ADE adopted its risk-based auditing strategy (auto-approving ESA spending requests below $2K, then auditing accounts afterward) because Supt. Horne’s prior “review every penny” approach caused massive backlogs & delays in approving expense requests. 13/ arizonadailyindependent.com/2025/04/02/ari…

There were nearly 11K transactions in quarter 3 of this year alone. It’s impossible for ADE's staff to review each transaction in a timely manner, but parents trying to teach their kids can’t wait months just to buy a textbook or pay their child’s tutor or school. 14/

To Horne’s credit, he listened to parents and made some incremental improvements that make it easier for parents to use the ESA. Now a tiny % of ESA holders are taking advantage of the looser rules, but they will be forced to pay the money back and could face prosecution. 15/

ADE has suspended 400 accounts due to improper spending —just 0.4% of the total accounts—and has referred some to the Attorney General for further investigation and prosecution. 16/

Punishing fraudsters is necessary. Every govt program is subject to some amount of fraud & abuse, and public officials must minimize it. But it is not in the public interest to undermine a program, especially when it helps kids access a better education & brighter future. 17/

School-choice opponents are using misspending as a pretext. If that were their real concern, they’d be raising alarms about all the waste, fraud, and abuse in the district school system. 18/ azfreenews.com/2025/08/bedric… School-choice opponents are not really concerned with stopping

Supporters of education freedom and opportunity should ignore the manufactured outrage and work to ensure that the ESA program works well for the families it serves. 20/20 azfreenews.com/2025/08/jason-…

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Some important reading material for Outspoken with Bruce & Gaydos on KTAR News 92.3

Columbia, Brown, & Penn have settled. Cornell and Harvard are reported to be next. UCLA, Northwestern, George Mason & others may soon follow. Some academics are mystified by why their leaders would settle or attribute it to cowardice. But settling makes sense. Here's why. 🧵1/

Why hasn’t the Southern Surge gotten much attention? One big reason: Many advocates, academics, & union honchos fear it teaches the “wrong” lesson about school spending. La., Miss., Tenn., & Ala. racked up big gains between 2014 & 24 while boosting after-inflation spending by

Jason Bedrick has the goods on fraudulent media attacks on Arizona's ESA program: "Supporters of education freedom and opportunity should ignore the manufactured outrage and work to ensure that the ESA program works well for the families it serves." azfreenews.com/2025/08/jason-…

Journal of School Choice T.L. Baker, PhD First, Matthew Ladner Matthew Ladner: “If the education freedom movement were a segregationist plot, it would have been a miserable failure—millions of Black and Hispanic students actively choose these schools today...he probability that Daniel Patrick Moynihan or Jack Coons

It’s amazing how fast ‘what’s right for kids’ gets tossed aside when the status quo needs defending. My latest in the Tennessean: tennessean.com/story/opinion/…

“Enrollment in Roosevelt Elementary began to decline years before the ESA program existed.” Read Matthew Ladner latest blog story, where he explores whether voucher programs are truly to blame for the Roosevelt Elementary School District’s closures. hubs.la/Q03F1B980

🎙️On our latest podcast, Susan Pendergrass talks with Matthew Ladner of Heritage Foundation about what the media gets wrong about school choice. showmeinstitute.org/blog/education…