Latest news with #EmpowermentScholarshipAccount
Axios
20 hours ago
- Politics
- Axios
New federal voucher law could add to Arizona school choice programs
Arizona, home to some of the nation's broadest school choice systems, could see even more through a new federal program created this month as part of President Trump's "big beautiful bill," if the state chooses to opt in. Why it matters: The law creates the first federal school voucher program, known as Qualified Elementary and Secondary Education Scholarships. How it works: People can contribute up to $1,700 annually to a scholarship-granting organization (SGO) and receive a dollar-for-dollar federal tax credit in return. Those organizations use the money to award scholarships for expenses like private school tuition, books, equipment, tutoring and other services. Eligibility is limited to students whose families earn up to 300% of the area median income. Zoom in: The program bears resemblances to two school choice programs in Arizona. Under the tuition tax credit program, people can contribute money to School Tuition Organizations (STO) to provide scholarships for private school tuition. The Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) program gives funding, which can be used for tuition, equipment, tutoring and other educational expenses, to students who aren't enrolled in public schools. Between the lines: The American Federation for Children (AFC), a national school choice advocacy group, touted that in states with preexisting private school choice options, federal scholarships "can be stacked … increasing purchasing power for parents and helping more students." State law prohibits students from using ESAs and STO money concurrently. Yes, but: It's unclear whether the federal program will be available to Arizona students, given a provision that requires states to opt in. The law requires states to annually provide the feds a list of qualified SGOs. Those decisions will be left to the governor or whichever "individual, agency or entity" state law designates to make determinations regarding federal tax benefits. In Arizona, the Department of Revenue would likely decide, leaving it to the governor's administration, Arizona Department of Education spokesperson Doug Nick told Axios. The intrigue: A spokesperson for Gov. Katie Hobbs did not respond to Axios' questions about whether Arizona would opt into the program. Hobbs has been a vocal critic of ESA program, which she and other Democrats argue siphon money from public schools and are unaccountable to taxpayers. What's next: The federal program doesn't go into effect until 2027. The fine print: Unlike ESAs, federal vouchers have income-based restrictions, so not all Arizona recipients would be eligible for both. What they're saying: "For a generation, our movement has fought to give all families, especially lower-income families, the freedom to choose the best K-12 education … and now President Trump has signed into law the single biggest advancement of that goal," AFC CEO Tommy Schultz said in a statement on the group's website.
Axios
28-05-2025
- Politics
- Axios
Yee challenges Horne in GOP primary for state superintendent
State Treasurer Kimberly Yee is taking on state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne in the Republican primary, challenging him from the right over Arizona's school choice system. State of play: Yee, who is termed out, will attempt to wrest the GOP nomination from Horne as he seeks reelection. She announced her candidacy from the state Capitol Wednesday, touting her career-long dedication to education issues and pledging to "build a stronger and higher-achieving school system." Yee criticized Horne for what she called "government overreach" in his administration of the voucher-style Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) program and argued that he's exceeded his legal authority in imposing restrictions on it. She also dismissed the types of excesses by some ESA parents that critics focus on as a minute fraction of a percentage of the total program. Background: Yee chaired the Senate Education Committee and focused on education issues during her 2010-2018 legislative career, as a legislative staffer and as an aide to former California Govs. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Pete Wilson. The intrigue: State Sen. Jake Hoffman (R-Queen Creek), who leads the far-right Arizona Freedom Caucus, told reporters last month he wanted to find a GOP primary challenger for Horne, whom he called "the single greatest threat" to the ESA program. Hoffman is backing a slate of candidates for statewide offices and introduced Yee at Wednesday's press conference. Yee said parents in the school choice community had been asking her to run for superintendent well before Hoffman's recruitment efforts. Between the lines: The superintendent proposes changes to the handbook that governs the ESA program. Horne's Arizona Department of Education in March proposed changes to require a curriculum for supplemental materials; impose spending caps for expenses like computers, musical instruments and home economics appliances; and ban expenses like smartwatches, multi-person kayaks, Amazon Prime fees and certain appliances like espresso machines and freeze-dryers. The State Board of Education postponed a vote on the new handbook after about three dozen ESA parents spoke out against the changes. Horne last month asked the board to again push back the vote, saying he wanted to meet with state lawmakers who had voiced concerns to him. The other side: Horne, a longtime school choice advocate who previously served as superintendent from 2008-2011, said in a press statement Wednesday that the state education department is strongly in favor of parental choice and ESAs. But he rejected the notion that the program should be unrestricted, pointing to expenditures he's rejected like a $5,000 Rolex watch, a $24,000 golf simulator and a vasectomy testing kit. If the department approved such expenditures, it would provoke a negative public reaction and threaten the program's survivability, he said. Horne added he has a duty to responsibly manage taxpayer funds, which includes limiting ESA expenses to reasonable educational purposes.
