EXCLUSIVE: Why Is Education All Over Our Ballot?

Why Is Education All Over Our Ballot?

By Linda Brickman

Follow the Power. Follow the Money. Then Ask Who Controls Arizona Education, or Other States’ Education.

Arizona voters may think the Propositions near the bottom of the November Ballot are separate questions about separate issues.

Look again…

School choice.
ESA accounts.
Teachers’ unions.
Classroom spending.
Student privacy.
Race-based policies.
Parental authority.
Different proposition numbers.
Different titles.
Different political arguments.

But one “scarlet thread” keeps running through them:

EDUCATION…

So, before we start arguing YES or NO on the propositions, perhaps Arizona voters should ask: WHY? Why is education showing up again and again on Arizona’s 2026 ballot?

Who wrote these measures? Who gains authority if they pass? Who loses it? And perhaps most importantly…WHO IS PAYING TO CONVINCE US?

Until yesterday, the biggest education battle on Arizona’s ballot centered on two propositions designed to fight each other. Now, neither one is expected to reach Arizona voters in November. But the battle they exposed did not disappear…

The Propositions May Be Gone. The Education War Is Not.

PROP 212 vs. PROP 145 — THE BATTLE THAT ENDED IN COURT

Proposition 212 — the Protect Education Act — seeks major changes to Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) program, that currently provides parents with broad school choice options.

Among other provisions, it would have restricted ESA eligibility based on household income, impose additional rules governing allowable expenditures, establish new requirements involving participating schools and providers, and generally require unused annual ESA monies to be returned rather than continuing to accumulate in individual accounts.

Then there is Proposition 145…

Proposition 145 began with an appealing and easily understood principle: protect scholarship accounts belonging to qualifying children of military families. But the actual language goes further.

The measure says its protection is not limited to scholarship programs serving only military children; it actually protects the entire ESA program from future changes. So, for example, if a proposed NEW bill is enacted into law, or a voter-approved measure passes on or after November 1, 2026, violates that protection, that entire bill or measure becomes legally void and unenforceable.

That also means that the courts would not be permitted simply to remove the offending section and allow the remainder to survive. This is an example of Ballot Warfare…

Prop. 145 was deliberately structured to collide with Prop. 212. Had both reached voters and been approved, its provisions were intended to prevent the competing ESA restrictions from taking effect. But the Collision Happened Before Election Day. Both measures went to court…

And both suffered decisive, fatal blows before Arizona voters ever received their ballots, giving the ESA a VICTORY!

FOLLOW THE MONEY

Now we get to the part political advertising rarely puts in giant letters. Who was paying for all of this? The committee behind Prop. 212 raised approximately $7.5 million trying to put the measure before Arizona voters. The dominant contributor was the National Education Association (NEA), which supplied roughly $6.5 million. The Arizona Education Association contributed approximately another $810,000.

That means the national NEA supplied roughly 87 percent of the reported funding we reviewed — and the NEA and its Arizona affiliate together supplied approximately 98 percent. And after all of that money, Prop. 212 will never appear on a single November ballot.

That does not automatically make Prop. 212 good. It does not automatically make it bad. But it should make Arizona voters ask:

Why is a National Education Union organization spending millions of dollars to influence how Arizona structures its education system?

And we should ask exactly the same question when large national school-choice organizations, political committees, wealthy donors or outside groups spend heavily on the other side.

Follow all the money.

Not merely the money belonging to the people we already distrust. Because if we are going to demand transparency from one side, we had better be willing to demand it from our own.

FOLLOW THE POWER

Money tells us who is trying to influence the decision. The proposition itself tells us where the power was to go after the election. That may be the more important question…

Under Prop. 212, additional authority would have moved toward state regulation and oversight of ESA eligibility, expenditures, participating providers and unused funds. Parents currently using ESAs would face additional restrictions on eligibility and how scholarship dollars may be used.

Supporters argue those restrictions provide greater accountability, safety and financial oversight. Opponents argue they reduce parental flexibility and substantially narrow a school-choice program Arizona deliberately expanded statewide. Both arguments deserve to be examined.

Prop. 145 would have approached the power question from the opposite direction.

It attempted to place constitutional protection around qualifying military-family scholarship accounts — but its whole-measure nullification provision would also restrict what future Legislatures, future voters and even courts could do when changing laws that conflict with that protection.

So, neither proposition is merely about dollars in an ESA account, or reducing ESA monies that otherwise could be earmarked for public education.

Both are ultimately about: Who gets the final word on Education?

The Parents?
The Teacher Unions?
The Legislature?
The State Bureaucracy?
The VOTERS?
Or the Courts?

