Jason Bedrick, a Research Fellow at The Heritage Foundation, has raised concerns over Arizona’s attorney general’s interpretation of state law, which he claims imposes excessive regulations on the Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) program.
“She did invent out of thin air a new interpretation of the statute that no prior Attorney General had adopted… All this is really doing is throwing sand in the gears because you’ve got more than 10,000 transactions in a given quarter. This is just a regulation that Attorney General Mayes is trying to throw sand into the gears to make it not run as well,” said Bedrick.
The ESA program in Arizona allows parents to allocate a portion of state K–12 funds for private schooling, tutoring, and other educational options. Since taking office, Attorney General Kris Mayes has cautioned families about the rights they relinquish when exiting the public system and has urged the Department of Education to enforce new documentation requirements for ESA purchases. According to ESA parents and advocacy groups, these mandates create additional paperwork and uncertainty for routine expenses, treating families like suspects and complicating what should be a straightforward school choice initiative.
Recent reports have examined the scale and cost of the ESA program. A 2025 report from the Common Sense Institute estimates that nearly 90,000 Arizona students are utilizing ESAs as of May 2025, with program costs projected at approximately $882 million this fiscal year and nearly $939 million next year. Heritage research indicates that this represents only a modest portion of overall K–12 spending. Supporters argue that these figures demonstrate ESAs as a mainstream option, meaning administrative slowdowns or legal challenges could impact thousands of families simultaneously.
Bedrick highlights the volume of ESA activity to illustrate that rigid rules are impractical. Data from the Arizona Department of Education shows over 1.2 million ESA spending requests reviewed by auditors and nearly 11,000 transactions in one quarter alone. An internal audit identified around $622,000 in potential fraud or misuse—less than one-tenth of 1 percent of total ESA spending—while approximately 400 accounts have been suspended due to improper expenditures. Reform advocates suggest that with around 90,000 students served by the program and thousands of purchases processed each quarter, regulations should focus on genuine misconduct rather than burdening compliant families with excessive bureaucracy.
Bedrick is a Research Fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Education Policy, concentrating on policies that enhance education freedom and parental rights while protecting religious liberty in schooling. Previously serving as a Republican member of the New Hampshire House of Representatives, he was the first Orthodox Jew elected to that body and has long supported school choice initiatives at both state and national levels.
The Heritage Foundation is a conservative public policy research institute based in Washington D.C., established in 1973 to promote free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and strong national defense. With over 100 policy experts, Heritage conducts research shaping debates on various issues including education reform through its Center for Education Policy.
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FULL, UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT
Leyla Gulen: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Grand Canyon Times podcast. I’m your host, Layla Golan. In this episode, we welcome back our guest, Jason Bedrick. Jason is a research fellow in the Center for Education Policy at the Heritage Foundation, where he focuses on policies that promote education, freedom, and choice, religious liberty, classical education, and restoring the primary role of families in education.
Jason, welcome back.
Jason Bedrick : Thank you so much for having me.
Leyla Gulen: So today we wanted to dive into a growing controversy in Arizona where critics say the State’s Attorney General is weaponizing the legal system against families. There are accusations of law fair, which is definitely raising some serious concerns about civil rights, parental autonomy, and the politicization of.
Law enforcement. So you recently wrote an article for the Daily Signal titled Arizona’s [00:01:00] Attorney Wages Lawfare on Families. So based on this article, you argue that Attorney General Mays directed the Department of Education to adopt an extra statutory regulation that she invented from thin air, quote unquote.
So what legal basis. Does she cite for that? And is there precedent for an AG compelling a state agency to promulgate rules not authorized by statute?
Jason Bedrick : I mean, certainly that you have, uh, situations where a statute might be unclear. And so, uh, when a, a new situation arises and some department official or department head usually has a concern about how to properly implement the statute.
They might seek guidance from the Attorney General. Uh, that is not at all what has happened here in this case. And this is, uh, last summer. She has, uh, more recently, uh, than been coming after the program. But, but to take a step back and, and, and look at what she did [00:02:00] last year, she did invent out of thin air, a new interpretation of the statute that no prior Attorney General had adopted that no.
