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.
Eight years ago, the United States Marine Corps moved my family to Arizona. Since then, my husband and I have used Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) program to help provide the education our three children need to succeed.
As both a mother and a teacher, I have seen firsthand the difference educational choice can make in a child’s life. That is why I oppose the so-called Protect Education Act.
Despite its name, this measure does not protect education. It limits educational opportunities and restricts parents’ ability to choose the learning environment that best fits their children’s needs.
My own children have benefited from ESAs, and many students at the high school where I teach attend through the program as well. These are real children with unique learning styles, goals, and challenges. The ESA program empowers parents to make decisions based on what is best for their child, not what is most convenient for a government system.
Critics often claim that ESA programs drain funding from public schools. The reality is that the typical ESA award is only a fraction of the combined state and local tax dollars spent on a student in the public school system. When a student leaves a public school and uses an ESA, the state generally spends less on that individual child.
Opponents also point to isolated examples of misuse within the ESA program. No government program is perfect, but the Arizona Department of Education reports that the overwhelming majority of ESA families follow the rules. State analyses have found that truly egregious fraud accounts for approximately 0.3% of ESA spending. By comparison, federal SNAP benefits experience improper payments and fraud estimated in billions of dollars annually, representing a far larger percentage of total program spending. Yet no one argues that food assistance should be eliminated because a small number of people break the rules.
The answer is accountability, not fewer choices for families.
Arizona has become a national leader in educational freedom because we trust parents. Whether a family chooses a public school, charter school, private school, homeschool, or another educational option, that decision should remain with the people who know the child best: their parents.
The Protect Education Act would move Arizona in the wrong direction. It would limit options, create new barriers, and make it harder for families like mine to access the educational opportunities our children need.
For the sake of educational freedom, parental rights, and student success, I encourage Arizonans to look beyond the title and reject the Protect Education Act.
The proposed ballot initiative would have required the Arizona Department of Education (ADE) to establish an online marketplace payment system next year for all ESA purchases with approved vendors, and would have eliminated the current reimbursement and debit card system.
The initiative would also have further restricted allowable expenditures, and required valid fingerprint clearance cards for qualified tutors and school personnel. Any parents who intentionally misuse funds would have been disqualified permanently from the ESA program.
Under the canceled initiative, the ESA program would have had to submit quarterly reports addressing vendor payments, disqualifications, and recovered funds to the attorney general as well.
Fortify AZ was supported in its signature-gathering efforts with millions from the American Federation for Children (AFC). Arizona campaign finance records reflected $1.2 million to their political action committee, but AFC said they invested over $5.3 million into the ballot initiative.
AFC said the proposed reforms were aligned with best policy practices implemented in other states: Texas, Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, Indiana, Ohio, Utah, Tennessee, New Hampshire, and West Virginia.
In a press release issued on Tuesday, AFC CEO Tommy Schultz said their organization backed the ballot initiative as the “best opportunity to save school choice in Arizona,” which they say is under threat by school choice opponents behind the other proposed ballot initiative which would end universal school choice, the Protect Education Act.
“After a small number of individuals acted to sabotage this chance for the school choice-gutting petition to be pulled and commonsense reforms enacted, we are evaluating our best next steps to ensure the union-backed petition does not rip school choice away from thousands of Arizona students overnight and fundamentally break the program for the rest,” said Schultz.
As the Arizona Agendareported, Republican lawmakers and the Arizona Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union, nearly reached a secretive school choice reform deal to end both the Arizona Empowerment Scholarship Accounts Reform and Accountability Act as well as the Protect Education Act.
However, the Arizona Free Enterprise Club raised concerns over the impact of the secretive deal on the ESA program.
Don't Cut a Deal that Kills ESAs — Lawmakers are negotiating a secret bargain with teacher unions tonight. Over 100,000 Arizona students hang in the balance. https://t.co/dToo9ac4uQ
— AZ Women of Action (@AZWomenofAction) June 12, 2026
Ultimately, lawmakers voted against the proposed deal.
Matthew Nielsen, founder of the Educational Freedom Institute, called the Arizona Empowerment Scholarship Accounts Reform and Accountability Act an “ill-conceived, and now ill-fated […] waste.”
