ORLANDO, Fla. — The whiplash of uncertainty has buffeted the nation’s charter school movement during the past five years. First, COVID-19 disrupted learning for millions of students . That was, followed by restrictions on federal grant money. Then came a lawsuit challenging the public status of charter schools.
The leader of the National Alliance of Public Charter Schools empathized as the movement’s annual conference kicked off on Monday.
“Starting, running and teaching at a charter school has never been easy,” the alliance’s CEO Starlee Coleman said during her keynote speech to more than 4,000 charter school representatives. She said plenty of changes lie ahead.
“Some of the changes you’re going to like, and some will be hard.”
But charter school supporters also had plenty to celebrate, including the sector’s growth alongside private school choice, students who outperformed district peers on national tests, and state laws that require charters to receive a share of capital funding. The U.S. Department of Education also infused an additional $60 million into the fund for charter schools, bringing the total to $500 million to support charter school expansion.
Leaders also hailed the opportunities created by the rise of private school education savings accounts, or ESAs, which have skyrocketed in popularity in states that have passed them.
“Choice is working. Choice is here to stay,” said Hanna Skandera, CEO of the Daniels Fund and a former secretary of education in New Mexico. Skandera was one of a four-member panel that discussed the future of charter schools.
Leaders in Texas and Florida discussed how to seize those opportunities by offering a la carte courses to students with ESAs. Florida, where in 2023 lawmakers made all K-12 scholarship programs into ESAs that are universally available and created the Personal Education Program for students not enrolled full-time in a public or private school, has already recruited school districts and charter schools to provide access to part-time classes. The latest to sign on is Charter Schools USA, which announced a collaboration with Step Up For Students earlier this week to expand options for students.
"This is the future, and it's great to see,” said Derrell Bradford, president of 50CAN and who serves on several charter school boards. “These sorts of collaborations are what happen when families are in the driver's seat, and they have real resources to direct the education of their children. I hope more states and providers follow them on the path to educational pluralism."
Texas won’t start offering its ESA program until 2026, but in preparation a coalition of charter school leaders has already started a pilot program for private-pay students at four schools. They offer a la carte classes online and in person, including some after school.
“We think this is an opportunity, not as a threat,” said Raphael Gang, K-12 education director at Stand Together Trust.
The panel advised those considering offering part-time services to capitalize on their strengths when deciding what to offer, start small and educate parents on how to access the programs.
In Florida, where education choice scholarship programs have been in place since 1999, representatives shared the history leading up to the state’s 2023 passage of House Bill 1, which converted all choice scholarships into ESAs and made them available to all K-12 students. That law also established a new ESA, the Personalized Education Program, for students who are not enrolled full-time in a public or private school. PEP allows parents to use $8,000 per student to create a customized education for their children.
“It has been a game-changer,” said Keith Jacobs, assistant director of provider development at Step Up For Students. Jacobs, a former charter school leader, works to recruit and onboard charter schools and school districts as providers of part-time services for ESA students.
Jacobs said school choice used to exist only for families who could afford private school tuition or buy a home in a certain ZIP code, but ESAs have taken choice to a new level.
“We have placed the funds in the hands of the parents,” he said.
What does that look like?
It might be a virtual class in the morning, band at a public school in the afternoon, and a session with a private tutor.
“Or it might be ‘My child needs an AP bio class and the charter school down the street has a good bio teacher,’” he said.
Charter Schools USA Florida Superintendent Dr. Eddie Ruiz said the decision to offer courses to part-time students was easy given the demand for flexibility.
“Charter Schools USA believes in innovation,” Ruiz said. “It’s given parents the flexibility to really design their student’s education.”
He said when he approached his principals about the idea, they wondered how it could be done. Ruiz compared it to Amazon.
“Parents can just pick and choose,” he said. “Whatever it may be, they design their educational experience.”
The implementation will look different for each state based on the laws, but in Florida, approved providers can list their offerings and prices on an online platform, where parents can purchase the services with their ESA funds.
Charter schools set their prices based on local costs, said Adam Emerson, executive director of the Office of School Choice for the Florida Department of Education. In calculating those, leaders should not overlook operational costs, such as putting the students in the school information system.
