I was at Wednesday night’s sparsely attended meeting with Ed Supe Diane Douglas. About 30 people showed up in the main library’s conference room to hear Douglas talk about what’s going on in Arizona education, a far cry from the packed auditorium at her Pima Community College event in April, 2015. Maybe the small crowd was because it’s summer, when parents and teachers’ minds are on other things, or maybe it’s because Douglas is no longer new news as she was last year.
Most of the meeting was made up of audience comments and questions, but Douglas made a few statements that were worth noting, on state testing and Ducey’s Classrooms First Initiative Council.
Douglas once again made it clear she’s no fan of the overuse of standardized testing. “We need to test our students less,” she said. And she indicated that results of the state’s AzMERIT test are being misused. “[Standardized] testing was never intended to be an assessment of a teacher, a school or a district,” she stated. Douglas said she is working on a more comprehensive A-F school grading system that will include more factors than a school’s state test scores.
Douglas only spent a few moments talking about Ducey’s Classrooms First Initiative Council, whose task is to propose ways to shift around education funding without adding new revenue. She’s a member of the council, and it looks like she shares some of my skepticism about the group’s unspoken agenda. (My recent posts on the subject are here, here and here.) Douglas said she was concerned that the council was “a special interest group,” though she didn’t mention what that “special interest” might be. However, a statement she made soon after is probably a clue to what she was alluding to. She said she is a supporter of charter schools, but she also noted that, 20 years after charters were set up in Arizona, 85 percent of students still choose to go to district schools, and we must be sure we do nothing to harm those students. I’m seeing dots connecting those two statements, which would mean she worries that charters will come out the funding winners in the council’s final proposals, to the detriment of school district funding. She’s spoken before about her concern that the pro-charter faction has outsized influence in the governor’s office. In a press release from Douglas in February, 2015, Douglas wrote, “Clearly [Ducey] has established a shadow faction of charter school operators . . .” Douglas has tempered her language since then, but I get the feeling her sentiments haven’t changed all that much.
Douglas also spoke a bit about her concerns about federal interference with states’ control of their schools and about the burden of school-related regulations. Those are areas where we part ways, at least in the degree of our concern, which isn’t surprising given that she’s on the political right and I’m on the political left. We agree that the federally imposed, high-stakes testing regimen is destructive, and we both have concerns about a nationally standardized, Common Core curriculum. But I want the federal government to maintain an active involvement in making sure people’s rights are protected in the schools—religious, ethnic and gender rights, among others. Too often, the push for state’s rights, in the schools and elsewhere, has been a way of allowing a narrow-minded majority to discriminate against members of minority groups. And the call for deregulation is often a cover for allowing financial and ethical abuses to go unchecked.
However, as I’ve said in a number of posts since Douglas assumed the Ed Supe position, I continue to be surprised, pleasantly, about how many times we agree when it comes to education. I’m convinced she genuinely cares about giving Arizona children—all Arizona children—the best possible shot at getting a good education. The superintendent position doesn’t give her a great deal of power. The legislature and the State Board of Education pretty much control the show. But she continues to use her limited authority and her bully pulpit to nudge Arizona education in what I think is generally a positive direction. Whenever I can find common ground with someone on the other side of the political aisle, as is the case here, it makes me happy, and hopeful.
This article appears in Jun 30 – Jul 6, 2016.
Thanks for reporting on the meeting. It’s good that Douglas continues to show signs that she understands what’s going on in Phoenix, and good that you have at least temporarily stopped writing about her in ways that bring to mind the ongoing influence of misogyny in the way some of our supposedly “progressive” male commenters write and speak about women in politics.
I disagree, though, that you are on the political left — seems to me that you are in the political pocket of elected officials who are about as authentically “left” as the porcine contingent in Animal Farm — but you will no doubt continue to assert that you are on the left just as the officials you support continue to assert it, depending as they do on sizable enough portions of the electorate being ignorant enough of their voting records and actions in office to enable key figures to continue — amazingly, disgustingly — to get re-elected.
Ditto on your status as an anti-testing activist. Prove it through your record in influencing policy during the last three years. Your friends in office have been responsible for some very bad behavior in this department and you have — what a surprise — remained silent.
A note to On the left? Really? I’d be interested in seeing what you find misogynist in what I’ve written about Douglas since she was elected. I think you’ll find I have been pleasantly surprised, as I said in this post, at how much I agree with what she has said and done. My surprise hasn’t been because she’s a woman but because of her right wing beliefs which I feared would be detrimental to Arizona education.
