I don’t know if Tom Horne and John Huppenthal, Arizona’s two most recent ex-superintendents of education, ever get together, and I don’t know if either of them spend any time with recalled Republican State Senator Russell Pearce. But the three of them definitely should find time to gather and celebrate now and then. They have every reason to high five one another as they look down from Phoenix at the political and personal battles raging in and around TUSD and say to each other, “Look at the mess we created down there. We did some good work, didn’t we?”
Conservative Republicans outside of the Tucson area no longer have to expend much energy trying to take down the school district which serves the children of the city they love to hate, the Democratic-leaning metropolitan area they think of as “The People’s Republic of Tucson.” They took a problem-ridden district and planted within it the bitter seeds of dissension and animosity. They helped create anti-district alliances among groups on the right and the left which previously had been at odds. Then they sat back and watched with satisfaction as forces in the school district and the community tear each other apart.
TUSD has long been a district with a reputation of poor management and poorer financial practices, and it couldn’t hold onto its superintendents, shedding them almost as regularly as trees shed their autumn leaves. But for all that, the district has always had its share of strong schools, strong teachers and strong programs. Among its strengths was the Mexican American Studies program which had a national reputation for innovation and excellence. It served a portion of the Hispanic community, as well as some non-Hispanic community members, who wanted to give their children a representation of Mexican and Mexican-American history and culture different from the more mainstream depiction which disparaged them. A dedicated core of teachers and administrators worked diligently to create a curriculum and an ethos which instilled pride in students while it dispelled some of the negative stereotypes which are pervasive in the normal school curriculum and society at large, empowering students with knowledge of the positive aspects of their history and traditions and spotlighting ways society has conspired to keep them poor, powerless and self hating. The program was well known and respected in some parts of the Tucson community, and disliked in some others, but beyond those groups, it mostly flew under the radar. It was just one of many programs in the school district about which the general public had little knowledge.
Then, a golden opportunity to demonize MAS fell in the lap of the right wing scream machine. Three words spoken at a school assembly by Delores Huerta, an icon of the labor movement and the fight for Hispanic rights, were used to spark conservative outrage. “Republicans hate Latinos,” Huerta said. The phrases and sentences surrounding those three words qualified them and made them less incendiary, but all anyone heard from her talk was, “Republicans hate Latinos.” National right wing media seized on the words, and Arizona’s conservative community latched onto them with a vicious glee. It was Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks saying she was “ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas” all over again. It was John Lennon saying the Beatles were more popular than Jesus. Unlike the Maines and Lennon episodes, Huerta’s words didn’t lead to record burnings, reminiscent of book burnings, cheered on by self righteous, cheering mobs, but they led to a reinvigorated wave of anti-brown agitation, fear and hatred.
And the words led to ambitious politicians seizing on the Mexican American Studies program to bolster their careers. Education superintendent Tom Horne drove from Phoenix to hold regular press conferences condemning the program outside the TUSD administration building. He hoped to ride the anti-MAS wave all the way into the governor’s office. John Huppenthal mixed barely veiled anti-Hispanic rhetoric with a history-blind patriotic fervor and made them the centerpiece of his winning campaign to follow Horne as superintendent. And Senator Russell Pearce, father of SB 1070, pummeled the TUSD program in the legislature at every opportunity.
The legislature passed a law crafted to make the Mexican American Studies program illegal, and Governor Jan Brewer signed it. Superintendent Huppenthal declared that the program had to be dismantled. The reaction in Tucson was fierce. Supporters of MAS rallied together, held demonstrations, disrupted board meetings and did everything they could to fight against the destruction of the program they held dear. Forces opposing MAS fought their fight on internet sites, right wing radio and on the school board itself. The controversy received nationwide attention. Finally, with Huppenthal demanding TUSD dismantle the program or face a loss of ten percent of its state aid, the board voted 4-1 to dismantle MAS. Voting in the majority were current board members Mark Stegeman and Michael Hicks as well as Alexandre Sugiyama and Miguel Cuevas who are no longer on the board. Adelita Grijalva cast the sole vote against the move.