Emerson said serving ESA families is a financial win for charters, but also the chance to make a positive difference for students in their communities.
“Yes, it’s a revenue stream, but it’s also a calling,” he said.
Two of the leading organizations in Florida’s united education choice movement are joining forces to expand access to learning opportunities at charter schools across the state.
The collaboration between Charter Schools USA and Step Up For Students will give Florida’s education choice scholarship students access to individual classes at 62 charter school campuses.
“By opening its campuses across the state for scholarship students, Charter Schools USA is helping set the pace for education innovation,” said Gretchen Schoenhaar, CEO of Step Up For Students. “Working with charter schools in a united movement expands access to flexible, quality learning options for Florida families.”
Florida’s 500,000 K-12 scholarship students are allowed to use their scholarships to purchase individual classes and other services from charter schools and school districts. More than 100,000 of those students use scholarships that allow them to fully customize their child’s education without attending a private school full time.
By the time school starts in August, one in three of the state’s 67 school districts and five charter school networks will offer flexible learning opportunities to scholarship students.
“We are thrilled to work with Step Up on this groundbreaking opportunity to further expand school choice,” said Dr. Eddie Ruiz, the Florida State Superintendent of Charter Schools USA. “By giving parents, especially those who teach their children at home, easy opportunities to access higher level educational opportunities while maintaining their customized scholarship option, we are providing ultimate flexibility. Schooling in the future will be all about flexible options, and this allows us to be on the forefront of this exciting endeavor.”
Keith Jacobs, Step Up’s assistant director of provider development, is a former charter school leader. He has made it his mission to collaborate with school districts and public charter schools to find creative ways to serve scholarship students.
“Charter schools began more than 30 years ago with a mission to bring much-needed innovations to education,” Jacobs said. “At Step Up, we are committed to supporting public schools across the state as they explore new opportunities to reach scholarship families. Charter Schools USA, with its proven ability to serve students across Florida, will supercharge these efforts.”
Education choice is the norm in Florida, where 3.5 million K-12 students attended schools or learning environments chosen by their families, a testament to decades of efforts by the state’s leaders to support a united movement to increase opportunities for students.
David Osborne recently predicted academic doom for red states having recently passed universal private choice programs. “This will accelerate the process of the rich getting richer while the poor fall further behind,” Osborne asserted. Osborne problematically ignored our nation’s actual experience with universal choice programs, making his column more a litany of faith than a clear-eyed analysis.
Osborne predicts a bleak future for states with universal private choice programs, with poor families left behind. Osborne prefers a charter school model of choice, keeping choice within the public realm of regulation and accountability:
"Is there an alternative, other than the status quo of struggling public school systems? Indeed there is. States and school districts could reduce bureaucratic controls, empower educators and increase choice, competition and accountability for performance within the public school system, through the spread of charter schools. Cities that have done so, including New Orleans, Washington, D.C., Denver and Indianapolis, have produced some of the nation’s most rapid improvements in student performance."
Arizona lawmakers created the first universal private choice program in 1997, the nation’s first scholarship tax credit program. Decades passed before another state enacted a private choice law with equally expansive eligibility. Three years earlier, in 1994, Arizona lawmakers had created two de facto public universal choice programs in the nation’s most robust charter school law and a statewide district open enrollment statute. “Large” and “relatively lightly regulated” would accurately describe Arizona choice programs, both public and private. Arizona lawmakers expanded and supplemented scholarship tax credits repeatedly; the Arizona charter sector became the largest among states, and open enrollment between and within districts dwarfed both in combination. Arizona created the nation’s first education savings account program in 2011 and expanded eligibility several times before making it universally available to Arizona K-12 students in 2022.
Given Osborne specifically cites four jurisdictions with the sort of choice programs of which he approves- Denver, Washington D.C., New Orleans, and Indianapolis, it seems in order. The Stanford Educational Opportunity Project provides academic growth data by jurisdiction (schools, counties, and states) and student subgroups for the 2009-2019 period. Comparing the rate of academic growth for low-income students in each of these four jurisdictions with those of Arizona counties in Figure 1:
Academic growth is a very important academic measure. While raw scores are very strongly correlated with student demographics, growth is much less so. Scholars widely view academic growth as the best measure of school quality. Many years into exposure to universal choice programs, Arizona’s low-income students seemed to be too busy learning to suffer Osborne’s predicted calamities. Greenlee County is a rural and remote area of Arizona with approximately 1,500 students and (alas) no charter or private schools during the period covered by the data. In this measure, a “zero” basically entails having learned a grade level worth of material per year on average, so the performances for Denver, DC and Orleans Parish are respectable, Marion County (host county of Indianapolis) less so.