Likewise, you might check back to see what I’ve written about standardized testing. You can look, for example, at the week I devoted to writing about the opt out movement across the country. I’ve written a number of posts about problems with high stakes, standardized testing.
The Range has a reasonably robust search engine. Type in a few search terms along with my name and see what you find.
David’s right. He hasn’t mentioned her name with recall petitions in weeks.
Thank you, David for this objective take on Diane Douglas. I, too, have been skeptical/critical/concerned and so forth about her tenure. But she did go on a listening tour and she has reached out to the community to learn our concerns. Unfortunately, I am afraid that she has “dulled her sword” by some of her antics and theatrics plus she is unqualified. I only wish she had the ear of the governor and that she had some credibility with him.
Keep it up!!
RE the quality of Safier’s coverage of Douglas and standardized testing and his queries directed to “On the left? Really?”:
Here’s one of David Safier’s early (and uniformly negative) articles about Diane Douglas:
http://www.tucsonweekly.com/TheRange/archives/2014/10/28/for-diane-douglas-its-always-i-before-e-ideology-before-education
And here are a couple of quotes from an article where he makes fun of Douglas’s conflicts with the charter faction in Phoenix:
“Ed Supe Diane Douglas’ antics, mainly directed at the state school board, have been the main source of jibes and jokes in the media. She’s a novice who says and does silly stuff in her pursuit of her education agenda, throwing tantrums, suing the board and seeing if she can win by taking her marbles, or her websites, and going home.”
“Douglas is an easy target, a side show, a distraction….”
The language Safier has used about her: “antics” “a novice” “does silly stuff” “throwing tantrums” “seeing is she can will by taking her marbles…and going home” “an easy target” “a side show” “a distraction” does not indicate that he is granting her respect as an adult who cares about education enough to use the means at her disposal to run a successful campaign for State Superintendent of Education and secure the majority of votes cast in her race in a state-wide election. The language is denigrating and dismissive, and in a context where the other players referenced are all male, the case could easily be made, as one commenter on that article noted, that there is an element of misogyny in it. The link to the full article from which the above quotes have been pulled is here:
http://www.tucsonweekly.com/TheRange/archives/2015/09/16/az-ed-funding-cage-matches-throwing-elbows-in-the-light-and-punches-in-the-dark
As for Safier’s status as an anti-testing activist, he seems not to have read what “On the left? Really?” wrote: “on your status as an anti-testing activist. Prove it THROUGH YOUR RECORD IN INFLUENCING POLICY DURING THE LAST THREE YEARS.”
An effective response to toxic testing includes, not just general, theoretical articles that don’t put their finger on what is going on in local institutions, but specific responses to policies and actions in office of the people running our local districts. A genuine and effective critic of the overuse of testing will speak up about abusive policies, even — or perhaps especially — when they occur in a district where the president of the board is someone whose candidacy for office the commenter endorsed.
A note on light turnout for latest Listening Tour – I was eager to attend the first round. I said my piece when she stopped in my rural area. Then I waited and watched for the sharing of the totality of information. needs and opinions gathered on this round. I never found that analysis, only her plan. So when I had the opportunity this week, I didn’t bother to go. Ms. Douglas did spend three days at the Leading Change conference in Tucson this week, listening to Ruby Payne, Anthony Muhammad and Jonathan Plucker on the theme of equity/access. Now I’m hoping that will carry over to policies and funding that make positive impacts for rural education – not more robbing public schools to further support selective charters and ineffective online schools that typically waste student learning time for a stretch and then return them to the local school even further behind than when they started their online hiatus. And I must keep stressing the inequity of allowing charter schools to discriminate against students with special needs. In our town, lone charter (a family affair) instantaneously has a waiting list for the grade a student with disabilities would like to enter. Magic!
Douglas: “[Standardized] testing was never intended to be an assessment of a teacher, a school or a district.” Never? For at least the last 15 years (the advent of No Child Left Behind) that is exactly what much standardized testing was meant to be.
Do we really need a test to find out which kids can;t read, write or add? The teachers already know. They just didn’t tell anybody.
Keep your laws off my brain. I can hear it now.
To RE Safier’s articles on Douglas and Testing. Your comments about the language I used about Douglas’ “antics” are reasonable. But I think it makes sense to look at the entire paragraph they came from.