Legislator had ever told them that this was how the statute was supposed to be interpreted, that nobody on the State Board of Ed and no previous or current, uh, superintendent of public Instruction, Republican or Democrat had ever interpreted the statute to mean that. Whenever somebody tries to purchase something with their empowerment scholarship account, uh, that they would have to, uh, write essentially a letter of explanation to the department about how they were going to be using this, how it tied in with their curriculum, uh, what their, they expected their kids to gain from it, you know, so parents who are buying pencils, notebooks, a textbook, now have to write this explanation.
Now the department, uh, is not going to be denying based on these explanations and. All this is really doing is [00:03:00] throwing sand in the gear because you’ve got more than 10,000, uh, transactions in a given quarter. The Department of Ed has a very small staff when it comes to the ESA program, and now they’ve got to, not only are you wasting parents’ time on this sort of thing.
You’re wasting the department’s time, and that led to massive backlogs of expense approvals and reimbursement approvals. Uh, so really this is a sort of thing. It doesn’t serve any useful purpose. The taxpayer isn’t any better off. We don’t have, uh, you know, this isn’t improving the quality of education.
This is just a regulation that Attorney General Mayes, who has expressed her hatred of the ESA program multiple times in her desire to roll it back. She’s just trying to throw sand into the gears to make it not run as well to dissuade parents from participating in the program.
Leyla Gulen: Yeah, the, the piece notes that the legislature had recently added a risk-based [00:04:00] auditing requirement that the department began automatically approving ESA purchases under $2,000 with audits afterward, and that her letter would roll that back.
So why do you see her demand to switch to full manual review as harmful and, and what are the practical consequences for families?
Jason Bedrick : Right. So, you know, we’re, we’re hearing from the media, particularly Craig Harris at Channel 12. Oh, this is, this program is so terrible. It’s so unaccountable. Parents are buying diamond rings, they’re, they’re buying hotel stays, all sorts of things that the program is, does not allow.
Right. However, we should note that when the department conducted their risk-based audit, they found only a very tiny. Percentage. Okay. $622,000. Now that sounds like a lot of money, but that is less than a 20th of 1%, [00:05:00] 0.05% of total ESA spending over two years from less than 0.4% of account holders, right? So this is a very tiny.
Problem. Certainly the government should be trying to minimize any waste, fraud, and abuse. Anybody that is misusing the program can and should be prosecuted. The department says it’s already in the process of collecting more than 600,000 of the $622,000. Uh, they’ve already suspended 400 accounts. Those are all appropriate measures.
The question though is how does the part, how does the department handle waste, fraud and abuse? What attorney, sorry. What, uh, superintendent Horn had been doing previously was a manual review of every single expenditure, and like I said, that was leading to massive backlogs. Parents were trying to buy a textbook and they would have to wait.
Two, three months in order for the department to approve it. Well, the kids can’t wait two, three months. Right. The semester starts in [00:06:00] August. Sometimes they’re waiting till November before they can get a textbook. That’s, that’s absolutely untenable. The legislature recognized this problem. They passed a, an amendment to the law requiring risk-based audits.
The governor who is a Democrat, I should remind you, signed that into law and the department then complied. And so they said, okay, we’re still gonna audit upfront anything that’s that’s above 2000. But anything below 2000 parents are buying notebooks, pencils, textbooks, fine. You just buy it, you get access to it right away.
And just as we do with our taxes. We pay our taxes and, and there’s only risk bases audit on, on the backend, and that is a very highly accountable system. This system has also proven to be very highly accountable, having the government accounting, the government accountability office, the GAO in Washington, DC finds that the fraud rate across federal programs is about 7%.
Like I said, this is one [00:07:00] 20th of 1%. Everyone wants fraud to be zero, but you’re never gonna get to zero. So why is the attorney general going after this program when it is one of the most accountable programs? Totally for political reasons, just as she was doing last summer. The point is she wants to throw sand in the gears.
She wants them to go back to the previous system that was not working for the 99.9% of families that are just trying to do right by their kids.
Leyla Gulen: What laws or legal mechanisms is the attorney general using to justify these actions? Are they being applied in a, a new or unusual way?
Jason Bedrick : You know, it’s, it, it’s not totally clear and there’s no lawsuit or anything like that.
