailblazer when it comes to providing families with a wide variety of educational choices and opportunities. “This is truly something that makes Arizona unique,” Ducey declared, “it’s the Arizona Way.”
In that spirit, the Governor detailed his plan to address how a technicality in the state’s Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) program was preventing certain Navajo families from providing their children with a quality education:
Like every other Arizona parent Savannah James is dedicated to ensuring her child, Bethany, receives a quality education. She selected a school near their home on the Navajo Nation.
For years, Hilltop school served Bethany well. Imagine their surprise when they received a letter from the heavy hand of government declaring the school was out of bounds, and demanding repayment of funds from their education savings account.
What did Savannah’s family do wrong? Although the school they had chosen for their daughter was within Navajo boundaries, it was just under a mile outside of Arizona. Their assigned district school in Window Rock was persistently failing despite spending more than $16,000 per pupil in 2018—over $6,000 more per pupil than the state average. At Hilltop, Savannah’s family was paying less than $3,000 in tuition to receive a higher quality education.
Despite having been given permission by the previous administration at the Arizona Department of Education to use ESA funds to enroll Savannah at Hilltop, the new administration demanded not only that they stop, but that they pay back her tuition. As Gov. Ducey put it, “This is an example of government losing sight of the people it’s supposed to serve. Savannah and Bethany are here today, and we have a message for them: We won’t stand for it. Help is on the way.”
That help comes in the form of Senate Bill 1224, sponsored by Senator Sylvia Allen (R-Snowflake), which would allow Native Americans to use ESA funds at schools located within two miles of tribal boundaries.
Unfortunately, various groups are fighting to force these low-income, Native American families back into the failing district schools. In a recent newsletter, for example, the anti-ESA group Save Our Schools Arizona (SOS) raised a litany of objections to the bill, spreading numerous falsehoods along the way. Here’s a factcheck of SOS’s claims:
SOS Claim: “We now have this year’s first ESA voucher expansion. Senate Bill 1224 aims to expand ESA vouchers across state lines, which would make Arizona the first state in the nation to allow tax dollars to pay for private, religious schools in other states.”
Factcheck Rating: False.
In just two sentences, SOS managed to pack in a mess of deception and falsehood.
SOS Claim: “The existing ESA voucher program costs the state of Arizona more than $110 million per year in state funding redirected from Arizona district and charter schools to fund Arizona private education.”
Factcheck Rating: Deceptive.
Taken together, the claims from SOS and others reveal an ignorance of facts and a gross paternalism toward Native American families—families whom SOS thinks it fitting to dictate what schools they should have an opportunity to send their students to.
Jason Bedrick is Director of Policy at EdChoice. Matt Beienburg is the Director of Education Policy at the Goldwater Institute.
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