The most ardent supporters of MAS were furious with TUSD for giving in. They felt betrayed that the district’s one outpost against the Anglo-dominated view of the Hispanic community, the program they cared about so deeply and fought for so ardently, was destroyed. They had fought long and hard against another instance of the anti-Hispanic establishment’s efforts to keep them in their obedient, subservient place, and once again they were shot down. They kept the fight going by filing lawsuits and continuing to urge people in the district to work to reinstate the program. Anything less than a full-throated support of MAS, not just in the past but in the present and into the future, was seen by them as a betrayal.
Other supporters of the Mexican American Studies program decided they had to move on. They had been beaten by forces who had control of the legislature and the Arizona Department of Education. It was futile, they felt, to continue to mount a frontal assault on people who had the power of the purse, and even the power to arrest TUSD staff members who violated the anti-MAS state law. That attitude infuriated those who wanted to continue the battle. They saw their former allies as traitors surrendering to the enemy. In some ways, those who left the fight were worse than the people who originally mounted the conservative fight against MAS, because they were former friends abandoning their comrades who wanted to continue fighting, if not to the death, then to their last political breath, consequences to the district be damned. The fight should not be abandoned, no matter what damage it might cause the district to refuse to comply with the state’s order.
Adelita Grijalva was among those viewed as a traitor who abandoned the cause. So were the two new board members, Cam Juarez and Kristel Foster, who had supported the fight to keep MAS and who replaced two board members who voted to dismantle the program. Grijalva, Juarez and Foster all fall into the progressive Democratic camp. Two are Hispanic and the third is fluent in Spanish and a program specialist in Language Acquisition in the Sunnyside School District. But for those who demanded that the fight continue, the three were viewed as enemies.
If the conservative war against Mexican American Studies hadn’t been waged and won, there still would have been educational conflicts between the Tucson’s more radical left, especially the Hispanic radical left, and the new board majority of Grijalva and the two recently elected board members. Some political rifts in the community are deep and long-standing. But they would have played out at a lower level, as they had before the MAS battles, with moments of unity and moments of disunity. But the conservative victory against the MAS program became a wedge driven between the two groups which made cooperation, a willingness to work together despite their differences, nearly impossible.
John Pedicone was TUSD superintendent during the MAS battles and its dismantling, and he, like so many other superintendents before him, decided to leave the district after a few years on the job. It was the newly reconstituted board’s task to find someone to replace him. The majority picked H.T. Sanchez, someone who is like them in many ways. He’s Hispanic, and he leans toward a progressive education model. Before the dismantling of MAS, his hiring would probably have been greeted with a shrug or at the most mild dissension by most members of the community who are to the left of the board majority. But Sanchez made it clear he wanted to pick up from where the district was and move on. He had no desire to refight the battles over the Mexican American Studies program. And that made him suspect—worse than suspect—to those who didn’t think the MAS battles should be ended.
That was the moment, when Sanchez was being scrutinized by the community before he was hired, when the alliance between those on the left who wanted to keep fighting for the MAS program and those on the right who were its strongest opponents was formed. Local right wing radio talk show hosts and their compatriots on internet were all too happy to find any reason to stir up anti-TUSD controversy. For them, the worse the reputation of the district, the sooner the privatization of education would triumph over government-controlled public schools. So when they saw the growing animosity toward the TUSD establishment by the strongest supporters of MAS, they embraced the controversy. On the radio and on the internet, they blasted the process of choosing Sanchez, his history and some of his statements. Stegeman and Hicks, the two remaining board members who fought against MAS, chimed in as well, digging up every reason they could find to oppose Sanchez. And the people on the left who fought hardest for MAS against those on the right who opposed it joined with their recent enemies to fight a common enemy: the board majority and Sanchez.