Yahoo
09-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Lawmakers take a 2-week break. Arizona does a happy dance
So, after four months of arduous work, the Arizona Legislature is taking a break. It seems the beach is calling, and they must answer. The House is taking two weeks off, returning on May 20. The Senate will return on May 27. This is, of course, an outrage. An affront to every hardworking Arizonan — the people who work five, six or even seven days a week just to get by. People who, I'm confident that when told their leaders taking a few weeks off, will rise up with one voice and ask: What will it take to get them to stay away? It's not like this Legislature has accomplished much, other than beating up on Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs virtually every day and patting themselves on the back for passing bills that will go nowhere. And, oh yeah, scheming to cut care for disabled children and trampling the constitutional rights of Scottsdale voters. Protecting the state's water supply? Nope. Passing a plan to boost the supply of houses people can afford to buy without selling all their internal organs? Uh-uh. Demanding better oversight of the state's runaway Empowerment Scholarship Account program? Be serious. Proposing a workable plan to ask voters for an extension of the Proposition 123 education funding that runs dry on June 30? They've hinted about holding hostage that $300 million in public school funding unless voters agree to a constitutional guarantee for ESAs. Yeah, no. After all that statesmanship, it seems our leaders are just too exhausted to stick around and do the one thing they actually are required to do. To pass a balanced budget, that is. Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs proposed her 2025-2026 budget on Jan. 17. Republican legislators? Nope. Opinion: What does Hobbs have against transparency? Once upon a time, the Legislature proposed a budget then held detailed hearings, allowing the public a voice in how our money is spent. Sure, was a time suck, but it was also good governance. These days, a few legislative leaders knock out a plan in private, then present it to the governor. By the time it gets to rank-and-file legislators, it's basically take it or leave it, and you have three minutes to decide. The public, meanwhile, has no role. So, now our exhausted leaders are headed off to vacay and other than the Governor's Office, which called the late-session vacation 'shameful,' I'm wondering … Will anybody even notice that they're gone? Reach Roberts at Follow her on X (formerly Twitter) at @LaurieRobertsaz, on Threads at @LaurieRobertsaz and on BlueSky at @ Like this column? Get more opinions in your email inbox by signing up for our free opinions newsletter, which publishes Monday through Friday. This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Arizona Legislature goes on vacation? That's ... fantastic! | Opinion
Yahoo
09-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Five Years Later: How COVID Triggered a School Choice Renaissance
In August 2022, visitors to the Arizona Department of Education webpage were greeted by an unusual message: Due to a 'high volume' of users, the note read, they might have trouble applying to participate in the state's Empowerment Scholarship Account program. It was the second such IT mishap of the year, following an episode in which a crush of parents temporarily overwhelmed the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction's site that winter. Libertarian activist Corey DeAngelis, then rising to fame as an arch critic of teachers' unions and Democratic politicians, said the trend convinced him that the experience of virtual learning had ignited in families a desperate hunger for more educational options. Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter 'I'd been chugging away at this before COVID, but it really took off when we were getting into debates about reopening schools,' he recalled. Five years after the onset of the pandemic, DeAngelis is one of the leading voices in an education world turned upside down by its effects. After a generation at the center of both federal and state policy, bipartisan reforms like charter schools and test-based accountability have receded from the spotlight; at the same time, billions of dollars were devoted to private initiatives that previously won few headlines and scant financial support. Since 2020, over 20 states have either enacted or expanded some form of private school choice, and 13 extend eligibility to all families within their borders. Over 1 million children now access those offerings, according to the advocacy group EdChoice, and over 20 million are eligible to do so. And just since the beginning of 2025, nearly 100 bills have been filed that would push the needle further, potentially allowing even more resources and greater flexibility for families in states like Texas, Florida, and Ohio. Related Patrick Wolf, a political scientist at the University of Arkansas who has studied voucher-like systems for decades, contrasted their fast spread over the last few years with the halting progress seen in the 2000s and 2010s. In particular, he said, education savings accounts (ESAs) stand out as having 'found their moment.' 'It's been amazing to see from a movement that had kind of plateaued and seemed stagnant just prior to COVID,' remarked Wolf, who has energetically argued for the benefits of choice. 