At this point. She has just sent a letter to Superintendent Horn, ordering him to abandon risk-based auditing. Uh, she doesn’t even in the letter, acknowledge that the legislature required [00:08:00] him to implement risk-based auditing, auditing, and that this was signed into law by the, by the current governor. So it’s, it’s not entirely clear what legal authority she thinks, uh, she has here.
But there is certainly the, the threat of a lawsuit if he fails to comply. Superintendent Horn sent her a letter back essentially saying, you know, you don’t have the authority to tell me to do anything in this case. And, uh, you know, he didn’t say this, not so many words told her essentially to go pound sand, uh, that, that he’s gonna continue operating the authority, the program under the authority.
Granted to him by the statute, uh, in the manner in which the legislature clearly expressed they want him to run the program. Uh, the purpose of the program is to maximize the freedom and flexibility of parents to customize their children’s education. The way that the attorney general wants to interpret the law goes exactly against that primary purpose of the program.
Leyla Gulen: What do you envision as the outcome? Should a lawsuit be [00:09:00] brought forward? I realize that’s requiring a crystal ball, but do you think that any lawsuit would be successful in fighting back against this?
Jason Bedrick : So I’m, I’m, uh, I’m not an attorney and I don’t play one on podcasts, but, but as someone who’s very familiar with the statute itself, you know, and, and with some familiarity of the, the rules of statutory construction, it, it seems clear to me and it seems clear to the attorneys that, that I have spoken to that are monitoring the situation that, that, that operate in the school choice world, uh, that the superintendent is carrying out his mission.
As clearly delineated by the statute, uh, and that the Attorney general doesn’t really have a leg to stand on here. So whether she’s serious about, uh, you know, now that the Attorney General, I’m sorry, now that the superintendent of public instruction has made it clear he’s not going to follow the Attorney General’s order, is she actually going to take that next step?
[00:10:00] And, you know, file a lawsuit against, uh, against the departments. Uh, I don’t know, maybe this is just bluster. Maybe this is just, uh, you know, she, she may have her site set on, uh, other offices, uh, or running for reelection. Not, uh, entirely clear, but we’ll see if she does follow through. If she does, uh, I expect that, uh, the Department of Education is going to prevail because the statute is so clear.
Leyla Gulen: Yeah. Yeah. In a more recent article for the Arizona Free News, uh, you addressed that the Arizona school system still needs more money despite being more funded than ever. So I just wanna kind of switch gears here. What evidence did you find that Deer Valley Unified in particular, is locating resources rather than being underfunded?
Jason Bedrick : So you had another Craig Harris special, uh, where, where he says, oh, look, you’ve got all [00:11:00] these, uh, ESA family spending all this money on, you know, trips to SeaWorld. And I mean, he mixes in things that, that are perfectly legitimate, like a trip to SeaWorld, right? Uh, and things that are not legitimate, like purchasing a diamond ring.
So he, he sort of confuses the issue. The actual fraud, as we mentioned, is a tiny, tiny. Percent, a fraction of 1%. Uh, but the real scandal for people who don’t like the program is that parents are buying things for their kids that they like, and that the kids find interesting and fun. Uh, and so they, they’re constantly harping on, oh my gosh, parents are buying, uh, SeaWorld tickets.
Well. At the same time, he’s, he trots out, uh, you know, a teacher from Deer Valley who says, oh, you know, we’re so underfund in a Deer Valley that I had to spend $500 out of pocket, uh, for classroom supplies. Right? And of course, uh, they’re, they’re asking for, uh, you know, another override so that they can, you know, bond overrides so that they can get more money for the school, which they, which they claim is underfunded.
Uh, [00:12:00] but at the same time. We find that they are spending more than $560,000 on students and staff for trips to Disneyland, Knottsberry Farm, SeaWorld Universal Studios, uh, and and other places here in Arizona, California, Hawaii. Indiana, Texas, I mean, so they’re going all over. So really this is a matter of priorities.
They could be spending that money on classroom supplies, but they have decided to spend it in a variety of different ways. And I’m sure that, uh, you know, the trips to Universal Studios and SeaWorld, those can be very educational. You know, if you go to those places and you see a whole bunch of school buses outside, that’s because they have whole programs.