The other ballot initiative to end the universality of the ESA program will continue. The Protect Education Act would place a $150,000 income cap for ESA program enrollees.
Additionally, this initiative would not only require qualified tutors and schools to have valid fingerprint clearance, it would subject them to Arizona State Board of Education discipline and require them to pay a fee and register annually with ADE.
Protect Education, Accountability Now, the political action committee behind the still-active ballot initiative, has spent about $2.7 million of the nearly $4.6 million it has raised.
98% of those funds (more than $4.4 million) came from the National Education Association, a national teachers’ union and the largest labor union in the nation.
As of this report, the ESA program has over 100,700 students enrolled.
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A Goldwater Institute-backed measure to constitutionally protect Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) funds for children of military families will go before Arizona voters in November after receiving legislative approval.
House Concurrent Resolution 2048, sponsored by Rep. Michael Way (R-LD15), asks voters to amend Article XI of the Arizona Constitution by adding a new section prohibiting the state from confiscating money from certain scholarship accounts of students who are children of military families.
Under the resolution text, the prohibition would apply if the scholarship account is established and maintained by the state under a program that designates children of military families as eligible to receive scholarship money, and if the student may use the money for tuition or fees at eligible postsecondary educational institutions. The resolution states that the provision is not limited to scholarship account programs established and maintained by the state only for children of military families.
The measure defines a “child of a military family” as a student whose parent is serving on active duty in the U.S. Armed Forces, was serving on active duty when the student’s eligibility was initially determined, or was killed in the line of duty. The measure defines “confiscate” as seizing, transferring, or otherwise taking money from a scholarship account.
The resolution includes exceptions for closures of accounts tied to individualized findings of illegal activity or wrongdoing after due process. It also accounts for routine account closures, including voluntary closure or failure to renew an account, graduation from an eligible postsecondary institution, or loss of eligibility after a student fails to enroll in an eligible postsecondary institution for at least four consecutive years after graduating from high school.
HCR 2048 also states that if a bill enacted into law or a voter-approved measure on or after Nov. 1, 2026, violates the proposed constitutional provision, the entire bill or measure is void and a court may not sever any portion of it. The resolution directs the Secretary of State to submit the proposition to voters at the next general election.
The measure passed the Senate on June 12 by a 16-13-1 vote and passed the House on final reading June 13 by a 31-22-7 vote.
The Goldwater Institute described the measure as its “Military Family Protection Act” and said it is intended to protect military families participating in Arizona’s ESA program from future efforts to redirect or reclaim scholarship funds.
The Arizona Department of Education (AZED) currently lists 100,713 students enrolled in the ESA program this school year. The department’s Fiscal Year 2026 Quarter 1 report, covering July 1 through Sept. 30, 2025, counted 93,993 ESA students, including 975 students in the category for students whose parent is active-duty military or was killed in the line of duty.
Goldwater’s Director of Education Policy, Matt Beienburg, told lawmakers that military families should not lose scholarship funds through a separate ballot proposal aimed at the ESA program.
“There is a current ballot measure being proposed to attack the scholarship funds and confiscate the scholarship funds of children, including military families,” Beienburg said. “These families should not be treated as a piggy bank to raid. These are families who have protected this nation.”
Rep. Way said the measure is intended to prevent Arizona from reclaiming scholarship money after families were promised access to the program.
“This measure asks a very simple question: should Arizona be allowed to take scholarship money from military families after we promised them? My answer is no,” Way said.
The referral comes as opponents of the ESA program are circulating the Protect Education Act, a proposed ballot initiative that would impose new restrictions on the ESA program. The campaign says the measure would require background checks and safety standards for voucher-funded schools, add spending transparency rules, prohibit non-educational and luxury purchases, cap family income for ESA eligibility at $150,000 with annual inflation adjustments, require unused ESA funds to be returned, and require voucher-funded schools to be accredited or administer approved assessments. The campaign says students with disabilities would be exempt from the income cap and assessment provisions.
In an op-ed for AZ Free News, Matthew Ladner and Jason Bedrick of the Heritage Foundation wrote that AZED published the results of a random audit of the ESA program in March 2026, “finding very low rates of misspending relative to other publicly funded programs and even lower rates of fraud. Less than 2% of ESA funds were spent on unallowed items, and 0.3% of the funds were spent on items considered ‘egregious’ or fraudulent.”