The Stanford Educational Opportunity Project also measures the gap in learning rates by subgroup, which is measured by subtracting the learning rate of poor students from that of non-poor students. The four jurisdictions lauded by Osborne ranked first, second, third, and fifth in comparison to Arizona counties in terms of the amount of learning rate inequality between poor and non-poor students. There was exactly one state that had a positive rate of academic growth for both poor and non-poor students and had a faster rate of academic growth for poor students. It is the state marked “1” and spoiler alert…it is Arizona, the host of multiple universal choice programs.
Osborne’s hypothesis held that what some would regard as wild, lightly regulated “let it rip” choice programs would prove to be a disaster for low-income students, and conversely, well-regulated choice programs should advantage the poor. In practice, however, we find evidence to support the opposite conclusion. These results would not have surprised Milton Friedman in the least:
The results in the above figure also sit comfortably with the diagnosis of John Chub and Terry Moe, who identified politics as the central flaw of the American public school system. The American public school system does not do a terrific job on average in educating students, but it does a fantastic job in maximizing the political power and revenue of employee unions and their associated fellow travelers. Attempting to set up a governance structure of politically disinterested technocrats who will give families just the right amount of freedom and just the right amount of regulation comfortable for technocrats is an appealing theory. In practice, the most powerful and reactionary forces in modern American politics hijack the project easily unless a powerful, supportive constituency rises to defend the programs.
EdChoice has an interesting survey question comparing what sort of school parents would prefer (district, charter, private or home) and comparing the results to actual enrollment patterns. In 2024 it looked like this:
There is a lot happening in that chart, starting with the apparent desire of approximately 50% of the parents of district students to have their students somewhere else. Of course, a great many legal and practical constraints stand between preference and reality, which is why we have an education freedom movement and why we find so much opposition from the insecure K-12 reactionary community. Taking the surveyed demand as a part of a thought experiment around “what would it take to give families what they want?” can be illuminating. Of course, in the real world, these things change only gradually. Arizona has the highest percentage of students in charter schools at 21% or so, but it took three decades to get there for all kinds of reasons, including the need to have school space, which involved a great deal of construction and debt. We live in a world of charter and private school scarcity relative to demand, and keeping up the previous (inadequate) pace of construction may prove difficult.
Using my advanced skills acquired in the Texas public school system between 1972 and 1986, I have used this surveyed demand to calculate an implied demand for an additional 1.1 million charter school spaces. Don’t hold your breath waiting for them. It took almost three and a half decades to reach 3.7 million, and if you’ll now take a look at the first chart above, you’ll see that most of that three-and-a-half-decade period involved relatively low and almost continually declining long term interest rates between 1991 and 2021.
After 2021, both interest and building costs went up for charter school construction. Interest rates of course could go down, but they could also (gulp) go further up. A slowdown in the rate of new charter openings happened before the increase in interest and construction costs:
The little green force mystic taught us “always uncertain the future is,” but it appears to me that circumstances will require the rise of different school models that create seats sans debt. The old expression holds that God doesn’t close a door without opening a window, and the recent rise in interest rates happened almost simultaneously with the rise of pandemic pods and a la carte learning.
For the first time in Florida’s history, more than half of all K-12 students are enrolled in an educational option of choice. During the 2023–24 school year, 1,794,697 students, out of the state’s approximately 3.5 million K-12 population, attended schools outside their zoned neighborhood assignment.
Since the 2008–09 school year, Step Up For Students, in collaboration with the Florida Department of Education, has tracked enrollment across a variety of choice programs. While methods and program structures have evolved, 2023–24 marks a milestone: more than 50% of Florida’s students are now learning in environments selected by their families.
