WHY THIS IS PERSONAL

“My husband and I raised our daughters in our district's neighborhood schools. One earned a full-ride Air Force ROTC scholarship. The other starts law school this fall. I can trace the impact of investing in education back a generation. After WWII, the GI Bill gave my dad, a poor kid from Pittsburgh, an opportunity to go to college and become a physicist. Public investment in education changes trajectories across generations."

fund public schools

Every child in our community deserves a great school close to home. Julie will fight to fully fund our public schools so that they can deliver the educational experiences, services, and programs that more than 70% of Arizona's children rely on.

Recruit, pay, and retain great teachers

You can’t run a great school without great teachers. Arizona has one of the highest teacher vacancy rates in the country. Julie believes our teachers deserve respect, competitive compensation, benefits, and learning environments that are great for educators and their students.

Prepare students for an AI-driven economy

AI and technology are transforming every industry. Arizona’s educators need resources, curriculum, and partnerships with industry leaders to prepare students for careers that don’t exist yet.

Increased accountability for ESA Voucher Program

Strengthening public schools and supporting school choice are not opposing goals. Julie supports school choice that is transparent, accountable, and tied to measurable outcomes. The rapid, unchecked expansion of ESA vouchers diverted hundreds of millions of dollars from public schools, with little transparency and no clear evidence of improved outcomes. By establishing reasonable guardrails, including income-based eligibility, performance standards, and financial transparency, Arizona can support both educational choice and strong public schools.

Frequently Asked Questions

How does Arizona rank nationally for public education?

Arizona ranks last or near last in most national education assessments. Consumer Affairs' "Best States for Public Education" report ranked Arizona:

• Last for public school funding

• 49th for student performance

• 47th for school safety

WalletHub's 2025 education rankings placed Arizona's public education system 48th among U.S. states.

How does Arizona fund its public schools compared to other states?

Arizona is among the lowest-funded states in the nation. According to the Education Law Center's 2024 "Making the Grade" report, Arizona ranks last in education funding effort, spending just 2.05% of its GDP on K-12 education, compared to 5.5% in the highest-effort state, Vermont. Arizona's statewide school district spending reached $13.1 billion in FY 2024, with an average teacher salary of $65,113. This compensation figure represents a 34.6% increase over 2017 levels.

How severe is Arizona's teacher shortage?

Arizona's teacher shortage goes back nearly a decade. According to the Arizona Department of Education's Fall 2025 Teacher Shortage Impact Report, schools planned to staff 57,567 teachers for the 2025-26 school year, but as of September 2025, 4,242 positions (7%) needed to be filled through alternative methods, including long-term substitutes, contracted personnel, classified staff, and student teachers.

More than 1,000 educators quit the teaching profession as of July 2025, and schools were still actively recruiting to fill 1,387 positions at the time of the report's publication. Separately, ADE's first formal teacher retention study found that 14.4% of educators (over 8,600 teachers) left the classroom after the 2024-25 school year, citing burnout, lack of respect, and student behavior issues as the top reasons for leaving.

How large are Arizona's public school classrooms?

Arizona has the highest student-to-teacher ratio in the country at 23 students per teacher, contributing to its low ranking in public education studies tracking the data point in their assessments. Arizona's class sizes are nearly double that of top-performing states like New York, which averages 12 students per teacher.

How are Arizona students performing academically?

According to a 2025 Harvard/Stanford Education Recovery Scorecard, Arizona ranked 41st among states in math achievement change and 35th in reading between 2019 and 2024, with average student achievement still roughly 60% of a grade level below pre-pandemic levels in both subjects.

How many students and teachers are in Arizona's public schools?

Arizona's public K-12 system comprises 236 school districts and 420 charter school districts. Arizona public schools are staffed with roughly 60,000 classroom teachers. These schools educate more than 1.1 million students, with approximately 900,000 students in district schools and 270,000 in charter schools.

How large is Arizona's charter school sector?

In 2024, Arizona's charter schools served 231,703 students across approximately 580 schools statewide, representing 21% of public school enrollment and 25% of the state's public elementary schools. Charter schools are public schools, open to all students at no cost, with independent governance rather than by elected school boards.

How do Arizona charter schools compare to district public schools academically?

Research from Stanford University's CREDO Project documents that performance varies significantly by school, with about half of charter schools posting results similar to those of their district peers. A portion of Arizona charter schools do deliver higher academic growth than local district schools: 35% of the time in reading and 38% of the time in math.

What is Arizona's Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) program, and how large has it grown?

Arizona's ESA program provides state-funded accounts families can use to pay for private school tuition, homeschooling, tutoring, and other approved educational expenses. ESA spending grew from $2.2 million in 2011-12 to $886 million in 2024-25. Today, roughly 7% of Arizona's K-12 students use ESA vouchers. The Common Sense Institute projects total ESA spending will reach approximately $1.06 billion annually as enrollment stabilizes.

Who uses Arizona's ESA voucher program, and is academic performance tracked?

Most ESA users were already enrolled in private school or homeschool before receiving vouchers — 71% of universal ESA students as of 2025 — and participants are disproportionately from wealthier, higher-achieving, and whiter school districts. Researchers at Education Week, Brookings, and the Fordham Institute note that Arizona does not collect standardized academic performance data for ESA-funded students, limiting the state's ability to evaluate educational outcomes associated with the program.

How do Arizona public, charter, and private schools report academic performance?

Arizona's district public schools have the most comprehensive reporting. All students in grades three through eight, and grade ten, take annual state assessments (AzMERIT and AzSCI). Results are delivered as A-F letter grades with subgroup breakdowns. Academic year results are published by school at azreportcards.azed.gov.

Charter schools are defined as public schools and follow the same testing and reporting requirements as district schools, making their results directly comparable on the same ADE report cards.

Private schools have no state testing or reporting requirements. The Diocese of Phoenix voluntarily publishes annual Iowa Assessment results for all diocesan elementary students at catholicschoolsphx.org. The Iowa Assessment is a norm-referenced test, reflecting how students perform against a nationally representative sample of their peers.

What are Julie Gable's priorities for education?

Julie Gable, candidate for Arizona State House in Legislative District 3, has four core education priorities:

1. Fully and fairly funding neighborhood schools. Every child deserves a great school close to home, and Julie will fight for full, equitable funding so public schools can deliver the programs and services families depend on.

2. Recruiting, paying, and retaining great teachers. With Arizona among the highest in the country for teacher vacancies, Julie wants to make teaching a sustainable career through better compensation, benefits, and working environments.

3. Preparing students for an AI-driven economy. Julie supports equipping public schools with the resources and curriculum to prepare students for technology-driven careers, which she sees as essential for both students and Arizona's broader economy.

4. Requiring accountability for public education dollars. Julie believes any dollar leaving the public school system should come with full transparency around its purpose and outcomes.