Tipping Point for School Choice in AZ?

The Arizona Republic gave an unqualified endorsement of school choice today, coupled with a stinging rebuke of the state Education-Industrial Complex, also known as “Big Ed” (yes, I will continue repeating this gimmicky label) for challenging this and other school choice laws in court.

It’s difficult to pick just one quote, but their opening will do nicely:

Of all Arizona's attempts over the years to provide education options for poor students, the law allowing corporations to take a dollar-for-dollar credit on their taxes is the best-structured reform effort so far.

And they pull no punches on Big Ed:

Despite the indisputable value it provides students and their parents — that of real education options — the program's opponents have gone to court against it and other education-choice programs . . . .  It would be a shame to see such programs flounder on the specious fear that if you give vouchers to disabled kids, or to kids at the rocky bottom of life's well, that public education itself will crumble. Simply put, it won't. Education choice strengthens the underlying system. Someday, with luck, opponents of reform will figure that out.

The Arizona Republic is fearful that the voucher programs for disabled and foster children might have a tougher battle in court. But they rightly recognize that the challenge to the business tax credit program is desperate, bordering on completely absurd:

Earlier this month, a Maricopa County Superior Court judge ruled that the corporate tuition tax credit program was "legally indistinguishable" from existing tax-credit programs, and so passes the same constitutional muster.

Huzzah to the editorial board at the Arizona Republic, and congratulations to all of the Arizona organizations who have put their state at the front of the march to educational freedom. Don’t let up.