Thursday Ed Supe Diane Douglas put out her AZ Kids Can’t Afford To Wait plan. It’s 156 pages long, crammed full of ideas and reasonably detailed descriptions of problems she sees and changes she hopes to see. [I was on the Buckmaster Show today discussing the plan with Bill and Sarah Garrecht Gassen during the second half of the show. The first half had some interesting discussions about our state universities.] I’ve only had time to give the plan a quick once over, so I can’t go into great detail here. But one thing I know. Douglas has been given an undeserved bad rap by the media. They’ve focused on some of her antics, mainly her ongoing battles with the state Board of Education, and not the indications that she’s serious about Arizona education. Those antics are a power struggle, folks. She’s not simply behaving childishly and suing people for no reason. She has a very clear agenda in mind, which is to increase her power and influence. Whether her tactics make sense or not, whether they’ll increase or decrease her power and influence, whether we’ll like what we see if she gains more power, all that remains to be seen.
Here’s what I’ve learned since Diane Douglas took the helm in January. She deserves to be taken seriously. She wants to change Arizona’s education in ways that she thinks will improve things for students. Though I disagree with some of her ideas, I agree with a hell of a lot more than I would have expected. During the campaign for the general election, I underestimated her intelligence and gave her too little respect as a person. People need to take her seriously, whether they agree with her or not. And educational progressives should do what they can to create strategic alliances with her, join forces so that in areas where there is agreement, they can work together and maybe put together the public relations push and the legislative votes necessary to actually move the needle, even a little bit, so we improve the education we give to our children.
Remember Douglas’ statewide listening tour, where she traveled all over and listened to people’s ideas and concerns about education? Well, a funny thing happened. She listened. Lots of the ideas in her plan are the kinds of things that never would have come up if she sat around the office with her staff, or conferred with principals and superintendents. Many of the ideas are there, I’m certain, because she heard them again and again from teachers and parents who spoke while she listened—when she was in Tucson, Douglas spent a minute introducing herself and gave hours of time to people who aired their views at the microphones placed around the auditorium—and she decided that many of the problems and solutions she heard are worthy of attention.
Now, to the plan. I’m going to deal with areas where Douglas and I agree, and only some of them because 156 pages of ideas can’t be crammed into a single post, and I haven’t had time to digest everything in the document. I want to stress areas of agreement, where people across the aisle can work together. There’s plenty of time to talk about areas of disagreement later.
First point, and Douglas puts this at the top of her agenda: she respects teachers. She wants more teachers and she wants better teachers. If there’s any teacher bashing in the document, I haven’t found it. Here are some of her ideas.
• Add $400 million to the budget to increase teacher salaries.
• Get prospective teachers into the classroom more often while they’re still in college.
• Increase mentorship of new teachers by more experienced teachers.
• Encourage teachers to work in rural areas, where there are never enough teachers, by forgiving their student loans, allowing them to pay no state taxes if they make less than $70,000 and giving them tax credits for supplies they buy for their classrooms.
Douglas doesn’t want yearly high stakes tests at every grade level. Give them in every other grade—3rd, 5th, 7th, etc.—or every third grade—3rd, 6th, 9th, etc. Give parents the right to opt their children out of the tests. And give regular, smaller tests during the year with a quick turnaround on the results so teachers get a quick snapshot of where their students are and can focus their curricula accordingly.
Redesign the A-F state grades for schools to lower the emphasis on high stakes test scores and give more weight to the quality of Career/Technical education, after school programs, STEM and social science instruction and—get ready—the quality of a school’s art, music and PE programs.
There’s enough meat in the AZ Kids Can’t Afford to Wait plan to keep educators and concerned citizens discussing it for a long time. What will come of it? A better question is, what generally comes of good educational ideas in Arizona? The answer is, usually, nothing. Douglas deserves credit for using her bully pulpit to promote a list of ideas which deserve our attention. There’s very little she can do to implement most of the plan without lots of help from others. The Ed Supe has limited powers.
I hope this plan will encourage the media and others to be less distracted by the antics of Douglas, the state school board and Governor Ducey and begin focusing on the substantive educational issues she has put forward.
This article appears in Oct 1-7, 2015.
How about discontinuing tenure for teachers so they can get rid of the bad ones. Where’s the $400 million coming from? Forgiving student loans, and no state taxes on incomes below $70K. Who’s picking up the tab Diane? How about reducing Hart’s salary?
