Matt Beienburg, Director of Education Policy at the Goldwater Institute, said that ensuring equal access to quality education provides every child with the opportunity to succeed. This statement was made on the Grand Canyon Times Podcast.
“Doesn’t matter what your background is,” said Beienburg, State Senator. “If you can provide students a solid opportunity and get ’em a quality education in K through 12, you’re actually giving ’em the opportunity to succeed in life regardless of what their beginnings may be. This is something that I think prioritizing the wellbeing of the students—there really is no higher public policy that we can dedicate ourselves to.”
The state of Arizona has been embroiled in controversy over school-choice policies following the expansion of the Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) program to universal eligibility in 2022. This shift has raised concerns about reduced funding and declining enrollment in traditional public schools. Critics argue that diverting resources may weaken district systems, while supporters assert it offers families greater choice and educational opportunities. Analysts have described Arizona as a national “laboratory” for universal vouchers, noting how the debate involves issues of equity, accountability, and public-school viability, according to EdChoice.
As reported by the Arizona Department of Education for the second quarter of fiscal year 2025, 83,819 students were participating in the ESA program. Nearly three-quarters of these students were enrolled under the universal-eligibility expansion. The report also indicated that over 55 percent of participants had attended public school immediately before enrolling in the program.
Nationally, research on universal school choice programs shows mixed outcomes. A Brookings Institution review highlighted that without safeguards, funds often disproportionately benefit wealthier families and may leave underserved students behind. Specifically concerning Arizona’s program, Brookings found that funds were “disproportionately flowing to the very wealthiest parts of the state.”
Beienburg also serves as Director of the Van Sittert Center for Constitutional Advocacy at the Goldwater Institute. His previous experience includes working as a senior fiscal analyst for the Arizona Joint Legislative Budget Committee, where he analyzed K-12 and higher-education finance. His work focuses on promoting educational freedom, parental rights, and school-choice policy reform.
___________
FULL, UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT
Leyla Gulen: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Grand Canyon Times podcast. I’m your host, Layla Golen. In this episode, we welcome back our guest, Matt Byberg. Matt is the Director of Education Policy at the Goldwater Institute. He has also served as director of the Institute’s Van Sitter Center for constitutional advocacy. He’s been published in local and national outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Examiner, Fox News and National Review.
His work focuses on promoting educational freedom, parental rights, and greater civic appreciation of America’s founding principles. He’s also the co-author of A Is For The American Dream. Matt, welcome back.
Matt Byberg: Thanks very much for having me on.
Leyla Gulen: So your work at the Goldwater Institute has you focused greatly on Arizona education, saving accounts and school choice.
So let’s start with your why. Why is this such an important issue for you?
Matt Byberg: Well, I think this is not only an an issue that impacts Arizona, but but obviously the [00:01:00] entire country. And it’s something that if you wanna look at where we can actually make changes in terms of public policy to improve outcomes.
I really think education is, is that great opportunity. This is something that affects families all across the income spectrum. Doesn’t matter what your background is. If you can provide students a solid opportunity and get ’em a, a quality education in K through 12, you’re actually giving ’em the opportunity to succeed in life regardless of.
Of what their, their beginnings may be. And so this is something that I think prioritizing the, the wellbeing of the students there, there really is no higher public policy that I think we can, we can dedicate ourselves to.
Leyla Gulen: Yeah. And you say that the media has attacked DSAs with false and misleading information, so how do you make your argument for those who are the naysayers and, and why do you think it’s drawn the ire that it has?
Matt Byberg: Well, you, there’s kind of two, two points to that question. One, taking the second part first of, of why it’s drawn ire. It’s, it’s sort of unfortunate that obviously politics gets in the way of, of good policy a lot of the time. And the teachers unions, the folks who, who generally have a. Kind of a political [00:02:00] lock on particularly the, the left side of the political spectrum in, in current American politics are, are deeply opposed to school choice really in any form.
We saw this years ago when public charter schools were, were in the limelight, or really in the cross airs, I should say. From the media and others and, and essentially the teachers unions view school choice, whether that’s in the form of, of public charter schools or private schools or home schools or things like the ESA program.
They view these as a threat. They view them as, as a threat to essentially a monopoly in which they wield the power. And so if you have. These programs that come online and the teacher’s union see them as a threat. Fewer students enroll in their programs so they have fewer employees or or less kind of political clout.
