PHOENIX — Stop us if you've heard this story before.
A new survey rates Arizona as the worst state in the country for public education.
Arizona comes in at 51st, below Alabama, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Idaho, according to the survey, the "Best States for Public Education in 2024, by the non-partisan Consumer Affairs.
"Arizona really ranked poorly in pretty much all of the categories that we looked at," research specialist Rebecca Sowell said in an interview.
The worst states share these themes: low teacher salaries; low test scores in math and reading; and less money spent on K-12 students.
Arizona ranked dead last because of low test scores across the board and the highest pupil-to-teacher ratio in the country — 23 to 1.
According to the Consumer Affairs report, Arizona has the most crowded public school classrooms in America.
Sowell said that in the poorest performing states, the problems all came back to money.
"The funding really just was not there," she said.
Arizona ranked 50th on school funding and resources.
That lack of funding, Sowell said, "turns into low teacher salaries, low reading and math scores, which also translates to graduation rates."
"It all funnels down," Sowell explained.
This has become a never-ending story in Arizona.
A few minutes on Google turns up several years' worth of stories on Arizona's bottom-in-the-nation rankings for public schools.
The stories' unifying theme: a struggle — critics would call it a reluctance — by the Republican-controlled state Legislature to adequately fund K-12 public education in Arizona.
There is no such reluctance with the Empowerment Scholarship Account program. The lightly regulated school voucher program has no budget beyond the number of $7,000+ per child ESAs that Arizona families apply for.
The new Legislature and Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs will face a $300 million K-12 funding cliff in 2025.
Voters must approve a review of Prop 123 before it expires next July.
The initiative has funneled $300 million a year to K-12 schools since it was first approved under then-Gov. Doug Ducey in 2016.
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