The Changing Landscapes report draws from Florida Department of Education data and removes, where possible, duplicate counts to provide a clearer picture of school choice participation. For example, it adjusts for home education students supported by the Family Empowerment Scholarship for Students with Unique Abilities (FES-UA) and eliminates double-counted students in career and professional programs. It also excludes prekindergarten students in FES-UA and programs like Voluntary Pre-Kindergarten (VPK), as the report focuses solely on K–12 education.
While many families still choose their neighborhood public schools, Florida’s education system now offers a broad range of options to meet diverse student needs. Public school choice remains dominant, occupying four of the top five spots in overall enrollment. Charter schools are the most popular option, followed by district open enrollment programs, career and professional academies, and Advanced International Certificate of Education (AICE) programs for upperclassmen.
On the private side, the 2023–24 school year marked a historic shift: For the first time, a single scholarship program now serves more students than all private school families who pay tuition out of pocket.
In total, over 116,000 additional students enrolled in choice programs compared to the prior year. The Family Empowerment Scholarship for Educational Options (FES-EO) and the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship (FTC) saw the greatest growth, along with AICE and FES-UA. Altogether, scholarships for private and home education increased by approximately 142,000 students, while private-pay and non-scholarship home education enrollment declined, likely due to the expanded availability of financial aid.
Among public-school options, magnet and district choice programs saw slight declines, with 28,000 and 8,447 fewer students, respectively. Still, public-school choice remains strong: 1.1 million of Florida’s 2.9 million public school students (40%) are enrolled in a choice-based public option.
Altogether, nearly 1.8 million students attend a school chosen by their parents or guardians. This shift reflects a fundamental transformation in Florida’s educational landscape—one where families are increasingly empowered to find the best fit for their children.
But with so many students opting for alternatives to their zoned public schools, it raises an interesting question: What about those who stay? If families are surrounded by options and still choose their assigned public school, isn’t that a choice, too? In that light, Florida may already have a 100% choice system, because staying is just as much a decision as leaving.
Rather than a battle between public and private education, Florida is showing how both sectors can coexist and thrive, working together to provide high quality learning opportunities for all students. The future of education isn’t one-size-fits-all; it’s about ensuring every family has access to an option that fits their child’s unique needs. In Florida, that future is already here.
Jason Bedrick and I published a piece at the Daily Signal about the Roosevelt Elementary School District in South Phoenix. The Roosevelt district has experienced enrollment loss for decades, and the school board of the district has announced plans to close five schools.
I first learned of Roosevelt Elementary School district some 20 years ago when a Roosevelt student brutally assaulted a co-worker’s child. The staff’s response was far less than satisfactory, but at the time, it was difficult to locate mid-year transfer spots for my co-worker’s children, even after we enlisted the aid of a person who specialized in such situations.
I’m happy to report that in 2025, it is less difficult for desperate parents to execute a mid-year transfer.
Multiple factors explain the decline of Roosevelt’s enrollment, including a nationwide baby bust that began around 2007. Students living in the boundaries of Roosevelt but attending other public schools, both districts and charters, outnumber ESA students approximately 10 to 1. So, Arizona’s open enrollment and charter statutes deserve more credit than the ESA program. An examination of the reviews of Roosevelt Elementary schools left by students, parents and staff on private school navigation websites made my co-worker’s experience from 20 years ago seem to be far from an isolated, unfortunate incident. Here are some examples:
“Please do not take your children here. Almost every child is bullied, and the staff won't do anything. If you truly care about your kid's school experience, don't sign them up.”
“This school makes kids act out by tolerating relentless bullying and cruel treatment by teachers for special needs kids.”
“The kids get bullied, my son got a Black eye the 1st day of school and they told me that because he didn't know who the kid was there was nothing they could do.”
“This school should be shut down.”
“…They don’t take care of bullies; they just ignore the problem and leave the kids (to) fend for themselves; it seems that this is a safe place for bullies not for other kids. I would recommend that you should never enroll your kid here, and if you do, be prepared to endure what seems to be a never ending bully problem, and its not only the teachers that don't do anything about bullies.”
“I would rate it ZERO stars. This school is not SAFE NOR ORGANIZED. Roosevelt school district needs to step up their game or close this school down.”
