Arizona set the gold standard for the nation last year by expanding eligibility for the state’s education savings account (ESA) program to every K-12 student in the state. Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne joins Students Over Systems to discuss the history of Arizona’s school choice programs and the challenges of overseeing the Empowerment Scholarship Account program expansion. Superintendent Horne, who previously led Arizona’s State Department of Education from 2003-2011, also shares his plans to improve public schools by focusing on student achievement and discipline.
TRANSCRIPT
Ginny Gentles:
Today on Students Over Systems, we’re celebrating Arizona’s Universal Education Savings Account program. Arizona’s Superintendent of Public Instruction, Tom Horne, joins us to share Arizona’s education freedom story.
Welcome to Students Over Systems, a podcast that celebrates education freedom. I’m your host, Ginny Gentles. At Students Over Systems we talk about the education freedom with the creators, advocates, and beneficiaries. And on today’s episode, we’re joined by Superintendent of Public Instruction for Arizona, Tom Horne. Superintendent Horne previously served 24 years as a school board member and four years as a legislator. He was the Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction back from 2003 to 2011, and also served as the Attorney General of Arizona from 2011 to 2015. Superintendent Horne was elected to another term of superintendent in 2022. Superintendent Horne, thank you so much for joining us.
Superintendent Tom Horne:
It’s a big pleasure to be with you.
Ginny Gentles:
Well, these early episodes of Students Over Systems, we’ve been spending a lot of time on discussing the history of the school choice movement, and you were part of that history in Arizona. You served as the superintendent of public instruction back in the earlier days of the school choice programs there, and you’ve recently returned to office. But before we delve into the Arizona education freedom story, I’d love to know what your priorities for education are this time around? And maybe you can share a little bit about how they might differ a bit from the last time you served in office?
Superintendent Tom Horne:
Well, my priority is to raise the amount that students are learning and have it demonstrated in the test scores. Under my predecessor, the test scores tanked because she didn’t focus on academics, she focused on other things like critical race theory and social-emotional learning and sexual stuff and so on. I want to get those distractions out of the way and focus on academics, get the learning up and get the test scores up. With the help of my transition team, we arrived at a mission statement and the mission statement is that, “The Department of Education is a service organization dedicated to raising academic outcomes and to empower parents.”
Ginny Gentles:
Differ from the last time that you were in office, you mentioned that the test scores tanked. Were you focused on academic achievement the last time or did you have other priorities at that?
Superintendent Tom Horne:
Yeah. Yeah, no, I was focused on academic achievement when I was in office and we had proficiency rates of 65% in math and 70% in English. And under my predecessor, they’re down to 33% in math and 40% in reading.
Ginny Gentles:
And this is on the Arizona State Assessments?
Superintendent Tom Horne:
Yes.
Ginny Gentles:
A lot of times when states reveal their state assessment data, it looks really good and then the nation’s report card data reveals the truth. But it sounds like maybe Arizona’s being a little more straightforward than my state of Virginia when it comes to the state assessments.
Superintendent Tom Horne:
Yeah, we were pretty much aligned with NAEP now in the rigor of our testing.
Ginny Gentles:
All right. So, obviously we’ve got a learning loss crisis in this country and a number of states are facing alarming test scores and serious concerns coming out of the COVID era policies that shut schools and disrupted learning and distracted students from academic priorities. How will you go about raising student achievement? What are your specific plans?
Superintendent Tom Horne:
Well, it starts with the first thing I mentioned. The first thing in our mission statement is to be a service organization. The last time I was superintendent, we had improvement teams that went out to help the schools. Under my predecessor there was no help for the schools at all. The schools described what the State School Improvement System was as paperwork hell, where they sent out long questionnaires, the schools filled them out, they sent them back, they got corrected. They went back and forth and by the time they got school improvement money, it was almost too late to do anything with it.
I want to be a service organization as I was before and get people out into the schools and help them do better, rather than sitting back and judging them without giving them any help. Of course, if despite our help they don’t do well, then they have to be held accountable. But the first part of it is to help. And then secondly, the second part of my mission statement is raise academic outcomes. And that means getting rid of the distractions that I mentioned earlier and getting the schools to focus on academics. And the third part of my mission statement is empower parents and that’s the ESAs that you’re familiar with.
Ginny Gentles:
Right. So a big part of addressing that academic crisis, the learning recovery, the prioritization of academics over activism, is ensuring that classroom discipline is addressed as well. What are your plans to ensure that discipline is restored to classrooms and that teachers are empowered with the tools that they need?
