Educational options in Arizona

Most families realize there are multiple education options available in Arizona, but exactly how many variations of the basic models are there…10…20? How about 70! Seriously, 70+ options and opportunities to find the variation that works for your family. Where did that number come from? It’s based on the combination of funding, educational approaches, and classroom models available in Arizona.

Dual enrollment is one model that many families are familiar with, but dual enrollment can be earned through private school, public school, charter school, vocational school or homeschool, which creates five variations.

Montessori based classrooms are offered as private school, charter school, and micro school classrooms; another three variations.

Before we dig in to the details and the comprehensive list, let’s get started with the basics.

In this section, we address these terms as an explanation of funding:

Public School- Publicly funded

Private School- Traditionall funded by student tuition, recently publicly funded options

Charter School- charter schools are public schools, therefor publicly funded

Online/Virtual School- can be either publicly funded or privately funded

Homeschool- can be either publicly funded or privately family funded

Hybrid- can be either publicly funded or privately funded

ESA (Empowerment Scholarship Account)- public funds for students to use for private school or homeschool or hybrid home based education

STO (School Tuition Organization)- public/ corporate donated funds for students to use towards private school tuition

The following terms are indicative of the approach to the development of the curriculum and the methodology used for instruction. Now let’s list the educational approaches to instruction:

Traditional : Montessori : Waldorf : Self-Paced : Accelerated :

Arts Integrated : Play Based : Vocational : Foresting/Outdoor :

Military : Game Schooling : Rabbit Trail : Life Skills :

Unschooling : Therapeutic : Faith Based : Magnet : Supplemental

The following terms are examples of classroom models. These are more about the environment where the students’ education takes place, but it also impacts the educational approaches available. Here is a list of classroom models available to families in Arizona:

Traditional : Micro School : Learning Pod : Virtual School :

Forest/Outdoor : Road- Schooling : Boat-Schooling : World Schooling

Dual Enrollment : Concurrent Enrollment : Home Based :

Boarding School : Hybrid : Co-operative :

In the next blog, “Deciding Which Model Works For Your Family,” we begin to discuss what these variations look like in practice allowing you to narrow down what may work best for your family.