by AZ Free Enterprise Club | Mar 20, 2026 | Opinion
By the Arizona Free Enterprise Club |
Arizona’s legacy media is at it once again—going after our state’s highly popular Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) program, which now sits at over 100,000 enrollments.
Last month, activist reporter Craig Harris, from 12 News, pushed his latest “investigation” claiming that the ESA program had fraud totaling 20 percent. Certainly, if such a level of fraud is accurate, it deserves a full investigation. But it didn’t take long before the truth—and the real data—revealed itself.
According to the Arizona Department of Education (ADE), Harris’s 20 percent fraud claim originated from a risk-based audit, which was not only limited in scope, but also targeted higher-risk participants and accounts. But it did not account for the entire ESA program. Instead, the ADE referred to a study by a Stanford PhD that showed a more accurate assessment of fraud at 0.3 percent. That’s quite a gap between the 12 News report and reality. Perhaps Harris is getting math lessons from his buddies in the teachers’ unions who, as we know, have never exactly been good at counting.
As Harris continued to push his vendetta against school choice on social media this past weekend, he was completely ratioed for his debunked ESA fraud claims. And the best part? He was also unmasked as a partisan liberal with Red for Ed conflicts of interest and a history of publishing defamatory stories that are still being litigated…
>>> CONTINUE READING >>>
by Staff Reporter | Dec 11, 2025 | Education, News
By Staff Reporter |
The Arizona Board of Education (ASBE) removed language relating to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) from state teaching standards and English language learning courses.
This follows a delay in their decision on the matter several months ago.
State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne published a press release approving ASBE’s decision to go forward with removing DEI language from Arizona education.
Arizona’s federal funding for 2026 amounts to about $870 million; should Arizona schools not purge DEI, that federal funding may be refused, per the Trump administration.
Horne said the DEI divestment not only counted as compliance with President Donald Trump’s executive order conditioning federal funding on the absence of DEI, but as a philosophical good for students.
“All people should be judged based on their character and ability, not their race or ethnicity. DEI language and programs promote the exact opposite, and they have no place in the classroom,” said Horne. “These terms do not belong in teaching standards, which are meant to direct educators on the most effective ways to teach students’ core academics. Every instructional minute is precious, and DEI efforts distract from that essential mission.”
Multiple federal courts issued nationwide preliminary injunctions against the DEI ban earlier this year. However, the proceedings of those cases were impacted by the Supreme Court ruling in June through Trump v. CASA that declared these and other nationwide injunctions improperly exceed the authority of federal courts. The Supreme Court determined that lower courts must offer specific relief to the involved parties, and generally can’t issue nationwide injunctions to non-plaintiffs.
Following this decision by ASBE, a dedicated working group launching in February will draft materials purging DEI from the Arizona Professional Teaching Standards and Structured English Immersion (SEI) Endorsement Course Frameworks.
These materials will define DEI-related language in order to determine which language to remove or revise.
All 15 counties will have representation in this working group. There will be special considerations to include teacher representatives from General Education, Special Education, and the various teacher subgroups such as English Language Learning, Gifted, and Talented programs.
Stakeholder input will be collected from the three public universities, county education superintendents, school administrators, Arizona Rural Education Association, Arizona Educators Association, and current Structured English Immersion course providers.
ASBE is scheduled to consider these materials next September.
While the state’s top education authority supports these modifications, other stakeholder groups oppose them.
The Arizona Education Association (AEA) submitted a letter to ASBE urging rejection of the proposed changes. AEA leadership claimed over 22,000 educators statewide signed onto the letter in their press release. That’s roughly one-third of the teacher workforce in the state. However, the letter clarified that AEA counted mere membership with their organization as equivalent to all members signing on to their letter.
AEA President Marisol Garcia said without DEI Arizona education would cause a “race to the bottom” — vulnerable to constant changes and little of the continuity required for imparting a strong education — as well as a purging of history.
The other major teachers unions at the national level — the American Federation of Teachers and National Education Association, as well as the civil rights organization, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People — sued the Trump administration to stop the DEI ban.
AZ Free News is your #1 source for Arizona news and politics. You can send us news tips using this link.
by Staff Reporter | Nov 26, 2025 | Education, News
By Staff Reporter |
The nation’s biggest union overseeing educators is prioritizing trainings to advance LGBTQ+ justice and defeat white supremacy as student outcomes continue to decline.
The National Education Association (NEA) plans to train educators on these topics through the 2025-26 Focus Academy schedule. Affiliate staff and member teams attend these academies to develop and implement issue organizing campaigns, per the NEA.
The NEA will kick off the holiday season with a three-day training on “Advancing LGBTQ+ Justice and Transgender Advocacy” the week after Thanksgiving.