'Now it's dynamic like crazy, with all kinds of variations and evolutions that we didn't anticipate even six or seven years ago.' When we leaned too heavily on lefty messaging on school choice, it didn't do much to convince Democrats to come along. But it might have alienated some of the more conservative or even moderate Republicans. Corey DeAngelis, private school choice activist The leap forward was made possible by a pronounced shift in perceptions of schools, especially among Republicans. The structure of the ESA, a lightly regulated grant placed directly in the hands of parents, proved both politically attractive and legally viable in ways that earlier voucher schemes were not. Spurred by competitive pressures among red-state lawmakers — and accelerated by a political strategy relying on Republican legislative majorities, rather than the assent of voters — the new benefits took hold quickly. No less pivotal was the adoption of school choice as what DeAngelis called a 'litmus test issue' for conservatives, who proved comfortable jettisoning Republican legislators standing in their way. Household names on the right, including Donald Trump and Betsy DeVos, have personally intervened in state-level fights, while figures like Christopher Rufo national profiles by directly confronting social controversies in the classroom. The resulting fights have often taken a vituperative tone uncommon to discussions of K–12 schools. Jon Valant, director of the Brown Center on Education Policy at the left-leaning Brookings Institution, said he believed school choice proponents had broken through by yoking their vision of an open education marketplace to the ascent of culture warriors like Rufo and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. 'Those two groups came together in a marriage of convenience, and you saw the push for ESAs ride the wave of frustration that was building,' Valant said. 'That frustration became political fuel in a lot of red states.' Accounts differ on the extent of public anger arising from the long era of school closures, quarantines, and mask mandates. But for many, COVID led to a serious reappraisal of the state of public education. It's been amazing to see from a movement that had kind of plateaued and seemed stagnant just prior to COVID. Now it's dynamic like crazy. Patrick Wolf, University of Arkansas According to the polling organization Gallup, 70 percent of parents said they were either completely or somewhat satisfied with the education their kids received in 2024 — down 10 points over the past two years, but still well above the figure for Americans as a whole. Among that larger group, the proportion dissatisfied with the quality of American education crested at 63 percent in 2023 and remained at 55 percent last year, compared with just 43 percent of survey respondents who said they were satisfied. Beneath the overall numbers is a gaping ideological divide. Virtually identical numbers of Democrats and Republicans said they had 'a great deal' or 'quite a bit' of confidence in U.S. schools in 2019 (30 percent of Democrats vs. 28 percent of Republicans), but a pandemic-era divergence exploded the very next year. By 2023, 43 percent of Democrats said they were mostly confident in schools; an extraordinary 9 percent of Republicans agreed. What's more, even while families approved of the performance of their local schools, the impact of the pandemic led thousands to pull their children out of them. Related A 2021 study by Stanford economist Thomas Dee found that traditional public institutions lost 1.1 million students in the fall of 2020, largely driven by a substantial departure of kindergarteners and elementary schoolers. The decline was 40 percent higher in districts that provided only remote instruction at the beginning of that academic year. A separate analysis from the conservative American Enterprise Institute found larger, more sustained enrollment drops between 2020 and 2022 in districts that kept schools closed longer and enforced mask mandates when students returned to campus. Martin Lueken, a researcher at EdChoice, said that prolonged closures both revealed and amplified the existing demand for private school alternatives. Although the process of building momentum for private choice initiatives was 'slow' in the years before the pandemic, he added, the massive disruptions to school routines acted as a powerful accelerant. 'There has always been a recognition that in order for these programs to be implemented, you need to build a broad constituency for them,' Lueken said. 'You never want to let a crisis go to waste, and COVID really shrunk the timeline for this to happen.' As parents became increasingly willing to leave their traditional school systems, politicians were converging on a vehicle to facilitate their exit: the education savings account. ESAs were first introduced in Arizona in 2011 as a resource for parents of students with disabilities. The scope of the proposal was limited, with only 17,000 children eligible to participate in the first year. Compared with other K–12 reforms being pursued in the Obama era, from teacher accountability to rapid charter school expansion, ESAs received little national attention; but school choice advocates hailed their passage, immediately recognizing them as 'the way of the future.' Their early excitement was a reaction to an unprecedented political opportunity— and grounded in two factors that made the policy more likely to gain traction than other forms of private school choice. The first was legal. An earlier school voucher law had been passed by the Arizona legislature in 2006, only to be swept aside a few years later by