Dedicated to, uh, you know, there’s, it’s fun mixed in with education. If the district decides that’s how they’re gonna spend their money. I get it, but don’t turn around and say, Hey, we can’t afford the basics when you can afford these other things. It’s, it’s essentially a ploy. It’s like the Washington [00:13:00] Monument strategy.
Right. You know, and if the government shuts down, uh, you know, the first thing we’re gonna, or if there’s a lack of funding, the first thing we’re gonna close down is the most popular thing. So they, they like to do this. They’ve been doing this trick to the legislators for a long time, uh, and to the public in general, but we, we shouldn’t, uh, we shouldn’t fall for it.
They, they spend more than $13,000. Per pupil, uh, a classroom of 25 students generates more than $340,000 in revenue. Where’s that money going? Mostly not to teachers. It’s going to a lot of, uh, administrative costs. Uh, the Auditor General’s report shows that they have very high spending on transportation and high spending on administration.
So it’s a matter of budget priorities.
Leyla Gulen: Yeah, I was gonna ask you, how would you compare the accountability in the ESA program to the accountability in school districts like Deer Valley,
Jason Bedrick : it’s, it’s much higher. With the ESA you, you can see a lot more detail. What parents are buying, right? You can’t [00:14:00] see what particular families are buying for particular students, right?
That would violate privacy concerns, but it’s very detailed what, what the parents are in, in, in the aggregate are spending their money on. You can’t see that to the same level of granularity with. The district schools, so they keep saying that the ESA is not transparent and unaccountable. I I say absolutely not.
It’s highly transparent and accountable. The districts have a lot of catching up to do if they wanna be as transparent and accountable as the ESA program.
Leyla Gulen: And are there, or which communities or groups of families are being dis disproportionately impacted?
Jason Bedrick : I mean, well, a large percentage of the ESA program is still students with special needs.
So if you are going to, uh, do things like the, like the attorney General is trying to do and throw sand in gears to the program and make it hard for people to purchase things. It’s, it’s the special needs population that [00:15:00] is going to be disproportionately affected. They, there are a higher percentage of students with special needs in the ESA program than you have in the district school system.
Uh, you see this in report after report from the department, ed of ed. They actually, the Department of Ed issues a quarterly report that actually has the exact percentages. I think the last one was about 19% of students in the program have, uh, special needs. So, I mean, those, those are the kids that, uh, you’re, you’re hurting the most.
Leyla Gulen: Yeah. Sure. Sure. And have you heard, just going back to the previous, um, article that we were talking about earlier, I’m just curious if any other groups, families, educators, healthcare providers, have, have they responded to any of these developments?
Jason Bedrick : I’m not sure which, uh, we are talking about.
Leyla Gulen: Okay. No, the, the pre the previous article, the one that we were first talking about.
So the, those, yeah, those particular developments. [00:16:00] I’m just curious, you know, the thought just occurred to me if, you know any Arizona families or educators have spoken up or. If you’ve heard any other rumblings based off of the latest developments.
Jason Bedrick : Yeah, I mean, certainly I’ve seen a lot of families on, there’s a ESA Family Network on Facebook.
Uh, there’s also a, a, a lot of accounts that are very active on Twitter. Uh, they were very upset by what the Attorney General was trying to do, and, uh, very supportive of, uh, superintendent Horn for standing up for them. And, and I should note, look, the, a lot of these families were very upset. Uh, when previously Superintendent Horn had adopted that, uh, policy of, of, you know, analyzing every single expense and, and approving it, uh, you know, in advance because it was leading to all of those problems.
Uh, so these, these people are not, you know, necessarily, uh. Uh, first of all, they’re not necessarily Republicans as you know, Republicans and Democrats and, and independents that are families [00:17:00] that are participating in the program and not necessarily are these Tom Horn partisans. Um, these are, a lot of these families that I was, uh, that I’ve seen recently, uh, were very highly critical of, uh, horn, uh, a year ago.
Leyla Gulen: Uh,
Jason Bedrick : when, when I conducted, uh, last fall, I conducted a survey of ESA families and more than two third, even though it was like 99%, uh, supported the program, two thirds said that they were dissatisfied with the way KO was running the program. Um, but a lot of those same families. Are now defending Horn against the Attorney General.
Uh, they’re happy that, that he has listened to them and has changed, uh, you know, working with the legislature to get the risk-based auditing changed his policy to make the program run much more smoothly. And now they see him defending the program against, uh, the attorney general. So, uh, you know, these are just families.
