Voucher accountability is headed to an Arizona voting booth in NovembergettyThe attempt to add guardrails to Arizona’s high-spending taxpayer-funded school voucher system has cleared one more hurdle.A coalition of parents and educators, represented by Save Our Schools Arizona and the Arizona Education Association, collected 421,251 signatures to place a ballot measure up to vote in November. 256,000 were required to put the measure on the ballot. The measure would place some guardrails on the Empowerment Scholarship Account program.The proposed Protect Education Act includes:Safety measures to protect students, including a requirement that voucher-funded schools follow fire and safety codes and require background checks for all staff.Bans on use of voucher funds for luxury and non-education items.Return of unused voucher funds to public school district. Currently, families can bank unused voucher funds indefinitely, so those taxpayer dollars can end up filling a family’s college fund. In July 2025, Craig Harris of 12News reported that around 10,000 accounts had banked over $10,000; over $440 million was sitting in accounts.Reporting requirement to show how much voucher money is going to the private schools that accept taxpayer-funded voucher money.Creation of a subsidy cap. Require that taxpayer-funded vouchers be available only to those families with income at or below $150,000.MORE FOR YOURequire academic measures. Voucher-funded schools would have to administer and report results on the same sorts of standardized tests used by public schools. Currently, private schools have no requirements to show how well they are actually educating voucher students.Save Our Schools Arizona says, “Arizona voters are more than ready to add commonsense guardrails to provide far better transparency and accountability, to curtail waste, fraud and abuse, and to ensure safety and quality academics for all students.” Arizona has taken its voucher program to the voters before. In2017, Gov. Doug Ducey signed a bill to make taxpayer-funded school vouchers available to any Arizona students. But when legislators moved to make vouchers universal, grass roots group collected signatures and forced the measure to go on the November 2018 ballot.The proposal to expand vouchers was heavily defeated at the ballot box. The voters had spoken, but the Arizona legislature simply ignored them and in June of 2022 passed the most expansive school voucher program in the nation.Voucher supporters have been trying to fend off this latest attempt to add greater accountability to the voucher program. The Besty DeVos-linked American Federation for Children launched its own ballot petition under Fortify AZ that promised accountability and transparency to a lesser degree. There was almost a deal with legislators to drop all the petitions in exchange for some reform, but that didn’t happen, and Fortify dropped its petition.The legislature then pushed through their own last-minute initiative that would serve as a poison pill constitutional amendment, invalidating the voucher reform initiative even if the majority of Arizona voters voted for it. The heart of their bill -- the Military Protection Act-- says the state can’t confiscate funds from military families, and any bill that included a violation would be “void” in its entirety. The portion of the PEA calls for unused voucher funds to be returned would be considered a violation of the MPA. The MPA will go before voters as a proposed constitutional amendment in November. Voucher reform advocates have challenged the bill in court. The next step will be a review of the petition by Arizona’s Secretary of State. Supporters of the taxpayer-funded vouchers will be working to fight that approval. The AFC has vowed to disqualify as many signatures as possible, and its CEO has offered some vague allegations about improprieties in the signature-gathering process.AFC have asserted that school choice policies have broad support among voters. One might assume that, confident of public support, voucher supporters might simply step back and let the voters display their support at the ballot box. But regardless of poll results, no voucher program has ever survived a vote by a state’s citizens, including the voters of Arizona. Those same voters are now one step closer to imposing transparency and accountability measures on the state’s voucher program.