All of these things undermine the power and influence that they’re able to exert over the system, over students. And so they are dramatically opposed to these things. But in terms of actually engaging with folks, I mean, we’ve seen polling that makes very clear your, your typical. Family again, regardless of ideology, supports, notions of of school [00:03:00] choice.
There have been all sorts of polls done in Arizona, done nationally, showing that families support the idea of school choice. And interestingly, there’s a break. Within the Democratic party in particular, between sort of minority families who overwhelmingly tend to support school choice and then your sort of political elite class again, really dominated by the teacher’s union and their influence that that is opposed to it.
And so these same folks who are saying that they’re advocating on behalf of particular constituency, often low income students, minority students. You actually have a split between what these two want. And so in engaging, it really depends. Are you talking to somebody who really is just a, a militant political activist who, who really know no degree of, of persuasion is going to change because it’s, it’s against their interests versus a lot of folks who I think genuinely may not know a lot about these programs, they hear sort of scary talking points from the left.
And those are folks that I think you can engage with and sort of go point by point. And we can kind of go into that in a little bit of detail, but I think most people really are honest. They’re looking for a high quality education system. They’ve heard, again, a [00:04:00] lot of the talking points from left base, you actually start to drill down into this.
And, and I tend to do that by just sort of asking questions and, and not, rather than trying to assume that somebody shares my, my starting points, just kind of ask questions and, and get to it. And you, you find that that logic tends to actually lead people. To, to a point of, of recognizing that, yeah, the status quo is failing students and simply doing what the teacher’s union says of continuing to trust them with more and more funds.
Unlimited blank checks, hasn’t solved any of these problems in 50 years, and there’s a, a better opportunities that are out there.
Leyla Gulen: Yeah. And I, I wanna dive into just ESAs, how they work and so forth in a moment here. But maybe you could outline for the audience what the public school landscape look like.
Prior to ESAs and School Choice?
Matt Byberg: Well, in Arizona, we actually had the most robust school choice really in the country. And so since the nineties, one of the earlier experiments in In School Choice was this idea of public charter schools, which essentially says, in addition to your traditional public district schools, we’re going to allow Arizona and a [00:05:00] bunch of other states said, we’re gonna allow some innovation.
And we’re gonna say that just like a district school can welcome students in and educate them, and taxpayers are, are required to fund those, the state said, why don’t we, at the end of the day, what we care about is not a particular school or institution. What we care about is the wellbeing of these students.
And so Arizona and a bunch of states that’re gonna create these public charter schools where you can become a state contractor. And essentially these charter schools for each kid that they bring in the door and educate, they are paid through the funding formula very similarly to a district. They get less funding, but the concept is similar.
And so that’s something that Arizona had already enacted. We actually had the highest percentage of students in public charter schools of any state in the country, over 20%. But interestingly, what we’ve seen in the last few years in particular is that enrollment in public charter schools. Has been going up by thousands of students each year.
While enrollment in the district schools has largely been flat, so we’ve already seen even before the ESA program, [00:06:00] a sort of shift in the momentum where families are being drawn to programs like public charter schools.
Leyla Gulen: Hmm. Okay. Well maybe tell our audience how do education savings accounts differ from, say, traditional vouchers or charter school funding?
Matt Byberg: Well, the, the biggest piece is really that it’s, it’s focused on the individual student and whether it’s a, a public charter school or other versions of school choice like vouchers. That would say the state’s gonna, uh, cut a check or pay just for the student to go to a private brick and mortar school with an ESA, we call ’em Empowerment Scholarship Accounts in Arizona.
Their, their education savings accounts more broadly. That essentially says we the state are going to give back a share of taxpayer funding to the parents of these students. And we’re, we’re not going to put our thumb on the scale. We’re not going to say, this is where, this is the kind of education, a brick and mortar school that it’s located here, that, that uses this sort of teacher certification.
We’re not gonna do those things. [00:07:00] A lot of that may sound good in theory, but in in practice, what matters is, is this schooling environment, educating the kid. And so if a family gets an ESA, they can do things like homeschool. We’ve seen an explosion of that. Obviously in the wake of COVID, a lot of families are doing sort of hybrid where maybe they’re doing home education for part of the week and then they’re taking them to a sort of micro school or a co-op, or in some cases even actually taking their students and, and paying a school district maybe for a one-off class to get an AP math class or science or something like that.