The training is exclusive to members and allies of the LGBTQ+ community. It seeks to harmonize the LGBTQ+ ideology and strategize to defeat other ideologies opposed to it:
“With partners from the Center for Racial Justice, members of the LGBTQ+ community, and other experts participants will learn how to: establish common understandings about the identities under the LGBTQ+ community umbrella; develop a shared understanding of the anti LGBTQ+ policy landscape and how to develop counter narratives of inclusion and equity; deepen skills and strategies to confront implicit bias, micro-aggressions and stereotypes in the LGBTQ+ community; [and] develop a toolset of tactics for dismantling systems of privilege and oppression as it relates to LGBTQ+ educators and students.”
Within this academy, educators are trained on defaulting to the pluralization of genders, using pronouns, transitioning genders, and implementing the Gender Unicorn.
Then, to kick off the New Year, the NEA will train educators on “address[ing] white supremacy culture.” The NEA emphasized a need for individuals “highly skilled” in handling “white fragility and interpersonal oppressions.” Leaked materials show a term that seems to have fallen out of the wayside in public commentary: Critical Race Theory (CRT).
“Recently, [Republicans] have paired these attacks with fear-mongering about Critical Race Theory, mobilizing their base with a potent mix of racist and transphobic tropes,” stated the training materials.
This focus academy training will have educators complete a campaign plan that details what racial justice looks like:
“Participants will learn how to help themselves and others: establish a common language for talking explicitly about white supremacy culture in a campaign cycle; deepen skills and strategies to confront implicit bias, microaggressions, and stereotypes; develop a shared understanding of the levels of racism with a focus on a power analysis required to make changes at various levels; [and] develop a toolset for dismantling systems of privilege and oppression.”
Defending Education published leaked materials from these academies. Per these materials, NEA leadership harmonizes and equates the issues facing the advancement of LGBTQ+ ideology and Critical Race Theory.
The materials show that the NEA blamed the lack of public support on transgenderism for minors on the political right having “exploited” general ignorance of LGBTQ+ ideology.
“Over the last ten years, Republicans in state legislatures have increasingly turned to anti-transgender rhetoric and legislation as a powerful complement to their arsenal of racist dog whistles used to whip up fear and consolidate power,” said the materials.
The latest Nation’s Report Card by the National Assessment of Educational Progress yielded additional declines in scores across the board for math, reading, and science.
AZ Free News is your #1 source for Arizona news and politics. You can send us news tips using this link.
by AZ Free Enterprise Club | Oct 18, 2025 | Opinion
By the Arizona Free Enterprise Club |
Ever since Arizona passed universal school choice, the Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) program has been the target of the Red for Ed teachers’ union, Democrat lawmakers and their corporate media allies. They demand transparency and accountability for alleged abuse of ESA dollars—all while scandal after scandal continues to pop up in our state’s K-12 public schools.
We saw it at the beginning of the year when the Isaac Elementary School District (IESD) was placed under a state receivership after it was determined that it had a budget shortfall of over $12 million! And this wasn’t a surprise. The Auditor General had been sounding the alarm on IESD’s mismanagement of funds for five years!
But where was the corporate media? Where was the digging? Where was the series of articles and threads on X exposing the corruption?
We got none of it. Instead, we have certain Red For Ed reporters, like Craig Harris, attacking Arizona’s popular ESA program with liberal talking points about unspent funds and alleged waste and abuse.
But if the failures of IESD weren’t enough, now we have the sordid financial tale of Tolleson Union High School District, a story so scandalous that it should make every taxpayer’s blood boil…
>>> CONTINUE READING >>>
by AZ Free Enterprise Club | Mar 28, 2025 | Opinion
By the Arizona Free Enterprise Club |
Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs and the Radical Left have made it clear that they want to dismantle school choice in our state. Despite getting trounced in November’s election where teachers’ unions and other anti-school choice groups made it a referendum on educational freedom, Hobbs has doubled down on her same tired and out-of-touch efforts since the start of this year.
Once again, it hasn’t worked. Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) program continues to grow—with enrollment now over 87,000 students. So, Hobbs and her buddies in the teachers’ unions have resorted to employing one of their favorite tricks: relying on activist reporters in the corporate media to give their anti-school choice messaging an extra boost.
In early March, a coordinated attack was launched against Primavera, an online charter school serving thousands of K-12 students across the state. It began with a story from Craig Harris, a Red4ED activist that calls himself a reporter, who claimed that Primavera received a ‘D’ letter grade from the Arizona Department of Education for the past three years. According to the report, the school failed to meet the minimum academic requirements for a traditional charter school. Harris’ column then went on to complain about the owner of Primavera and how much money he has made while operating the school.
After the story was published, the Arizona Charter School Board convened a hearing to review the allegations against Primavera. In a span of just a few hours, the board imposed the most severe punishment at their disposal, revoking the schools’ charter and setting them up for eventual closure. In effect, Primavera was given the charter school death penalty after one meeting.
On the surface, this might make sense. After all, if a school is failing its students, it deserves proper accountability. But as so often happens with today’s corporate media, an important fact was omitted from this manufactured takedown…
>>> CONTINUE READING >>>
