Philosophy

As Texas rolls out its new Texas Education Freedom Account (TEFA) program, Arizona's decade-plus of experience with universal Education Savings Accounts (ESAs) offers a preview of what's ahead. Arizona expanded its voucher-style program statewide in 2022 after starting narrowly in 2011, growing from roughly 11,000 to 108,000 participants without a proportional increase in state oversight staff.

Supporters, including microschool operators like Phoenix's School to Purpose, say ESAs let families find alternatives that fit children who struggled in traditional classrooms. Critics, including advocacy group Save Our Schools Arizona and Deer Valley superintendent Curtis Finch, point to fraud and misuse concerns, weak academic accountability for private schools and microschools, and enrollment losses draining public school funding. State superintendent Tom Horne disputes the scale of fraud, calling it minimal, and argues parental choice itself serves as the accountability mechanism.

The debate matters for Texas as its own program scales up: whether existing oversight capacity and accountability requirements can keep pace with rapid enrollment growth, and how public school districts absorb the financial impact of departing students.
Arizona's years-long ESA experiment offers Texas a preview of the tradeoffs between school choice, oversight and public school funding.

Onondaga County Judge Melinda McGunnigle has warned Dr. Shareen Ismail, a Manlius pediatrician facing 21 fraud-related felony counts, that her Dec. 7 trial will not be postponed, even though she currently has no attorney after her previous lawyer withdrew. Ismail, founder of the Alexandre Centre for Children's Health, is accused of fraudulently entering vaccine records into a state database to enroll her son in school; most of the records reportedly came from a Rochester clinic that denies administering the shots. She has denied wrongdoing and maintains her son is vaccinated.

Prosecutors say the case files are extensive and have offered Ismail a plea deal to two felony counts in exchange for cooperation and turning over patient records tied to a related civil case, in which the state health department is seeking access to files for 50 patients. A judge recently blocked an earlier subpoena on a technicality, and the state has since refiled it, though Ismail has not complied. She is expected back in court Sept. 10 with a new attorney. If convicted on all counts, she could face decades in prison.

Abortion policy continues to fracture along state lines three years after Dobbs overturned Roe v. Wade. In Massachusetts, Gov. Maura Healey signed the Prioritizing Patient Access to Care Act, removing restrictions on abortion after 24 weeks and drawing criticism over the state's parallel campaign against pregnancy resource centers, which has spurred defamation and free-speech lawsuits. In Missouri, voters will decide in November on Amendment 3, a compromise measure that would restore limits on abortion after 12 weeks while allowing exceptions for rape, incest, and medical emergencies, and would also bar gender transition procedures for minors. And in Columbus, Ohio, reproductive rights advocates are pressing the city council to remove Flock automated license plate readers, warning the cameras could help states with abortion bans track and prosecute out-of-state patients, despite police assurances that reproductive-care searches are filtered.

Together, the disputes illustrate how abortion access, surveillance, and parental-consent questions remain contested even in states that have moved to protect or restrict the procedure, with litigation and ballot measures likely to shape enforcement for years.