Almost Half of Students in the Young, AZ, Area Are Using ESAs
Whatever happened to ESAs being for the rich?
Rural ESAs
Disclaimer, there are only around1 50 students enrolled in school in Young, AZ, area. That said, what a great example of how ESAs can empower a community? Maybe? I’ll have to ask around to figure out what exactly is going on there. I’ve emailed the Young Public School superintendent to see his observations and thoughts, and I may reach out to some family I have that lives out there.
Whatever is happening in Young, I wouldn’t be surprised if similar things are happening in other very rural communities across the state. We won’t know from Rosenblatt’s data as it is censored for privacy reasons to exclude ZIP Codes that have fewer than 20 ESA applicants. After Young (85554) the next smallest ZIP Code, by student enrollment, in the data is Clarkdale (86324) which has around 281 students, 11% of which have applied for ESAs.
I’d love to see what the students in Jerome, who I think travel all the way to Clarkdale for school, are doing. Has a parent set up a microschool in Jerome funded by ESAs?
The Chart I Promised in My Last Post
As of yesterday, Rosenblatt had only the old ESA data from several weeks ago up. The current data is through October 15, the deadline for applying to receive ESA funding for the first school quarter.
As I said I would yesterday, I’ve created the same plots as I made here. Below is the updated plot of ZIP Code median household income against ESA applications normalized by student enrollment estimates (excluding 85554 as it is such an outlier with 45% ESA applicants and $29,952 median HH income).
Remember, you can’t make any causal link between a ZIP Code’s median household income and percentage of students applying for ESAs, so this plot isn’t actually telling you much, but it’s interesting to see nonetheless.
All the arounds in this post are because the student enrollment data I’m using is an estimate from the Census Bureau for 2020. A lot has happened since 2020.