And so it has been since then. It’s never hard to find concerns about and complaints against something going on in TUSD. That’s true with any large public institution and doubly true of a school district in an urban area with a large minority population. But those reasonable concerns are being shouted at ear-splitting volume by those on the left and right opposing the current TUSD establishment. Long invectives have been published, one after the other, screeds mixing genuine concerns and complaints with a level of vicious animosity, often personal, often exaggerated and wrong, which far exceeded the concerns being aired. It was like the right wing shouting “Benghazi!” at Hillary Clinton, and “Emails!” and “Clinton Foundation!”—unrelenting attacks with the volume turned up to eleven. Any new controversy, any new problem is aired with the same hyped-up hatred. The problem being revealed is secondary to the overriding message, “Throw ’em out!” It’s a demonization that we’ve come to expect of the right going after the left—and the left going after the right—but when it comes to TUSD, it’s coming from the two political ends working in combination to demonize a mutual enemy.
The latest controversy is over TUSD’s spending, or not spending, of its Prop 301 funds. It’s a very reasonable topic of discussion, since it involves the amount of money teachers receive, which is always too little in this state, but may have been less than it should have been for TUSD teachers. It would be valuable to have some dispassionate analysts weigh in to help us understand what’s happened to those funds in the recent past and what’s planned in the future. But once again, the screaming makes a reasonable discussion almost impossible (though the Star’s Tim Steller is making an attempt, with some success). The people fighting hardest against Sanchez and the board majority are using the controversy to yell, “Throw ’em out!” while the district administration and the three members of the board under attack are adopting a defensive stance, knowing any admission that the money wasn’t distributed properly will be greeted by shouts of “Guilty! String ’em up!”
Let’s not forget to give our state’s Republican leadership some credit for this most recent controversy. When Prop 301 was passed, it was an excellent example of a funded mandate. The voters said, we want to raise the compensation for teachers, and we’re going to pay six-tenths of a cent in sales tax to fund it. And to make sure those funds remained available to spend on teachers, the proposition mandated that the legislature could not cut its education budget. Then, starting in 2009, the Republican-led legislature illegally cut the education budget. According to national studies looking at education cuts after the 2008 recession, Arizona, already near the bottom of per student funding, cut the largest percentage of education funding of any state in the nation. Our already inadequately funded schools were beggared still further, illegally. Though the Prop 301 funds kept flowing, their purpose became, in essence, an unfunded mandate. It’s highly unlikely TUSD would be dealing with the controversy about the way it used those funds at such a high decibel level if its budget hadn’t been squeezed by anti-education Republicans.
So I say congratulations to Horne, Huppenthal, Pearce and all the Republicans in power who would like nothing better than to dismantle public education and in particular punish The People’s Republic of Tucson. You’ve done your anti-education, anti-children, anti-Arizona job well.
This article appears in Oct 6-12, 2016.
Nobody created the mess in TUSD except TUSD. Why can’t you own up to the facts as they are? This is a corrupted organization that gets ahead by promoting deception. From hiring to finances and misuse of Deseg money, these guys think they are Hillary Clinton.
When will the lies and corruption stop? When we the people stop them.
So much energy, passion, lies and delusion to defend the Grijalva’s.
There must be something in it for whoever does it. By tonight’s newscast the transcripts of Hillary’s speeches to Wall St will be public where she promises them open borders and more power for insiders to control hemispheric business to a borderless world. She sure got shocked when Brexit happened!
So much energy, passion, lies and delusion to be the nastiest troll on the TW site.
TUSD Mexican American Studies (MAS) Program, was a mistake, and, more importantly, provided fuel for Racists and Bigots.
No reasonable person would deny that it is essential for those living in Arizona to know and understand, Historically and Now, the many contributions made by Mexican Americans to our Democracy. Not via a Separate Program but incorporated as a MAJOR component of a History of Arizona. To do otherwise simply provided Racist/Bigot fuel for those who do not understand the inherent Diversity in our Society and view our neighbors to the South as our Enemies.
My favorite refrain to such Individuals/Groups is:
Pon su cabeza donde no esta brillando el sol!!!
Best article you’ve written in a while. Thank you.
What tremendous effort you’ve exerted here, David.