But the ESA program is really about saying, look, state taxpayers are being asked to invest thousands of dollars per student in the education system. In the public education system. And so we’re going to give a portion of that to the family and say, we’re going to give you your student, you know, what their needs are, what their strengths are, and we’re gonna empower you to find the best education environment for them regardless of where you live or, or what your income is.
Leyla Gulen: So it gives them a lot of flexibility. And of course a lot of parents ended up going shifting to homeschooling because they shuttered at [00:08:00] what they saw their kids learning when the schools, when the world shut down. And I wanna talk about that as well ’cause you’ve been very outspoken regarding DEI and, and other issues.
But what criteria would determine who qualifies for an ESA, and and how are those funds allocated?
Matt Byberg: Well, the, the ESA program started in, in 20 11, 20 12, and it was originally open only to students with special needs. And over the years that was expanded to other students, so kids whose family were in the military or from the reservation in 2022, that was expanded to all students in Arizona.
And so essentially it says if you’re eligible, if. If you’re a student who’s eligible to go to a public school in Arizona, we’re no longer gonna throw up barriers to you, to the ESA program. Just like you can walk into a public school, regardless of your income, regardless of your background, those same students who have the choice to go into a public school and, and ask taxpayers to pay for them, they now have the ability to say, I will, I will take a smaller portion of that funding and put it into an account and now I can use it.
So the ESA program is now a [00:09:00] universal program for all students in Arizona, regardless of of characteristics or background.
Leyla Gulen: And how is it regulated to prevent fraud or misuse of taxpayer dollars?
Matt Byberg: Well, despite some of the, the headlines that we see from the media families who are on the ESA program have to account for literally every single dollar that they spend.
They have to submit receipts and, and every purchase that they make is documented. The, the items, the amount, everything is on there. And so under law, the ESA program allows families to, to use the funds for, for various. Educational options, whether that’s private school tuition, whether that’s tutoring and teaching services, whether that’s curriculum and supplemental materials.
And so those families, every single time that they. Make one of these purchases, they have to document that and provide that to the Arizona Department of Education. And so there’s already significant guardrails on that. And interestingly, we can kind of jump into this as well. The, again, the left loves to try to say, well, there’s, there’s no accountability here.
And, and literally we’ve seen people like the Attorney General in Arizona come out and said, I’m gonna, I’m gonna come up with a [00:10:00] new way of reading statute. And in addition to families documenting literally every penny that they’re spending, I now want them to explain why they are spending money on things like.
Kid’s book. So if a family wants to buy a kid’s book, literally a pencil is an example given by the attorney General. To say, you have to write a note saying, I’m buying this pencil to teach my kids fractions as part of math. That’s what, when the left talks about accountability, that’s what they’re talking about.
Not, not basic taxpayer, good stewardship, but just trying to layer on bureaucratic compliance, nonsense. And that’s part of the problem that’s afflicted the public school system for so long. And so again, it’s one of these things where I think everybody hears the word accountability and they think, well, that, that sounds reasonable.
We all want accountability. This program already has significant accountability. What the left is pushing for is trying to smother it and choke it out with bureaucratic red tape.
Leyla Gulen: Mm-hmm. And how do you measure student outcomes under the ESA programs?
Matt Byberg: Yeah, so the program, again, it’s, it’s open to anybody, no student is required to go on it.
So the families who are, are getting onto that program are saying, my kid is not having their needs met in the [00:11:00] public school system. We are choosing this program. And so parental accountability is, is sort of the cornerstone of, of, of all of this, right? If you have no options and you can only go to your local district.
It doesn’t matter how that school does. And, and this is a great point. I’m, I’m glad you asked. It comes up a lot. We hear, well, public schools are very accountable. We measure success. We have standardized testing, we do all these things. There’s an A through F letter grade system in Arizona. We can see which schools are rated A, B, C, D, F.
That all sounds very sharp and, and, and, and great. But then you actually look into the data and almost no schools are actually rated as failing in Arizona, even though only about a third of students are proficient in, in math and reading. And so the vast majority of schools, public schools in Arizona receive this A or B school rating, right?
Parents see that. They think, oh, this school, it’s a government operated school. It’s, it’s A rated, it’s B rated, maybe it’s even C rated. Like all of these say this is meeting, it’s meeting expectations. It’s doing what it needs to, and yet the majority of the students there are struggling. And so it’s one of these things where that, that’s almost the worst of all worlds [00:12:00] that we’ve created this, this sense, false sense of security that says, ’cause it’s got a government stamp of approval on it.