Mr. Kelly, please do not continue to perpetuate the myth that there is such a thing as teacher “tenure” in our K-12 schools. That is a lingering falsehood that public school educators should debunk. Yes, a teacher moves to continuing (as opposed to probationary) status after three full years in the classroom, but even a veteran teacher can be removed for professional incompetence if the administrator who evaluates them follows the proper procedures and does THEIR job. Moreover, most teacher association members know who the poor teachers are in their ranks and do not work to prevent that process from going forward. Removing a teacher for unprofessional conduct is even easier than having them ousted for professional incompetence.
Those who have their own agendas for education in this country have continually put forth this legend that there are untold numbers of lousy teachers who are somehow protected from accountability by “tenure.” They pick isolated anecdotes where poor teachers have stayed in place, or have been moved around within schools in their districts, to make it appear that this is a widespread problem. It isn’t…and those of us who serve as administrators or teachers in our public schools should do all we can to make it clear that this simply isn’t happening. Mr. Kelly and others who do believe this myth should talk to any veteran public school educator to find out the real truth, rather than furthering a lie that does nothing more than discredit the thousands of hardworking and creative teachers in Arizona.
I have read every word of Douglas’s report. About 75% of it is good. She is still obsessed to an irrational degree with Common Core. It seems her obsession has nothing to do with any actual standard, but rather, the general insanity of some conspiracy theory about them. One thing I did not see was more accountability for charter schools, actually privately run schools getting public tax dollars. This is one big myth, that charters are public. Until they get the general public to elect their boards and are accountable to the extent district schools are they SHOULD NOT be called “public”. This is a big lie the charter industry nationwide have created. Her semantics on ethnic studies are an entertainment in themselves, echoing the insane law on “driving people apart.” God forbid we have any realistic look at historical assault on minority groups, that don’t mouth “exceptionalism”. (The Frank Burns school of patriotism). Her stance on testing, CTE, AND STEM are not bad. She heard loud and clear the problem with the State budget and JTEDS. (Right Wayne P.!) But god forbid our kids go to college to expand their general knowledge, or critical thinking skills, too, without an absolute employment related outcome. We cannot always be concerned about absolute utilitarian purposes for education. I give her credit for listening and restating many of the comment during the listening tours. And I have seen her huddled with Sanchez at ASBA events so that ain’t bad, better than Horne and Huppster suing. However with her inept political skills, she has essentially no influence on the governor, legislature, the State Board, local districts, or really anyone actually implementing any ideas.
Great title “AZ Kids Can’t Afford to Wait”.
Problem is, that is exactly what liberals have done to our children by prioritizing the education of illegals, using resources for our children.
Illegals are not AZ Kids.
$400 MILLION more dollars from the taxpayers to educate illegals? No way!
You sound like her. Hey, hey, ho,ho, Bunch of Illegals got to go! Hey, hey, ho, ho, dirty old Common Core got to go!
@ Frances Perkins, who wrote, “Until [charters] get the general public to elect their boards and are accountable to the extent district schools are they SHOULD NOT be called “public”.
If they are accountable only to the extent TUSD is, that shouldn’t be a problem. They can all call themselves “public” right away.
Wake up, Ms. Perkins: Getting the general public to elect your board is absolutely no guarantee whatsoever that governance will be accountable or that it will comply with the laws that require it to be transparent.
What a shock, someone played the “Blame illegals” card and it was the same someone who always plays that card. Someone needs to bump the needle on that broken record.
The AZ Tax Credit for education program was just ranked #1 in the nation.
There are choices. AZ leads the way!
@dreamy. Try to go to BASIS and get financial data or how much the administrators make, or when the next board meeting is, or how to get on their board. TUSD board jobs are wide open. Put yourself up. Funnier still, try to put yourself up for BASIS board. But make sure to bring your checkbook for the “voluntary” teacher improvment fund or the lunch fund.
@ Frances Perkins
I am not a supporter of Basis, or of the lack of transparency in charters.
But you “Supporters of Public Education” should take a look at what’s going on in the largest local public school district. Transparency? Accountability? What a laugh.
Until you start taking seriously the need to watch this district closely enough to understand what’s going on and hold those in governance accountable to OBSERVING THE LAW, stop yammering about the need for transparency in charters, with your nonsense about making them “accountable to the extent district schools are.”
What hypocrisy.