“Students are constantly fighting or involved in some type of confrontational altercation with each other. Teachers behave more as peers than educators. My grandchild has attended this school for the past five years. I have seen very little improvement. If it were my choice, they would not attend.”
People who work for school districts have organized, and they use the fact that Americans dislike school closures. I would submit, for your consideration, that it is not wicked legislators or dastardly choice supporters who have forced the looming closures of Roosevelt schools. Rather, it has been due to the action of thousands of families who live in the boundaries of the district, who desire safe schools that will equip their children with the knowledge, habits and skills necessary for success. They have chosen to prioritize the long-term interests of their children over the short-term preferences of Roosevelt staff in increasing numbers for decades.
This is a thumbs up for Roosevelt students, whose interests the community has collectively put first, more than a thumbs down for the district schools. Roosevelt district schools will remain the best funded option on a per-pupil basis and might just stage a comeback if they can secure the confidence of families regarding safety and academics. Some of my friends in Arizona’s K-12 reactionary community would prefer that Roosevelt schools receive unconditional immortality. It is difficult to view these folks as engaged in anything other than macabre traffic in other people’s children. Perhaps I judge too harshly; the Phoenix area K-12 industrial lobbying complex is probably large enough to delay the need for difficult decisions in Roosevelt. If they are willing to enroll their own children in Roosevelt schools through open enrollment or otherwise, they might be able to stave off the need for safety and academic improvements.
Opponents of choice in Phoenix have been avid users of choice. One of your humble author’s children graduated from a South Phoenix charter school just a few miles away from Roosevelt. He attended with the children of two gubernatorial nominees who campaigned against choice (including Gov. Katie Hobbs), a child of the president of the Arizona Education Association and a co-founder of Save Our Schools Arizona, among others. Rather than choosing safe and academically performing charter and district schools, this community could instead put their families where their mouths are and lead the renaissance of Roosevelt district schools by enrolling their own children and grandchildren.
While this noble project gets off the ground, we in the Arizona choice community will continue to prioritize the interest of families above those institutions.
Longtime NextSteps readers know that your humble author has been holding forth on the Baptist and Bootlegger problem that helped throttle the growth of the charter school movement. The term “Baptists and Bootleggers” comes from economics and references prohibition, which Baptists supported out of religious conviction, and bootleggers supported to limit competition in their manufacture and sale of alcohol. In the context of charter schools, it describes how elements of the charter school movement, in this case large charter management organizations, or CMOs, partnered with the anti-charter usual suspects to limit competition through 900-page applications and charter laws hewing closely to sponsored “model” bills that mysteriously produced few charter schools. This, of course, was not the only problem to afflict the charter movement in recent years; see Robert Pondiscio’s recent account for example.
In 2024, I sounded the alarm that the private school choice movement was far from immune to this danger. Alas, Bootleggers’ tactics have indeed appeared in recent school choice legislation. For example, Iowa’s “ESA” law requires students who choose to spend their funds on private school to attend an accredited one. The new Texas legislation makes only accredited private schools eligible, and in a late amendment, a provision was added that requires private schools to have been operating for two years before becoming eligible to participate. Competition is apparently good for Texas public schools, but not terribly desirable for established private schools in Texas. Sigh. Stay on the lookout; accredited Texas private schools that have been operating for more than two years might just start selling some illicit liquid products at their bake sales...
There are other examples, but you get the point. Why does this matter? Well, if you stimulate demand for a product but restrict the supply of new entrants, you hang a sign on your back that says:
Luckily, this does not need to be the case, but the devil is in the details of bill design. Some make the mistake of assuming any choice program will automatically lead to cost inflation, but this is not the case if supply can rise to meet expanded demand. EdChoice has a new study out on the supply side of school choice, in which they examined the purchasing data from Arizona’s ESA program for years one and two of universal eligibility. Arizona’s ESA program had a very large increase in participation during these years. Without a corresponding increase in schools and vendors, cost inflation could get underway.