Superintendent Tom Horne:
That’s one of my primary initiatives actually. As you mentioned, I served 24 years on a school board, 10 years as its president, Arizona’s third-largest school district. And we never reversed a teacher one time on a matter of discipline, not once in 24 years. We became known as the toughest district around. Our kids learned more and our test scores came up to show it. And now we need to bring that to the state level because discipline has really had a tough time in recent years. A lot of people report to me the students have taken over the schools. And so I have a bill in the legislature that would require districts to keep track of when teachers requested discipline and to what extent the administrators followed it and did something about it. And that if there was a chronic failure to do the discipline that the teachers were requesting, the consequence would be a decline in the letter grade by one letter. So if you had otherwise been a B, you would be a C and so on. And that they couldn’t do better than a C.
And I’m evangelizing school discipline, it’s fallen into disuse under social-emotional learning, teachers are told not to discipline kids because it might hurt their feelings. And we have one district where they have teachers on assignment, they took them out of the classroom at a time of teacher shortages, and they go door to door telling the teachers not to discipline the kids. A teacher calls in saying that the student said to F-off, and didn’t use the letter, used the word, when she asked him to do his work. And the response was use your social-emotional learning or use other programs that don’t have consequences for misbehavior. We have to have consequences for misbehavior because kids want boundaries, but if they see one kid getting away with it, then they all start doing it and it declines into anarchy. And that’s one of the main reasons that teachers have left the profession, because who would want to teach in a situation where you’re not supported on discipline?
Ginny Gentles:
Absolutely. All right. So in addition to supporting teachers when it comes to discipline and supporting schools when it comes to prioritizing academics and student learning, you did mention that a priority of yours is empowering parents. And that’s long been a priority in Arizona. There have been an array of school choice options that parents can choose from, long before this universal ESA that we’ll talk about later on, came onto the scene last year. So when you were superintendent the first time, there were school choice options in place, correct?
Superintendent Tom Horne:
Yes. My involvement actually goes back to the time I was in the legislature in the 1990s. The Arizona Senate, even though it had Republican majority, passed a bill that restricted the growth of charter schools and that became part of the Senate Education Omnibus Bill, a bill that has a lot of education provisions in it. The House Omnibus Bill did not have that provision. I was the chair of the conference committee to resolve those two bills. And the very first thing I did was to destroy the Senate bill that would’ve limited the growth of charter schools. I thought it ought to be up to the parents how many charter schools they wanted, the market should prevail. And as a result of doing that, when I left office, we were first in the nation in the percentage of our kids that were at charter schools, at that time at 10%. And the next highest was Florida at 7%. And so I’ve been heavily involved in school choice going back quite a few years.
Ginny Gentles:
Right. So the charter schools have been flourishing and growing in Arizona for a long time, in part because of the work that you did. And then there also has been a tax credit, or at least two tax credit programs I believe, that provide scholarships for families. How did parents find out about these options? I wonder about that sometimes, in these states like Florida and Arizona where there’s an abundance of options, how do parents learn about them? Was that something as a Department of Education that you helped them learn about?
Superintendent Tom Horne:
Well, up till now, it has not been. It’s been a word of mouth or watching the news and so on. But starting in May, we’re going to be running public service announcements. We’ve budgeted several hundred thousand dollars for that, informing parents that my job as state superintendent is to encourage excellent public schools. And indeed we do have excellent public schools in Arizona, but if the school that your child is at is not serving that child’s need, you have sources, you have choices, and we give them the website address where they can go and see what those choices are.
Ginny Gentles:
So in all of this history of Arizona and its school choice movements and the proliferation of options, there’s often this term of Arizona being the Wild West of school choice or the Wild West when it comes to education freedom. Would you agree with that characterization?
Superintendent Tom Horne:
Totally. The Wild West was settled by pioneers and we’re definitely a pioneer, certainly first in the country with ESAs.
Ginny Gentles:
Right. And so let’s delve in after a quick ad break into what ESAs are and the Arizona story around there. We’ll find out more about the opportunities that are offered to Arizona families. But I first wanted to share a short message from one of our favorite podcasts here at IWF, and that’s Problematic Women.
So are you a conservative woman and do you feel problematic just for existing in today’s political landscape? If so, every Thursday morning on Problematic Women, Lauren Evans and Virginia Allen sort through the news to bring you stories and interviews that are particular interest to you, a problematic woman. That is a woman whose opinions are often excluded or even mocked by those on the so-called pro-woman left. Lauren and Virginia break down the news you care about in an upbeat and sharp witted way. Search for Problematic Women wherever you get your podcasts.
Okay, so Education Savings Accounts or Empowerment Scholarship Accounts, those were just coming on the scene as you were leaving office the last time, I believe around 2011. Sometimes when we’re talking about ESAs in Arizona, it’s as if they were just created last year and they suddenly came on the scene and were a universal program available to all 1.1 million K-12 students, but that’s actually not true. Arizona has a long history with these accounts. What kind of debate was there around the creation of these programs, again, first in the nation, Wild West of education freedom in Arizona?
