On a campaign flier, Diane Douglas lists “Pro-Life” as one of the five reasons she’s qualified to be our next Superintendent of Public Instruction. “Conservative Republican” also makes the list. The general rap on Douglas’ run for superintendent is that she’s a one issue candidate: Kill Common Core! But she hopes to do more than get rid of the new standards. She wants to make Arizona’s schools a playground for the Tea Party. As superintendent, she would be more ideologue than educator.
Douglas is against Common Core Standards, true, but it’s not really the standards which cause her the most distress. It’s the “Common” part of “Common Core” she truly despises. As a devotee of the 10th Amendment, loved by states righters from segregationists to today’s right wing, she wants education to be controlled by the states, without federal government involvement.
Douglas’ pre-primary website was aimed squarely at her most ardent supporters, people who shared her Tea Party leanings. Since then, she’s replaced it with a vanilla version better suited to the general election. On the original web pages, she wrote, “Common Core is to education what ObamaCare is to healthcare” and called it “Obama’s invasion of our children’s education.” Her promise was that as superintendent, she would “Use every power of the office and all my energies to ensure the AZ Dept & our State Board of Education protect and defend our 10th Amendment right to direct and control the education of our children.”
According to Douglas, from the first President Bush, to Clinton, to the second Bush, to Obama, the goal has been the same:
Our schools are under the control of the same Washington bureaucrats who have marginalized academic content — stressing culture over content, social engineering over student achievement and conspiring to rewrite the story of American pre-eminence in the world.
To Douglas the Bushes, father and son, were lefty internationalists just like their Democratic successors.
In that context, Douglas’ dislike of the International Baccalaureate (IB) Program, which is used either as an alternative to or in tandem with Advanced Placement courses in schools across the country, should be no surprise. When she was a Peoria School Board member, she opposed renewing the district’s IB program.
Douglas said, “I am vehemently opposed to this program. We’re relinquishing our control to an international organization.”
[snip]
“IB’s goal is to promote world government,” Douglas said, adding that it is changing children’s values to think globally, telling them what to think, not how to think.
“In my opinion, the IB program has no place in American education,” she said.
Douglas’ view of what should be taught in our schools is limited to what the far right considers “patriotic” and “moral.” Under her leadership, schools would become a battleground where curriculum, textbooks and teachers would be scrutinized to make sure they taught about the world according to the Tea Party.
It’s no wonder much of the Republican establishment is actively supporting David Garcia’s candidacy. They’re terrified of having a right wing ideologue as superintendent who would listen to her friends on the far right, like Russell Pearce — she had a love-in with him in an interview on his radio show — and ignore the wishes of more pragmatic, business-oriented Republicans. Two former Republican superintendents are supporting Garcia. The Arizona Chamber of Commerce gave him its first endorsement for a Democrat since 2006. Former Mesa mayor and recent Republican gubernatorial candidate Scott Smith has recently joined the list of Garcia supporters, along with Rich Crandall, the conservative former Arizona state senator who recently served a brief stint as Wyoming’s education director.
Here’s a real shocker. Robert Robb, reliably conservative columnist for the AZ Republic, wrote recently,
David Garcia is probably the most qualified person ever to run for school superintendent. I first met him when he was keeping the operation going under the energetic but sometimes organizationally challenged Lisa Keegan. He knows what he is talking about, he knows the office’s political territory, and his commitment to improving K-12 education is fierce.
Let me repeat: Robert Robb wrote those words. If Robb is touting Garcia’s qualifications, that says something about how far concerns about Douglas have reached. After Robb praised Garcia, he gave Douglas a bit of backhanded praise, saying really, she’s not as bad as everyone makes her out to be. Using a double-negative construction which is the definition of damning someone with faint praise, he writes,
Douglas’ views shouldn’t be dismissed as unworthy of consideration.
I don’t expect that to show up on any of Douglas’ campaign material any time soon.
This article appears in Oct 23-29, 2014.
Douglas is a one-issue candidate. She has no real qualifications for the job. Garcia is far more knowledgeable about the issues, but he is so often on the wrong side of education issues Douglas is about the only opponent who actually looks worse.
Scrape the surface and Garcia is very much on the same page as President Obama and Secretary of Education Duncan when it comes to public education. There are reasons that Robert Robb and so many other “reliably conservative” Chamber of Commerce types support Garcia. He is the best candidate their money could rent. Douglas may have her heart in the right (wing) place, but she is much too unreliable for them to depend upon her when it comes to setting policy.
“…conspiring to rewrite the story of American preeminence in the world.” Who is the one “stressing culture over content”? These tea-bagger culture warriors lack any ability to self-reflect.
