The Department of Education (ED) announced a significant new investment in school choice.
On Monday, ED pledged “historic” investments into charter schools, American history and civics programs, Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), and Tribally Controlled Colleges and Universities (TCCUs).
The department repurposed funding from Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs to fund these investments.
ED Secretary Linda McMahon said the funds were reserved for programs “which support student success.”
“The Department has carefully scrutinized our federal grants, ensuring that taxpayers are not funding racially discriminatory programs but those programs which promote merit and excellence in education,” said McMahon. “The Trump Administration will use every available tool to meaningfully advance educational outcomes and ensure every American has the opportunity to succeed in life.”
ED also pledged over $160 million to the American History and Civics Education National Activities — Seminars for America’s Semiquincentennial program. 2026 will mark the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States of America.
ED will award American history and civics grants for seminars that “directly commemorate the 250th anniversary of the Founding of the United States.” Eligible seminar programming must make a feature study of American political tradition: the ideas, institutions, and texts instrumental to this nation’s constitutional government and history. The seminars must also be based on “the first principles of American founding.” Eligible seminars must include the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights.
$500 million in grants will be distributed to charter schools for the 2025 fiscal year. Another total of nearly $500 million collectively will be sent as one-time investments to HBCUs and TCCUs.
As justification for the reallocation of millions in government grants, ED cited the poor student outcomes exhibited by the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores released earlier this month. Student NAEP scores reached “historic lows” throughout K-12.
Nationally, average NAEP scores were lower across all three assessments: science at grade 8, mathematics at grade 12, and reading at grade 12.
Arizona students scored lower across the various subjects than the average national scores for both fourth and eighth graders. Fourth grade math scores averaged 232, compared to the national average of 237; fourth grade reading scores averaged 208, compared to the national average of 214; and fourth grade science scores averaged 149, compared to the national average of 153.
Eighth grade math scores averaged 270, compared to the national average of 272; eighth grade reading scores averaged 254, compared to the national average of 257; and eighth grade science scores averaged 148, compared to the national average of 153.
McMahon called the NAEP results “devastating,” and indicative of a trend of generations unprepared for adult life. McMahon questioned the spending of billions annually with such dismal results, and pledged to claw back some of those funds to invest in individual states and educational choice.
“At a critical juncture when students are about to graduate and enter the workforce, military, or higher education, nearly half of America’s high school seniors are testing at below basic levels in math and reading. Despite spending billions annually on numerous K-12 programs, the achievement gap is widening, and more high school seniors are performing below the basic benchmark in math and reading than ever before,” said McMahon. “If America is going to remain globally competitive, students must be able to read proficiently, think critically, and graduate equipped to solve complex problems. We owe it to them to do better.”
In May, ED pledged to increase charter school funding by $60 million for a program budget total of $500 million.
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Richie Taylor, Communications Director for Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, was called out on social media earlier this week. The Democrat staffer allegedly launched “vicious ad hominem attacks” against Jenny Clark, founder of Love Your School, a nonprofit that advocates for parental rights, school choice, and resources for Empowerment Scholarship Accounts (ESA) and special education students.
Clark sat on the State Board of Education, appointed by former Gov. Doug Ducey in 2022, as a public member known for her advocacy for ESAs and School Tuition Organizations (STOs), and for vocally opposing Governor Katie Hobbs on both topics. She was ousted from the role by Hobbs in March after her term expired.
Following an August 27th segment on KTAR’s Outspoken, which featured Clark, AZGOP Chairwoman Gina Swoboda, and KTAR Legal Analyst Barry Markson, a terse exchange between Taylor and Clark began.
More from ESA Debate on @OutspokenKTAR:@ClarkRimsza provides important context that more than 99.9% of ESA purchases are proper educational spending.@BarryMarkson1: I think 99% of the parents using the program probably are using it right. I absolutely agree with you! pic.twitter.com/zfpLMTfDlO
The disagreement appeared to arise when Taylor referred to Clark as a “grifter” and put her name in quotation marks, which led Clark to point out Taylor’s collaboration with her during his time as Communications Director for the Arizona Department of Education. She wrote, “Why is my name in quotes, Richie! How weird! Remember when you were at the AZ Dept. of Ed. and we partnered to get flyers out about the ESA program in 2021? Here’s a screenshot for reference! Feel free to keep attacking the Arizona ESA program – right into 2026, please!”
