Susan Pendergrass talks with Matthew Ladner, senior advisor for education policy implementation at the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Education Policy, about a recent Washington Post article blaming Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Accounts for school closures in the Roosevelt Elementary School District. They unpack the real reasons behind declining enrollment, the role of open enrollment and charter schools, and why most Arizona students exercising school choice are still in public schools. The discussion covers how media narratives overlook parent-driven decisions, the political resistance to letting kids leave low-performing districts, and why open enrollment could be a game changer for states like Missouri. Ladner also shares his broader perspective on the post-COVID shift toward educational self-reliance and what it means for the future of public education.

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Susan Pendergrass (00:00)
Thank you so much for joining me on the podcast this morning, Matt Ladner of the Heritage Foundation. You are no stranger to Arizona education or school choice, right? Nor am I. I feel like I could be wrong, but we met at the Goldwater Institute around the year 2002. Does that sound right? It’s been a minute and it was so—

Matthew Ladner (00:03)
That could be, yes, indeed.

Susan Pendergrass (00:28)
It was surprising to me to see in the Washington Post a week or so ago, basically a hit piece on Arizona education. Because oftentimes Arizona’s held up like Florida as one of the states that’s really making strides in both test scores overall, but in particular in Arizona, test scores and growth scores for low-income kids. They’ve really taken bold moves and made an actual difference in outcomes.

And yet we have this piece that says because Arizona is giving parents the option of a scholarship instead of an assigned public school, that is killing this poor Roosevelt Elementary School in Phoenix. I assume you saw the article.

Matthew Ladner (01:08)
I did indeed. Well, so I moved to Arizona in 2003. Of course, I was doing work here before I moved here. So we probably met the year before at the Goldwater Institute.

Susan Pendergrass (01:10)
What’s your take? What’s your hot take?

Matthew Ladner (01:24)
The first I heard of the Roosevelt Elementary School District was in 2005, when someone I worked with had a child who was attending a Roosevelt school and was brutally assaulted. By brutally assaulted, I mean rushed to the emergency room based on what happened to this child.

Susan Pendergrass (01:39)
My gosh.

Matthew Ladner (01:49)
Obviously, the school administration did not react well. In fact, they questioned whether the attack had been provoked—classic blame-the-victim. At that time, I put my coworker in touch with someone who did informally what we would today call navigation—helping people find schools.

Susan Pendergrass (01:59)
Thanks.

Matthew Ladner (02:13)
At that time, it was incredibly difficult to find a school for this woman’s children. The school year had already started. There were charter schools in South Phoenix, where the Roosevelt Elementary School District is located, but they had waitlists. We had scholarship tax credits, but the school year had already started, the money had already been committed, and there were waitlists.

We had open enrollment, but school districts were not interested in taking students from Roosevelt. In fact, I recall my coworker calling about an open enrollment transfer, and when she said her kids attended Roosevelt Elementary, they hung up the phone on her. It was visceral. She was almost as stuck as she would have been in 1993, the year before Arizona started any kind of school choice.

Fast-forward 20 years, no one in Arizona is stuck like that anymore. Every child has access to an ESA program. While only a minority actually use it, it’s available to everyone. That, I believe, motivates these drive-by shooting journalistic exercises, because very powerful vested interests don’t like people having the option of leaving.

If you read the Washington Post article, the unstated hypothesis is that the world would be a better place if people like my former coworker did not have the option of going somewhere else.

Susan Pendergrass (04:04)
That’s exactly right.

They chronicle the closing of an elementary school in that district. People are sad, heartbroken, and anxious. It’s a tragic story. But dwindling enrollment is less due to the ESA program and more due to the fact that in Arizona, you can pick any public school in the state.

In fact, they cite one group of low-income parents of color who started their own micro-school to avoid going to that school. Yet the counterfactual is: “If only they didn’t have the option of leaving, this school would stay open.” As if we should have kept kids trapped in a failing school. Hard to believe that’s the case in 2025.

Matthew Ladner (04:52)
Absolutely.

It’s offensive to argue the world would be better if people didn’t have the option of leaving a situation that wasn’t working for their child. The reality is, the largest form of school choice in Arizona remains district open enrollment.

