Arizona School Voucher Program Causes Budget Meltdown

there are valid ideas in the exploration of school voucher programs: school choice and reducing state budgets.

yet, the problems of scale continue to crack most idealogies and many times (as is the case with scaling school voucher programs) we see outcomes opposite of the intent: disparities and lack of choice for those without means AND an increase in state budgets.

ignoring these outcomes and proceeding with broken solutions seem to be rooted back to the culture wars that are being dragged on in american politics right now.

In 2022, Arizona pioneered the largest school voucher program in the history of education. Under a new law, any parent in the state, no matter how affluent, could get a taxpayer-funded voucher worth up to tens of thousands of dollars to spend on private school tuition, extracurricular programs or homeschooling supplies. In just the past two years, nearly a dozen states have enacted sweeping voucher programs similar to Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Account system, with many using it as a model. Yet in a lesson for these other states, Arizona’s voucher experiment has since precipitated a budget meltdown. The state this year faced a $1.4 billion budget shortfall, much of which was a result of the new voucher spending, according to the Grand Canyon Institute, a local nonpartisan fiscal and economic policy think tank. As a result of all this unexpected spending, alongside some recent revenue losses, Arizona is now having to make deep cuts to a wide swath of critical state programs and projects, the pain of which will be felt by average Arizonans who may or may not have school-aged children.