Why is my name in quotes, Richie! How weird! Remember when you were at the AZ Dept. of Ed. and we partnered to get flyers out about the ESA program in 2021?
The exchange escalated with Taylor posting, “lol indeed. You caught me acting in good faith. Wow impressive. Again, you had a dem superintendent wanting to work with you and you f***ed it over at every turn because it would have ruined your grift.”
Why is the Head of Communications for @AZAGMayes posting in my X account, totally unprovoked, and cussing me out?
We have had cordial exchanges before when he was at ADE and I worked to get flyers out for them on ESAs (which I shared in screenshots).
In response, Clark shared the post and asked: “Why is the Head of Communications for @AZAGMayes posting in my X account, totally unprovoked, and cussing me out? We have had cordial exchanges before when he was at ADE and I worked to get flyers out for them on ESAs (which I shared in screenshots). Inappropriate and odd.”
Responding to another now-deleted post, she asked, “Why is the Head of Communications for an elected Attorney General @AZAGMayes personally attacking a working mom, who started a non-profit on school choice, and is helping families? I mean, is this the type of class and leadership we have come to expect from democrats? Odd!”
She replied to the post, writing, “It’s such an abrupt and unprofessional personal attack. I’m not sure what prompted it! I’ve never had issues with @richietaylor before, all of a sudden today they’re attacking me personally on my X threads. It’s actually very concerning, on a few different privacy levels, too.”
Taylor then doubled down replying “Cry more and get used to it.”
In the most recent post in the social media clash, Clark shared a screenshot of the now-deleted post in which Taylor allegedly wrote to her, “lol. You make so much money off the program and you know it[.] Why don’t you tell people how much? And you also know you torpedoed any real reform because you were trying to get your preferred vendor the contract to manage it.”
According to ProPublica, citing public tax records, Clark drew a salary of $102,000 in her role as Executive Director of Love Your School. No public record of her applying for “preferred vendor status” was found in the State Board of Education’s available online records.
In her post, Clark wrote, “Update: the Head of Communications for @AZAGMayes, @richietaylor- has deleted posts against me which were extremely aggressive, untrue, unprovoked and vicious ad hominem attacks. I make policy arguments supported by available facts, they prefer to personally attack people.”
The legacy media seem to be on a mission: tear down Arizona’s groundbreaking school choice program with false accusations and inaccurate reporting.
Fortunately, facts don’t lie, even if the media does.
The Arizona Capitol Times declared this week in astonishing terms, “Education department under fire for approving $124M in improper ESA [education savings account] purchases.”
Such astronomical levels of fraud would seem to threaten the very foundations of the historic school choice revolution that has swept the nation. There was just one problem, the headline was completely false.
Not only were the supposed dollar amounts exaggerated up to 100 times greater than the amounts of improper spending actually reported by the department, but these purchases weren’t even approved in the first place.
Here’s the story the media won’t tell: Arizona’s 2022 adoption of a fully universal ESA program has been a nation-leading success, allowing parents across the state to give their children an education best suited to their needs.
To its credit, the Times quickly retracted its original headline and issued a formal correction admitting “an inaccurate dollar amount” in its first draft and eliminating the suggestion that the purchases were “approved.” Unfortunately, such journalistic ethics appear not to be shared by the Times’ more ideological media counterparts in Arizona, particularly those of the teachers’ union-aligned 12News team, who have resolutely declined to correct or retract their false reporting.
12News’ Craig Harris, for instance, has repeatedly and falsely declared that the state has “approved” ESA purchases for iPhones, televisions, and other non-educational items over the past year.
