School Vouchers Were Supposed to Save Taxpayer Money. Instead They Blew a Massive Hole in Arizona’s Budget

Arizona, the model for school choice programs nationwide, spent so much money paying private schoolers’ tuition that it’s now facing hundreds of millions in budget cuts to critical state programs and projects.Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs is navigating a budget crisis some attribute to the state's widespread use of school vouchers. In June, Arizona lawmakers approved a bipartisan budget deal that erased a $1.

The result is new money coming out of the state budget. After all, the public wasn’t paying for private school kids’ tuition before.Chris Kotterman, director of governmental relations for the Arizona School Boards Association, says that Arizona making vouchers available to children who had never gone to public school before wasn’t realistically going to save the state money.

In Arizona, for example, vouchers as of 2011 were available solely to students with disabilities, to make sure that their families could afford a range of personalized education options. The program was then expanded to students who had lived in foster care and to Native American students before, gradually, the money started going even as states started considering providing vouchers to every parent who wanted one, which is a far more costly undertaking.

This is similar to arguing that the public should help pay for car drivers’ gas because if they didn’t drive, they might use public transportation instead, which would be a cost to taxpayers.Ducey’s spokesperson, Daniel Scarpinato, did not acknowledge that the net cost of universal vouchers has been far higher than voucher supporters originally promised. Instead, he reiterated that “universal ESA costs are basically revenue neutral.

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