Arizona Lloyd@TeamLloyd2015
Dear ESA Families,
I hope this email finds you all doing well and enjoying the beautiful Arizona spring. As the end of the school year approaches, we hope the Empowerment Scholarships that your students have been awarded have helped them to grow academically and personally. This program is so critical to providing the freedom and choice that all parents need to best cultivate their children’s learning and development.
Unfortunately, there are critics who attack the program in ways that are misleading, dishonest, and intended to undermine the ESA program. One of the most consistent claims by critics is that the ESA program is rampant with fraud, waste, and abuse. One news outlet has claimed that the rate of improper spending in the Arizona ESA program is 20 percent. That claim is completely false. The 20 percent misspending claim was the result of an intentional or unintentional misunderstanding of transaction data and a failure to comply with basic principles of statistics.
Here is the truth. The Arizona Department of Education used its experts to conduct a statistical analysis on the rate of unallowable spending in the ESA program. The selection of a statistical sample conformed to strict statistical principles. What the analysis found was that the ESA program is not rampant with fraud, waste, and abuse. Instead, only 2 percent of dollars spent in the ESA program is on unallowable items. Two percent is a far cry from 20 percent. Two percent of spending on unallowable items likely makes the ESA program exemplary in the lineup of state-run social spending programs. However, although 2 percent is a low unallowable spending rate, rest assured that the ESA team will pursue repayment for any unallowable spending that it identifies.
The very low rate of unallowable spending in the program in conjunction with the program’s robust student enrollment growth is the clearest evidence that the ESA program is healthy and strong. We will continue to make this program the best program that it can be to serve all of your students’ continued educational needs.
Superintendent Horne has publicly announced this great news in a press release, which you can read here: ADE Corrects False Claim regarding alleged 20% inappropriate ESA expenditures | Arizona Department of Education.
Best Regards,
John Ward
ESA Executive Director
