by Staff Reporter | Mar 16, 2026 | Education, News
By Staff Reporter |
The Arizona Department of Education (ADE) accused a major media outlet of misrepresenting the amount of fraud that occurs within the state’s school choice program.
Per ADE, 12News claimed the Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) Program had fraud totaling 20 percent. ADE said this figure was false, and that the true fraud rate sits at 0.3 percent.
The 20 percent claim originated from a risk-based audit — an audit of limited scope — which targeted specific higher-risk participants and accounts. It does not account for the entire ESA Program population, says ADE.
ADE presented the 0.3 percent figure from a study by Stanford PhD on a random sample to obtain a more accurate assessment of the entire ESA population. That study, which reviewed 3,000 random ESA orders between July 2025 and February 2026, also concluded that unallowable spending amounted to less than two percent of the total.
ADE Superintendent Tom Horne demanded 12News issue a retraction.
“A ridiculous figure of 20 percent fraud has been circulating concerning ESA purchases which resulted from a total misinterpretation of data provided to Channel 12. The 20 percent figure represented program participants that ADE had selected for risk-based auditing,” said Horne in a press release. “Continued use of the 20% fraud allegation is an outrageous misrepresentation to the public that must stop.”
By comparison, Horne noted, other government programs have higher rates of improper spending: Medicaid totals over seven percent, food stamps total over nine percent, and unemployment insurance totals over 14 percent.
Horne clarified that the unallowable purchases rate doesn’t constitute fraud necessarily. The superintendent said “most” of those purchases were confirmed as “innocent mistakes” such as improper form completions or viewing certain unpermitted educational items as permitted, like backpacks or lunch boxes.
Horne said ADE promptly recovers misspent funds, and has recovered over $1.2 million.
The disputed 20 percent figure was mentioned in multiple articles by 12News, including one of the latest pieces of coverage published on Wednesday.
“According to state records obtained by 12News Investigates, nearly 20% of ESA parents or at least 18,000 ESA account holders, have misused voucher funds,” read Wednesday’s article.
The original 20 percent figure by 12News stemmed from a report on public records reviewed by the outlet which estimated that misspending “could” amount to 20 percent of all purchases in the ESA Program. The report stated that over 18,600 out of the 102,000 ESA account holders had at least one unallowable purchase over the course of a year.
Horne said at the time that the percentage provided wasn’t totally representative of fraud; rather, the superintendent said “most of it” was attributable to mistakes by the parents.
While critics of the program highlight the millions ADE is forced to recover, mainly from misspending and marginally from fraud, supporters of the program highlight the millions saved by children entering the ESA Program rather than their designated public district school system.
Goldwater Institute director of education policy, Matt Beienburg, said in a press release that wrongful spending occurs just as much, if not more, in the public school district system.
“It’s also worth observing that just 52 cents of every dollar sent to Arizona district schools now makes it to classroom instruction according to the state auditor general,” said Beienburg. “Among the many uses of those funds outside the classroom: a $500,000 trip to Las Vegas by a school district that promptly cut bus services for students; a district spending $4,000 per person to send staff to Napa, California for a conference featuring wine tastings, a district spending $18,500 on ‘membership dues and for staff to attend golf tournaments,’ and more.”
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by Jason Bedrick | Mar 13, 2026 | Opinion
By Matthew Ladner & Jason Bedrick |
It is said that a lie travels halfway around the world before the truth can get its pants on. But when the truth finally catches up, it tends to arrive with receipts.
In recent weeks, anti-school-choice activists have accused Arizona’s popular Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) program of having a ludicrously high rate of misspending. That narrative, repeated endlessly despite being repeatedly debunked, has now collided with an inconvenient reality: the Arizona Department of Education’s own data tell a starkly different story, one that exposes the “unaccountable ESA” myth for what it always was: a misleading talking point masquerading as journalism.
On Thursday, the Arizona Department of Education published the results of a random audit of the ESA program, finding very low rates of misspending relative to other publicly funded programs and even less 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. The department is in the process of recouping those funds.
