The Paradise Valley Unified School District sounds idyllic—but it has been far from picture-perfect for math interventionist Stasia Stoffey.

She has endured two school closures in five years. The first, in 2019, was Aire Libre Elementary—a Title I school that felt like a second home to Stoffey.

“The staff was extremely close-knit, and we had an amazing principal,” she says. Just talking about the loss of that community—which she was part of for 14 years—still makes her cry.

The second closure in 2024, Sunset Canyon Elementary, was even more abrupt. Also, a Title I school, the students had dramatically improved their math scores, and the school had earned an “A” under the state’s grading system.

“I had only been there three years when it closed, but it was still devastating,” Stoffey says. “I was surrounded by grieving staff who had been there 20-plus years.”

Sunset Canyon was one of three district schools shuttered that year, along with another elementary school and a middle school, despite the outcry from parents. The surface-level explanation is that drops in student enrollment forced a financially hamstrung district to make tough decisions.

But vouchers are the biggest contributing factor. The most devastating of Arizona’s five voucher programs is the one lawmakers made universal in 2022, which offers vouchers to anyone—regardless of income—and has peeled students and funding away from the state’s public schools.

Shortly after the Sunset Canyon closure was announced, in late 2023, the stress caught up to Stoffey, setting off a form of colitis that left her struggling to eat and critically underweight. Though she is better today—and determined to keep teaching and earn her full retirement benefits—her loved ones still worry about her.

“The closure affected all of us differently, but so profoundly,” Stoffey says. “Some of the staff retired early or quit teaching. Some families went to try a charter or left the public school system.”

Paradise Valley is just one district in the greater Phoenix area that has recently faced closures. From 2021 to 2023, the Glendale Elementary School District closed five schools, and the Roosevelt Elementary School District was set to close five schools at press time. Three more campuses across the Phoenix Elementary #1 and Cave Creek Unified districts will also close this year.

The Voucher Wrecking Ball

In December 2022, Arizona became the first state in the nation to enact a universal school voucher program (despite the fact that voters had already rejected the idea when it appeared on the ballot in 2018).

The “Empowerment Scholarship Account,” as the state calls it, gives families roughly $7,500 in taxpayer money per child to cover “educational expenses.” These costs can include private school tuition, homeschooling, and fees for private lessons in sports, art, and music, for example, with little to no oversight.

As with most voucher laws, accountability is almost entirely lacking. Private schools are not required to disclose their finances and operations, and many are not transparent about how they measure student achievement. In many states, they do not even require educators to have teaching credentials.

The number of students receiving school vouchers soared from 12,000 to 80,000 students after Arizona enacted the universal voucher law. The expense of the program has greatly exceeded all estimates—it is on track to cost the state $1 billion this year alone.

“What gets me is that 75 percent of these vouchers are going to kids who were never enrolled in the schools in our district.”

Heather Schmitt, President, Paradise Valley Education Association 

“We’re losing all this money out of the general fund and closing schools as a result,” says Heather Schmitt, a preschool special education teacher who currently serves as president of the Paradise Valley Education Association.

“What gets me is that 75 percent of these vouchers are going to kids who were never enrolled in the schools in our district,” Schmitt says. “I have an issue with taxpayer dollars paying for a religious school or a private education with a significant lack of oversight. I have an issue with money that should go to public schools being used for scuba diving lessons and grand pianos.”

Like Schmitt, educators around the country are seeing firsthand how voucher programs siphon already scarce resources from the public school system that 90 percent of families with school-age children rely on.

Ready to Push Back?

Voucher schemes have proliferated in the past few years. Fifteen states and the District of Columbia have limited voucher programs (which have some parameters, such as family income or student disabilities, for example), and 18 now have universal school vouchers available to anyone, including affluent families whose children already attend private school. In those states, leaders have chosen to pump taxpayer money into programs that primarily benefit middle-class and wealthy families at the expense of the public education system.