AZED disputed claims that the ESA program had a 20% fraud rate in a March release, saying about 2.0% of dollars spent by ESA account holders were for items deemed unallowable under program rules and that actual fraud or egregious purchases accounted for 0.3%.
“The submission of a purchase that is deemed unallowable does not constitute fraud,” AZED said. “Most are innocent mistakes, such as an error in a form that must be resubmitted, or educational items that are not on the allowable list but that the user could have in good faith believed were permitted. Some examples would be backpacks, lunch boxes and water bottles.”
AZED said the 20% figure represented program participants selected for risk-based auditing and “had nothing to do with fraud.” The department said action is taken to recover or collect funds or refer matters to law enforcement when necessary, and that more than $1.2 million had been recovered through that process.
Opponents of HCR 2048 have argued that its voidability provision could invalidate ESA reform proposals if voters approve conflicting measures. ABC15 reported that critics said the measure is aimed at blocking the Protect Education Act, while supporters said it is intended to protect scholarship funds promised to military families.
HCR 2048 was one of three education-related ballot referrals approved before the Legislature adjourned. Senate Republicans said the measures were intended to protect military families, direct more education dollars into classrooms, and restrict the use of taxpayer-funded school resources for labor organization activities.
“These scholarship funds were created for helping the children of military families pursue higher education,” Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman David Farnsworth said. “When government faces budget pressures, dedicated funds can become tempting targets. Arizona should never balance its books on the backs of military families or treat money set aside for their children’s futures as a piggy bank.
“This referral permanently protects those funds and ensures they remain available for the students they were intended to serve.”
For months, we have documented the pattern of errors, distortions, and outright fabrications that characterize the coverage of Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Account program by Channel 12’s political reporter Craig Harris. Each new episode—the fabricated 20% fraud claim, the defiance in the face of correction by the Arizona Department of Education itself, the constant shifting of goalposts as each of his claims is debunked—seemed like it might result in Channel 12 taking appropriate corrective action.
But they never did.
Last week, at the Arizona Legislature’s final stretch of its 2026 session, the mask came off entirely.
While lawmakers debated a series of consequential ESA-related bills and resolutions on Thursday and Friday—including a constitutional amendment to protect military family scholarships—Harris was captured on camera doing something that no journalist who takes the job title seriously can explain away: coordinating, via text message, with members of Save Our Schools Arizona, the anti-school-choice advocacy group that is a principal sponsor of the Protect Education Now ballot initiative, about where they should position themselves inside the Capitol building for maximum political impact.
Text message conversation between Channel 12’s Craig Harris and anti-school choice activists.
Let that sink in. A reporter on the education beat, covering legislation in real time, was not observing the advocacy groups in the building. He was directing them.
The text exchange was visible on the screen of a Save Our Schools activist—readable thanks to a conspicuously large font and no privacy screen—and was flagged by our Heritage Foundation colleague Corey DeAngelis, who shared images of the messages on social media after receiving them from a local activist. Harris subsequently confirmed on X that the images of the group chat, named “ESA DDD Confidential 12News,” were real.
After Harris told the activist that he was in the state senate chamber as that is “where [the] bill will first get introduced,” Save Our Schools board member Kathy Boltz asked Harris for advice regarding where their team of activists should place themselves in the capitol building. “Should we be in the senate? Hmm,” she asked. Within a minute, Harris answered in the affirmative.
This is not ambiguous. This is not a misunderstanding. This is a journalist using his knowledge of the Arizona Legislature’s political process to provide tactical advice to an advocacy group that has a direct political stake in the legislation he is supposed to be covering neutrally.
Harris was no longer covering the news. He was helping to manufacture it.
But that wasn’t the worst of it.
The same captured text conversation revealed Harris mocking a local school choice supporter, asking whether the individual “stars in porn.”
This derision was not just a lapse in professionalism. This was contempt—contempt for the families, advocates, and ordinary citizens who show up at the Capitol to make the case for educational freedom, expressed in a private conversation with advocates on the other side of the issue.
