Empowering Parents in Arizona

During National School Choice Week, we celebrate the policies that enable families to choose the learning environments that align with their values and work best for their children. School choice policies recognize that parents—the people who know their children best and love them most—are in the best position to decide where and how children are educated. Whereas bureaucrats and politicians tend to focus narrowly on test scores, parents take a more holistic approach to education. Parents are looking for schools that take moral instruction and character development seriously—schools that not only produce good workers, but that produce good citizens, good neighbors, and good people. That’s why many families want faith-based instruction to be the heart of their child’s education.

Arizona has long been at the forefront of empowering families with education choice. In 1997, Arizona became the first state to offer tax-credit scholarships, and in 2011 it became the first state to offer K–12 education savings accounts (ESAs). With an ESA, families have the freedom and flexibility to customize their child’s education. Families can use ESA funds on private school tuition, tutoring, textbooks, homeschool curricula, online learning, and more. In 2021, Arizona expanded eligibility for the ESA to all K–12 students, leading a universal education choice revolution nationwide and earning it the top spot for education choice in The Heritage Foundation’s Education Freedom Report Card two years in a row. In “Making the Grade,” we profile four faith-based schools in Arizona to see the difference that education choice policies make for the families they serve.

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