Does Arizona’s ESA program cost $1 billion? Nonprofit clashes with officials over exact amount

PHOENIX — A recent report from one of Arizona’s top educational advocacy groups claimed the state’s school voucher program now costs taxpayers $1 billion, contradicting data from the Arizona Department of Education (ADE).

The Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) voucher program lets families use public education dollars for other learning options, like private school tuition or homeschooling supplies.

Save Our Schools Arizona estimates the average ESA cost per student at $10,348, based on dividing the latest spending report ($881.6 million) by the 85,195 students listed in the fourth-quarter report and projecting it to current enrollment numbers.

However, this doesn’t align with data from the ADE.

What does the Arizona Department of Education say about the ESA program costs?

The department reports a lower average of $7,500 per student. This puts the total cost closer to $727.6 million for the 97,020 students currently enrolled.

“Special needs students will skew the average higher since some of them have need very expensive therapies, with students in district and charter schools receiving slightly above the average as well based on the local property taxes and bonds,” a spokesperson with the department told KTAR News 92.3 FM.

Save Our Schools disputed that $7,500 is the correct average per student, alleging that the ADE numbers were missing special education students entirely.

“The average voucher value of $7,500 provided by Supt. Horne is the median value of a voucher — that means that roughly 50% of students receive less than that amount, and 50% receive more. Using that value to calculate the total cost completely disregards the over 16,000 … students with a disability category that qualifies them for higher-value vouchers,” the advocacy group said in a statement.

“Using the median value of $7,500 provided by Horne, the total cost for 2025 Q4 would be only $638,962,500, whereas the actual total cost for that quarter was $881,662,142. Using the median to calculate the total cost yields a value that is more than $200 million off the true cost.”

About 19% of ESA students qualify for disability funding, which is higher than the typical ESA student can receive.

Do ESAs divert money from public schools?

A common critique of the ESA program is that it allegedly diverts millions of dollars away from public schools.

However, Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne said that the average cost of an ESA account is 90% of what a student in public school would receive from the state.

“If a student leaves a public school to go to a charter school or a private school, they lose that money,” Horne told KTAR News 92.3 FM. “But the school also loses the expense of educating that student.”

In his view, what matters most is how much is spent per student, not the total budget for the ESA program, which he considers a valuable incentive for school improvement.

“It’s a popular program and if the public schools don’t want to lose their kids to the private schools or charter schools, they’ll do better academically. They won’t lose the students,” Horne said. “Under competition, people always perform better than they do when they’re a government monopoly.”

Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story did not include the Save Our Schools Arizona statement.

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

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