Text message conversation between Channel 12’s Craig Harris and anti-school choice activists.
Multiple Arizona politicos were quick to call out the behavior publicly. State Senator Jake Hoffman called for Channel 12 to fire Harris and called on the station to “open an investigation into every story he was involved in and retract any instance of undisclosed coordination.” Hoffman observed that this coordination with activists is “precisely the kind of unethical behavior that has caused the majority of Americans to deeply distrust the media.”
Arizona Republic columnist and former State Senator Paul Boyer called it “a really bad look” for Channel 12 to have their reporter, “who is also reporting on these same groups” to be discovered “coordinating with them at the legislature to defeat the same type of legislation he’s myopically focused on.” Similarly, J.P. Twist, executive director of Citizens for Free Enterprise, called out Harris for “literally strategizing with a partisan union to undermine parents’ rights.”
The parent company of Channel 12 publishes a “Principles of Ethical Journalism” statement committing its journalists to the values of truth, independence, public interest, fair play, and integrity. It’s hard to see how coordinating with one group of political activists and crudely mocking the other side comports with those standards.
Sadly, Harris’s breach of journalistic ethics does not end there.
Later that night, in a hearing on legislation to protect military family scholarships, Harris took to social media to characterize two of the three supporting witnesses who testified as people “making money off ESAs,” implying their support was financially motivated rather than principled.
One of those witnesses was Kevin Biesty, spokesperson for the Arizona Christian Education Coalition. As Biesty detailed on X, he reached out to Harris privately and asked him to correct or remove the post. Harris declined. As Biesty observed, the logic Harris applied to him — that representing clients who are affected by ESA policy makes one a financially conflicted advocate — is never applied to the other side. The staff and lobbyists of Save Our Schools Arizona and the teachers unions, who are paid to oppose the ESA program, are never characterized by Harris as people “making money off” the issue.
Harris also claimed that no military family spoke at the hearing. That too was false. Biesty had personally presented a written statement from a military mother who could not remain for the late-night session, and referenced letters from other military families — all of this while Harris was in the room. At no point did Harris ask Biesty for that mother’s contact information or seek to include her perspective in his coverage. He was, however, apparently attentive enough to the gallery to communicate with his Save Our Schools contact — the same ESA mother and SOS board member who, Biesty observed, is never identified as such in Harris’s stories — while sitting at the press desk on the floor.
Indeed, when ESA students and their families share their stories, Harris is quick to dismiss them. Recently, a young ESA student with disabilities named Jordan Visser shared on video about the ways the Protect Education Now initiative would harm students like himself. Harris went on social media to dispute his account, claiming that the initiative would not affect students with special needs—effectively accusing a student with disabilities of lying about the impact of a ballot measure on his own situation.
He was wrong. As the student’s mother, Kathy Visser, and others documented, the text of the initiative itself bore out what the student had said—the ESA funds that the family had saved to continue providing him with services would be seized by the state if the Save Our Schools ballot initiative were adopted.
The irony of Harris’s posture—aggressively checking the credibility of a disabled student while coordinating inside the Capitol with the very advocacy group sponsoring the initiative in question—encapsulates the problem. It is not that Harris is a journalist who occasionally makes mistakes. It is that the mistakes run in one direction, consistently, and that when corrected, he doubles down rather than acknowledging any error. And it is now documented, on camera, that he was coordinating tactics with one side of the debate he was purportedly covering.
Arizona families with children in the ESA program deserve better than a reporter who coordinates with the opposition at the very hearings he is assigned to cover. Arizona viewers deserve better than a news organization that has allowed this pattern to continue unchecked. And the thousands of children—including those with disabilities—who rely on these scholarships deserve a press corps willing to represent their stories honestly.
Channel 12 has not issued a correction or a retraction of the false fraud statistics. It has not yet acknowledged Harris’s coordination with activists or the mockery of a school choice supporter.
Channel 12’s parent company should answer a simple question: Is the behavior documented at the Capitol last week consistent with its Principles of Ethical Journalism? If not, what will it do about it?
Jason Bedrick is a Senior Research Fellow and Matthew Ladner is aSenior Advisor for education policy implementation at The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Education Policy.