Fortunately, Arizona’s program saw a healthy increase in the supply of new schools to accompany expanded eligibility:
Not only did the number of participating schools increase from 510 to 661, but Arizona also saw broad increases in the types of schools accessed by families, including large increases in private religious schools, non-religious private schools, special education focused schools, co-ops and post-secondary schools. Baptist and bootlegger anti-competitive provisions would have prevented this flourishing, but fortunately, Arizona lawmakers wisely avoided it. When the Goldwater Institute examined private school tuition trends after the universal expansion, they found no evidence of a demand induced inflationary spiral.
Arizona vendors other than schools also increased their participation in the program, increasing competition.
Don't look now, but dance and art studios, dojos and a whole lot more have entered the Arizona ESA chat:
Choice supporters with a vision beyond trying to fill a limited supply of empty seats and/or creating a tuition inflation spiral must create bills allowing supply to increase with demand.
The story: With less than a week to go before the U.S. Supreme Court hears arguments about the constitutionality of religious charter schools, supporters and opponents are making wildly different predictions about the possible effects.
Supporters, who include advocates for religious education, are framing a win for their side as a victory for religious freedom and a logical extension of recent rulings that affirmed faith-based schools’ right to participate in publicly funded programs.
“This is a way of getting new choice options in the context of performance accountability,” said Andy Smarick, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, during a recent debate about religious charter schools sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute. “A small number of religious organizations might apply to run charter schools, and I think that’s wonderful and not going to change the world.”
The Manhattan Institute is among the organizations weighing in on the side of religious charter schools.
Opponents, which include the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, are sounding the alarm over what they say could cripple a movement that began more than 30 years ago to launch innovative new public schools.
The other side: The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools warned that a ruling allowing religious charter schools could carry “catastrophic consequences” for the nation’s existing charter schools.
For religious charter schools to exist, they argue, the high court would have to redefine charter schools as private. That would overturn laws in 46 states, plus Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, that define charters as public and thus threaten their ability to be funded under the same per-pupil formulas as school districts.
Yes, and: Charter supporters also point out the potential for ripple effects, such as charter schools losing facilities funding, questions about teacher participation in state benefit programs, or more drastically, calls to halt the approval of new schools or even funding of existing ones.
“This could lead to the destruction of chartering or limiting of chartering,” said Kathleen Porter-MaGee, a managing partner at Leadership Roundtable, an organization that brings together laity and clergy to support the Catholic church.
Instead of extending charters to religious groups, she encouraged a doubling down on private K-12 scholarship programs, which are now established in 29 states, with Texas poised to become the 30th.
Expanding scholarship programs for private education would let faith-based schools maintain instructional and employment practices that align with their beliefs, free from government interference, while allowing them to serve families who would not have access without private funding.
Catch up: The legal and political battle rocketed to the Supreme Court shortly after two Catholic dioceses won approval from Oklahoma’s statewide virtual charter review board in 2023 to open St. Isidore of Seville Catholic School, an online charter school that would include the same Catholic teachings as the church’s in-person schools.
The fight pitted Republicans against one another, with the current Oklahoma attorney general taking a position opposite his GOP predecessor and filing a lawsuit. It also divided the charter school movement, with national groups forcefully opposing a legal argument that could redefine their status as public entities and some charter schools arguing they would welcome the change.
While Oklahoma has a refundable tax credit that pays up to $7,500 per child for private school tuition, the program was not available until January 2024, about six months after St. Isidore applied for charter school authorization.
Possible upsides of a win for St. Isidore:
“Catholic schools have been doing things on the cheap for far too long,” Smarick said. “This is the opportunity to say you can remain private for as long as you want…but if you think you can do more for your mission in the charter school context, you can.”
Possible downsides:
Charter groups preparing: In case the court rules in favor of St. Isidore, advocates of established charters are working on model legislation that would allow states to maintain funding. A finding that says charter schools are not state actors also raises many questions, such as whether the ministerial exception, a legal doctrine that shields religious organizations from non-discrimination laws in the hiring of staff with ministerial duties, would apply to faith-based schools.
“No one knows what the court is going to say,” Smarick said. “State legislatures need to step up fast and answer these questions.”
Tune in: The U.S. Supreme Court has scheduled oral arguments in the case for 10 a.m. April 30. Audio will be livestreamed.