They’re, they’re not, um. These are [00:18:00] not politicos. These are just families that are trying to provide their children with a top-notch education that meets their individual learning needs and aspirations. And, uh, they’re gonna side with whoever sides with them, and they’re gonna side against whoever comes after them.
Leyla Gulen: Naturally. Yeah. And I realize your focus is on Arizona. Is this part of a larger national trend? Are we seeing similar tactics being used by ags and other states, or is this unique to Arizona? I.
Jason Bedrick : So far, this is unique to Arizona, uh, but Arizona is a trailblazer. Uh, we were the first state to adopt an education savings account policy for K 12.
Uh, we were, uh, the first state to go universal in terms of implementation. Uh, West Virginia beat us in terms of legislation, but we implemented it first. Uh, and so you’ve got a, and, and now there are are 17 states that have, uh, some form of, uh, universal private school choice program, whether a voucher, an [00:19:00] education savings account.
So Arizona has been a trailblazer in that regard. And you’ve got, uh, you know, I work at the national level. I work in a bunch of different states. Everyone’s looking to see what’s going on in Arizona because, uh, it, it tends to have national, uh, implications, what happens here, ripples across the country.
And so, you know, if, uh, the Attorney General does succeed in, in gumming up the works, uh, I do expect that they’ll. Try similar tactics in other states, you know, elsewhere, they’re, they’re sort of where we are. Several, we were several years ago where a lot of states are still fighting, uh, lawsuits. You know, is this constitutional or not?
You know, you still have those sorts of fights that were settled here in Arizona a long time ago, and so they’re, they’re a little bit behind, but certainly I think people are, are watching nationally to see how this plays out.
Leyla Gulen: Yeah. And remind the audience why this has become such a, a passion of yours, why you’ve dedicated so much time to this concept of ESA and education in our [00:20:00] systems, the strength of families, and also their strength in terms of determining what’s best for their own children.
Jason Bedrick : I’ve been working on school choice for 20 years now, and I chose my parents wisely. And, uh, they, they, uh, they were able to afford to live in a public school district in New Hampshire that had great public schools and, uh, we didn’t have a high school, but they could afford to pay to send me to a private high school.
And instead of the public school at the neighboring town we contracted with that, that wasn’t as good. And it, uh, it always seemed to me. That the promise of the American dream is quality of opportunity. Well, how can you have a quality of opportunity if you don’t have, uh, every child having access to a high quality education?
That there is something fundamentally unjust, unfair, and, and un-American, that children are assigned to a school based on the location of the home their parents happened [00:21:00] to be able to afford. Uh, and, uh, that it, it would make. Much more sense if, uh, the money could fall the, the child to the school, the parent’s choice, and then instead of being a captive audience.
The schools have to be accountable directly to the families that, that affirmatively choose them. So that’s what, uh, drove me to get involved in education policy. And I got involved at a time when, uh, this was still somewhat of a, a fringe position, and it’s gone in 20 years from, uh, fringe to popular to, to seemingly inevitable.
Like I said, you know, just since 2021. We’ve gone from zero states with publicly funded universal private school choice to 17 states. And, uh, I think that we very well might live to see a day where people just take for granted that you get to choose the school that your kid goes to and the money falls the child.
And, uh, people will be astounded to [00:22:00] learn that, uh, once upon a time, uh, that wasn’t the case.
Leyla Gulen: And it took a lot of hard work and advocacy to get there. Uh.
Jason Bedrick : Absolutely hard work advocacy and, uh, frankly define providence. Uh, sure. I I, I, I look at what happened with COVID and not so much the, the, the school shutdowns, but the way that the public schools and the unions in particular responded.
They broke trust with parents and when, when you saw school districts. That, uh, you know, where the unions were saying, you know, we’re not gonna reopen the school until you meet our list of political demands, including things like universal healthcare, fa, and, and, and meanwhile, the Catholic school down the street is open for business.
Aaron said, wait a second. Something’s going on here. And then even after they fought and succeeded at reopening their schools. Uh, they kept an eye out, you know, they got a, a peak through Zoom school at what was going on, and they said, you know, I don’t like this. I don’t like the politicization of the classroom.