Back in 2017, a study of Phoenix-area school districts found that the number of open enrollment kids—within and between districts—was about twice the number of charter school students. And Arizona has the nation’s largest charter sector.

Susan Pendergrass (05:42)
About how many kids are in charter schools?

Matthew Ladner (05:44)
Today it’s around 21% of public school enrollment. Back in 2017 it was about 16%.

Open enrollment is the King Kong of school choice. If Arizona has a school choice justice league, Superman is district open enrollment. Then come charter schools, and trailing far behind are private choice programs.

I do understand people don’t like school closures. Even schools that are underperforming and half-empty have emotional attachment. When you move to close them, people say, “My grandfather graduated from that school—how dare you close it!”

Susan Pendergrass (06:33)
No, yes.

Matthew Ladner (06:55)
State data shows Roosevelt has 6,500 kids who live in the district and attend its schools. But 5,700 kids live in Roosevelt and attend a charter. Another 2,700 attend a different district. About 800 use an ESA.

A final report showed only 129 ESA students previously attended a Roosevelt school. If you’re running a 6,500-student district, you don’t close five schools over 129 students. The Post article was misguided and misleading. Roosevelt’s enrollment has been declining since about 2006. There’s also the baby bust since 2007, which Arizona has worse than most states.

Susan Pendergrass (09:11)
Right. And in addition to bad reporting, the article says this ESA program “offers a window into the GOP vision for K–12 education.” In other words, nothing to do with what parents want. It’s supposedly a GOP political strategy to kill public schools.

That’s damaging because a lot of people don’t read past the headline. In Missouri, we don’t even have open enrollment. Some of our lowest-performing districts demand to be carved out from letting kids leave because they believe they’ll all leave and the district will collapse.

For example, in Ferguson, only 3% of 8th graders are proficient in math. Yet they don’t want kids to leave, even though they’re arguably not even fulfilling the constitutional duty to provide a free and fair public education.

Matthew Ladner (11:02)
Yeah, it’s bad all around. The Fordham Institute’s open enrollment map of Ohio shows every urban district is surrounded by districts that don’t participate. Arizona is the opposite. Almost all districts do open enrollment, including Scottsdale Unified—where about 25% of kids come from outside the district.

They do that because 9,000 kids who live in Scottsdale attend elsewhere. Financial incentives pushed even wealthy districts to open up.

Susan Pendergrass (13:10)
Right.

Matthew Ladner (13:23)
The Post piece framed this as a GOP vision, but really it’s about giving families dignity and autonomy. The underlying hypothesis was that low-income Hispanic and African American parents in Roosevelt are doing something wrong by making the best choices for their kids. That’s offensive, and bad reporting on top of it.

Susan Pendergrass (14:14)
Right. In Missouri, we rank all schools. When we launched that website, protesters said it was racist because many low-performing schools enrolled Black and brown kids. But those kids are already stuck in F schools. Shouldn’t we let them out?

Instead, the approach is: “Let’s not tell them it’s an F school, and if they find out, let’s not let them out.” That’s insulting to parents.

Meanwhile, in St. Louis, schools are losing kids but the district passed a moratorium on new charters because they know a new charter would fill up immediately.

Matthew Ladner (15:42)
Right.

Susan Pendergrass (15:43)
What’s your global view? In Missouri, we’re fighting lawsuits against our scholarship program. Do you see this as a last gasp, or what?

Matthew Ladner (16:03)
Not a last gasp. The struggle will continue past our lifetimes. But we are making progress.

The reason you see lawsuits and agenda-driven journalism is that there was an awakening during COVID. People realized the district system isn’t run for parents—it’s captured by unions and contractors. Schools are not about your kids. They’re about employees and contracts.

Now we’re seeing a self-reliance movement in education—school choice, homeschooling, co-ops. It’s growing. And frankly, Randy Weingarten’s actions during COVID made her the poster child for this failure.

Susan Pendergrass (18:18)
In terms of keeping schools closed and how she reacted?

Matthew Ladner (18:21)
Exactly. If you didn’t realize during COVID that the system wasn’t about you, someone needs to draw you a picture.

Susan Pendergrass (18:33)
The protests with coffins in the street, saying we were sending teachers to their deaths—they overplayed it a bit.

