In 2019, there were 180 Arizona schools that received a D or F rating and
new legislation given preliminary approval by the House would hand over their
operations or shut them down if they don’t
improve.
House Bill 2808 establishes the Arizona
Achievement District. This district is made
up of high-performing district and charter
schools handpicked by a nine-member
board appointed by the governor. Out-of-state charter school operators may also be
welcomed into the district.
The new board would use performance
data from the 2018-2019 school year and
this year to identify struggling schools. No
school grading was done between those
years due to COVID-19 and the shift to
remote learning. Based on these results,
schools would be given several choices:
independently improve their performance
within three years, partner with a high-per-
forming school that will take over operations, be replaced by a “Fresh Start” school
with a proven academic track record, close
down, or consolidate with a nearby school.
The move is an extension of GOP school
choice initiatives that favor charter over
public schools. Struggling schools may elect
to be replaced with a “Fresh Start” school,
or might be forced into the arrangement
if they don’t improve on their own. “Fresh
Start” schools would be run by an Achievement District School to eventually replace a
failing school on the same campus or within
its attendance boundaries. They operate out
of a vacant building or one which is being
leased or purchased from a school district.
During a Feb. 15 Education Committee
hearing in the state House of Representatives, sponsor Rep. Michelle Udall said these
“Fresh Start” schools would need to be charter schools, because public school districts
can’t buy up schools in other districts.
If schools fail to reach a C grade after the
three year mark, they will be forced into a
partnership with an Achievement District
school, a Fresh Start school operation or
be shut down, at the Arizona Achievement
District board’s discretion.
“The goal is to have only high-achieving
schools in the state. The goal is to have no
more D and F schools in the state, so that
every child can attend a school that is high
quality and get the education they deserve,”
Udall said during the committee hearing.
The Mesa Republican, who chairs the
committee, noted the program’s application
of pressure on schools garners positive
results.
Udall’s bill last month won preliminary
approval in the House of Representatives,
but has yet to face a formal vote. If the
House passes it, the measure would go to
the state Senate for further consideration.
A similar program in Tennessee found
exactly the opposite. The state began taking
over underperforming schools with its
own Achievement School District in 2011
with the goal of moving the bottom 5% into
the top 25% in five years. But after nearly a
decade of handing struggling neighborhood
schools over to charter school networks, the
schools failed to meet the state’s performance goal — and the state is now working
on moving several of them back into their
original districts.
Critics of the bill say its measures don’t
actually address the reasons so many
schools are struggling.
A 2019 U.S. Census Bureau review placed
Arizona 49th in school funding. The state
spent about $10,000 on students that year,
well below the national average of $15,700.
Beth Lewis, the director of Save our Schools
Arizona, a public school advocacy organization, pointed out that low funding invariably
contributes to lower standardized test scores
and graduation rates. It doesn’t help that
these schools often operate in already poor
communities.
“School performance correlates really
closely with the level of district poverty,”
Lewis said during a Tuesday afternoon
Zoom town hall meeting with school officials about HB2808.
Arizona’s poverty rate was higher than
the national rate, even before the devastating impact of COVID-19. Students whose
families struggle economically often start
school at a lower educational level than their
peers, experience schooling gaps and might
not have access to high quality learning
materials at home.
Many D- and F-rated schools are in communities with entrenched poverty. Marana
Unified School District Superintendent Dan
Streeter said Roadrunner Elementary in his
district was a C-rated school in 2019, but has
been heavily impacted by the COVID-19
pandemic and he worries it may be in danger in the future if Udall’s legislation passes.
About 82% of Roadrunner’s student body
is on the free and reduced lunch program,
and the surrounding community’s median
income is 60% lower than the average for the
rest of Marana. Its placement in a rural area
means that community resources are scarce:
The nearest library is 14 miles away.
“These are factors that impact letter
grades,” Streeter said.
Expecting school districts to resolve systemic issues in such a short period of time is
hardly fair, especially when the bill doesn’t
provide adequate funding to do so, Tucson
Unified School District Superintendent
Gabriel Trujillo said.
Schools that choose the bill’s self-improvement route would be granted $150 per
student for three years. For schools that are
already overstretched, critics say that investment is insufficient. In Maricopa County,
Buckeye Elementary School had an F rating
in 2019. Its enrollment was 904 last year –
assuming enrollment stays fairly equal, the
total funding Buckeye Elementary might
receive to turn around their performance is
$405,000.
If schools decide to partner with an
Achievement District or “Fresh Start” school
— relinquishing their control and, in the latter case, the whole school — they may apply
for one-time funding of $2,000 per student.
That “partner” may end up being an outside
charter school operator who profits from
taxpayer money.
Implementing punitive measures shifts
the focus from student growth to performance and is detrimental to students in the
long run, critics said. Punishing schools for
not meeting standards drives away high
quality teachers — the most valuable asset
in a school’s arsenal. Arizona continues a
six-year streak of teacher shortages, and
a survey last month found nearly 2,000
vacancies.
“When you have a student body that is
more needs-intensive and you have a more
punitive model for determining school letter
grades and determining teacher performance-based pay, that doesn’t necessarily
romance the most highly qualified applicants to come and take teaching positions,”
Trujillo said.
The schools most at risk of facing take-overs are those that serve marginalized
communities. Lewis estimates that 22 out
of 77 schools in the Navajo Nation would be
affected by HB2808. Joe Bia, a governing
board member at Kayenta Unified School
District, said that keeping schools open in
Kayenta is critical. The town is rural and
isolated, and schools and their after-school
programs are among the only educational
resources for youths. Shutting them down
means cutting kids off from internet access
they may not have at home.
Changing the way these schools work to
meet performance standards might also put
the cultural identity of schools at risk. KUSD families are predominantly Navajo,
and he said the schools work to preserve
their cultural heritage and language in
classrooms.
“If we’re going to have to change the
way that we’re running our schools, I can
see that panning out in many catastrophic
ways — one impacting elemental cultural
aspects,” Bia said.
Tucson Unified School District is another
district with cultural identities that would
be negatively affected by eliminating local
control. It’s home to the largest Afghan refugee student population, a sizable English
Language Learner cohort, and is the top
choice for Tohono O’odham and Pascua
Yaqui families. Trujillo said he doubts
transplanting educational frameworks from
other regions into a place as diverse as
Tucson would work.
“Our communities and our staff that
serve these communities know the needs
of our children and our communities best.
And what they need is support — they need
resources and they need time,” he said.
Instead of forwarding potentially devastating programs, legislators should support
programs with proven success rates, like
Project Momentum, said Kristi Wilson, the
superintendent of Buckeye Elementary
School District. The project works in collaboration with school staff to help foster professional development for teachers, design
tracking and evaluation methods, and craft
curriculum maps and pacing guides to keep
classrooms in step with state standards.
It also provides funding equivalent to HB
2880 — $150 per pupil. But the difference is
the guidance that comes along with it, and a
lack of punitive measures.
Avondale Elementary School District
significantly improved working with the
Project, tripling their AzMerit mathematics scores and nearly doubling scores in
English in the 2017-2018 school year from
the baseline established in 2014-2015. Still,
those three years of gains were not enough
to move all their schools out of D grade territory. A short turnaround time for schools
with long-standing difficulties simply isn’t
feasible, Save Our Schools Arizona noted in
a written fact sheet for Tuesday’s town hall.
“You have to meet kids where they are
and then you have to have the resources to
help them grow,” Wilson said, “They need
more, and teachers need more.”
This article appears in Mar 10-16, 2022.