Superintendent Tom Horne:
Well, I can tell you about the debate to make them universal. There were limited ESAs for the years that you mentioned for Special Ed parents and people in failing schools and a few other categories like that. But the big debate over making them universal for all, as you say, 1,100,000 students in our state occurred last year. The leader in the legislature was Ben Toma, who’s the speaker of our house. Outside of the legislature there was leadership from Steve Smith who’s the executive director of the Arizona Chapter of the American Federation of Parents. They got their title from the American Federation of Teachers. They thought parents should have a similar organization, so as the American Federation of Parents.
And it became a debate between myself and my opponent in the election because, in addition to campaigning to be reelected, she was campaigning to get people to sign a petition which would’ve put the bill to provide for universal ESAs on the ballot and so that people could cancel what the legislature had done. And so it was a major issue in our campaign. Christine Accurso, who I’ve now made the head of our ESA program, led a movement of parents to urge other parents not to sign those petitions. And that was successful and they did not get enough signatures. And she’s now a very successful administrator of our program.
Ginny Gentles:
It was an exciting time to watch from afar. I can’t imagine how intense it was to be in the state, particularly from a parent perspective, when the possibility of having this Education Savings Account, or I think you all call them Education Freedom Accounts, was at stake. What do these accounts offer parents?
Superintendent Tom Horne:
It offers them $7,000 to go to tuition in a private school or if they’re homeschoolers, it could be used for educational materials that the homeschooler could use and tutoring, that kind of thing.
Ginny Gentles:
Right. And so you had mentioned that originally the program was limited as far as the eligibility and largely it was families with students with disabilities who took advantage of it. That eligibility was expanded over time, I believe students that were children of military families, children who were on Indian reservations and foster children, there were a number of different categories that it was expanded to.
Superintendent Tom Horne:
And children in schools that were given an F as failing schools.
Ginny Gentles:
Right, also failing schools. So expanded over time. And I’ve heard different numbers, but I think before the universal expansion you had, I’ve heard, between 11,000 or 15,000 students participating. You’re growing significantly with that program. And last-
Superintendent Tom Horne:
Since I took office, it’s increased to 50,000.
Ginny Gentles:
Okay. So that’s a significant growth in a program. Are there any growing pains?
Superintendent Tom Horne:
Oh yeah. The kind of interesting surprise, really. But here’s what happened. My predecessor was against ESAs, and so she did not enforce the rules and make sure that money went for educational purposes. So people got away with using the money for things like restaurants, clothing stores, ridiculous things. The word somehow got from the Department of Education to a group called SOS, which is against ESAs and campaigns against it. And then they would put it up on their Twitter accounts saying, “Look how they’re wasting your money.”
So when I took office, I cracked down on that. I felt like we’re first in the nation, we’re in a spotlight, for the sake of Arizona and for the sake of the whole country, we have to be 100% clean. So the money has to be spent only on legitimate educational purposes and we have to enforce all the rules. Well, that provoked a backlash from some parents who were used to the looser system. And so we’ve had quite a fight with them at a number of state board meetings because they don’t like the fact that we’re enforcing the rules strictly and we’re making sure the money only goes for educational purposes. But I think that’s necessary to make this a successful program in our state and so that other states can imitate it, that it has a record of following the law, using the money only for proper educational purposes.
Ginny Gentles:
Well, let’s dig into that a little bit. I know that there’ve been some auditor general reports on the program, and that does provide some examples of concerns about program administration over the years. But as we look across government programs, there are GAO reports, Inspector General or IG reports, all kinds of reports that show that often in government programs there’s a fair bit of waste, fraud and abuse. Something that we should all be concerned about. My understanding is that it was fairly low as a percentage wise when it comes to ESAs. But I hear what you’re saying.
Superintendent Tom Horne:
I’m not going to allow any.
Ginny Gentles:
Yeah, okay.
Superintendent Tom Horne:
I’m not going to allow any, we’re going to have everything strictly by the book. Because I think that’s necessary, even if it was just a question of Arizona, but the spotlight is on us for the whole country, and I have to make it work in a way that is not subject to criticism for wasteful expenditures or for things that don’t follow the law.
Ginny Gentles:
So how does one deem what is a wasteful expenditure when it comes to education? It seems like, when you look at the public education system, there’s been so much that’s been wasteful. And then also there’s so much that they do spend money on that could be deemed educational depending on your perspective. So I was reflecting back on growing up in Orlando, Florida, and I attended Orange County Public Schools where we went on a field trip to SeaWorld. So if a homeschooling parent buys a ticket to SeaWorld with an ESA fund, is that considered waste or is that just like it was for me growing up in a public school? Of course, we went on a field trip to SeaWorld.