As a piece of fantasy fiction, this works very nicely. It is shot through from beginning to end with falsehoods, significant omissions, and specious conclusions. Where does one begin to start identifying all the lies in this propaganda written specifically for Democrats who may be thinking of straying from the Sanchez-Foster-Grijalva-Juarez fold? I’ll take just a few of the more dubious assertions and address them in the order in which they occur:
“[Conservative Republicans outside of the Tucson area] helped create anti-district alliances among groups on the right and the left which previously had been at odds.”
No David, it’s this TUSD administration’s constant lies and violations of proper process in public institutions that have created alliances among groups on the right and the left. Strangely, there are people on both ends of the political spectrum who still believe in things like using proper bidding and hiring practices in public institutions and not lying to the Board and public about what is going on in the district — slipping new $10K bonuses to your cabinet when you’ve said no changes were made to central admin compensation, saying you haven’t met the president of the board’s mother-in-law, who was improperly put forward for a principal position without proper disclosure of the relationship, that kind of thing. I know it’s hard for people like you to believe that there are still some people out there who are motivated by a desire for honest leadership using clean processes to manage public institutions, but whether you believe it or not, it is true.
“[HT Sanchez] leans toward a progressive education model.” Says who? Any reputable authority who has even the faintest credibility in progressive education? What has been done under his administration with standardized testing and Opt Out policies? What has beend done with the # of AP exams required of the already academically overburdened students at University High School? Do you consider bragging about giving millions of desegregation dollars back to taxpayers part of a “progressive education model”? How about telling the Arizona legislature it would be fine to phase down deseg funds after Unitary Status is achieved? How about co-writing an editorial in the Arizona Daily Star with Lisa Graham Keegan about how reducing teacher credentialing requirements is the right way to solve our teacher crisis? Which part of this do you consider “progressive”? Do tell.
“[Local right wing radio talk show hosts and their compatriots on internet] blasted the process of choosing Sanchez, his history and some of his statements.” There was plenty to find fault with in the process of choosing Sanchez without your specious — and entirely unproveable — attribution of motives. The process was conducted with so much secrecy it would have made a good chapter in an espionage novel — complete with cars bringing in the Superintendent candidates being parked in the parking lot between vans so no one could see the candidates coming and going. The Arizona Daily Star had to file a lawsuit to even find out the names of the other candidates. The community had been promised proper participation in the selection process — a normal part of selecting a leader for a public institution of this size — but in this inappropriately closed process proper the promised public participation did not materialize. As for Sanchez’s resume, do you think a young man who’d held a number of subordinate posts for short periods of time, switching jobs frequently, and had been an interim superintendent in a much smaller district for all of four months should have been considered a proper candidate for a position in a troubled district with a history like TUSD’s? How many other Superintendents in the country with a job history like Sanchez’s are now making close to $500K.
And the last and most ridiculous piece of fiction here is that the notion that the Republicans in the Arizona legislature are on the side of the anti-Sanchez factions. Quite the reverse. Sanchez is much more a Ducy-collaborating, Lea-Marquez-Peterson style leader than what should properly be considered a Grijalva-style leader. But it’s the AZ legislature who dispenses funds, and it seems the Grijalvas decided to knuckle under and produce an anti-progressive, anti-deseg, pro-123, corporate-produced-testing fan, right wing, Christian, Texas-style educational “leader” to placate the dispensers of funds and keep the money flowing into TUSD.
Are there a few “progressives” left in town still unable to see through the smoke screen you perpetually try to blow around what is actually happening in this district? Guess we’ll see come November 8, won’t we?
So what do you recommend we do, David? Keep backing Sanchez?
Even if what you say in this misleading and inaccurate fairy tale written to rally disillusioned Democrats to your lost cause were true — which it is not, on any number of points — the fact is: it is impossible for this man to win public confidence and to lead.
Those of us who’ve been watching the district and know what is going on in the schools understand that this is because he was in fact given every opportunity to lead, and he blew it — failed to implement progressive education policies in the schools, failed to properly manage the desegregation case, failed to tell the public the truth about what is going on in the district — over and over and over again until all trust was destroyed.