We’re gonna say it’s a quality school, but this, this school over here, that’s a private school. I mean, typically what you’ll see is those schools have to actually persuade parents, right? They have to demonstrate success. There’s a reason that there are wait lists at a lot of these schools where families are trying to get into.
It’s not because the schools are underperforming, it’s because they’re doing so great that parents want to get into them. Mm-hmm. And so again, it’s this notion of. Kind of a, a leftist view of, of paternalism that says the parents are too dumb to know what their kids need is essentially what it boils down to.
We’ve had, we’ve had school teachers go up and testify to the Arizona legislature saying these parents don’t have advanced degrees. How could they know what’s best for their kids? And there’s a sort of condescension that, that comes from the left while a total blind spot to the, the lack of quality and accountability in the public school system.
Leyla Gulen: Yeah, and they, I know that the left will also say ESAs risk, widening the gap between families and resources. What about safeguards [00:13:00] to ensure disadvantaged students can access high quality alternatives? I mean, it sounds like it. It’s there. It’s embedded in the doctrine of ES.
Matt Byberg: Yeah. Well, interestingly, this comes up a lot and, and again, we hear critics on the left who say, well, private schools don’t have to accept everybody.
And so if you have a student with special needs, for instance, this is something that the governor and others have said, you should only be able to receive ESA dollars if you serve all students. Right. Regardless of what their special, and again, that’s something that’s. Sounds nice to most people, but that’s the, that’s the current measure for, for the public school system in theory.
But those districts themselves don’t necessarily put all the kids in in each school. Right. They might say, sorry, this school doesn’t work for you. We’ll ship you off to somewhere else in the district. Interestingly, even the Arizona Republic, which has always been gunning for school choice. Has actually run stories pointing out that public schools will at times reject students and say, we we’re actually not very good at, at teaching students with your situation.
We’re going to send you literally to a private school to get the help that you need. And if you look at the ESA program. [00:14:00] There’s actually a higher percentage of students with special needs. About 18.5% of students on the ESA program have special needs compared to only about 14% in the public school system.
So even without all of these mandates and compliance requirements hanging over the head of schools that are, are operating through the ESA program, there’re still serving a higher percentage of students because there may be some schools, maybe a small, one room schoolhouse that maybe doesn’t have the capacity and isn’t well equipped.
To educate certain students while at the same time you’ll have centers that are extremely successful and know how to handle students with range on, on the autism spectrum, for instance. And so again, it’s this kind of difference of opinion of the left wants to say, we’re going to prescribe everything, look and feel exactly the same.
We’d rather have sort of consistent mediocrity than we would a system where some schools are gonna really help students thrive from, from one background. And maybe there are other schools where that wouldn’t be a great fit.
Leyla Gulen: Yeah, you just touched on what was gonna be my next question. What constitutes a special need?
And again, so that’s, how would you define that?
Matt Byberg: [00:15:00] Yeah. And and so in, in terms of the, the, the data that I mentioned, those are students who, who have a diagnosed disability under the Arizona funding formula. Students with with disabilities generate different amounts of funding and that that happens whether or not you’re in the school district or on the ESA program.
So in terms of kind of learning disabilities, ’cause that’s, that’s one that’s often thrown around. And again, the data is very clear that these, a lot of these families on the ESA program had their students in the public school system. And if you have a system. The parents are not satisfied with, even though it has all these so-called safeguards and protections and requirements, if, if those aren’t meeting the needs of the kids, they’re not doing any good.
Yeah. And so if a family says, I would rather take a, I’ll take a smaller portion of what you’re spending on my student in the public school ’cause it’s not working, let me take that and let me help direct their education. I’ll find the, the tutors, the special education therapies, the learning environments, and, and go down the list.
And you see that success, and again, the fact that you’ve had this movement of thousands of students with special needs to the SA program, I think is evidence of that. It’s not just students with special needs, kids [00:16:00] across the income spectrum are on this program. You have got kids, and we can kind of dive into this from the Native American reservations, very low income, economically disadvantaged areas where the public school spending per student is extraordinarily high.
You’re talking 15, $20,000 or more. Per student, and these are chronically underperforming schools, and it’s not simply an issue of, well, they need even more funding. You can talk to, to folks in these districts in, in some of the urban areas in Phoenix, and no one is under any illusion that if you simply funnel more funding into this, that you’re gonna have a change of outcome.