The department’s audit has punctured the gross distortions of Phoenix-based journalist Craig Harris of Channel 12, who had misrepresented the ESA program as being rife with fraud. The department called Harris’s claims “ridiculous,” “reckless,” and “a total misinterpretation of data provided by [the department] to Channel 12.”
Harris had claimed that 20% of ESA purchases represented misuse of funds based upon an examination of only a small portion of total ESA purchases—384,478 of the 1.8 million total ESA transactions since December 2024, approximately 20% of the total.
But it was not a random sample. The Arizona Department of Education had selected these purchases under a risk-based audit for additional scrutiny, so it was not a random sample that one could use to extrapolate rates of misuse in the ESA program. Instead, the risk-based pool was far more likely to contain misuse than the average purchase.
In other words, among the 20% of ESA purchases flagged for additional scrutiny, the department found 20% to be misspending. Harris, however, extrapolated the risk-based results on to the entire universe of ESA purchases. This represented a blatant distortion because the remaining purchases outside of the risk-based sample were far less likely to involve misspending.
Think of it this way: imagine that a reporter read a study showing that 20% of Americans were obese and that 20% of obese Americans had diabetes, then he ran a story claiming that 20% of all Americans had diabetes. Such a claim would be a complete distortion of the data, a conclusion that is entirely unsupported by the facts.
Harris was warned both publicly and privately that his “analysis” was deeply misleading. Nevertheless, he continued to repeat his “20% misuse” claim on television and social media.
The Arizona Department of Education decided to set the record straight by auditing a random sample of thousands of Arizona ESA purchases. The audit’s conclusion: “About 2% of purchases are unallowable expenses and only 0.3% represent fraud or egregious purchases.”
In short, Harris’s “analysis” on misspending was off by a factor of 10, and his accusations of fraud were off by nearly a factor of 100.
And although Harris made it seem like one in five ESA parents were buying diamond rings, the reality is that egregious purchases represented a vanishingly small percentage of ESA spending. Most of the unallowed items appear to have been innocent mistakes.
The Arizona Department of Education explained the difference between unallowable purchases and egregious purchases/fraud in a press release:
The submission of a purchase that is deemed unallowable does not constitute fraud. 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.
A ridiculous figure of 20% fraud has been circulating concerning ESA purchases which resulted from a total misinterpretation of data that we provided to Channel 12.
Cracking down on misspending is important, but so is keeping things in perspective. The rate of improper payments for the Arizona ESA program, at 1.9%, stands far below a variety of programs which ESA opponents support, such as Medicaid (7.4%), food stamps (9.3%), and unemployment insurance (14.4%). Moreover, the Arizona Department of Education actively recovers misspending, and refers serious cases for criminal prosecution to punish criminal activity and to deter fraud.
Indeed, the only reason we know about the miniscule level of unallowed purchases in the ESA program is because it is so transparent—far more transparent than district schools, which do not report transaction-level data to state officials, let alone the public. Given the rash of recent scandals in Arizona’s district school system, one can only imagine what we would find if given access to information about every purchase that district schools have made, as we have for the ESA program.
In the interests of transparency and accountability, state lawmakers should require the district schools provide the same level of information about purchases as ESA families.
Harris has not yet retracted his false reporting. Instead, he has doubled down on his errors, erroneously claiming that the department’s audit was “largely skewed” and based on “a miniscule sample.” This claim is particularly ironic given that Harris erroneously treated a risk-based sample—which is inherently skewed—as though it was representative of the entire population. A random sample, by contrast, is representative of the whole.
Facts are stubborn things. So too, apparently, are anti-school-choice activists who can’t let go of the false narrative they pushed in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
Matthew Ladner is a Senior Advisor for education policy implementation and Jason Bedrick is a Senior Research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Education Policy.
by Jason Bedrick | Feb 19, 2026 | Opinion
By Matthew Ladner & Jason Bedrick |
Emerson famously noted that “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” Opponents of Arizona’s school choice program seem determined to field legions of such monsters.
Exhibit A: the reporting of Craig Harris. Harris has over the years repeatedly filed anti-school choice stories which were riddled with errors. His latest salvo against Arizona’s popular Empowerment Scholarship Accounts (ESA) program is no exception.
