Educational freedom is under a two-front assault. Here’s what you need to know—and what you can do.

I have a bracket filled out and a No. 1 seed I am trying not to get my hopes up about. Wildcats fans know better. But it is March, and you cannot help yourself (Bear Down!).

Arizona families know that feeling, too. You support something good—an educational setting that works, a learning environment where your child is finally thriving—and then you watch someone try to take it away.

In the span of a single month, the most successful educational freedom program in the country has gone from facing one ballot initiative designed to gut it to facing two.

Center for Arizona Policy will oppose any ballot measure that burdens ESA families with unnecessary regulation or shrinks the program in which more than 100,000 Arizona students depend.

ESA families and educational freedom supporters should decline to sign both petitions.

Petition One: The Teacher’s Union-Backed Measure

As we reported last month, the Arizona Education Association and Save Our Schools Arizona are circulating a petition for a ballot measure that would gut the ESA program through income caps, mandatory state testing for private schools, and layers of new bureaucratic control. More than 100,000 students and their families depend on this program. The unions want voters to dismantle it.

That threat has not gone away. The $150,000 income cap would immediately remove 15% of current ESA students and lock out over a quarter of Arizona families with school-age children. It would force private schools to adopt the same mandatory state testing that has produced math and reading proficiency rates below 40% statewide. It would reclaim unspent funds from family accounts. And it would bury parents in a reimbursement process that forces them to pay out of pocket first and wait for bureaucrats to approve the purchase later.

Petition Two: The Wolf in Educational Freedom Clothing

Now families must fight on a second front. A political action committee called Fortify AZ has filed the Arizona Empowerment Scholarship Accounts Reform and Accountability Act with the Secretary of State’s Office. The American Federation for Children, a national organization, is backing the effort, calling it a way to preserve the ESA program against the union-backed measure.

Do not be fooled. This measure does not include the income cap found in the union-backed petition—and that is where the good news ends.

The Fortify AZ proposal would require the Arizona Department of Education to build an online marketplace payment system, eliminating the current reimbursement and debit card structure that families rely on. It would require students not enrolled in full-time “qualified” schools to take state-approved exams. It would direct ADE to maintain lists of approved curricula. And it would layer additional reporting requirements and vendor oversight onto a program that already has accountability mechanisms in place.

For families using ESAs to educate their children at home and those using micro-schools or other alternative education models, these provisions are not minor adjustments. They represent a fundamental shift in the relationship between the state and the families who chose to leave the traditional system. Parents who sought freedom from one-size-fits-all education would find themselves answering to government-approved standards, government-approved curricula, and government-approved tests.

Different Front Lines, Same Target

Make no mistake: both ballot measures would damage the ESA program and destroy the freedom it represents. They simply attack it from different directions.

The union-backed measure goes after the program’s reach and its participating schools. The Fortify AZ measure leaves eligibility alone but eliminates the program’s flexibility—with its heaviest weight falling on home-based and alternative education families.

One measure primarily targets private schools. The other targets the alternatives. Both expand government control over what was designed to be a parent-driven program.

And both carry a consequence that most voters never consider: under Arizona’s Constitution, the Legislature cannot repeal or substantially alter a voter-approved ballot measure. Only voters can undo what voters approve. Once these regulations are locked in, there is no legislative fix. The damage is permanent.

Why the Ballot Box? Because Legislators Know Arizonans Love ESA.

Ask yourself why both attacks take the form of ballot initiatives instead of legislation. The answer is simple: our elected representatives know what the polls confirm—more than two-thirds of Arizona voters support ESAs, and nearly all Arizonans believe parents should have the freedom to direct their children’s education.

These proposals cannot survive the legislative process because lawmakers know their constituents would never forgive them for gutting a program that works. So, the architects go around the Legislature and straight to the ballot box, betting that misleading language and well-funded petition drives can accomplish what honest debate never could.

Make no mistake about who pays the price. The $150,000 income cap is not an attack on families who can afford private school tuition on their own. It is a diversion to hide the sneak attack on families in Arizona’s poorest zip codes—families for whom the ESA is the only path out of a public education system that has already failed their children. Strip away the ESA, and those families can’t afford any alternative. Their children are trapped.

Decline to Sign. Both of Them.

Last month, we asked you to decline to sign the union-backed petition. That has not changed. But now the ask is coming from a second direction, and this one may be harder to spot because it is dressed up in the language of educational freedom.

A ballot measure that hands the state new authority over home-education curricula, new testing mandates for non-traditional students, and a new government-run purchasing system is not a defense of educational freedom. It is a concession. And once voters approve it, the Legislature cannot undo it.

Decline to sign. Both of them. Tell your neighbors. Tell your church. The ESA program does not need to be rescued by the same kind of regulation that its opponents have been demanding for years. That kind of logic is madness.

More than 100,000 Arizona students are thriving because their parents have the freedom to choose what works. That is a program worth defending—and Arizona families are not going back.

ICYMI

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