Superintendent Tom Horne:
I don’t remember that specific, but I think that the examples that I gave are obviously things that were allowed that should not have been allowed. And as far as waste in the public schools, I’m working on that as well. My campaign is to get a higher percentage of the school’s budgets into teacher’s salaries because no school can be better than the quality of the teachers in the classroom. And I find that some districts spend too much, for example, on administration. So I just issued a press release with a graph that demonstrates that there’s a one-to-one relationship between schools that spend a higher percentage of their money in the classroom, which is mainly teachers’ salaries, as opposed to those schools who don’t. And there’s a straight line on our graph that shows the more efficient they are in the sense of putting a higher percentage of their money into a teacher’s salaries, the higher their test scores are, the better they do academically. And so I’m on a crusade for that as well.
Ginny Gentles:
Well, as we start wrapping up, I’m wondering, it sounds like you’re dedicated to ensuring that this ESA program and the school choice options work for families. You’re also dedicated to improving that the traditional public school system is improved and is serving families well. How do you respond when critics of school choice programs, like Red for Ed, like the Save Our Schools, say that these choice programs are actually pulling resources and are hurting? How do they actually help the families who aren’t participating or do they hurt the public school system?
Superintendent Tom Horne:
Right. I got this question many times during our general election, and I have basically two answers. The first answer is, the amount you spend per pupil is the key factor, not the amount you spend in gross to the school. So you’re better off in a smaller school that has less money overall, but more money per pupil than in a larger school that has more money overall, but less money per pupil. So the key factor is, what’s the expenditure per pupil? And if a school loses a student to a private school, let’s say, they lose the income, but they also lose the associated expense. And so the amount for pupil over the long term, it takes a few years sometimes for the adjustment, but over the long term, the amount per pupil stays the same.
The other way public schools are benefited is that competition’s good for everyone. That’s why the United States was prosperous and the Soviet Union was poor because we had competition and they had a government monopoly. And as they used to say in Poland, “We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us.” Well, with that philosophy, you don’t produce much and your country is poor. And the same applies to education. And I give a personal example of that.
When I was on my school board, I would do the negotiating with the teachers, and one year they had a proposal that we eliminate the Advanced Placement courses that didn’t fill up because not enough students qualified. They said that was inefficient and the money should go for something else. And my response was, “If you do that, you’ll lose all your best students to charter schools.” And that stopped the discussion. They never raised that again. And so that’s an illustration of the fact that when you have competition, it causes the schools to perform better because of the competition, just as is true in the economy generally. And I think that competition will make a big difference.
If a school is complaining that the fact that they have competition from a private school means that a student may leave, the solution to that is for them to do a better job academically, get better results academically, so the parent will want to keep the student there. Most parents, overwhelmingly the majority of parents, want their students to go to the neighborhood public schools. If they take them out of the schools because students’ needs are not being met, improve academics, meet the students’ needs, you won’t lose any students. That competition is very good for everybody and results in a good system, just as a competitive capitalist system results in a prosperous country rather than a poor country where you have a monopoly.
Ginny Gentles:
Well, those of us who advocate for students over systems or putting it another way, funding students not systems, definitely support your beliefs on this subject and have been pointing to Arizona as the setting the gold standard for education freedom and for a model that can benefit all students in the state. But it sounds like, in our conversation, you’re embracing perhaps both titles, the Wild West and the Gold Standard moniker. As we conclude, what is a final school choice myth that you would like to debunk for our listeners today?
Superintendent Tom Horne:
Well, I think what I said that it would hurt the public schools. I think it benefits the public schools, because the public schools don’t have a reduction in their amount of money per pupil. And what they do have is additional competition as they had from charter schools, which is additional incentive to focus on academics, get rid of the distractions like critical race theory, social-emotional learning, inappropriate sexual classes, get rid of those distractions, impose discipline, focus on academics, and you won’t lose students anywhere because the parents will be happy with the academic performance of the students.
Ginny Gentles:
Great. Well, Superintendent Horne, thank you for your leadership, your clear dedication to education and serving the parents and the students in your state. And thank you for joining us here on Students Over Systems today.
Superintendent Tom Horne:
Thanks for having me.
Ginny Gentles:
We hope our listeners found today’s conversation informative and encouraging. If you enjoyed this episode of Students Over Systems, please consider leaving a review on your favorite podcast app. And don’t forget to share this episode with your friends. To learn more about the work of IWF’s Education Freedom Center, please go to iwf.org/efc and thank you for listening to Students Over Systems. Until next time, keep celebrating education freedom and brighter futures.