You assert (what a surprise) that it’s a vast right-wing conspiracy and he never had a chance. That is false, but even if it were true, it would lead us to draw the same conclusion: he cannot lead, he needs to be replaced.
Sanchez “leans toward a progressive education model”?
David: Would you like to do a blog on “progressive” changes made to the educational program at University High School (UHS) since Sanchez came to town? Shall I put you in touch with UHS parents who withdrew kids from UHS or declined to enroll younger children in the school during the last three years after more AP requirements — including 2 AP requirements in the freshman curriculum — were added to the already heavy corporate-produced curricula and multiple-choice testing load these kids carry? You might be interested to know that at the same time that inflexible AP requirements were added, requirements were tightened in several other departments: number of terms students were allowed to serve as “assistants” to admin or as T.A.’s instead of taking an additional class – reduced. Permission to register for less than 6 courses as a senior, while completing college applications and traveling out of town for college admissions – denied except through petitioning and documenting special hardship circumstances, and this was the case even for kids who didn’t need the credits to graduate. You might also want to include information on how before the AZ legislature added a clause to their public-school-tax-credit legislation saying the credits could now be used for standardized testing fees as well as for fine arts and extracurriculars, and you will definitely want to note that while the ink was still drying on the new law, UHS Site Council was asked to consider a proposal that thousands of dollars of undesignated tax credit funds that had formerly been available for band, orchestra, dance, choir, etc., be made available to pay for AP testing fees for families that do not qualify for free and reduced lunch. All these curricular, policy, and legislative changes are related to the award the district recently won from the College Board for increasing its AP test-taking rates and exam scores. This award features prominently among the achievements advertised to the public by the district, and winning this award was evidently such an important goal to accomplish that the availability at UHS of humane and flexible curricula and adequate funding for the fine arts had to be kicked to the curb to accommodate it.
But your approach, in general, seems to be to make general, theoretical statements that you think will make the leaders you defend palatable to the Democratic base, without taking the trouble to see whether these statements can be justified by what is actually happening to students in these schools: gifted kids at UHS are being exploited for the test scores and rankings they can be forced to produce, but Sanchez “leans toward a progressive education model.”
Actual changes made to UHS curriculum and policies during the last three years are exactly the kind of education John Dewey always plumped for, right David? Learning by doing relentless cramming for high-stakes multiple choice tests.
Hey, “nice piece” and “what again”, why don’t YOU use your real name?
The question of why some comment anonymously has been asked and answered many times in the comment streams on Safier’s blogs. If you need a briefing on the subject, go into the Tucson Weekly archive and read up on it.
I always find those that demand you register or use real names interesting. The comment is the same regardless of who said it. I have people use my name all the time. So how would you know who said it?
David, your diatribe is typical of a partisan hack. Lets see…
We said the rich people are trying to take over the District and that didn’t work. We tried to stop them from speaking at Board meetings and that didn’t work. We tried to get $10,000 from one of our vendors to help with the fight and that didn’t work. We blamed local business people on trying to create a “business board” and that didn’t work. We have stolen the majority of their street signs and that didn’t work. We even accused them of being racists, which normally works, and that didn’t work. So lets blame the evil Phoenix Republicans because they probably won’t even respond.
Really David?
The fact is David it is about the kids. It is about the money being spent in administration instead of the classroom. It is about the bullying and creation of a horrid climate for both kids and teachers. It is about a Board majority that refuses to work collaboratively with anyone. It is about a culture of fear and intimidation that is being created by an overpaid and supersensitive superintendent.
David, it is about the kids and it is not about your own perverse political hallucinations.
Denial facilitates decline. This ship is going down, and there are no life jackets.
The MAS program was a radical leftist program. It used source material that is ideological, not fact-based. For example, it taught that white settlers purposely wiped out native Americans with germ warfare (something with no factual basis).
It taught that illegal immigration was not only ok, but a positive good, promoting the myth that the Southwestern U.S. (and even the entire U.S.) rightly belongs to Mexico when Mexico in truth possessed the Southwest for less than 30 years.
