What Governor Ducey said isn’t a lie, exactly. It’s classic bullshit, and it tells you all you need to know about the most important part of his education budget agenda.
It’s in an article about how Arizona teachers’ low salaries make them low hanging fruit for recruiters from nearby states where salaries are higher and benefits are better. That’s one reason Arizona education advocates want Ducey to put most of his proposed $114 education budget hike into increasing salaries instead of the $13.6 million he allocated, to help retain current teachers and attract new ones. Here’s Ducey’s response.
The governor said he wants to see higher salaries for teachers. But he also wants full-day kindergarten, teacher debt forgiveness and broadband Internet in rural school districts, and he indicated that he’s unwilling to divert money from those priorities into more money for teacher salaries.
The best definition of bullshit is a misrepresentation which is intended to deceive. It doesn’t have to be a lie to be bullshit. It can actually be substantially true so long as it serves its deceptive purpose. And Ducey’s excuse for not putting more into teacher salaries is bullshit pure and simple.
Ducey’s highest priority in his proposed education budget is what he calls “results-based funding.” He wants $38 million for that program, close to three times what he designated for the salary boost. But he left that out of his “priorities” in the statement above.
Let’s see how much the “priorities” he mentioned add up to. Full day kindergarten? He put $10 million into that pot. Teacher debt forgiveness? That comes to $250,000 — a quarter million — added to money already in the budget. Broadband internet for rural districts? That adds another $5 million. The total is fifteen-and-a-quarter million, less than half the $38 million in his “results-based funding” request. If you add all the “priorities” money to the $13.6 million he put into teacher raises, the increase goes from a dollar a day all the way up to two dollars.
Why did Ducey somehow forget to mention the program that takes the largest chunk of his education spending proposal when he listed his “priorities”? Because it’s the most controversial part of his spending, and he’d like to sneak it in under the cover of darkness. “Results-based funding” would give money to the top 10 percent of Arizona schools based on their scores on the AzMERIT test. Standardized test scores are directly related to family income, in Arizona, in the rest of the U.S. and all over the world. As a general rule, the higher the family income, the higher the test scores. So that $38 million, which comes to an average $350 boost per student in the lucky schools—more than the per-student increase from Prop 123—will mainly flow to schools filled with students who are already the state’s socioeconomic winners. Ducey’s plan would increase the state’s educational inequality for those who are already the beneficiaries of our growing income inequality.
This idea has been proposed before. Former Governor Brewer and her disgraced Education Secretary John Huppenthal tried to make it happen. Lisa Graham Keegan, who pushed through our charter school law when she was a state senator, then implemented it when she was state Education Secretary, has been promoting this idea as part of her “education reform” agenda for years. It’s right in the conservative sweet spot. Use government money to help as many well-off kids as you can move into charters and private schools, and for those well-off kids who decide to stay, give them an extra financial boost over kids from poorer families. Oh, and, let’s not forget, some of that extra money will go to the BASIS-type charters filled with high income, high achieving kids as well, since “results-based funding” is for charters as well as district schools.
This article appears in Jan 26 – Feb 1, 2017.
Yep, Ducey is a bullshitter alright. “Results-based funding” is perhaps the shoddiest public policy proposal we’ve ever had the misfortune of receiving from those “governing” our state, and that’s saying a lot.
But David, with a heart bleeding for our poor, underpaid teachers, where is your commentary on Prop 123 spending and Prop 301 spending in TUSD? In case you’ve forgotten, this is the district where mid-year, more than 100 teaching positions were still unfilled, where too many classrooms have been manned by subs…and where those teaching positions might be filled with credentialed educators if the district stopped hoarding money that belongs to teachers in its bank accounts or giving its sadly limited funds to fat cat central administrators in the form of $10K bonuses…or to Sanchez in a $500K per year ridiculous compensation package.
I detect a selective communication strategy, somewhat similar to Ducey’s. Blast Ducey for, among other things, not paying the funds formerly owed under Prop 301, but don’t look at or comment on what happens to those 301 funds once they are dropped into the coffers of malfeasant, mismanaged TUSD.
Your outrage is, as usual, selective, as befits a card-carrying PCDP / Grijalva lapdog. Yip, yip! Now bite Ducey’s ankle. Good boy.
David,
You are wrong on two accounts. I have never supported nor proposed tying money to test scores because it has never worked. Nor do I feel the slightest bit disgraced. This is the second time you have falsely accused me. When my mother died of cancer, I contributed $10,000 to the Sunnyside Dollars for Scholars program in her name. I grew up 50 feet from the Sunnyside school district office and my father proudly displayed the awards he received from the Sunnyside superintendent for his participation on various policy boards. That money that was used for Dreamer college scholarships and computers for at risk students.
Bizarrely, you interpreted that contribution to be for my benefit.
There is a 160 year history of tying money to test scores thoroughly documented in the research – well over 100 case studies stretching all the way back to Great Britain which did it for 30 years in the mid 1800’s. I would never propose nor support tying money to test scores as a stand alone program the way Governor Brewer did nor the way current administration is doing. I wouldn’t support it because I have read all these studies and more importantly, completely understand why tying money to test scores backfires and damages school results.
There is no proof that the schools with the top test scores are above average schools. What they are good at is collecting top test score students and highly motivated parents. To test as to whether they are above average, you have to do two tests. First, you have to compare their academic gains with the academic gains of all students above the 90th percentile. The first time I did this, the school I was looking at flunked. Their gains were below the average of comparable students.
The second test you have to do is to look at the academic gains of their students when they were not in the current school. If any school can produce their gains, it is unlikely to be really associated with that school, it is really a product of the home.
In 1996, when the Mesa school district, the largest school district in the state, negotiated the performance pay system that continues till this day, I was called in to provide the technical expertise on everything that can go wrong in designing education performance pay systems. The system that came out of that 37 leader negotiation continues, with some modifications, still today.
The Obama administration did it again in Race to the Top. Vanderbilt University was named the national center for coordinating Race to the Top performance pay studies. Go read them. Predictably,not a single working model. Education policy makers, as a rule, have incredibly strong opinions and very little knowledge.
It is really great to read your response to his accusations. Thank you for all that you have done.
It is because of people like David and others in the public school system, that I vowed not to make the same mistake with our second child as our first. We enrolled him in a private school, and while we struggled to pay the cost of tuition, it was such a rewarding experience to be encouraged to participate in the educational opportunities. (When small schools need help they have to use volunteers, and it developed a servant’s heart in both of us.)
What I am trying to say David, is thank you. Thank you for showing me that the public school sysytem has gotten to big, too bureaucratic, and far too expensive. I encourage all parents to take on the struggle of tuition like we did. Your kids will be blessed for a lifetime.