Goldwater Institute

In modern politics, many believe that the government plays the role of Robin Hood. Through progressive taxation and spending, proponents believe that government reduces poverty while making everyone pay their fair share. The pages that follow will empirically evaluate the effectiveness of state government as Robin Hood.

Judicial interpretations of the Arizona Constitution have often been inconsistent and conflicting. Instead of developing a sound and authentically independent reading of the Arizona Constitution, the Arizona judiciary frequently relies on federal constitutional analyses to resolve matters of state constitutional interpretation. As a result, differences in the state constitution are often read out of the constitutional text to achieve uniformity with federal constitutional trends.

Under the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, states, local governments, private institutions, and the people--not the federal government--bear the responsibility of funding and administering education. Congress, however, circumvents the 10th Amendment through the Spending Clause in Article 1 to justify funding a vast array of federal programs, including the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB). NCLB created a federal education accountability system that often conflicts with Arizona's existing education accountability system, AZ Learns. As a result, principled federalists, frustrated by the overly prescriptive federal education law, have called for Arizona to opt out of NCLB.

Arizona's private schools are substantially less expensive to operate than their state-run counterparts, are better physically maintained, employ far more teachers per pupil, and

Studies show NCLB duplicative, private schools have higher teacher-student ratio