It’s often that you have an administration, a culture, a stewardship of resources that simply, again, embraces essentially mediocrity or, or worse.
Leyla Gulen: Yeah. Yeah. Well, and for those, I’m aware of the opposition views in terms of funding and how, how do policymakers respond to concerns that ESAs might drain funding from public schools serving?
The majority of kids.
Matt Byberg: Well, interestingly, when the [00:17:00] ESA program in 2022 was expanded to be universal at the same time that Governor Ducey signed that legislation and the conservative lawmakers who got the universal expansion passed, hundreds of millions of dollars were added to the public school system above and beyond what was required under the state formula.
And so we’ve heard for years the ESA program, it defund the, the, the public schools lawmakers from the time of the inception of the ESA program and particularly since the universe. Expansion have poured funding into the public school. So the argument that, well, you’re defunding our education system just simply isn’t true.
We’re now over $15,000 per student spent in the public school system that’s gone up thousands of dollars since the universal expansion. There’s really, again, in the, in the eyes of, of school choice supporters, we’re essentially saying the, we don’t measure success in terms of how much we spend, right? It, it’s measured in terms of our students thriving.
Are they succeeding? Do they have educational opportunities? From the left to the teacher’s unit. It’s just how much are you spending? [00:18:00] And even by their own measures, the public schools are doing better than they were. And that’s not something, that’s why we, we frankly, tend to hear that argument less now about you’re defunding the public schools.
Anytime you see a school closure that’s, that’s coming back, and we can talk about some of the, the recent media coverage, but the argument that you’re defunding schools simply doesn’t hold up. Even conservative lawmakers have said, you know what? We’re willing to add additional funding to these schools.
We’re at essentially record high. Spending but the left, in many of these cases, the left would actually rather shut down ESA programs and public charter programs than they would have an increase for everybody. If that increase means the families might choose a system outside the one they control.
Leyla Gulen: Yeah.
Yeah. And, and why don’t we, let’s, let’s talk about some of those recent articles. So you were mentioning the closures of schools.
Matt Byberg: Yeah, so the, the Washington Post, we, we’ve really seen sort of national and local attacks on the ESA program. Recently, the Washington Post did a, a, a piece. Recently that the, the headline of it essentially says, Arizona [00:19:00] schools are closing as vouchers soar.
And essentially the, the takeaway that they’re trying to give you with, with this headline is, ESAs and School Choice are blowing a hole in communities and they’re destroying our, our schools. Is, is basically the takeaway. And when you read through the, the article that they do. You get this sense of public schools being just eviscerated by, by things like the ESA program talking about this.
The Roosevelt Elementary School District is the one that this, this particular news story spotlighted, and I think it’s kind of worth diving into. Roosevelt is one of the lowest income, highest minority student population districts in the state. That’s in sort of south central Phoenix. It has been chronically underperforming.
And now the, as the, the posts and others are, are saying there, there’ve been proposals to close down several of its schools. And the argument is that they’re, they’re saying is, well, look at this. This is what happens. We allowed Universal ESAs and now the kids have left and the school is closing. And so your average reader, here’s that and.
Gosh, I didn’t, I wasn’t trying to shut down schools. I just wanted to give kids [00:20:00] opportunity. Maybe this is a problem. That’s the, the sort of narrative that they’re trying to, to fuel here. But when you actually dive into it, it’s apparent that this really is little other than political scapegoating. So this district, for instance, the Post even acknowledges that the enrollment in this district has dropped from over 10,000 to about 7,500 kids over the last 10 to 15 years.
So it’s had a significant drop in enrollment. And then they go in and they point out. That there are a bunch of students in that district on the ESA program, right? So the argument is kids leave the district, they go on the ESA program, the district doesn’t get as much funding and so the district has to shut schools.
Very logical frame there, but it, it simply doesn’t hold up when you actually look at the fact that there are only about 130 students who have left the Roosevelt School District since the expansion who were enrolled in that district, meaning kid was enrolled in the district. Decided they wanted to go to the ESA program and they left that district.
So the district was no longer funded 130 students or so. Interesting. Interesting. There are [00:21:00] 8,000 students in the Roosevelt Elementary School District who have chosen not to enroll in Roosevelt, but instead enroll in a different public school. And so. Yes, you have about 130 kids who left the district for an ESA.