I’m not keen on the, the level of [00:23:00] quality. It’s not quite where I, I thought it was. Uh, you know, I, they started looking at the, some of the books that were being assigned or that was in the library, finding school policies where, you know, they had secret transition policies, maybe where they were. Keeping one set of records with a child’s given name and pronouns that that accorded with their biological sex.
And then another set with a, a, a different name and uh, different pronouns and parents started to see these things and say, wait a second, what is going on here? And at first they were just fighting every single in individual issue. But at a certain point, and this is especially outside of Arizona, where they didn’t have.
Robust school choice like we had, they started to say, you know what? Why don’t you just give me the money and let me choose a school that aligns with my values, that actually listens to the families that, that are there and don’t treat us like a captive audience. And so you saw state, after state, after state, uh, follow the Arizona model in adopting [00:24:00] robust education choice and freedom.
Leyla Gulen: Yeah, and you’ve written books on the subject as well, and in fact, you hook out another book that’s slated for release next year titled Phoenix Principles, A Guide to Renew America’s Education System. So as we kind of move the ball forward here, uh, what, what are you putting into those pages and what do you hope people glean from it once it is released?
Jason Bedrick : Well, the, the Phoenix Declaration is named not only for our great city, uh, but also for where, where we signed the declaration, uh, earlier this year, but also for the mythical creature that that emerges from the ashes of its former self. And so we do believe that, you know, the, the American system of education is long overdue for renewal.
If it’s going to come, it’s gonna come from a, a commitment to first principles, so parental choice and responsibility, recognizing that parents are the primary educators of their children, and that the money should follow the child. [00:25:00] Transparency and accountability. Recognizing that true accountability is not top down, it’s bottom up, it’s accountability to.
The people who bear the consequences of the performance of the institution. Uh, so in this case it’s the children and their parents and, uh, that schools should be engaged in the pursuit of truth and goodness, uh, that schools have to think carefully about cultural transmission, right? I mean, this is a central purpose of education to transmit humanities, accumulated knowledge and wisdom and our own particular nation’s culture and heritage.
To the next generation, right? A civilization only survives if it is intentional about transmitting its history, traditions, its values, and including its unrealized aspirations to the next generation. Um, schools have to be, uh, engaged in, in character formation, right? We’re not just. Producing good workers, we are producing good people.
Uh, yeah, that right, absolutely. Academic [00:26:00] excellence. Uh, that’s, that’s one that most people think about. But, but unfortunately, uh, a lot of people these days think about it like, oh, well, you know, just, uh, you know, college and career readiness. Well, it’s, it’s a lot more than that. Or we think about, uh, we just have to teach them the right skills, uh, or we just need to focus on stem.
No, we, we, we also need literature and history and civics and the arts, right? A well-rounded education, right? Even those who say, well, you know, my child’s gonna go into the STEM field. Do you want people going into STEM who are working on ai who have never read Frankenstein? Yeah. And grappled with, you know, the questions that it raises, right?
We, we need the humanities, we need a serious engagement with the humanities. Maybe now more than ever in some sense. Oh, yeah. As we’re questioning what humanity is and, and, and finally is citizenship when you look at the founding error. Era. The founders were so keen on education because they said, we are going to have a system of [00:27:00] self-government.
We need an educated populace that can rise to the challenges of self-government. So it’s not just enough to, you know, teach kids to, you know. Learn their multiplication tables and you don’t need facts, just teach ’em how to Google. No. They, they need to understand our history and our schools should be cultivating good patriotic citizens.
Not blind patriotism, but a patriotism that loves this country and wants the best for it. And so these are the sorts of things that, uh, the book is going to discuss.
Leyla Gulen: Wonderful, wonderful. And for people who wanna follow your work, where should they go?
Jason Bedrick : They can find almost everything I’ve written at, uh, the Heritage Foundation’s website.
heritage.org.
Leyla Gulen: Okay, great. And if people want to follow you on social media or reach out to you in some way, do you have a way for them to do that?
Jason Bedrick : I’m most active on X and that is at Jason Bedrick.
Leyla Gulen: Fantastic. Jason Bedrick, thank you so much for joining us today.
Jason Bedrick : Thank you again for having [00:28:00] me.
