Goldwater Institute

PHOENIX-In Washington, D.C., Thursday, April 22, 2004, it was announced that Arizona governor Janet Napolitano would serve as co-chair of the new Task Force on Public Education in the 21st Century. Napolitano explained, "We are trying to prepare students for a high-tech world, but we are doing so by putting them through a school system designed in the 20th century."

PHOENIX - The Arizona legislature is under funding special education programs by $200 million per year, according to an Arizona Department of Education study released April 15. Chuck Essigs, director of government relations for the Arizona Association of School Business Officials told the press, "What it means is districts are taking money out of regular education programs to pay for special education."

PHOENIX-Arizona's landmark School Tuition Tax Credit program helped 19,778 students attend schools of their choice in 2003, according to a report released last week by the Arizona Department of Revenue.

PHOENIX-Arizona's landmark School Tuition Tax Credit program ranked among the top two school choice programs in the nation in a March 15 report card released by the Milton and Rose Friedman Foundation.

In a study released today by the Goldwater Institute, Human Resources Policy Corporation president Lewis C. Solmon and Pete Goldschmidt of the UCLA Center for the Study of Evaluation provide strong evidence that the superior performance of Arizona charter school students is not the result of "creaming" the brightest students from traditional public schools. To the contrary, charter school students typically begin with lower test scores but show overall annual achievement growth roughly three points higher than traditional public school students.