There are about 800 kids. Even if you wanna take the, the most liberal view of this, there are about 800 kids who reside within the districts who, who are on the ESA program. Again, most of whom the district was never getting paid for in the first place. But even if you take that 800 number, it’s 800 ESA kids versus 8,000 who live within the district, that the district has failed to actually attract or keep or retain.
Who have chosen a different public school district or a charter school. So again, it’s one of these things that families are fleeing districts like Roosevelt because they know that the quality of education is poor. They know that the district is dysfunctional. Thousands of families have said, no, thank you.
But then when a few hundred choose the ESA program, suddenly we’re told this is the cause of the district’s financial problems. Which again, once you actually. See [00:22:00] those numbers and understand the context, that entire narrative is obliterated. But, but that’s not the, the objective of, of the media, right?
They’re trying to get you that top line data. Have you think, oh, there’s a problem here. Never actually fill in the fact that, well, sure some kids are finding rescue and, and hope in the ESA program, but 10 times as many at least have fled for other public schools. And unless you’re gonna say these public schools are, are rating them and should be closed down or any of that nonsense, you really have no coherent argument left against the ESA program.
Leyla Gulen: Yeah, as they say, numbers don’t lie. Why do you think some students’ parents decide to shuffle their kids to other districts rather than engage in the ESA programs?
Matt Byberg: Well, obviously the ESA program is still fairly new and, and it’s not something that. As much as we talk about it, there are a lot of families in, in the state who just aren’t even familiar with it.
And, and even families who recently get on it will say, I, I just heard about it. I didn’t even know the program existed. So you have a lot Arizona, for years I mentioned we’ve had public charter schools since the nineties. We’ve had [00:23:00] district open enrollment, which is the, the policy that says you can go from one district to the next that’s been there for 30 years.
And so you have a system that parents have gotten familiar with. And so a lot of them might say, I know Roosevelt’s terrible, I gotta go somewhere else. I’ve heard about. Name another district in the area and we’re gonna try that. And so I think that that probably plays a lot of it. And you’re, you’re seeing that the charter school movement in Arizona, for instance, had obviously zero students before it started in the nineties.
And it has grown steadily over time. It’s over 200,000 kids now. I think you will see continued growth in the ESA program over time as well. But to your point, why are families still choosing other districts? Well, those districts might at least be better than Roosevelt, right? All they have to compare it against that they know of is, is the Roosevelt District.
So they look elsewhere. They might just have have heard, Hey, we heard something in the media about ESAs are bad, or public charter schools are bad. But those district schools, those must be good. ’cause again, they’re A or B rated by the. Date and they’re, they’re, it says it’s a school district, so that must be something.
So I think there are some just, [00:24:00] just kind of en entrenched, a sense of familiarity with the traditional district system that I’m sure a lot of parents still think, well, that, that sounds familiar, even though I know that the one near me isn’t working well.
Leyla Gulen: Yeah, you don’t know what you don’t know. So how well are these ESAs advertised and is it conceivable to have every student in the Arizona school system engage in an ESA program?
Matt Byberg: The advertising. A lot of groups have, have tried to let families know whether it’s kind of media on broad media, radio, tv, et cetera, or groups going into the community and, and talking to parents. So I think you are gonna see continued growth. I don’t think it’s likely that you’re gonna see, I, I, I think the most likely path is, is a continuation of what we have had.
Right. Just like families have increasingly opted for public charter schools and, and fewer have gone to the district. But the district system has not disappeared. It’s still the, the single largest system in, in the state. You have about 800, 900,000 students on the. [00:25:00] Enrolled in public district schools. And I think just like we have now, ESAs and, and actually interestingly, if you look at the, the trajectory ESAs have been growing and districts again continue to be sort of flat or declining.
And a lot of the growth that was in charter schools over the last couple of years has been students. Seemingly shifting to the ESA program, and so I think you’ll see a rebalancing, but I think again, the beauty of school choice is that no one is forced into this. And, and you have districts like Vail down near the near Tucson, these are super successful districts.
Tucson Unified is, has been bleeding students for years. Again, similar to Roosevelt, that families know that the caliber of educational opportunity is, is often mediocre at best, but then they’re neighboring school districts. That have, have really prioritized educational excellence. Those districts are not struggling to enroll students.
In fact, there are very few charter schools in the area because there’s, there’s just not demand, right? Parents are satisfied generally with what is offered there, and so I think what you’re likely to see is that districts are gonna be forced to continue to either improve their offerings [00:26:00] or continue to, to be running up against competition, either from other school districts or from public charter schools, or from ESAs.