Matthew Ladner (18:37)
Yeah. And now we’re in a different environment. Young parents I talk to say there’s no way they’re sending kids to district schools.

That’s not to say everyone in districts is bad. There are good teachers trapped in a bad system. But the exciting part is teachers leaving to start their own schools. In Florida, there’s nothing stopping them, and it’s beautiful to see.

Susan Pendergrass (19:46)
Yes. In Missouri, we’ve cut off the teacher-as-entrepreneur option. It’s too bad. Every summer, parents reach out to me desperate to transfer kids to other districts, but we have nothing for them—except paying very high tuition.

It reminds me of your coworker stuck in Roosevelt. People say, “Just move.” But not everyone can move, nor should they have to.

Matthew Ladner (20:49)
Right.

Susan Pendergrass (21:09)
When I see a major outlet still saying in 2025 that ESAs are killing public education, when it’s really poor parents finding alternatives, that’s sad.

Matthew Ladner (21:28)
Exactly. It’s not up to me or lawmakers to decide where kids go. Families should decide, and that’s as it should be.

Susan Pendergrass (21:55)
Thank you so much for joining us. We have to keep this in front of people, and I appreciate you coming on.

Matthew Ladner (22:05)
Thank you, Susan.

Produced by Show-Me Opportunity

The post What the Media Gets Wrong About School Choice with Matthew Ladner appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The post Town Hall – Make it Permanent: COVID-responsive Reforms After the Pandemic appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Well, the RTT movement has expanded since then. Today over thirty states have already enacted the law, and it looks like federal officials may be following suit very soon.

Indeed it hasn’t. With a new Congress, bipartisan support, and a potentially supportive President, the prospects for a federal RTT statute passing are as good as they have ever been. If it does pass, it will be a win for patients across the country seeking greater control in the most precarious health situations imaginable. As we’ve said many times before, government should let people help their fellow Americans on terms largely or entirely unencumbered by state or federal bureaucracies. Right to Try laws are fundamentally designed to advance that end — and to offer hope to the most vulnerable among us. 

It isn’t clear when the federal Right to Try law is going to be debated and voted on this year. We’ll update you as the legislation goes through the process.

The post Right to Try Becomes a National Issue appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Like most states, Arizona felt a financial crunch in the wake of the economic downturn of 2008. As a result, funding for education could not keep pace with the expected increases. An Arizona judge recently ruled that state lawmakers did not fund schools properly during this time and must appropriate an additional $317 million to Arizona public schools, immediately.

However, as Jonathan Butcher of the Goldwater Institute points out, much less money would be needed if “ghost students” were removed from the funding formula. A ghost student is essentially when the state pays for the same student twice.

In The Arizona Republic he writes:

“Arizona schools can apply for additional funding for current-year enrollment growth, but they do not have to adjust for enrollment decreases in the same year. Traditional school payments are generally not updated until the following year, which means schools get funding for students who aren’t in their classrooms anymore.

“As Goldwater Institute research has reported, the state pays about $125 million for empty seats every year.

“Traditional school payments should be based on the number of students in the classroom, with payments updated accordingly throughout the year.”

In Missouri, we often hear that the state’s foundation formula for education is not fully funded. That is true, but Missouri’s formula is riddled with the same features that create ghost students in Arizona. Schools are funded based on the number of students from the current or two previous years. Thus, a district with declining enrollment could get funded based on their enrollment from two years ago, while a district with increasing enrollment gets funded based on the current year’s student count.

In addition, there are several other features that do not allow a district’s funding to decrease when it should. For instance, the amount counted as “local dollars” is pegged to 2004 assessment levels. If local property taxes increase, the state should pay less to the school district, but they don’t. On top of all of this, Missouri has a “hold-harmless” provision that prevents state funding from decreasing below a set level, even if the district should receive less based on the formula. As of 2013, there were 174 hold-harmless districts.

If Missouri were to remove these provisions it would allow the formula to adjust to the changing demographics of our schools. Then the formula would not be as dramatically underfunded as is claimed. This would be a wise step, because we simply cannot afford to continue to fund ghost students.

For more on the funding formula, check out our handy primer.

