Taxpayers funded this trashy, failing Mormon-based private school in Arizona

Title of Liberty Academy opened and closed within a matter of months. Republicans in Arizona made it possible through their obsession with vouchers.

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It turns out there’s a very easy way to create and run a school if you don’t want the public finding out how badly you’re screwing over students: Just say it’s religious and watch the oversight disappear.

That’s what just happened to a private school in Arizona.

In that state, Republicans have, until recently, dominated every branch of government, and they’ve used their power to launch a sustained attack on public schools. Instead of funding them, lawmakers have given parents vouchers worth about $7,000 (on average) to send their kids to charter schools or private schools. The money can also cover the costs of homeschooling. Despite the euphemistic language of “choice,” the reality is that many parents are taking money from public schools in order to send their kids to a place where standards are optional, actual education isn’t always a priority, and accountability is hard to come by.

The Washington Post noted last summer just how much money was being spent through this system:

… in Arizona, more than 75,000 students are benefiting from the Empowerment Scholarship Program, which pays for any educational expense. In 2022-2023, three-fourths of the money — about $229 million — went to 184 vendors. Most of that money went for tuition, 87 percent of it to religious schools.

A budget passed by Republicans over a year ago set aside $624 million for these vouchers meant to cover 68,380 students. The ESA program is currently being used by over 83,000 students, which explains how vouchers are blowing a giant, unsustainable hole in the state’s budget. Some of the families using that money include parents who can afford, and may already be sending their kids to, private schools.

But the problem isn’t just that vouchers exist. It’s the lack of oversight that allows certain schools to take taxpayer money without answering to anybody.

That’s the basis for a devastating new story from ProPublica’s Eli Hager.

He writes about a charter school called ARCHES Academy. Because charter schools are technically public schools, we know that “it had a record of dismal academic performance, with just 13% of its students proficient in English and 0% in math in 2023.” Those numbers, along with horrible financial mismanagement, led the Arizona State Board for Charter Schools to shut down ARCHES last March. They had the power to do that.

But Michelle Edwards, the founder and principal of ARCHES, decided she wasn’t going to let her lack of qualifications prevent her from keeping the school open. All she had to do was rebrand it.

Within a month of being shut down, ARCHES became Title of Liberty Academy, a private Mormon school with no formal ties to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. (It simply says it’s focused on the LDS Church’s “values.”)

Edwards could now accept voucher money. Even better for her, there would be no oversight whatsoever.

In other words, it was closed down by a public governing body but found a way to keep existing and being funded by the public anyway, just without the standards and accountability that would normally come with taxpayer money.

Arizona does no vetting of new voucher schools. Not even if the school or the online school “provider” has already failed, or was founded yesterday, or is operating out of a strip mall or a living room or a garage, or offers just a half hour of instruction per morning. (If you’re an individual tutor in Arizona, all you need in order to register to start accepting voucher cash is a high school diploma.)

Specifically, Title of Liberty would not have to make its finances public, would not be audited over academic performance, would not have to hire teachers with any specific qualifications, and would not even have to make employees pass a background check.

The irony is that many of the parents taking advantage of vouchers usually want some level of accountability.

Several ESA parents across the Phoenix area said in interviews that they absolutely want educational choice and flexibility, but that they also want the sort of quality assurance that only government can provide. Most said that the Arizona Department of Education should provide at least some information as to the background and credentials of private schools and other educational providers that accept voucher money, and also that the department should do something to protect families from badly unqualified providers.

But Republicans have made it so that the state cannot go after these private schools at all, for anything, allowing corruption and incompetence to thrive. That’s precisely what happened at Title of Liberty Academy. It opened up last fall… and within months, the dysfunction was so bad that the place was forced to shut down. Not by the state, but by Edwards herself, who couldn’t make anything work.

Edwards spoke to Hager for his article, and the numerous problems she cites are all ones that could have been prevented if she was held to the sort of standards, and under the kind of scrutiny, normally reserved for public schools.

… For one, Edwards told me, “We didn’t yet have [enough] students enrolled to be able to afford teachers. … But we had to have teachers in order to be able to get students.” She ended up hiring mostly her own family members, both for teaching positions and to do much of the school’s financial paperwork.

She also blamed difficulties with the ESA process, like some parents being told that they hadn’t submitted their email addresses or signatures in the right format. She made clear that none of this involved the state actually scrutinizing her school; still, she wasn’t able to obtain ESA funding as quickly as she had expected to.

The landlord, waiting on unpaid rent, finally asked Edwards to pack up the school and leave. According to one of the property managers, “She just left the space for us to deal with this shit,” which he said amounted to six large dumpsters’ worth.

What did the parents get for all the trouble of enrolling their kids in this fake religious school? Their kids lost months of education and now have to transfer somewhere else mid-year. Meanwhile, taxpayers lost the money that was wasted on this conservative-sponsored experiment located in a strip mall. If the parents who sent their kids here give a damn about their children, they should send them to a school with a solid, proven reputation instead of one that just has a mention of religion in its advertising material.

A mockup of Title of Liberty Academy on its Facebook page. Not seen is the China Palace restaurant next door.

None of this will change, though, as long as Republicans control the purse strings. They want to destroy the public school system at the state and national level and don’t give a damn what sort of damage that does to students or the economy. Children deserve so much than the low-bar education these faux-institutions and conservative politicians want to give them.

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