But all those purchases haven’t been approved, as the State Board of Education’s ESA Handbook—ratified by members appointed by both former Gov. Doug Ducey and Gov. Katie Hobbs—makes clear. The document expressly states that while families’ ESA purchases under $2,000 are promptly reimbursed by the state, these items “are not deemed ‘approved’ by the Department, until they are audited OR the timeframe to audit the orders has passed [2 fiscal years].” Just like their tax returns filed with the IRS, these families’ ESA purchases are processed up front and subject to enforcement afterwards.
Yet, 12News either knowingly misrepresented the status of these orders or else incompetently failed to perform basic due diligence to learn how the program operates.
By 12News’ anti-ESA logic, the IRS should apparently also withhold refunds to taxpayers until their tax returns have been audited potentially years later, rather than promptly when the returns are filed.
Unfortunately, this is not the first time that 12News’ anti-school choice reporters have been exposed in such light. In 2018, Harris (then with the Arizona Republic) falsely reported that Arizona charter schools produced worse student graduation rates and worse outcomes on the state A-F letter grade system than district schools. Both claims turned out to have been fabricated results stemming from a faulty, agenda-driven data analysis by Harris’ team.
In 2024, 12News’ Joe Dana likewise doubled down on false claims that ESAs cost state taxpayers more than the public school system per student by conveniently ignoring major sources of public school funding. The state’s Classroom Site Fund, for example, allocates over $1,000 for every public school student in the state and gives not a penny to ESA families.
Undeterred by journalistic standards, Dana’s 12News team also went further, deceptively extracting a fragment of a statement given by the state’s budget director (given in response to a completely different question) to suggest the ESA program had created unprecedented strain on the state budget.
The Heritage Foundation’s Matt Ladner and Jason Bedrick have already exposed a litany of deceptive claims flowing from outlets like 12News, while more prestigious national news organizations like The Washington Post have seen their recent anti-ESA narratives similarly debunked. Yet none of these outlets have expressed any contrition for their deceptive coverage.
Indeed, in perhaps the richest of ironies, Harris’ 12News team recently attacked ESAs for “hurting” high-performing schools like Arizona charter network BASIS by competing with it for students. Never mind that Harris previously attacked BASIS for its alleged poor stewardship of taxpayer funds. Now that it is clear he and the media were on the wrong side of that school choice debate as well, they have simply shifted to a new enemy in their war on parents.
Looking at the whole of Arizona’s education landscape, there is no question that those who seek to defraud the state—whether via the traditional public school system or its competitors—should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. But if there is a scandal in our education system, it is the dishonest reporting by journalists who are more disturbed by parental empowerment than by the tens of billions of dollars squandered year after year in chronically poor performing public schools.
Matt Beienburg is the Director of Education Policy at the Goldwater Institute.
The Common Sense Institute’s recent report, Echoes in the Halls: Arizona School Districts’ Growing Problem with Empty Buildings and Empty Buses (August 2025), quantifies a reality that many parents and educators in Arizona already sense: the traditional district school system is struggling to adapt to the new education marketplace. The report highlights a staggering mismatch between student enrollment and district assets. District schools across the state now operate with seventy-eight million square feet of unused space—capacity for more than six hundred thousand students who are not there—representing assets valued at more than twelve billion dollars. Since 2019, district enrollment has fallen by nearly fifty thousand students, while close to forty percent of incoming kindergarteners are now enrolling outside their local district.
The story of transportation is equally telling. Even as eligible bus ridership has dropped by forty-five percent, districts have added more than three thousand new vehicles, bringing annual transportation spending to more than half a billion dollars. At the same time, capital expenditures have surged by sixty-seven percent in just five years, reaching nearly nine billion dollars, with hundreds of new buildings added even as families continue to leave for other options. The evidence points to a system built on assumptions of perpetual growth, unable to pivot as students migrate toward charter schools, private schools, and homeschooling.
The question is not whether Arizona has too many empty classrooms and idle buses—the report makes that clear—but why the system finds it so difficult to adapt. The answer lies not in the commitment of teachers and administrators, but in the political structure that governs districts themselves. For more than a century, Arizona’s districts have operated under locally elected boards with broad political and taxing authority. This design once served an important democratic purpose, anchoring schools to their communities. But in an environment defined by choice and specialization, it has become a straitjacket.
