One state’s budget dispels big lie about school choice

Arizona is proving anti-school choice scaremongers wrong. It turns out educational freedom doesn't bust the budget, it improves it because students get thousands of dollars less.

Fortunately, Arizona’s Republican-controlled legislature knows better. The typical ESA student receives about $7,500 annually from Arizona taxpayers, compared to the more than $12,000 per pupil that Arizonans give public schools through their state and local taxes alone.     Jason Bedrick is a research fellow in the Center for Education Policy at The Heritage Foundation. 

Over the past three years, Republican lawmakers in a dozen states have made all or nearly all K­­–12 students eligible for school choice. More red states, most notably Texas, appear ready to join them. To halt this progress, opponents of school choice have settled on a message intended to give conservatives pause: that school choice supposedly is a budget buster.