The post Missouri Should Stop Funding Ghost Students appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

On Thursday, the Missouri Legislature passed Senate Bill 493. Described as the “transfer fix,” the bill contains many provisions. One is the ability of students to use public dollars to attend a nonsectarian private school. If you believe the hype, I should be celebrating. After all, I am a proponent of private school choice. Sadly, I have been wrestling with whether this is even a victory for the school choice crowd.

Don’t get me wrong. I am glad that the legislature moved in a bipartisan manner to get this bill passed. Unlike the education establishment, I am willing to compromise and there are many needed aspects in this bill. Nevertheless, I cannot help but feel as if the students who need educational options got the short end of the stick with this deal.

Am I being too cynical? Should I be celebrating? To answer this question, I asked several school choice policy experts this question:

Is this a win for school choice or does it do more harm than good?

Here were their responses:

Mike McShane – Research Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute

The number of hoops parents and schools are required to jump through in order to participate will most likely prevent students from ever accessing a private education. This is Potemkin private school choice.

Patrick Wolf – Professor and 21^st Century Chair in School Choice at the University of Arkansas

I wouldn’t expect more than a handful of families to navigate all of those huge roadblocks to exercise private school choice, especially since religious schools are excluded from the program. When families have a broad set of private school choices, nearly 80 percent of them choose private schools with a religious ethos. That is their preference. This is essentially a private school choice program without the private school choice part.

Jonathan Butcher – Education Director at the Goldwater Institute

I don’t think it does more harm than good, but I’m not sure it will accomplish anything. At least not right away.

Matt Ladner – Senior Advisor of Policy and Research for the Foundation for Excellence in Education

The academic catastrophe going on in Kansas City and Saint Louis have been well understood for decades. On the private side of things, this legislation brings to mind an inspector on the Titanic making conditional offers of an approved life vest three years in the future.

Jason Bedrick, policy analyst at the Cato Institute, and Jay Greene, head of the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas, both pointed to the exclusion of religious schools and the testing requirement as very negative aspects of the bill.

“It’s especially painful when a ‘school choice’ program is designed in such a way that its passage is, to say the least, no cause for celebration,” Bedrick wrote.

Greene cautioned that this legislation might stifle future pushes to create school choice programs in Missouri.

A fix to some of the transfer issues was needed and on balance, the bill is mostly positive. But given these comments, I think my initial reaction was correct – this is not a school choice bill. It addresses some issues, but it does not expand options for students.

Summary of the private option:

Students in unaccredited schools within unaccredited districts are free to transfer. They must first apply to an accredited school within their district. If there are no spaces, they are able to transfer to another district or, upon voter approval, a private school. The private school must be located within the unaccredited district, nonsectarian, accredited, administer state tests, and meet a few other criteria. There is no transportation for transfer students.

The post Senate Bill 493 Is Not A School Choice Bill appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Congratulations to the legislators who made the bill happen, to the Goldwater Institute, which has pioneered the idea, and most importantly, to the patients and families who will benefit from this law’s enactment.

The post Landmark ‘Right to Try’ Legislation Crosses The Finish Line appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

When I speak about tax credit scholarships, I get a lot of questions: What is a tax credit scholarship? How would that work? What are the chances of that passing in Missouri?

If you want to find out the answer to these and other questions, join us on April 25 at Lindenwood University in St. Charles, Mo. We are partnering with the Hammond Institute for Free Enterprise at Lindenwood University to present a dynamite event, “Expanded Opportunities: A Discussion About Tax Credit Scholarships.”

Jason Bedrick, of the Cato Institute, and Jonathan Butcher, of the Goldwater Institute, will present information about how these programs are working in other states. You can download their recent case studies for the Show-Me Institute about the New Hampshire and Arizona programs directly from our website.

Attendees also will be able to take part in a panel discussion with Missouri Sen. John Lamping (R-Dist. 24), Sen. Maria Chappelle-Nadal (D-Dist. 14), Missouri Speaker of the House Tim Jones (R-Dist. 110), and Rep. Michael Butler (D-Dist. 79).

RSVP online, mark your calendars, tell your friends, and join us on April 25.

