Just a quick post to say that Dillon Rosenblatt has a new data set from the AZ Department of Education with the ZIP Codes of all ESA applicants from the passage of HB 2853 through October 15, the date that parents needed to apply by for first quarter ESA funding. I wrote about his previous data set here:
First off, there are over 30 thousand new applicants! There are over 60 thousand students in private schools, so I’m actually a bit surprised that we aren’t seeing all of them capitalize on the ESA program, especially if it’s true that ESAs are just a ploy by the rich to send their kids to fancy private schools. Nevertheless 30k is still huge.
All that said, everything from my original post responding to Rosenblatt still stands. This data doesn’t give any evidence that the wealthy are disproportionately using ESAs. (And if it did, that doesn’t mean anything until a few years out because poorer people are probably going to take more time to transition from public to private schools.)
Sadly, along with misusing data, Rosenblatt seems to have accidentally not posted the new data in his new post. When he does, I’ll post some charts similar to my previous post.