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Education Group Examines School-Voucher Trends Across US

Published: Wednesday, March 22, 2017 - 3:21pm
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The fate of a bill in the state Legislature to expand Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Accounts, or ESAs, to all public-school students appears to be uncertain, with some senators expressing skepticism.

The voucherlike program allows parents to use public money to send their kids to private schools.

Legislative budget analysts say the bill would cost the state nearly $14 million by 2020, if 2.6 percent of students moved from traditional public schools to private ones.

But Arizona’s not the only state looking at ESAs.

In fact, the group Education Commission of the States has compiled a database of what states across the country are doing or have done on school choice.

Micah Wixom is a policy analyst at ECS.

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