Given state cuts to US public education, overcrowding and underfunding in urban district schools continue to grow. Yet, how parents understand the role of state disinvestment on underfunded and overcrowded public schools remains relatively unexamined. Drawing from an ethnographic study of school choice in Arizona, I explore how a group of white parents from diverse income and educational levels, who exited their child from a district school to enroll in a charter school, articulated state disinvestment in their everyday lives. Findings show that parents blamed local schools for what were largely the effects of state disinvestment. In particular, parents connected underfunding and overcrowding with a lack of district responsiveness to individual concerns to express the view that dire conditions were a personal and not a collective problem. Concurrent with the view that they were "were forced to choose" a charter school due to a lack of district responsiveness, parents developed the belief that choice makes education more equal, especially for students who don't "fit in" to the district school. In total, findings highlight how technologies of choice enter into local cultural and material struggles to transform the relationship between parents and schools from a social to an economic one.