state courts arguing that the program violated state law by sending state funds to private or parochial schools. Thirty-seven states have written such prohibitions, known as 'Blaine amendments,' into their constitutions since the 19th century. By contrast, ESAs indirectly facilitate choice by providing families with money and allowing them to use it as they see fit. Supporters in Phoenix quickly grasped the significance of that distinction, moving to expand the accounts to children attending failing schools just a year after they were first enacted. The second advantage of ESAs was political. Surveys have often shown high levels of support for private school choice, but voucher programs failed at the election booth for decades. Between 1978 and 2007, six states conducted nine different referendum campaigns to determine whether to establish either voucher programs or tax credits for private school tuition. Voters rejected each ballot measure, often by overwhelming margins. Valant called the branding of voucher programs 'toxic,' especially relative to the simple appeal of sending money directly to parents. 'People don't like 'private school vouchers,'' he said. 'But they don't really know what an ESA is until they actually dig into the policy details, so they don't have the immediate baggage that vouchers come with.' EdChoice's own tracking survey, conducted with the nonpartisan research firm Morning Consult, consistently showed that about two-thirds of parents had positive attitudes toward ESAs during the pandemic. Even more importantly, Republicans were eager to pass them through the normal legislative process, without risking lengthy and expensive referendum battles. Related Since 2021, over a dozen states have passed ESA legislation, significantly increasing the number of American families eligible to receive the accounts. Crucially, most have opted to follow Arizona's lead by structuring their programs not as targeted benefits for disadvantaged students, but as universal entitlements that gain rapid acceptance among families from all walks of life. Dan Lips, a senior fellow at the Foundation for American Innovation and veteran education policy analyst, first proposed a regime of ESAs 20 years ago, while working at Arizona's conservative Goldwater Institute. Reflecting on the decades-long path trod by the school choice community, he called the triumph of the policy a 'silver lining' to the damage wreaked by COVID. Inline pullquote: People don't like 'private school vouchers.' But they don't really know what an ESA is. Jon Valant, Brookings Institution 'There's been an advocacy effort, going back 30 years, to mobilize parents, to fund scholarship organizations, to educate policy makers about the benefits of these types of programs,' Lips said. 'I don't think the strategy changed during the pandemic, we just found a lot more motivated lawmakers who'd had enough with public school systems.' Republicans were motivated by more than the urgency of the pandemic, however. During the Biden era, backing for the expansion of school choice became something of a crusade on the right. For more than half a century, conservatives have favored the evolution of new school models and options outside the public sector. But during the era of bipartisan education reform stretching across the Bush and Obama presidencies, most of that energy was redirected toward the spread of charter schools, a compromise position that also enjoyed the blessing of Democrats leery of any move toward vouchers. Arguments for direct subsidies of private schools — occasionally drafted into congressional legislation that went nowhere — were usually couched in the language of equity, with a heavy focus on targeting benefits at low-income families and freeing students from underperforming local school districts. DeAngelis said that while those discussions were tailored to win over the left, they tended to backfire. 'When we leaned too heavily on lefty messaging on school choice, it didn't do much to convince Democrats to come along,' he said. 'But it might have alienated some of the more conservative or even moderate Republicans, because they didn't feel like it was a Republican issue.' With the arrival of COVID and the presidency of Donald Trump, messaging around the issue changed. Conservative activists and politicians increasingly voiced disapproval of what they perceived as political indoctrination in schools, militating instead for parents to be provided the autonomy to select among institutions more in line with their values. The moment presented an opportunity, proponents argued, to take advantage of the culture war. Related One of the most dedicated 'anti-woke' combatants of the Biden era was Gov. Ron DeSantis, who pushed Florida's Republican legislature to adopt strict new rules constraining how teachers can speak about sexuality or other controversial subjects in the classroom. At the same time, he transformed the state into America's biggest marketplace for school choice, pointedly linking the expansion of ESAs with parents' desire to escape 'woke' instruction. A similar dynamic is playing out in Texas, now at the precipice of adopting the policy. Republican Gov. Greg Abbott spent the past several years stumping for his favored ESA legislation at a host of Christian (and predominantly Protestant) schools, warning of progressive bias in small towns as well as blue-trending cities. He also moved relentlessly against a contingent of mostly rural Republican legislators who opposed him, succeeding in ousting over a dozen through