Arizona Supt. Horne dismisses report of rampant improper ESA spending as ‘ridiculous’

PHOENIX – Arizona’s ESA school voucher program is a subject of recent controversy, with vastly different numbers being used to describe how much money is going to banned items.

Empowerment Scholarship Accounts allow families to use public education tax dollars for private school or homeschooling expenses.

Last month, 12News reported that nearly 20% of ESA users spent funds on unallowable purchases, adding up to $10.3 million.

In a statement last week, the Arizona Department of Education accused the Phoenix TV station of misinterpreting the data. The department said a random sample of 3,000 ESA users showed that 2% of funds were spent on unallowable purchases, with only 0.3% considered fraudulent or egregious.

On Tuesday, Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne called the 20% report “ridiculous.”

“The 20% figure was the percentage of purchases under $2,000 that we were looking at to see if they were OK or not. But only 20% of that 20% were improper. And so that’s 4%,” he told KTAR News 92.3 FM’s The Mike Broomhead Show.

In an interview with KTAR News’ Outspoken with Bruce & Gaydos later the same day, 12News investigative reporter Craig Harris explained how he came to the 20% figure using data received through public records requests.

“The records that we looked at found 18,000 accounts … misspent money. … If you take that number and the total number in the program, that’s about 20%. Now, if you take all of the buckets into the program and throw all of it in, which is over a billion dollars, you could push that number down to say someone who commits fraud is less than 1%. You could actually have it both ways,” Harris said.

How did Department of Education determine ESA fraud level?

The Department of Education official who conducted the study joined Horne for his interview Tuesday. Joseph Guzman, whose title is associate superintendent for accountability, research and evaluation, explained how the department got its data.

“We were drawing orders, not items. So, each order might have multiple items. And so, we found that 6.2% were flagged as unallowable. Whether they were egregious or not, they were unallowable, and that accounted for 1.9% of the actual spending,” he said .

Horne explained that the distinction between unallowable purchases and fraud makes a big difference in the data, too.

“The other thing to know is they’re not all fraud. A lot of times it’s innocent mistakes of a paper that needs to be resubmitted,” he said.

According to the state Department of Education, more than $1.2 million has been recovered from ESA enrollees who misspent dollars.

The department recently began referring ESA fraud charges to the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office as well as the Arizona Attorney General.

This comes after a new ballot initiative was filed that could require more accountability for the ESA program, with public school advocates saying the vouchers have been using taxpayer dollars without guardrails.

Funding for this journalism is made possible by the Arizona Local News Foundation.

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