AZ's Superintendent of Public Instruction been running TV and radio ads touting ESAs (Empowerment Scholarship Accounts, better known as school vouchers). In them, he claims that AZ's education system is "excellent" but may not work for everyone, which he wants them to siphon funds away from public schools by using ESAs.
Some other folks may disagree with his use of "excellent" to describe AZ's public education system.
From US News and World Report -
From WalletHub -
From The Hill -
From Intelligent.com -
From the National Education Association is a .pdf that doesn't seem to provide an overall ranking for AZ, but most of the categories that AZ is ranked highly in are raw number categories where the number is based on size -
From BusinessInsider -
One group *does* agree with Horne and rates AZ's public education system highly. Of course, the pro-corporate organization American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), like Horne, has credibility issues where societal concerns are involved.
I realize that members of a certain caucus in the Arizona legislature aren't going to ask me for advice, particularly where their bad behavior (willfully ignoring the stated will of the voters and supporting the expansion of the grift ESA program) is concerned, but if they ever do, I would advise them to hire defense attorneys and instruct them to make the best deal possible.
And then I would suggest that those lawyers advise their clients to cooperate their asses off.