If you look at enrollment trends in the Arizona districts with the largest total enrollment losses, look at the Arizona Open Enrollment report and the Quarterly ESA report, you get Figure 1. In Figure 1, both the gains from open enrollment (blue columns) and the losses to other districts and to charter schools (red columns) are presented. The purple columns represent the ESA enrollment of students who live in each of these districts.
Note that the ESA students reside in these districts; many of them were never enrolled in the district where they reside when they enrolled in the ESA program. Some students were already attending private schools, in which case they effectively transferred from the private scholarship tax credit program to the ESA program. Others were in those red columns, attending charter schools and other district schools through open enrollment. Others enrolled in kindergarten straight into the ESA program; others moved in from other states. Others, of course, transferred into ESA directly from their resident district. The purple columns, however, undoubtedly overstate the impact of the ESA program on district enrollments.
Even if they did not, I invite you to compare the red and the purple columns. The financial impact to a district school is identical whether they transfer to another district school, to a charter school, to the ESA program, or move out of the state.
In examining the 2024 NAEP results for Arizona, a rather stark picture emerged that Arizona charter and Arizona districts had strongly diverged- Arizona charter schools show academic recovery, whereas Arizona district scores sank, in some cases, to all time lows. This came despite district spending standing not only higher than charters on a per pupil basis and standing at or near record high levels. Arizona charter schools still have an incentive to attract students, whereas during the federal money printing extravaganza districts of the COVID-19 debacle often spent a lot more money even as their enrollments shrank. The NAEP shows the scale of the academic gulf between Arizona charter school students and Arizona district students placed into context with statewide average scores on the 2024 eighth grade math exam:
Drowning districts in cash even as their enrollments shrink may have turned off the positive competitive impact of choice programs, and data published by the Common Sense Institute Arizona shows just how stark this has been. Kamryn Brunner and Glenn Farley of the Common Sense Institute Arizona have been tracking the enrollment and expenditure trends of school districts that have announced school closings since January 2025. I used their data to make Figure 1:
So, the word cloud that pops in my head when looking at this data prominently features “RECKLESS” and “IRRESPONSIBLE” and “UNSUSTAINABLE.” A few months ago the Arizona State Board of Education put the Isaac School District into financial receivership. This enrollment loss was not driven by Arizona’s ESA program, as the state’s open enrollment report shows 2,319 students who reside within the borders of Isaac attend public schools outside of the district (through open enrollment and charter schools) and the ESA quarterly report shows only 82 ESA students reside within the Isaac school district. The number of students who transferred from an Isaac district school to the ESA program will be smaller still, as these students may have previously been attending other districts, charter schools or private schools.
The districts in Figure 2 have announced a total of 13 school closings. Another chart from the Common Sense Institute Arizona shows far more is needed. The Arizona district system has physical capacity to serve almost 1.3 million students, but only 850,000 enrolled.
So how did Arizona districts wind up with a spare 450,000 spaces? There is not a single culprit. A baby bust started in 2008, but this seems not to have informed the decisions of districts. Part of the story is that Arizona families have less demand for district schools. The main culprit however is the usual suspect: politics. The Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting (AZCIR) and KJZZ reported in 2017 on financial relationships between a small group of architects, construction companies and subcontractors and the school districts in Maricopa County. They found that architects, construction firms and subcontractors accounted for nearly all the financial contributions made to Maricopa County districts’ bond and override campaigns from 2013-2016. This is dubious enough in a fast-growing district with clear facility needs, but it has also been happening in districts with shrinking enrollments.
Arizona should collect K-12 capital funding statewide, rather than on a local basis and provide it on an equitable per pupil basis to students. District and charter schools should be free to spend these funds in whatever fashion they feel furthers their educational mission, whether that is building a new school, patching a leaky roof, or paying their teachers. Districts with large amounts of underused space should, however, not receive these funds until such time that they return or offload such space to some sort of productive use.
Arizona is likely not the only state where the positive impact of competitive effects drowned in a sea of COVID cash. With the 2024 election having hinged largely upon an inflationary spiral coinciding with federal money printing, and 10,000 Baby Boomers reaching the age of 65 per day until 2030, the reckless level of spending on K-12 seems all but certain to reverse.