That’s right Diane, let’s be Pro Life, and create thousands of more unwanted children in the world. It’s a women choice, not any government, nor any candidate.
Let’s keep our fingers crossed and get out to vote (for Garcia). He may not be perfect but the thought of Douglas being elected is too much to contemplate.
Garcia is the best in years. He is a researcher who allows data to speak to the effectiveness of a policy, and not the usual Republican theory, “I believe it, therefore, it must be right.” Now, in fact, I rarely agree with Arne Duncan either. He is wrong more than he is right.
You libtards are going to get trounced on this one. Garcia is just another extension of the Obama policy. One of abject failure and disappointment as are all of the other policies put forth by the bogus and illegal admin. Along with Duval and Grijalva, you socialist garbage are out of here!
The Republican Party likes to nominate non-educators to the Superintendent of Public Instruction position. So much easier to enact lousy policies and divert public money to private schools, when one of their own heads the department. BTW, Arne Duncan is to education as Brownie was to FEMA.
Excellent article once again, David! I have met Diane and, indeed, she is a one trick pony. “Kill Common Core”. End of platform, end of ideas, further deponent sayeth not. Now as I have previously opined, Common Core is far from ideal; though reportedly developed by the States, it has been embraced by the Federal government so there will be more fed money for states that drink the koolaid – read more loss of local control. It has also been embraced by the test designers (read big corporations) that stand to make lots of money. It replaces one form of high stakes testing with another. Finally, it was never tested before it was enthusiastically embraced, so our kids are the beta test platform.
Never the less, it apparently is working in at least one school district in the State. Osborn District in Central Phoenix reportedly has had great success with their kids so it’s probably not all bad. My suggestion, work with it, fix it as we go let’s not throw it out at this point and inflict a whole new yet to be developed initiative on our schools, our teachers and our kids
Shame on you, Jim Kelly. I have never picked up an unwanted baby. Your mother might have but I sorely doubt it.
It’s laughable that you accuse Diane of putting ideology before education…that is the total liberal/progressive agenda for all public policy. Don’t do what works, do what we told you to do. Let me tell you a secret, if stamping education with a progressive/liberal/Democrat agenda was going to work we would already have the finest schools in the world. But the truth is local control of education is IMPERATIVE for our schools to be successful. The top down model, especially under the FedEd is not serving our kids well. It has simply turned education into an industry with special interest groups and all the garbage that goes along with it. I am confident that Diane is going to win because her message of parental rights trumping educational ideology is thriving with voters all over the state. The liberal enclave of Tucson likely is the only exception. I need a bumper sticker that says I survived 10 years in Tucson and still am in my RIGHT mind.
I’m going to venture a guess that none of you Garcia supporters have children of school age. And/or you’re ignorant of the Common Core FACTS. And/or that you don’t CARE what happens to your children. Let me just suggest you watch Pink Floyd’s The Wall. Just watch all the parts filmed in schools. Up to, and including when they’re all turned into burlap faced clones of each other and they walk right off the conveyor belt of education into a meat grinder. If it’s okay with you that your children become the stupidest generation ever, and it’s okay with you that your child’s education and medical records are all mixed together and are readily available to third parties, that everything they say, everything they do, and in particular every mistake they make from Pre K through age 20 is available for whomever wants to see them, if data collecting on YOUR (the parents) voting habits, work habits and parental style is okay…and lastly if you’re okay with the federal government owning your children, and you having NO say-so in how they’re raised. Then by all means cast that vote for Garcia. Common Core is not just a common set of standards, it’s about owning your children. Just like Hitler did, take the children. Sway them, because they will be here long after you’re gone and they will BE the nazi community. Y’all need to educate yourselves and stop being puppets. I don’t like Douglas. Not even a little bit. But my vote will go to EVERYONE who will allow ME to protect my children. Oh, and one last thing, if you guys vote for Garcia, and he does all the above mentioned things and you don’t see it until it’s too late……I hope and pray it’s MY voice you hear in your heads saying “I told you so”
FYI Republican Mike Huckabee (former Gov.) and Jeb Bush (Gov.) support CC too (maybe they own stock in Pearson) so this is not a Dem. or Rep. partisan issue. Common Core is absolute garbage. Throw it out and restore FERPA [look it up now!]. Our kids will thank you.
Do not blame Obama for CC as this is a waste of energy. Save your energy for demolition!
My child is not common! Do you want your child to be common?
I’m glad to know she won’t be aborting any K-12 kids. Too bad she won’t be educating them either.
That’s stupid. The legal term for aborted K~12 students is murder.
Well, somehow Douglas was elected.
In July, we can instigate a recall:
http://www.recalldouglas.com/#!get-involved/cecw