The only ones who could make such a claim are the Navajo, Tohono, Apache, Hopi, and others that truly were dispossessed first by the Spanish and later by the Anglo settlers.
Had the MAS studies been a positive fact-based program, it would have been better received. But it was created by the most radical leftists to pursue an agenda. When even a generally left of center moderate such as myself dislikes it, it’s doomed.
TUSD has been mismanaged and the MAS program is not that important in the overall scheme of education. The AZ legalature is responsible for de-funding education in the ever expanding quest to privatize public endeavors, such as education. Tucson is my home town, and the policies of the Republican run state has been disportinate towards Tucson. I am proud of Tucson for maintaining it’s flavor and uniqueness. Education funding and policy start at the top and our legislators have a D-.
How much does TUSD get per student from all sources?
Debra,
You can get the actual total spending per student by TUSD from the Superintendents report for 2014-2015. TUSD is on page i192
http://www.azed.gov/superintendent/files/2…
You can get the budget for the current school year from the TUSD website:
http://www.tusd1.org/contents/distinfo/bud…
In both cases, you will have to do the last piece yourself, taking the total spending and dividing it by the enrollment.
Thanks so much. But is there funding that does not show up in total spending like contributions, grants and the like? I never know if those numbers they post are really true.
TUSD doesn’t have a current budget posted. Last year, CFO Soto didn’t get around to posting TUSD’s Budget Book until December. She left out all the summary data and posted that TUSD Food Services had only 0.3 full time employees!
The “budget” that is sent to the state is not really a budget; it’s a report the state uses to calculate what the state needs to pay as its share of the district’s revenue. Revenue that is not part of that calculation is omitted.
The best way to compare various school district’s revenue per student AND how the districts spend their money is to look up the information on the Arizona Auditor General’s website. Every February they release a 2 pages report on every district’s performance for the prior year.
https://www.azauditor.gov/reports-publicat…
According to the Arizona Auditor General TUSD gets $9,600/student and has more money per student than any other local school district. Of the other 9 large Arizona school districts, only one has more money per student than TUSD. That is Phoenix Union. It gets more, because it is an all high school district and the state pays more for high school students than for elementary students.
The MAS program was indeed an incredibly successfully and inspiring program, respected around the country for its amazing success in raising the achievement level of at-risk youth. Its classes were electives, open to all students, and its foundation was built upon social justice ideals. It was bizarre to me how threatening this was to Horne and Huppenthal. (Oh, boy… I can’t believe THESE two guys were the leaders of education in the state of AZ. Embarrassing.) The program dared to speak about racism, sexism, etc., which simply couldn’t be tolerated by the hyper-reactive right.
Social justice is the Affirmative Action Program from the 80s where we gave people jobs based on skin color rather than ability.
Too much college can make you stupid.
George S., I’d like to beg to differ. MAS was a rigorous academic program that was known within Tucson High as having some of the more difficult and demanding classes of the school. It presented students with tools for critical analysis on our society’s most entrenched problems. I don’t see that it had anything in particular to do with Affirmative Action. But programs to address past discrimination seem perfectly legit to me. Multiple studies have confirmed that in the ’60s and ’70s minorities were singled out for punishment at 3-4 times the rate of white students in the schools. (A black or Latino student would get a penalty much worse for the same infraction.) What’s wrong with trying to correct a past injustice?
That is a lot like saying that every driver has broken speed limits so let’s ticket them all. It is no secret that MAS encouraged hatred and division of American citizens and illegal entrants. That serves no purpose unless it is a campaign platform for an election.
Yesterday was Columbus Day and approximately 70% of workers did not have a holiday to celebrate it. Why? Many have been told that Columbus was racist and for that reason have sought to eliminate any holiday honoring him.
http://elitedaily.com/news/world/happy-columbus-day-the-day-we-celebrate-a-racist-crusading-murderer/
Do you know Columbus was a racist or did somebody tell you?
