In 2016, I began navigating the special education evaluation process through my local public school for my oldest son. He was struggling to read. Through many meetings, evaluations, and tearful follow-ups with the school, we finally received a dyslexia diagnosis for not only my oldest son, but two of my children. We qualified for the Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) program in 2018 and have been in the program ever since.
ESAs have been a resource for children in Arizona for fifteen years. This scholarship provides families approximately $7,500 per year, or 90 percent of the state per-student funding (excluding federal dollars), for educational expenses such as tuition, tutors, therapists, and curriculum. I was thrilled to use the ESA for a dyslexia remediation tutor and specialized curriculum for my kids.
I saw the difference ESA made in my children’s lives, so I immediately started advocating for the program among my friends. Sadly, even in 2026, many Arizona children are still struggling to read in the traditional public school system. Despite significant and growing investments in Arizona public education—$16.6 billion in taxpayer funding and $15,251 per public district school student—public school students are still struggling. The Nation’s Report Card reported that only 34 percent of Arizona public school fourth graders are proficient in math. The reading scores are even worse, with only 26 percent of Arizona fourth graders proficient in reading. This is an absolute crisis for the Arizona economy, and one that cannot be blamed on the Arizona Education Association’s case for more public-school funding.
The Empowerment Scholarship is one tangible way to provide immediate educational support to Arizona students. The ESA ensures that children who are struggling can access a better educational environment, allowing parents to take immediate action at a lower overall cost to the taxpayer.
In my work at Love Your School, we field calls daily from families whose kids aren’t just struggling academically. Many are facing medical issues, compounding educational delays from post-COVID school shutdowns, and fierce bullying. These are the children who often slip through the cracks, never get a diagnosis or support, and whom a proposed ballot initiative would remove from the Empowerment Scholarship with financial caps and other restrictions.
Arizona ESA families are facing an uphill battle. The Protect Education Act would reduce options for students with disabilities by taking the funds in their scholarship accounts and shifting them back to the state at the end of each year, and removing families whose children have been bullied or don’t have public school IEP paperwork. It would also directly affect home-educating families with disabilities by regulating every “supplementary material” and all of their curriculum. Government regulation like this would disrupt the education of these vulnerable students and create a “big brother” mindset around a program that is currently working. The percentage of students with disabilities on an ESA is higher than in public schools. This shows that these families want the program and their students benefit from it.
Any parent or grandparent who has navigated the special education evaluation process in the public school system as I have knows it takes almost a year; there is constant bureaucracy to deal with, and many students fall through the cracks. To roll back an educational scholarship benefiting more than 102,000 Arizona students just because their bullying “isn’t impacting their education” enough for an IEP, or because their parents make over $150,000 a year gross (regardless of family size), is the wrong direction for Arizona students and their families.