What is clear for anyone with any visibility on the governance model districts operate within is that the political cycle ensures instability. Board turnover, electioneering, and the shifting priorities of competing constituencies disrupt long-term strategy. Every few years, districts are thrown off course by new agendas, new mandates, new programs, new superintendents, and a seemingly unending supply of divisive debates. In a consumer-driven education market, where parents prize clarity, stability, and quality, such volatility is profoundly counterproductive.
By contrast, Arizona’s most successful education providers—charter networks like Great Hearts and BASIS—operate under governance models insulated from political churn. Their boards are mission-driven and stable, enabling them to stay focused on long-term priorities and to deliver a coherent and trustworthy experience. Families know what to expect from a BASIS or a Great Hearts school. Each has built a distinctive value proposition and a consistent culture, refined over years without disruption from local political battles. Governance stability has been essential to their growth and attraction, and it is no accident that they are now among the most sought-after public schools in the state.
The one-size-fits-all assumption that once defined public education—that a child would simply attend the local district school—has evaporated. Today, nearly half of Arizona’s students are educated outside of their neighborhood district school. Parents are no longer defaulting to their assigned option; they are actively choosing models that align with their values and aspirations for their children. They want education providers that are both distinctive and stable—schools that can deliver excellence without being buffeted by every election cycle or politicized by the latest ideological controversy.
The traditional political governance of districts is increasingly out of sync with these expectations. It undermines the very qualities—consistency, coherence, and focus—that families prize. Meanwhile, two generations of charter operators in Arizona have demonstrated that nonprofit governance structures free from political cycles can create durable, attractive, and scalable school systems. These operators are not without challenges, but they have proven that clarity of mission and insulation from politics allow for the steady building of educational brands that families trust.
The lesson is plain: if Arizona’s districts are to thrive rather than decline, they must be unshackled from their archaic political governance model. Continuing to operate under structures designed for the early twentieth century ensures further erosion of parent confidence and continued inefficiencies in managing billions of dollars of underutilized assets. A new path is needed, one that allows districts to reimagine themselves as nonprofit education management organizations, brings simplicity and flexibility to sources and uses of capital, allows for the restructuring of real estate portfolios, and the establishment of governance models capable of long-term stewardship. It would mean shifting from political governance to mission-driven governance, from reactive cycles to strategic stability. Nothing about this would be easy. It will take a thoughtful integration of the tax and governance issues that are best considered by a new commission of governance transformation.
Such a transformation is not about abandoning public education but about liberating it. It would align districts with the same best practices that have made Arizona’s most successful charters so attractive to families. It would give teachers a more stable environment in which to do their work, free from the whiplash of shifting political priorities. It would give parents confidence that their schools are governed for the long-term benefit of students, not for short-term political gain. And it would give students schools that are full, focused, and flourishing, rather than echoing with the costs of inefficiency.
The Echoes in the Halls report demonstrates that Arizona has reached a tipping point. Families have embraced choice, and the state’s education landscape has been reshaped accordingly. What remains is for governance to catch up with this reality. The way forward is not to cling to political structures of the past, but to free districts from them so they can compete on the same terms as the schools parents are already choosing. Only then can the empty classrooms and idle buses be replaced with what every community wants most: the sound of students learning in schools built on mission, stability, and trust.
Erik Twist is the Principal Partner and President of Arcadia Education. He served as President of Great Hearts Arizona from 2017 to 2022.
Channel 12 continued its clumsy crusade against school choice this week with a breathless report about fraudsters abusing Empowerment Scholarship Accounts to buy diamond rings and necklaces, flights and hotel stays, and even lingerie.
It paints a picture of a program rife with abuse. But is it?
The Arizona Department of Education gave Channel 12 the records for more than 1.2 million ESA requests. Yet when askedrepeatedly what percentage of those requests were fraudulent, Channel 12’s reporter refused to comment.
Why? Because the truth undermines the anti-ESA narrative.