“MAS was a rigorous academic program that was known within Tucson High as having some of the more difficult and demanding classes of the school. It presented students with tools for critical analysis on our society’s most entrenched problems.” to quote Jacob Bricca from above.
My perception and analysis was different. MAS was intellectual rot and brain washing and its implementation was incompetent. There is an argument to be made for the creation of radicals and revolutionaries even though that creation is illegal under state law. However, our observation of these classes was that they were not even able to do that. .
The entire program was built around Marxist theory that all of history is the struggle between the oppressed and the oppressor. This is just horse manure. While Marx was writing these words in Europe, Vanderbilt was giving transportation on his steamboats for free, liberating the poor to move where ever opportunity was beckoning. Rockefeller was relentlessly reducing the price of lighting homes liberating the poor to read late into the night.
Neither Vanderbilt nor Rockefeller, so called robber barons, ever consumed even 1/10 of 1 percent of the wealth that they created. The only people they oppressed were companies profiteering at the expense of the poor. Rockefeller and Vanderbilt lived like the middle class. Rockefeller took the subway to work every day, didn’t even have a private automobile.
The economic record is absolutely clear. The price of kerosene and transportation went down and down and down. It was the gilded age and America flourished and became the dominant economic power in the world.
All of South America is trapped by the “critical analysis” Bricca waxes poetic about. They have the highest murder rates in the world, ten times the United States. To quote a young TUSD MAS student in the Senate hearing “I never knew I was oppressed until I took this class.” That is the poisonous framework they were instilling in each of these students. Once you define someone as an “oppressor” you can do anything to them, even murder. That’s Marx’s gift to mankind. 100 million dead in China, 40 million in Russia, 3 million dead in Cambodia, death, misery and poverty wherever that philosophy takes root and flourishes.
There was oppression in Marx’s Europe. But it was oppression by government. France had ten times as many bureaucrats as the United States. Bureaucrats whose salaries had to be paid and whose dictates had to be obeyed.
And, we do have oppression in the United States. A k-12 system which doesn’t provide one-tenth the academic growth that the poor are capable of, a university system which layers students with a hundred thousand dollars of debt and leaves the typical college student without any measurable cognitive gains, a welfare system which traps millions in poverty and general government which is five times as expensive as it needs to be.
That’s where the real oppression lies.
Safier is like a whining adult blaming all of their failures on their parents. If only. Time spent getting even is better spent getting ahead. There is no evidence from the record that any of TUSD’s problems would have been lessened even if MAS had not been challenged. TUSD has lost over 13,000 students since 2001 because parents now have choices. That trend started well before the MAS controversy. It is now an above average district in terms of academic gains and social outcomes and a very expensive district – so don’t blame money. But above average is still mediocre and parents want excellence.
Nationwide, only 24% of parents rate the quality of their child’s education excellent (Gallup). That means 76% would move if they had the choices that Arizona has. So far, only 20% of TUSD parents have left. Judging by the TUSD parent satisfaction survey, there are another 30,000 that will head to the doors over the next decade as more choices become available.
Then, only the 15,000 students getting an excellent education will be left.
When will this state stop electing ignorant madmen to positions of public responsibility?
Probably never, given the degree to which our school system is being actively undermined and dismantled by the worst kind of ideologically driven, professionally uninformed fantasy about how public institutions and education actually work. Our damaged institutions will keep producing more people like this with shockingly deficient understandings of history, social theory, and what is in some states in the US but not in Arizona the PROFESSIONAL field of pedagogy / education.
Did you actually read Thucydides, John Huppenthal, or did you just use his name when you posted some of your anonymous screeds? Thucydides had some interesting things to say about what can go wrong in a democracy when an ignorant majority elects irresponsible leaders.
Arizona: case in point.
Amen to that. All we need to do this morning is look at the Podesta emails that were leaked attacking American religious citizens and the bigotry they exhibit.
This is from the group that promotes social justice. Don’t be fooled. That was never their intent.
Will Hillary be asked to defend those comments or fire Podesta et al?
I’m sure, not.