Leyla Gulen: Is the application process complicated or is it pretty streamlined?
Matt Byberg: It is. It’s something that any, any paperwork obviously is, is, is, is some work, but it is not an overly difficult process to get on the the program. There’s a few sort of basic requirements. You have to go through the online, there’s an online application, and again, it’s essentially just.
Confirming that you have the student providing essentially kind of just records of the, the student’s birth and, and, and fairly, fairly straightforward, same kind of stuff you would be providing for kind of the basic services for these kids. And so it’s not something that, that is not a huge barrier.
That’s something that, you know, and we’ve had from the rollout of various, just in terms of IT programs and things, you, you always have some hiccups when a new system gets deployed, but the process itself, and that’s why I think you’ve seen, again, 90,000 students are on the program now and there are organizations that that help families.
Love Your school is one that helps. Families who are interested in this kind of navigate that process. ’cause obviously it’s something new and [00:27:00] different for, for a lot of families who may not be familiar with it.
Leyla Gulen: And I know you’ve touched on this a little bit, but evidence that exists showing that the ESAs do improve academic performance or, or long-term student success.
Would you say that those are pretty tangible?
Matt Byberg: So there’s a lot of evidence that School Choice does the ESA program itself. In terms of having the universal eligibility is, is fairly new. And again, it went online in 2022. There has been a significant amount of research for school choice programs in, in particular private school choice programs.
The, the one that, that I point out to folks, the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship Program, which has been that the largest in the country, has had studies done by center left think tanks that that come out and say, yeah, this program, it actually mostly even serves low income disadvantaged students and it has positive outcomes.
On their students. In general, the, the improvements from school choice tend to actually be strongest, not so much on the year to year testing as the long-term outcomes, which I would argue is actually more important, right? The, the percentage of students who are able to [00:28:00] successfully not only complete and graduate high school, but complete and, and be successful afterwards.
Are students actually enrolling in college? Are they actually completing college? It doesn’t do anybody any good to just. Funnel students into college have them take out huge debt. And not complete. Yeah. But the, the studies that have been done have shown that overwhelmingly school choice programs do benefit the students.
The, the most sort of prominent one to show otherwise, which opponents love to kind of latch onto is from Louisiana, that the students actually ended up doing, doing worse. Now, I would say not only is that an outlier, but interestingly that program in Louisiana. Had very stringent requirements around what the private schools had to do in order to operate and be eligible, and so you actually had the higher quality private schools say, no, thank you.
We’re just not gonna participate. It’s not worth it. And so essentially the only schools that took place were those which tended to be weaker. And so again, kind of the law of unintended consequences, policies from the left that say, fine, we’ll give you the school choice program, but we wanna slap on a [00:29:00] whole bunch of regulations because we think that we’re used to these in the public school system.
And that’s really what you need to succeed. Well, if all you do is. Transform the private schools into cookie cutter carbon copies of the public schools. You haven’t actually achieved anything.
Leyla Gulen: Yeah, and we have public ESAs. Are there also private ESA providers?
Matt Byberg: So the, the ESA program in, in Arizona is, it’s, it’s funded through the state funding formula.
All the students who are on it are funded. It goes through the Arizona Department of Education, and they get that funding and they can use it. They cannot be enrolled in a public school at the same time they’re on the ESA program. They can be on an ESA. And then take that and use those funds again. I, I mentioned to purchase maybe a, a a course or to participate on the sports team, but the program itself is not privately funded.
It is funded through, through those dollars. Obviously you have a lot of organizations that maybe offer private scholarships to students, particularly for college. We see a lot of that. Arizona also has a, a [00:30:00] scholarship tax credit program that kind of compliments the ESA you have to. Pick one or the other, but families can make private donations to scholarship, private non-profit scholarship granting organizations called STOs.
Those organizations then take that funding, they put it together and they, they package it as scholarships for students to be able to attend private schools under current law. Families can only do one program or the other, but both of those sort of provide vehicles where families who, again, say the public school district near me, it’s not cutting it.
Maybe there’s a big wait list at the local charter school. I need something different. And so you have these paths through the ESA program or, or the STO program.
Leyla Gulen: I see, I see. And obviously parents, they, the ones who are in the know, they’ve engaged in the ESA and the school choice programs because they were unhappy with the way their schools were performing for their kids.