The salacious report is intended to persuade policymakers who support ESAs to impose regulations that would undermine the ESA program. It goes without saying that anyone engaged in fraud should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, and the Arizona Department of Education is appropriately cracking down on fraudsters. But before policymakers rush to amend the ESA program, they should know the context that Channel 12 left out.
ESA Misspending Is a Tiny Fraction of Total ESA Spending
The ESA program currently serves about 90,000 students at a projected cost of $882 million this year and $939 million next year, or about 6.7% of the $14 billion spent on Arizona’s district schools. Families can use ESAs to purchase a wide variety of educational expenses to customize their child’s education.
The typical ESA student receives about $7,500 per year, compared with more than $15,300 per pupil at Arizona’s district schools. Students with special needs—who account for more than 19% of ESA students, compared with 14% of district school students—can receive more funding, although the accounts are still worth 90% of what the state spends on similarly situated students at public schools. According to the Common Sense Institute, “a disproportionate share of middle-income households use an ESA.”
On Tuesday, the Arizona Department of Education revealed that their internal audit had turned up $622,000 in ESA funds that are “possible fraud or misuse.”
That’s less than one-tenth of 1% of total ESA spending.
Ignoring Mountains, Covering Molehills
Meanwhile, there are 30 school districts that the Arizona Auditor General currently deems to be non-compliant with state reporting requirements or that have internal control deficiencies. The total spending in those districts is more than $1.4 billion, more than the total spending of the ESA program. Yet aside from its coverage of the disastrous overspending in the Isaac Elementary School District, Channel 12 has barely covered it at all.
For that matter, Channel 12 has ignored the $7.8 billion that Arizona school districts are holding in cash reserves. That’s about $7,000 per pupil. The reserves have grown $2 billion in two years, yet Channel 12 doesn’t evince even the slightest curiosity about why.
Nor is anyone at Channel 12 interested in the $12 billion worth of unused and underutilized buildings that districts are sitting on, often just to prevent private or charter schools from buying them.
Channel 12 found space in the aforementioned ESA exposé to mention that a judge recently ruled that the state supposedly “isn’t properly funding capital needs for its public schools,” but the station had no space to mention that school districts are sitting on $20 billion in cash reserves and underutilized buildings.
Indeed, Channel 12 has barely covered any of these facts even as they pump out multiple anti-ESA stories each week, despite the fact that the ESA program is dwarfed by the spending at non-compliant districts, district school cash reserves, and underutilized buildings.
School-choice opponents and their media allies are hyper-focused on ESA misspending because they want to pressure lawmakers to undermine the program via regulation.
The Arizona Department of Education adopted its risk-based auditing strategy—automatically approving ESA spending requests below $2,000, then auditing accounts on the back end—because Superintendent Tom Horne’s previous “review every penny” approach was causing massive backlogs and delays in approving expense requests and reimbursements.
There were nearly 11,000 transactions in quarter 3 of this year alone. It’s impossible for the department’s staff to review each transaction in a timely manner, but parents trying to teach their kids can’t wait months just to buy a textbook or pay their child’s tutor or school.
To Horne’s credit, he listened to parents and made some incremental improvements that make it easier for parents to use the program. Now a tiny percentage of ESA holders are taking advantage of the looser rules, but they will be forced to pay the money back and could face prosecution.
The Arizona Department of Education has suspended 400 accounts due to improper spending —just 0.4% of the total accounts—and has referred some to the Attorney General for further investigation and prosecution.
Punishing fraudsters is necessary. Every government program is subject to some amount of fraud and abuse, and it’s incumbent upon public officials to implement rules that keep fraud as close to zero as possible. But it is not in the public interest to undermine a program’s effectiveness, especially when that program is helping kids get access to a better education and a brighter future.
School-choice opponents are using misspending as a pretext. If that was their real concern, they’d be raising alarms about all the waste, fraud, and abuse in the district school system. They’re not really concerned with stopping the 0.4% of ESA holders committing fraud, they just don’t want the program to work for 99+% of families just trying to do right by their kids.
Supporters of education freedom and opportunity should ignore the manufactured outrage and work to ensure that the ESA program works well for the families it serves.
Jason Bedrick is a Research Fellow at The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Education Policy.
