School choice programs in recent years have been marred by allegations of fraud from critics who argue they are rife with bad actors looking to get rich off state dollars.
Whether it is “fly-by-night” private schools, negligent parents looking to make a quick buck, or high-profile stories about questionable Education Savings Accounts purchases — such as LEGO sets, despite being a small percentage of transactions and LEGO having an educational arm that public schools use regularly — the narrative suggests programs are being taken advantage of by everyone except the students and families seeking educational opportunities that suit their needs.
Data from the Arizona Department of Education tells a different story.
SCHOOL CHOICE ISN’T RADICAL. THE ALTERNATIVE IS
Last August, the Arizona DOE reported it had earmarked $622,000 for collections due to possible fraud or misuse. That amount is nothing to scoff at, but to fail to put it into context is to cherry-pick. This $622,000 represents far less than 1% of total spending on the Arizona Education Scholarship Accounts Program, which currently serves over 100,000 students.
The Arizona DOE conducted its own randomized audit, finding that 2% of ESA spending was unallowable under its guidelines. The same audit found that a paltry 0.3% of ESA spending was egregious or never allowable.
The transaction numbers from both analyses suggest the rate of fraud or unallowable purchases is likely well below the claim from a media outlet that misspending in the program was around 20%. The 20% figure came from a dataset that focused only on transactions that had already been flagged as questionable and was not a representative sample.
According to a recent EdChoice analysis, it is much more likely that around 1% to 2% of total ESA spending is inappropriate. Still, it appears there is a problem with how Amazon items are approved in the Marketplace portal, leading families to believe the displayed options are permitted. This is likely a fixable issue in one part of the program, not evidence that the entire ESA program is a money-laundering machine.
Fraud and improper payment rates in other government benefit programs are much more rampant. The Government Accountability Office estimates that “the federal government loses between $233 billion and $521 billion annually to fraud.” Federal improper payment rates, though not the same as fraud, have totaled nearly $3 trillion since fiscal 2003. Major programs like the Earned Income Tax Credit and SNAP reported improper payment rates of 32.69% and 10.93%, respectively, in fiscal 2025.
Unemployment insurance, which had an improper payment rate of 14.41% for the 2024 reporting period, reportedly cost taxpayers between $100 billion and $400 billion in fraudulent claims during the COVID-19 pandemic. Medicaid isn’t much better, with government reports citing $543 billion in improper payments from 2015 to 2024, and the Paragon Health Institute, using a more rigorous methodology, put the figure closer to $1.1 trillion.
Yet we rarely hear about these abuses of government programs.
Instead, school choice programs, which have substantially lower fraud and improper payment rates, receive the bulk of the headlines. This suggests that many calls to roll back school choice programs over fraud are not made in good faith, but rather out of political convenience by those holding blanket opposition to such programs — such programs now serve over 1.5 million students across the country.
Moreover, to paraphrase 50CAN President Derrell Bradford, isn’t it ironic that during the pandemic that we weren’t concerned about sending checks worth thousands of dollars directly to citizens who could spend it on crack cocaine, but now, after the worst documented learning loss children experienced in generations, we’re worried about dollars sent with oversight to families who want to buy crayons for their children?
The double standard is ludicrous.
FROM PROMISE TO REALITY: SCHOOL CHOICE WON BIG IN 2025
Any popular program will experience some degree of fraud. Addressing it builds public confidence. This is not at odds with offering families robust access to educational options. In analysis after analysis, not only are choice programs shown to experience a fraction of the waste and fraud of other state initiatives, but the roots are often honest mistakes and easily addressed.
The response to fraud is not to shut down these programs, but to punish bad actors, provide transparency, and improve the programs for their beneficiaries, the students.
Cooper Conway is a state policy director at EdChoice, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, nonpartisan organization working to advance educational freedom and choice for all students as a pathway to successful lives and a stronger society. Follow him on X @CooperConway1.