competitive primaries; revealingly, while those campaigns were crucial to Abbott's legislative strategy, their messaging focused much less on schools than on the hot-button issue of border security. Related Republican donors like former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos got in on the action, spending millions to promote legislation and fund primary challenges against rural GOP legislators who resisted the new laws. In Iowa, where a universal ESA bill was being held up, the chairman of the House education committee was defeated after his opponent was endorsed by the Gov. Kim Reynolds. The bill was passed shortly thereafter. Conservative media figures have been no less confrontational, casting their adversaries as would-be propagandists seeking to control other people's children. DeAngelis, whose recent book received praise from President Trump, has proven adept at the cut-and-thrust of social media trolling, personally attacking top Democrats for sending their own children to private schools while rejecting school choice for others. The popular Twitter account Libs of TikTok takes aim at more targets in the classroom, often circulating videos of teachers its creator, Chaya Raichik deems ideological or manipulative. Joshua Cowen, a professor at Michigan State University who fiercely opposes the wave of new laws, said that while school choice has historically been understood as a reform grounded in markets and accountability, it is now principally a means by which the conservative movement can reward sympathetic constituencies and achieve its cultural aims. 'At the end of the day, the real energy for this is the culture war,' Cowen said. 'It's linked to the same energy that rolled back Roe, and…at the same time we're talking about vouchers expanding across the country, we're also talking about bathrooms and locker rooms and book bans.' No one would have predicted that the last five years would be the most tumultuous in the modern history of school choice. Few would hazard a guess at what the next five might look like. Going forward, it may be challenging even to learn how new ESA systems are affecting student learning. In part, this is because the state statutes passed since 2020 generally have not required private schools to take part in state testing, which could allow lawmakers and researchers to compare the performance of pupils in the private and public sectors against one another. The University of Arkansas's Wolf, who has previously conducted longitudinal studies of voucher programs in Washington, D.C., Milwaukee, and Louisiana, said he believed scholars could still devise strategies to identify the benefits or demerits of new private school programs even in the absence of testing — many already emphasize later-life outcomes such as college enrollment and completion — but added that he expected to face some obstacles. 'There's more of a sense that, 'We want to do this, and we're confident that it's going to be good for families,'' Wolf observed. 'When states have that attitude, they're somewhat less enthusiastic about bringing a scholar in to actually kick the tires and determine if their expectations are correct.' The real energy for this is the culture war. At the same time we're talking about vouchers expanding across the country, we're also talking about bathrooms and locker rooms and book bans. Joshua Cowen, Michigan State University It is also difficult to project the future progress of the ESA wave. A large number of states with Republican governors and legislatures have already taken action, leaving mostly purple and blue states without some form of private school choice. Few Democrats have been willing to touch the idea; Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a rising star in his party, mused about joining with Republicans to create a voucher offering in 2022, only to back off after a storm of criticism. Resistance within states, even including those that have passed ESA bills, makes their future difficult to project. The South Carolina Supreme Court ruled last fall that the newly adopted Education Scholarship Trust Funds violated the state constitution, leading to a scramble this year to craft a program that might pass legal muster. And in Arizona, home to the first-ever ESA law, Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs has made repeated attempts to pare back the accounts, claiming that their growing popularity poses a danger to the state's finances. Related A national, ESA-type entitlement remains the dream for school choice proponents, including the America First Policy Institute, the think tank most closely tied to the Trump administration and its education secretary, Linda McMahon, who previously served as the Institute's chairwoman. Legislation to that effect has been proposed in Congress, though it would likely have to pass through the budget reconciliation process, which is not ideally suited for the creation of new programs. Valant said that, once the remaining red states decide on whether to embrace the policy, the U.S. could feature a striking regional contrast in education policy. Democratic- and Republican-leaning states increasingly exhibit a high level of difference on policies like charter school growth, school evaluations, and the science of reading, and ESAs may simply make the contrast more stark. 'For the short term and maybe the intermediate term, we're going to be in the unfamiliar place of having very different systems of education governance in red states and blue states. That just isn't what we've done in the past.'
