By Christine Accurso |

I have sat at the desk where the reimbursement requests come in. I have reviewed the accounts flagged for misuse. I have personally picked up the phone and called parents when something did not look right. I ran Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) Program as its Executive Director, and I am here to tell you that the public conversation about this program is missing something critical: the truth about how it actually works.

You have heard the complaints. Fraud. Waste. No accountability. What you have not heard, because no one is saying it, is that robust accountability mechanisms already exist in this program and they are working. There have been plenty of op-eds, news reports, and counter-claims about ESA fraud. But very few of them come from someone who managed the program from the inside, day to day, and watched those guardrails operate in real time. I did. And this is what they look like.

Every parent who receives an ESA signs a legally binding contract. They must verify their child’s identity and their own Arizona residency before a single dollar is approved. Every purchase requires documentation: an invoice or a receipt. No documentation, no payment. If misuse is suspected, the account is immediately suspended and reviewed. If a parent attempts to bypass that suspension by going directly to the digital wallet vendor, that act is classified as fraud and results in immediate termination. Confirmed fraud is referred to the Attorney General for investigation and potential prosecution. And critically, all of that account holder’s ESA contracts may be terminated, not just the one in question. Misused funds must be repaid. Offenders can be permanently barred from the program.

The contract also prohibits account holders from concurrently accepting ESA funds and a School Tuition Organization scholarship in the same contract year. Reselling any item purchased with ESA funds is strictly prohibited. Tutors and instructional providers must have no disciplinary action pending before the State Board of Education for immoral or unprofessional conduct. These are not suggestions. They are enforceable contract terms with real consequences.

Every morning, an automated report runs at the Arizona Department of Education, cross-referencing every ESA student against public school enrollment rosters. Any student found enrolled in both loses their ESA account that same day. No warnings, no exceptions. Parents agree to cover core subjects: reading, grammar, mathematics, social studies, and science. All school staff with unsupervised access to students must be fingerprinted. Cash withdrawals are prohibited. Televisions, video game consoles, and non-educational equipment are explicitly unallowable. Incomplete documentation triggers a formal audit. And any unused funds that roll over may only be used after graduation for post-secondary tuition, textbooks, and fees. Nothing else.

When I personally called parents about suspicious requests, the answer was the same every time: they had made an honest mistake. They did not know the rule. They were informed, they returned the funds, and they continued in the program. The guardrails caught it. The system worked.

The fraud rate in this program is among the lowest of any government program in Arizona. Every confirmed case of fraud has been referred for investigation or prosecution. The fact that you can find those cases in the news is not evidence the program is broken; it is proof the oversight is doing its job.

And beyond all of the formal protections sits the most powerful accountability of all: these are parents who chose to be here. They made a deliberate decision to take responsibility for their child’s education. There is no bureaucrat, no administrator, and no government program that will ever advocate for a child the way their own parent will. That is not a weakness in the program’s accountability. That is its greatest strength.

Arizona’s ESA students are thriving. The program is accountable, it is lawful, and it is working. Before you accept the narrative that it isn’t, ask yourself why you have never heard any of this before, and who benefits from you not knowing.

Christine Accurso is the State of Arizona’s former ESA executive director, a long time school choice advocate, and the leader of the very successful Decline to Sign movement when the parents won the ESA fight in 2022 ushering in the Universal ESA program for all AZ students.