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.
Arizona’s politics might be described as “Chaotic Purple,” but 2024 elections proved quite red at the state legislative level, with Republicans making gains in both the Arizona Senate and House. It may be the case that some of those gains happened because of the unrelenting level of hostility to school choice on the part of the nominated candidates of the Arizona Democratic Party for state legislature. Surveys show that school choice remains broadly popular among Arizona Democrats, Independents and Republicans. Democratic candidates and officeholders, however, have been much more likely to represent the views of public school-affiliated lobbyists and activists than those of their own voters and (crucially) the independent voters needed to secure electoral victory. Hostility to school choice may have cost Arizona Democrats legislative majorities in 2024, and the likelihood of this will only increase in the years ahead.
The 2018 elections might best illustrate Arizona’s Chaotic Purple tendencies, as Republican Gov. Doug Ducey won re-election by a thumping margin even as Democrat Kirsten Sinema won the race for a seat in the U.S. Senate. “Ducey-Sinema voting” did not end in 2018. In 2020, Arizona voters narrowly went for Joe Biden and in 2022 elected Democrat Katie Hobbs governor, but in both instances kept Republican legislative majorities intact. In 2024, the same electorate swung back to Donald Trump over Joe Biden in the presidential race and expanded Republican legislative majorities but also elected Democratic candidate Rueben Gallego to the U.S. Senate. Arizona was a hotly contested swing state in 2024, and Arizona Democrats privately expressed confidence regarding their chances for capturing majorities in the state legislature.
Arizona Democrats have not always been hostile to school choice. Gov. Janet Napolitano, for example, signed two voucher laws as a part of a budget deal. Arizona’s current governor has espoused an unrelenting hostility to school choice, having called for the repeal of Arizona scholarship tax credit programs and “reforms” to the Arizona Empowerment Scholarship Account program that would effectively eliminate the program. Not to be outdone, Arizona legislators have also filed “reform” and “accountability” proposals on choice programs which, if not actually drafted by Arizona’s NEA affiliate, looked remarkably similar to something they would draft if given the chance.
Arizona has five private choice programs: four scholarship tax credits and the Empowerment Scholarship Account. Well over 100,000 students participated in these programs by November 2024. Some of them were eligible to vote in 2024. Arizona taxpayers made 80,057 scholarship tax credit donations in 2023 under the original tax credit program, and another 49,323 donations under the “switcher” credit. Thousands of Arizonans volunteer and/or work at a private school. A broader universe of therapists and tutoring firms also participate as eligible vendors in the ESA program. The unrelenting hostility of many Democrats to the interests of their children, students and schools would be hard pressed not to notice. Did this hostility cost Democrats at the ballot box?
Perhaps so.
The Arizona Senate has 30 seats, and most of these races are not close, going for either the Republican or the Democrat candidate by a wide margin. The races are close and decide which party will be in the majority. The closest state Senate races in 2024 occurred in Legislative Districts 2, 4, 9, 13, 17 and 23. Republicans won four of these six close races, prevailing by margins of 3,767, 5,465, 7,383 and 3,045 votes, respectively.
For example, Arizona Legislative District 4 featured Republican Carine Werner defeating Democrat Christine Marsh by 5,465 votes. A swing of 2,733 votes would have changed the outcome of the election. Data compiled on Legislative Districts by the Common Sense Institute of Arizona found that 3,399 students were attending private schools in 2021-22 in Legislative District 4. The 2021-22 school year, however, was before the Arizona Empowerment Scholarship Account became universally eligible to all Arizona K-12 students.
The Common Sense Institute Arizona research found private school enrollment increased by 31% between the 2019-20 school year and 2021-22 school year. If we take the conservative assumption of a similar increase by the fall of 2024, it would create an estimate of 4,452 private school students in Legislative District 4 by November 2024. If you assume 1.5 parents for each private school student, you reach a potential voting block of 6,679. Assume further that the 4,452 private school students didn’t get there without corresponding private school staff members, add in the assumption that LD 4 had a proportionate share of Arizona’s 100,000 plus scholarship tax credit donors, and you reach an unavoidable conclusion: pledging to revoke private choice programs may have been a very costly political decision. In Arizona Legislative District 4, not only the Senate race but both House races went to candidates supportive of K-12 choice.
We will never know for certain whether K-12 choice hostility tipped electoral balances in 2024. However, we do know that it will be more likely to happen in 2026 legislative races than it was in 2024 based upon the continued growth in Arizona choice programs. Continuing to threaten the thousands of families relying upon choice programs looks to have been a bad bet in 2024 and a worse bet going forward. Both ESA families and scholarship tax credit donors each separately outnumber members of the National Education Association affiliate by more than four to one. Math is hard, and it is even less forgiving.
