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School Choice in Arizona: A Review of Existing Programs and a Road Map for Future Reforms
Goldwater Institute Policy Report
Tuesday, March 04, 2008
By Dr. Matthew Ladner
Goldwater InstituteEXECUTIVE SUMMARY
In 1994, Arizona lawmakers took the first steps toward parental choice in education through the open-enrollment and charter school laws. Later, lawmakers added reforms such as scholarship tax credits (1997 and 2006) and limited vouchers (2006). With 13 years of experience in school choice experiments, the time has come for Arizona to take stock of the past and make plans for the future. This paper examines the progress of the existing Arizona school choice programs and makes recommendations for their improvement and expansion.
Research from Harvard, UCLA, and other institutions has shown that Arizona’s choice programs have improved public school performance and led to faster learning gains for students exercising choice.
Research also shows that choice programs are not plagued by some of the pitfalls critics feared. For instance, data show that parents are not motivated by segregationist impulses in choosing schools outside of their assigned public schools. Rather, parents choose schools with higher test scores.
Despite the promise of school choice, the pace of charter school openings has stalled in recent years, largely because of problems with the charter school authorization process. Allowing universities to authorize charter schools should help to expand the charter school market.
Likewise, Arizona’s existing school choice programs are too small to create a widespread system of competition for students. Arizona’s scholarship tax credit is limited, raising less revenue than would cover half of a single medium-sized school district’s operating expenses. Enrollment growth in the public schools has far outpaced the creation of new parental options. Some abysmally performing Arizona districts, for example, have more students today than before the school choice implementation in 1994.
Parents and students have benefited from Arizona’s positive, but limited, school choice programs. To fully enjoy the benefits of parental choice, lawmakers should create a personal use tax credit. Coupled with means-testing of the original scholarship credit, such a tax credit would create a universal system of school choice.
Read School Choice in Arizona: A Review of Existing Programs and a Road Map for Future Reforms here.
Dr. Matthew Ladner is vice president of research for the Goldwater Institute. Prior to joining Goldwater, Ladner was director of state projects at the Alliance for School Choice, where he provided support and resources for state-based school choice efforts. Ladner has written numerous studies on school choice, charter schools and special education reform. Ladner is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin and received both a Masters and a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Houston. Ladner previously served as director of the Center for Economic Prosperity at the Goldwater Institute and as vice president of policy and communications at Children First America.
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