How much of that, how much of the shift came because of DEI? I know you’ve been very vocal about the infiltration of ideological frameworks, so I’m just curious how much of that was [00:31:00] because of DEI and as a result. Has any of that indoctrination, fizzled in response to parents shifting their kids from the districts or some of the public schools to more of an ESA funded program or school choice?
Matt Byberg: Yeah. Well, that, that has obviously had an impact. We don’t have the, the, the students, when they’re applying for the ESA program, they don’t have to fill out something that says sort of a. What led you to do this or, or why, but parents have made it it very clear, and you can, you can see this in the data that families who have opted for even a lot of the, the public charter schools, they say, Hey, look, our mission here is, is gonna be focused on traditional education.
The Great Heart Schools in Arizona, American Leadership Academy in Arizona, these are schools that have had. Really thriving schools and, and student populations. And again, often with, with wait lists out the door or new campuses going up because they’re offering parents something those parents are, are looking for, right?
It’s like an education that the families sort of know you’re not gonna have to worry about a bunch of this woke nonsense and [00:32:00] DEI. At the same time, you, you do have families who are still in school districts. The, the, the Scottsdale School district in Arizona for instance, has it for years. Very much been, been kind of pro on a lot of this DEI type of content.
And you have seen that district really struggle to attract students compared to the, the charter schools in the area. And so I think you’ve seen that play out in a number of ways. I, it’s not quantified in terms of. How many students are, are moving from one district to another or to an ESA for this particular reason.
But we’ve absolutely seen that. I, I would say the DEI is no longer ascendant. It has, it has plateaued. I don’t think that it is something that its proponents are going to simply abandon. It has been somewhat in retreat over the last couple of years. We’ve been active not only in K 12, but in higher education released model policy a few years ago with the Manhattan Institute, Chris Ruo and those folks.
To help kind of set the stage for dismantling these DEI offices in higher education. And obviously that has taken root. We’ve seen the, some of [00:33:00] the executive orders from the Trump administration really cracking down on a lot of these policies where institutions of education were essentially pushing racial discrimination under the guise of affirmative action or DEI or affinity groups.
And so I do think you’re seeing those practices are, are now under scrutiny for, for really the first time in any serious way and, and somewhat in retreat. But in a lot of cases it’s, it’s simply sort of that they, they adapt. And so the, the idea that I think the problem has been solved or that now we can kind of rest on our laurels.
We’ve, we’ve been active. I made a push this last go around and, and continuing to work on a state constitutional amendment for Arizona, the Arizona State Constitution that would actually, and was sponsored by the Speaker of the House, Steve Montenegro. That would actually. Enshrined in the state constitution, a ban on the racial discrimination that’s promoted by, by DEI in institutions of of education.
And so I think even some of the stuff that’s come from the Trump administration, again, can be re overturned or can be reversed if, if it’s simply executive orders that are, that are pushed out and they don’t have [00:34:00] congressional authority or. A lot of this is, is state level or state level issues if the state legislatures don’t act, and, and obviously we’ve seen vetoes from Governor Hobbes repeatedly against protections for students against DEI.
So it is absolutely gonna continue to be a really a, a challenge and, and I would say a threat in many cases to the academic integrity of these institutions going forward.
Leyla Gulen: Yeah. Alright. What’s next for you? What’s next on the agenda as we now are embarking on the fall semester for students and, and for future education years?
Matt Byberg: Yeah, we’re, we’re working both at the K 12 and higher education level, continuing to help. Beat back some of the attacks on the ESA program Argue for providing additional, more greater parity for the funding for ESA families, protections for them, but also looking more broadly to help revitalize. We’ve been engaged on teacher trainings, for instance, to help provide education in civics for, for Arizona students.
Working with folks from the school of Civic and economic thought and leadership at a SU, for instance, to provide teacher trainings so that. That families are able to [00:35:00] actually have educators who have, who’ve actually learned about the constitution or have been provided some, some basic knowledge of fundamental institutions, the separation of powers, federalism, et cetera.
So opportunities such as that. And also working in higher education across the country to help push back again on some of this radical agenda that, that continues even despite some of the progress that’s been made, but continues to force students into mandatory DEI classes in order to graduate or, or take that kind of content.
So, yes. Very active for, for the next year as well.
Leyla Gulen: Terrific. Matt Berg, thank you so much for taking the time to join us.
Matt Byberg: Thank you very much for having me on.
