Veila Aquirre and Rosemary McAtee are homeschooling moms in Arizona dedicated to giving their children the best, most individualized education needed. Their jobs are not easy — teaching children at different grade levels all they need to be successful in life. But now a new attack on the state’s school choice funding program is making it even more difficult.
For years, Arizona’s education savings account program has empowered Aquirre and McAtee to use a portion of their children’s allotted state education funding for homeschooling materials such as pencils, reading books, periodic tables, and flashcards. However, in 2024, Attorney General Kris Mayes issued a new directive based on a faulty interpretation of the law that requires material purchased with ESAs to be explicitly requested in a curriculum. In other words, if a homeschooling parent’s math curriculum doesn’t specifically call for notebooks, then ESA money can’t be used to buy them.
Applying the new interpretation of the law is cumbersome work for parents, who must find — or write — curriculum to justify the use of basic materials like pencils and erasers, or classic books like “Brown Bear, Brown Bear” for new readers
“No other teacher in the state has to provide curriculum for purchasing things [like pencils and erasers] for their classroom,” Aquirre explained.
Additionally, the directive violates the state Department of Education’s own handbook, which states ESA reimbursement documentation is required for unusual purchases but not for “common-sense purchases of items that are ‘generally known to be educational.’”
What’s happening in Arizona is not unique to school choice funding programs, either.
“A lot of the reason why programs have been structured the way that they have is because of fear of waste, fraud, and abuse,” explained Katherine Bathgate, CEO of SchoolForward, a policy-driven communications and advocacy firm that advances school choice and education reform. “It’s a fair concern,” she elaborated, “but we have two choices for how to deal with it.”
The first is to legislate and regulate to control for that — which is essentially the approach the new Arizona directive from Mayes is signaling. It requires that every purchase be explicitly reviewed before the parent can make the purchase. The other approach is to figure out how to incentivize families employing ESAs and school choice funding programs to make good decisions while still protecting their freedom. This would involve enforcements like audits and holding individuals accountable for abuse of funds.
“The way we set up these programs, we treat parents guilty until proven innocent,” Bathgate said. “We make it so they have to essentially ask permission from the state to educate their kids the way they believe is best.”
Creating consumer-friendly school choice funding programs
Can parents be trusted with their child’s education?
That’s the question at the heart of the discussion surrounding school choice funding initiatives like ESAs. How school choice funding programs are designed communicates an answer to that question.
“Parents know their children better than anyone else,” said Jenny Clark, CEO of Love Your School, an organization that gives one-on-one support to families navigating school choice options in their state. “Statutes for school choice funding programs should allow families to purchase any curriculum, or supplementary items that go along with curriculum, and utilize their scholarship for tutors, extracurriculars, and other education innovations like online programs, without a gatekeeping mechanism that requires a constant ‘Mother May I’ attitude.”
To that end, here are some suggestions for policymakers and influencers looking to shape school choice funding programs without gatekeeping:
1. Give families direct access to funds
The first way states can show trust in parents is by giving them direct access to their school choice funds. This can be done through mechanisms like debit cards, as Arizona currently allows for families with ESAs who joined before 2022; or direct deposit into parent-controlled ESAs administered through a bank, like West Virginia’s Hope Scholarship.
“As an ESA parent with five kids who joined prior to 2022, our family still has a debit card for each child, which we use to access our funds, and we have for nearly seven years,” explained Clark. “The ease in which we can use our scholarship is far greater than so many other families who joined after 2022.”
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2. Adopt risk-based auditing policies
Risk-based auditing is an approach to reimbursements that allows for certain expenses to be reimbursed immediately and then verified, rather than forcing families to wait for approval before getting their expenses reimbursed.
For example, in Arizona, expenses under $2,000 can be immediately reimbursed. Documentation still needs to be submitted for verification of proper use of funds, but families, especially those with tighter budgets, can focus on education instead of worrying about financial strain.
“By shifting to risk-based auditing, it is easier for lower-income families and families with children with special needs to fully participate in an ESA program,” explained Clark.
Audits can also serve as an accountability mechanism. Instead of creating the tedious administrative burden where families ask for approval to spend money, with audits, families will know that they could be asked to give receipts and explanations for how they used their funding.
3. Create a free market for vendor management and marketplaces for goods
To prevent misuse of funds and create better oversight, many states have employed one vendor to distribute the money. Many have also set up digital marketplaces where families are encouraged to buy their materials and supplies.
Problems with this single-stream approach include: system overload that leads to poor customer service and long wait times for reimbursements, transaction fees that wouldn’t exist if a family purchased outside the marketplace, and costs for supplies that are higher in the marketplace than in a traditional store.
“Allowing multiple vendors would introduce competition into the system. Instead of one single vendor working for the state, these vendors would compete for families, which would drive down costs and improve customer service,” explained Bathgate.
Families would be able to pick the vendor that meets their needs best, and vendors would be motivated to provide the best experience for families.
4. Reduce barriers to entry for families
Some states require students to be enrolled in school or be a resident of the state for a specific number of days before applying for and receiving school choice funding. Some states have income requirements for eligibility. Some states only offer funding for students in certain districts. Many programs are for specific populations, like students with special needs.
These sorts of criteria make it more difficult for all families to give their children the best education for them. The ideal school choice funding program does not have these sorts of barriers but instead is universal, meaning that all students in the state are eligible.
“For example, Arizona used to have a 100-school-day requirement before families could access an ESA,” Clark said. “It was particularly burdensome to special needs children and families who moved to Arizona. Prior to its removal, it was the No. 1 barrier for special needs families.”
Trusting families with educational funding is not just a policy decision; it is a statement of confidence in their ability and right to educate their children. By crafting programs that prioritize accessibility, efficiency, and trust, we send a clear message: Parents are the best stewards of their child’s future.
Love Your School and SchoolForward are supported by Stand Together Trust, which provides funding and strategic capabilities to innovators, scholars, and social entrepreneurs to develop new and better ways to tackle America’s biggest problems.
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