Treffer: Education Choice at a Crossroads: A Survey of Arizona Families Who Use Empowerment Scholarship Accounts. Backgrounder No. 3881

Arizona education savings accounts (ESAs) empower parents in the state with the freedom and flexibility to customize their children's education. Participating parents receive 90 percent of the state funds that would otherwise have been spent on their child in public school via a restricted-use savings account. Parents can use those funds to pay for private school tuition, online learning, special education services and therapies, private tutors, textbooks, curricula, and a host of other education-related products and services. This survey was conducted in September 2024 to gauge families' satisfaction with Arizona ESAs. Although findings show the state's ESA policy is extremely popular with families who benefit from it (99 percent support), they are also highly dissatisfied with the way it is currently being administered (66 percent dissatisfaction with the Arizona Department of Education). The vast majority of ESA parents report having encountered problems when using their ESAs in the past year. Recommendations for policy and departmental resource allocation are detailed which would significantly address ESA families' main concerns and would likely restore the program's historically high level of user satisfaction.

ERIC