“Ed Supe Diane Douglas’ antics, mainly directed at the state school board, have been the main source of jibes and jokes in the media. She’s a novice who says and does silly stuff in her pursuit of her education agenda, throwing tantrums, suing the board and seeing if she can win by taking her marbles, or her websites, and going home. That all makes for easy, eye-rolling commentary. It also makes people forget that, since she took office, Douglas has made some of the most sensible statements about education coming from a Republican in a long time, including a school funding plan that’s head-and-shoulders above any other AZ Republican proposal I’ve heard, maybe ever. Much as people like to say she’s harming our schools, so far as I can tell, she isn’t. Maybe she will in the future, it’s certainly possible, but not yet. She’s gumming up the privatization works a bit and giving the state board fits, but I haven’t seen how it has hurt kids in a way that’s comparable to, say, the legislative cuts to education which have been going on for years or Huppenthal’s vendetta against TUSD’s Mexican American Studies program.”
After looking at the whole paragraph, if readers think my overall tone is misogynistic, that’s fine. I just wanted to put the earlier passage in context. Here’s the link to the entire post. http://www.tucsonweekly.com/TheRange/archi…
And more’s the pity, Dr. Stegeman. Is the quality of your teaching at the University of Arizona assessed by corporate designed standardized tests? If not, why not? If not, from what source are you getting your information about what relationship what students do on standardized tests may bear to the quality of your teaching or the quality of the University of Arizona’s administration? Does the University of Arizona have admissions standards, or is it required by law to enroll all applicants, no matter what their GPAs and standardized test scores prior to enrollment may be? What do you know, from direct experience, about the challenges of teaching non-selective student populations may be? What do you know, for that matter, about teaching and / or administering K-12? Do you have a degree in education? Child development? Public administration? Experience teaching at any level other than collegiate? Are you a parent? Have you interacted with public schools from the position of someone advocating for the best interests of a child and / or children enrolled in these schools? Do tell.
Let’s consider the broader context, shall we, David? As one of the commenters on that article pointed out, you have a vested interest in defending the point of view that Douglas, though she may be ludicrous and a good person for you to mock, condescend to, and make fun of, is actually harmless. Why is that? Because you were one of the people involved with outing Huppenthal’s online commenting habits and getting him booted out of office. So the paragraph you quoted, while it may sound tolerant of Douglas, is actually defensive of your own actions, which some who didn’t like Douglas’s anti-common core agenda might have regarded as disastrous: get rid of Huppenthal so you can get Garcia in, then Garcia fails to win and we get a Tea Party activist instead.
Is your language about Douglas “misogynist”? It reads that way to me. I don’t think terms associated with naughty, self-indulgent children and / or freaks in a carnival side-show are appropriate for describing our State Superintendent of Education, whether or not you happen to agree with her agenda politically or think she is using the best techniques to achieve it. To me, she looks like someone who is actually, according to her beliefs, not all of which I share, trying to do what she thinks is best for children in our public schools. I prefer her attempts to criticize and resist the corporate reform agenda to the ongoing disgusting capitulation and collaboration of you and your friends in TUSD. Is TUSD governance and admin being properly “effective” and “mature” in your eyes, as they outsource subs, pick fights with the deseg authority, drastically inflate fees paid to deseg lawyers, give deseg taxes back to taxpayers, implement abusive testing policies, overpay their CEO, and, according to some, deliberately misrepresent student and teacher attrition rates and the degree to which the goals they are allowed to set for themselves have actually been met?
When you’re listing the failures-to-be-authentically-on-the-left of the so-called “progressives” running TUSD, don’t forget “agree with Graham-Keegan that teacher credentialing requirements should be reduced” and “aggressively promote the passage of 123.”
This back and forth proves exactly why public schools are doomed. There is a major tug of war going on for control (and it must be the money) of the schools. Parents are fools to stay and continue to under serve their children. Enroll them where you don’t have to fear the courses or the admin.
Students have been and will continue to be the losers in this flawed system.
We will always need publicly funded schools, and both compassion and justice demand that they be places where children can get the kind of education every one of our citizens needs and deserves.
There is no institution — not the non-profits and for-profits that run charters, not the church communities, religious orders, and wealth cohorts that run privates — that is not affected by its own internal politics, and no institution is so trustworthy that parents can have no reason to keep an eye on what’s going on there with “the courses” or “the admin.”
We need to roll up our sleeves and do the work necessary as citizens to defend the institutions this democracy needs to function. In a country where the majority rules, if you give up the fight to ensure that the education delivered in the school system still utilized by more than 80% of our population is sound, you do so at your own peril.
Common Core State STANDARDS… Not curriculum.