THE COURTS HAVE ALREADY ENTERED THE CLASSROOM

And this is where Arizona’s BALLOT CIRCUS took an unexpected turn. On August 18, the Arizona Supreme Court affirmed a lower court ruling against Prop. 145 on a technical, procedural ground.

The Court concluded that the military-family scholarship protection and the broader provision voiding entire future laws were not sufficiently interrelated to satisfy Arizona’s Separate Constitutional Amendment Rule. Prop. 145 will not appear on the November ballot.

Prop. 212 suffered a different defeat…That same day, the Supreme Court rejected key arguments by its supporters in the signature litigation, leaving the initiative approximately 10,000 valid signatures short of the 255,949 required to qualify. The matter was returned to Superior Court for the final calculation, but Prop. 212 supporters began conceding that their measure would not reach the November ballot.

Think about what just happened.

Two propositions designed to fight over the future of Arizona education NEVER made it on this November’s ballot.

But that does not end the education battle…It just changes where the battle will be fought next.

AND THOSE AREN’T THE ONLY EDUCATION FIGHTS

Now pull the camera back…If Props. 212 and 145 were the entire education story, we could stop here. But they aren’t!

Now pull the camera back again…The 2026 Education Proposition Battle also includes measures involving:

how much qualifying school districts must spend directly on instruction;
public-employee unions and the use of government resources;
school athletics, restrooms, locker rooms and other private spaces;
race-based preferential treatment and certain DEI-related practices within public education.

Not every one of those propositions is exclusively about education…But education keeps appearing inside them…Again, and again, and again.

That is why merely handing voters a sheet saying don’t worry about education and having to vote YES OR NO on PROP 212, or PROP 145, doesn’t work!

BECAUSE even though 212 and 145 are gone, EDUCATION is still the “Scarlet Thread” on the Ballot.

So, Voters need to understand the ramifications of voting YES OR NO on the other 2026 Education-Related Propositions. And the Education future debate also shifts to a larger battle we ARE voting on – WHO Arizona elects to govern and legislate in 2027!

THIS IS BIGGER THAN SCHOOL CHOICE

Arizona’s ESA enrollment climbed from roughly 11,000 students before universal expansion to more than 100,000 students in only a few years. That is no longer a small experimental program. And with Props. 212 and 145 removed from the immediate ballot fight, the next major decisions about that billion-dollar program may depend heavily on whom Arizona elects to govern and legislate in 2027.

It affects families, private schools, public schools, state budgets, taxpayers and the political organizations fighting over all of them.

So, Accountability Matters.
Fraud Matters.
Parental Choice
Taxpayer Money Matters.
Educational Results Matter.
And Who Controls the System Matters.

Those principles do not have to cancel each other out…Perhaps the most important question facing Arizona is NOT whether we must choose between Parental Choice and Accountability.

Perhaps the question should be: Why Can’t Arizona Demand Both?

THE BALLOT WARS IS ONLY THE LAST STEP

By the time a voter sees a proposition number inside a voting booth, millions of dollars may already have been raised. Lawyers may already have been to court. Political organizations may already have spent months choosing their language. Legislators may already have designed competing measures. Campaign consultants may already know which words test best with voters. But there is still one person who gets the Final Decision.

YOU!

So, before YOU VOTE on any proposition:

Read the actual language.
Ask where the authority moves.
Ask where the money came from.
Ask who benefits, and
Ask who loses control.

And above all:

ASK WHY!

Because the “scarlet thread” running through Arizona’s 2026 proposition battle is not merely education. It is something even more fundamental…

WHO WILL CONTROL IT?

ALL 50 STATES AND THE FUTURE OF AMERICA’S EDUCATION

We started this article on “Follow the Power. Follow the Money. Then Ask Who Controls Arizona Education, or Other States’ Education.”

But the Ballot Wars are going on not just in Arizona, but in dozens of other States… so, Education’s future is both a Statewide and Nationwide issue.

COMING NEXT: A TWO-PART SERIES ON THE FUTURE OF AMERICA’S CHILDREN…

BECAUSE the fights over education do not end with Ballot Propositions — or even at the Classroom Door.

PART I asks are America’s children being prepared to think, learn, work, and become independent adults — or are parents losing their authority over what their children are taught and who they are being prepared to become?

PART II follows those children out of the classroom and into the American economy: Where did the first rung of the ladder go? What happened to the summer jobs, entry-level opportunities, and work experiences that once taught teenagers how to earn, save, compete, and become self-sufficient?

Because educational freedom is about much more than choosing a school – It is about whether our children will still have the knowledge, freedom, opportunity, and skills to build an American future of their own and Preserving Our Constitutional Republic!