In 2018 and 2019, Harris published articles in the Arizona Republic claiming charter schools underperformed district schools and faced mass closures, but both stories relied on flawed research—including counting schools that only went through 9th grade or had already closed as having 0% graduation rates and relying on “research” by anti-charter school activists that misunderstood basic accounting concepts.
More than six years later, the predicted mass closures have never materialized, and National Assessment of Educational Progress data actually showed Arizona charter students outscoring district peers by roughly two grade levels.
But Harris, unlike the students, doesn’t seem to have learned his lesson. These days he has fixated his efforts against Arizona’s ESA program—and the results are just as edifying.
With an ESA, parents can purchase a wide variety of educational goods and services using 90% of the state money that their child would have received at their local district school. The parent-managed accounts have state oversight to keep transactions focused on allowable education expenses. The program is wildly popular with Arizona families, with over 100,000 students participating.
However, the ESA program is not so popular with special interest groups tied to school districts and their allies in the press.
Now at Channel 12, Harris has produced misleading stories about Arizona’s ESA program, including claims that parents use accounts for “babysitting“—based on a since-corrected error by the Treasurer’s Office—and that families are “subsidizing vacations,” when in reality they’re purchasing tickets to museums, zoos, and aquariums, which are allowable educational expenses also used by public schools. The program uses risk-based auditing to detect fraud, the same widely accepted method used by the IRS and recommended by Arizona’s Auditor General.
In his latest salvo against ESAs, Harris has produced a so-called “analysis” claiming that 20% of ESA purchases constituted a misuse of funds—a huge jump from the less than 1% rate of misuse previously detected by the Arizona Auditor General.
Misuse of funds in publicly funded programs is a serious problem which the Arizona Department of Education has taken great pains to minimize in the ESA program. Harris, however, is once again playing games and tricks with the data.
First, Harris’s claim of that 20% misuse is based upon an examination only of a small portion of total ESA purchases—384,478 of the 1.8 million total ESA transactions since December 2024, or about 20% of the total. This smaller group of purchases had been selected by the Arizona Department of Education for additional scrutiny via risk-based auditing, so it’s not a random sample that one could use to extrapolate about rates of misuse in the ESA program generally.
In other words, among the 20% of ESA purchases flagged for additional scrutiny, 20% were found to be misspending. But 20% of 20% amounts to only 4% of total purchases. Harris’s claim that 20% of ESA purchases were misspending is a gross exaggeration.
In fact, even the supposed 4% misuse rate itself is an exaggeration, as it is 4% of total transactions, not 4% of total spending. The most recent data from the Arizona Department of Education show more than half of ESA funds are spent on private school tuition, so the rate of misspending is likely less than 2% of total spending—a rate of improper payments that is well below a variety of programs found in programs which ESA opponents support, such as Medicaid (7.4%), food stamps (9.3%), and unemployment insurance (14.4%).
Tears for Fears’s hit song “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” includes the line, “One headline—why believe it?” If the headline is followed by a Craig Harris byline, be very careful before you believe it as you are not getting the whole story—maybe even a false story.
Matthew Ladner is a Senior Advisor for education policy implementation and Jason Bedrick is a Research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Education Policy.
by AZ Free Enterprise Club | Feb 9, 2026 | Opinion
By the Arizona Free Enterprise Club |
Governor Katie Hobbs rolled out her budget last month and, unsurprisingly, it doesn’t add up.
Not only because her “solutions” don’t match the problems she claims to be solving, like suggesting we can make goods and services more affordable by piling on new taxes and fees, but because her budget quite literally just doesn’t add up.
While it’s become common for governors to release budgets built on rosier revenue assumptions than the Legislature’s more conservative Joint Legislative Budget Committee (JLBC), Hobbs’ proposal relies on projections so fanciful it resembles a fairy tale more than a fiscal plan.
Counting Chickens Before They Hatch
Hobbs’ budget is a $17.7B spending plan ($100M more than last year) that leaves a meager $37.8M balance at the end of FY27. That means her revenue projections leave very little room for error. Yet one of the more obvious facts about her budget is just how likely error-prone these projections are, a fact that Republicans during a joint appropriations hearing were sure to point out.