But that is at odds with what the majority of voters want. Vouchers have appeared on state ballots 17 times—and every time, voters have rejected them. The most recent votes, in November 2024, were in Colorado, Kentucky, and Nebraska.

In some states, educators, parents, and other community members have successfully demanded that legislators vote down universal voucher schemes. Last year in North Dakota, educators led the charge in rejecting a universal voucher proposal under consideration by state lawmakers. Wins like this one require allies, says Josh Cowen, a professor of education policy at Michigan State University.

“It’s hard to overstate how much these schemes are opposed by many rural Republicans in state legislatures,” he says. “Parents, school boards, and superintendents in rural areas support their public schools, and have helped keep these bills at bay.”

Photos: Brandon Sullivan
 

5 Reasons Vouchers Are Not the Answer

Fact #1: There’s no link between vouchers and gains in student achievement.

Independent studies in the District of Columbia, Indiana, Louisiana, and Ohio show vouchers had negative impacts on student test scores on par with the COVID-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, no scientific study has shown a positive impact.

As Josh Cowen, a professor of education policy at Michigan State University, puts it, “If the right wing is using test scores to criticize and condemn public school performance, I’m going to put it back on them and say, ‘OK, how do these voucher schools do?’ The answer is horribly.”

Additionally, there is no validity to claims that by creating a “competitive marketplace,” vouchers force public schools to improve. The most dramatic improvements in student achievement have occurred in places where vouchers do not exist, according to the Learning Policy Institute. Connecticut, for example, does not squander public funds on vouchers; the state boosted student performance by focusing on teacher quality and tutoring.

Fact #2: Vouchers lack accountability and enable fraud.

Private schools have almost complete autonomy in how they operate, including who and what they teach; how they teach; how they measure student achievement (if at all); and what they disclose to parents and the public.

The absence of public accountability has contributed to rampant fraud, waste, and abuse, such as extravagant spending on ski resorts and Disney tickets and the creation of “ghost students” who don’t exist. One scheme in Arizona made sure that these non-existent students had documented disabilities to prompt the highest level of payout.

Fact #3: Vouchers do not reduce public education costs.

“Vouchers saving a state money? How would the math work on that, exactly?” asks Kentucky high school math teacher Harsh Upadhyay. “Vouchers essentially force taxpayers to fund two school systems—one public and one private.”

Upadhyay was one of thousands of Kentucky educators who spoke up to help defeat a voucher ballot measure in the last election.

Research by the Economic Policy Institute shows the financial strain on public schools caused by vouchers. As educators know, when vouchers are enacted, public schools wind up with less funding, leading to larger class sizes and fewer resources such as textbooks, school nurses and counselors, lab equipment, and music and athletic programs.

A significant body of research also shows the majority of voucher users are students already enrolled in private schools. In other words, universal voucher programs force taxpayers to pay for a private school education for families who can already afford it.

Fact #4: Vouchers are rooted in racism and perpetuate discrimination.

Vouchers were invented after the U.S. Supreme Court banned school segregation in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling. School districts allowed White students to use vouchers to attend private schools, referred to as segregation academies. As a result, the schools that had served those White students were closed, and schools that served Black students were chronically underfunded.

By design, voucher programs operate with impunity. Unlike public schools, private schools can still limit admissions based on race, gender, sexual orientation, family income, and disabilities.  

Fact #5: Voucher programs too often fail students with disabilities.

Many families do not realize that when they accept a voucher, their children lose rights and protections, as private schools are not bound by many key provisions of federal laws like the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.

North Dakota teacher Sheila Peterson explained to her state legislature, in March: “My family didn’t have a choice. My daughter was kicked out of three private preschools” because of challenging behaviors.

Fortunately, her public school system, in Mandan, N.D., offered early intervention screening and diagnosed her daughter with autism at age three. The district provided supports such as occupational and speech therapy and a classroom aide.

Today, Peterson says, her daughter navigates high school independently and has made the honor roll, “all because of the public school educators who never gave up on her.”