The post Mark Your Calendars For Our April 25 Tax Credit Scholarship Event appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

During our conversation, Butcher explained how education savings accounts work in Arizona and how they are different from vouchers or tax-credit scholarships. In his words, “The biggest difference is flexibility.” Unlike vouchers or tax-credit scholarships, the funds are not restricted to private school tuition; they can be spent on a host of education services and goods.

Another benefit of the program in Arizona is that it actually saves the state money.

“In Arizona, the program is designed so that each savings account comes as a cost savings to the state because only a percentage of a student’s portion from the funding formula is deposited in an account,” Butcher said.

For more on ESAs, read Butcher’s report: “Education Savings Accounts: A Path to Give All Children an Effective Education and Prepare Them for Life.”

You can watch the full video of our chat below.

The post Making Public Education More Flexible appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Matthew Ladner, a senior fellow with the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice and the Goldwater Institute, calls education savings accounts “The Way of the Future” — and I agree. The basic idea of an ESA is fairly simple. When families with eligible students choose to leave the public school system, the state gives some of the money it would have otherwise spent on the child in the public schools back to the family in the form of an ESA. Those funds are deposited into the ESA, which can be used for approved education purposes.

Arizona is currently the only state to have implemented ESAs and as of this month, one out of every five Arizona students is eligible for an account. Examples of eligible families include those with disabled children, military families, students in failing schools, and more.

The beauty of ESAs is that they are versatile. Families can use the money on private school tuition, textbooks, education therapy, online classes, tutoring, standardized testing, 529 college savings plans, or individual public school classes and extracurricular programs. Money in the account earns interest, like a health savings account, and if a family does not use all of the money, they can save it for future educational expenditures, including college tuition.

Later today, I will be interviewing Jonathan Butcher, education director of the Goldwater Institute, which was instrumental in helping get an ESA program established in Arizona. We will upload the video to the blog once it is ready. So stay tuned to learn more about ESAs.

The post New Idea For A New Year appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Much like a health savings account, an ESA would be a savings account used solely for education purposes. The state would deposit money into these accounts; families would then be the owners of these accounts and could use the money to purchase school supplies, tutoring services, or even private school tuition. Money not spent could be saved for later use, including college tuition. Writing for the Friedman Foundation, Matthew Ladner calls ESAs the way of the future and a “critical refinement” of Milton Friedman’s idea of the school voucher.

In 2011, Arizona became the first state to pass ESAs into law and the accounts seem to be growing in popularity. Initially, Arizona’s ESAs were available for students with special needs, but a 2012 expansion of the program will allow students in failing schools, students adopted from the state’s foster care system, and children of active-duty military families to take part in the program. Goldwater Institute Education Director Jonathan Butcher writes, “Now, nearly one out of every five Arizona public school students — more than 200,000 children . . . are eligible for an account. . . . The accounts are a model for what education in the 21st century should look like: flexible, innovative, and child-centered.”

Missouri school districts spent an average of $9,619 per student in 2011. The state’s share of this is approximately $2,800. In lieu of sending that money to school districts, families with eligible students could receive an ESA worth $2,000 for educational expenses. This would give families more options while saving the state and local school districts money. In the next legislative session, Missouri policymakers should seriously consider ESAs in any discussion of school funding.

The post Education Saving Accounts: What Are They? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The Arizona Department of Education (ADE) has mandated that the schools align their curricula to an ADE-determined grade-by-grade curriculum sequence.

Part of the appeal and success of charter schools has been the ability to try new curriculum that better suits students’ interests and needs. These schools should not be required to change the very thing that makes them so successful. The charter schools involved do not appear to need any assistance in deciding which curriculum is best for their students:

BASIS Tucson, BASIS Scottsdale, Veritas Preparatory Academy in Phoenix, Chandler Preparatory Academy and Mesa Preparatory Academy — include four of the ten highest-performing public schools in the state based on AIMS test scores. Newsweek has named BASIS Tucson one of the nation’s ten best high schools for two consecutive years.

Hopefully, Missouri will not repeat the ADE’s mistake, instead allowing its growing number of charter schools the freedom necessary to provide an innovative and quality education for their students.

The post If It Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix It appeared first on Show-Me Institute.