Yahoo
26-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Speaker Dustin Burrows assures school choice legislation will pass Texas House
AUSTIN (Nexstar) — For the first time in almost six years, the 'Big 3' of Texas — Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, House Speaker Dustin Burrows — held a news conference together to show their shared support in passing school choice legislation in the Lone Star State. 'If we are going to achieve our goal of being ranked the best state in America for educating our students, it starts this session by passing school choice,' Abbott said to a packed room of media. Burrows assured the Texas House would do something it has failed to do multiple times: pass an education savings account program (ESA). 'We can fully fund public education and do school choice at the same time,' Burrows said. He added that he expects the House proposal of the ESA and public school financing bill, HB 2 and HB 3, will pass committee next week and be debated on the House floor soon. Not only would the bill pass the House floor, Burrows said, but it would be approved with more than the 76 votes needed. The bill currently has 76 coauthors. It would provide state dollars to parents to help them pay for home-schooling or private school tuition. The governor enlisted the help of former Arizona Governor Doug Ducey to help promote the positives of school choice legislation. Ducey helped pass universal school choice in his state in 2022. It was the first state in the country to do so. 'These kids are trapped in failing public schools and it's time to set these families free,' Ducey explained. Arizona's school choice program, known as the Empowerment Scholarship Account, has no cap, meaning anyone who applies can be a part of the program. According to the Arizona Joint Legislative Budget Committee, the Arizona Department of Education estimates the program will cost $864.4 million and will enroll 99,135 students by the end of the fiscal year. While the state's leaders built up school choice, opponents of school choice programs took the opportunity to critique Arizona's program. 'I'm very worried that if this voucher scam passes into law it's going to bankrupt our public education system, just like it did in Arizona,' State Representative James Talarico, D – Austin, said outside the Capitol steps Tuesday morning. Arizona is going through budgetary problems and one expert said it is being compounded by the cost of the school choice program. The state legislature was able to erase the $1.4 billion deficit over the summer, but had to cut from some important programs. Dave Wells, the research director for the Grand Canyon Institute (GCI), a nonpartisan think-tank, said the school choice program in Arizona contributed to the budget deficit, saying it added a whole new cost to the state. 'We're taking a whole bunch of children who were never going to be in a public district or charter school and now we're subsidizing them,' Wells explained. A report released by GCI over the summer last year looked at the net cost of Arizona's school choice program. The report aimed to find the costs or savings the state was taking on because of the program. In Arizona, the state partially funds district schools and fully funds charter schools and the ESA program. The ESA program pays out 90% of what a student would make if they attended a charter school. Proponents of the program say it saves the state 10% if a child leaves a charter school to go to a private school. But Wells and his team found that 80% of the students in the universal program were never a part of a district or charter school to begin with. They estimated that last fiscal year it cost the state a net $332 million and estimated that will grow this fiscal year to $429 million, although Wells said it may not get that high. Wells added the program also does not appear to be helping the children that needed the most resources when it comes to education. 'What these programs do is they primarily seem to elevate the needs of higher income parents over the needs of lower income parents,' Wells said. Ducey was asked by reporters about the budget deficit during the news conference at the Capitol. Ducey said the deficit happened after he left office and blamed irresponsible spending by the current legislature. Wells said the biggest contributing factor to the deficit in Arizona was due to a flat tax that lowered the tax revenue in the state. A policy passed during Ducey's tenure. It is hard to compare what happened in Arizona and what could happen in Texas. For one, the program in Arizona is different than the proposals in the Texas legislature currently. Arizona does not put a cap on how many students can be in the program, while both Texas proposals cap the spending on the program to $1 billion. The Legislative Budget Board (LBB) released its fiscal note on the Senate's ESA proposal and said it would cost the state nearly $4 billion by 2030. It's one of the biggest talking points from opponents of the bill who say the cost of the program will balloon over the years. Abbott was asked about that fiscal note during Tuesday's news conference and said the LBB's estimates were based on nothing but fiction. The governor said the program will have to be appropriated every session by state lawmakers. He said the program will not automatically grow every biennium, but instead can only grow as large as the legislature will allow it. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