One of the most speculative assumptions Hobbs is making in her budget proposal is relying on $760 million of “reimbursements” from the federal government for expenditures the state has made for border security since 2021. That is a good chunk of change, and her budget is unworkable without it.
The problem is it is actually way more likely than not that even if the state receives something in the way of reimbursement, it will not be the full amount, and who knows on what timeline. Regardless, it is irresponsible to commit money out the front door that may never come in.
This is nothing new for Hobbs. Just last year she continued a COVID-era program that neither had legislative authorization to continue nor the ongoing financial allocations to support it. That wound up blowing a $122M fiscal hole in the previous year’s budget mid-session that Republicans had to mop up.
The Governor’s budget also depends on tapping the State Land trust for another $1.5 Billion. Setting aside whether its a good idea to raid the land trust set up for various beneficiaries (K-12, Universities, deaf and blind, etc), changing the formula for trust land distributions requires a constitutional amendment that would need to be approved by voters in November.
Hobbs’ “Affordability” Plan is Really a Chaotic Tax-And-Spend Plan
Hobbs wants to brand her budget as improving affordability, but it does just the opposite. Every idea in her plan is built around $1B in new taxes and fees and the hope that the bureaucracy can “manage” the cost of living while literally contributing to its inflation…
>>> CONTINUE READING >>>
by Staff Reporter | Jan 30, 2026 | Education, News
By Staff Reporter |
The Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) program grew to over 100,000 enrollments this week.
As of Monday, the Arizona Department of Education (AZED) reported the ESA program had nearly 100,500 enrollees.
Superintendent Tom Horne said in a statement on Tuesday that the milestone represented “a remarkable endorsement” of school choice by Arizona parents. Horne offered an example of a typical scenario in which a family enrolls in the ESA program.
“Consider a family with three children. Two of the children are doing just fine in district schools. The third child’s needs are not being met. Now, the parents can find another school that meets the child’s needs,” said Horne. “I do not understand how anyone can say parents do not have a right to find a school that meets their child’s needs, unless people are so immersed in ideology that they lose sight of what is best for students.”
When Horne took office in 2023, the ESA program had about 11,000 students. That represents an average annual growth of nearly 30,000 students in the program for the past three years.
The latest enrollment data from AZED (2024-2025) reported nearly 1.1 million students across K-12. That’s about nine percent of the total student population.
AZED also reported the recovery of nearly $1.2 million in unallowable expenses through collections, repayments, or legal authority referrals. The program requires parents to document all purchases made, and any impermissible purchases result in a freeze on their accounts.
Parents do have recourse if they believe a mistake was made in the rejection of their expenditures. Horne reminded parents in his Tuesday statement that they are free to appeal rulings; to date, AZED has not lost an appeal.
“Some people have questioned my authority to insist that expenditures only be for valid educational purposes. I am not the final word. Parents have a right to appeal denial to an administrative law judge,” said Horne. “There have been 20 such appeals, and my authority to deny the expenditure was involved in everyone. We have 20 wins and zero losses. Administrative law judges have held unanimously that I do have that authority.”
Horne’s fellow executive branch leaders have expressed dissatisfaction with the continued growth of the ESA program.
In her State of the State Address earlier this month, Gov. Katie Hobbs accused the program of widespread waste, fraud, and abuse — a money pit funding many things other than “true educational purposes.” Hobbs recently proposed an income cap on ESA enrollment: anyone making over $250,000 a year would not qualify.
Horne’s response was a defense of the ESA program as a clear desire of Arizona voters. The ESA program was universalized through legislation passed in 2022 under Hobbs’ Republican predecessor, Gov. Doug Ducey.
“Arizona parents have made it clear they believe in being able to choose the best education for their children, whether districts, charters or Empowerment Scholarship Accounts,” said Horne. “By their loud display today, Democrats proved they want to take that power away from mothers and fathers who know their children’s needs best and return education to a government monopoly that parents do not want.”
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