I began blogging almost by accident in 2008. I asked Mike Bryan, the owner, proprietor, sole writer and chief bottle washer for Blog for Arizona if I could write about education on BfA, and he said sure. I imagined myself working in an arcane backwater. Few people would be interested in the details of state and national education legislation, public schools, charter schools, all that kind of stuff that interested me as an educator but wasn’t on most people’s radar. At best I hoped some teachers and administrators would read what I was writing, and if I could get a few people in the media and Arizona politics to pay attention on occasion, I would consider myself a success.
Instead, a decade later, I find myself writing on The Range and competing with the mainstream media and any number of educational professional and volunteer groups for attention. With politicians as well. The governor touts his focus on improving education. His potential Democratic rivals for the office, Steve Farley and David Garcia, can’t bring up the sorry state of education funding often enough.
If it sounds like I’m complaining, far from it. I love seeing the increased attention education has been getting in the state. The more the better. And in case this all sounds like bragging, like I think my blogging has pushed the topic front and center, far from it. I don’t take a scintilla of credit. Education has bubbled to the surface in Arizona as one of the most important issues facing our state on its own. Its time has come. That’s why our schools are at or near the top of every survey of voters’ most important concern.
Weekend articles had headlines like “Arizona Legislature begins Monday with focus on education funding” and “School funding is first priority in new legislative session.” A preview of the Ducey’s coming address to the legislature has the headline, “State opioid crisis and education funding expected topics, State of the State address.” Drug addiction seems like the only topic important enough to share the billing with schools.
I’m writing as I wait to hear our Koch-addicted, self-styled “Education Governor” Ducey deliver his 2018 State of the State Address. I expect Ducey’s address to be filled with glittering generalities about the importance of education to our children and the future of the state. I expect him to promise ever more funding for our cash-starved schools. He might try to convince us to dream the impossible dream of raising teacher salaries, spending more money on educational supplies, fixing our crumbling schools and replacing our old buses without raising taxes. “I have in my coat pocket a sheet of paper with the details of a budget putting our school children first,” he might tell us, but we won’t get to see it until later.
Will he say he plans to “Make our schools great again!”? He may not lay it on that thick. We’ll have to see.
Whatever Ducey says about education, it will be fodder for the media, politicians, business groups and education-centered organizations from now until the November elections.
This article appears in Jan 4-10, 2018.
So wrong David. It goes without saying that he would encourage school districts like TUSD to create blacklists of employees no longer wanted, he would promote wasting money that used to be available for pay increases and classroom supplies ,on increasing the number of administrators, and then he would hope that they would attempt to take over their individual schools by promoting racist agendas.
Oh wait, I got him confused with TUSD. Is there any wonder why education is the topic as one party continues to push the waste of even more money into an unaccountable operation with very poor results?
Wayne. You mean charter schools or private schools are unaccountable?
Keep the Education blogs coming, David Safier! Having had three kids graduate from TUSD before Charters, I watch this wild west of Charters take hold. I remember wonderful old Wrightstown Elementary, where my kids went. (2 lawyers and 1 MD) Wrightstow has been razed. Several charter schools surround the housing development that has taken the place of the school we loved .
For those wanting an impartial look at Charters, join the League of Women Voters and find out their results as well. The LWV meeting on Charters that I attended revealed the lack of oversight and regulation of Charters at the State Level. Some were good. Some were excellent. Many many poor.
More and better Charter oversight is needed, as are your blogs, David. Thanks.
“Everyone… is for education”
Yes, but some just want to throw more money at it in a belief that money improves education. Or, that the existing education culture is healthy, strong and coming close to achieving student’s potential. Others of us read research carefully and know that is not true.
A researcher from Stanford, Sean Reardon, just published what may be the most important study in the history of education. He used a sophisticated statistical technique to rank every single district in the nation based on academic gains. These were 5-year gains, not the one-year gains of letter grading which can be gamed.
Of the 200 largest districts in the nation, Chandler Unified ranked second. Peoria and Washington also ranked in the top ten. Not a single AZ district in the bottom ten.
Of the whole list, we had 41 school districts in the top 10% of the nation. By comparison, Massachusetts had 36 districts in the top 10%. (Our district student count about 950,000, Massachusetts? 950,000)
Massachusetts had 19 districts below the 10th percentile. Arizona had zero.
The median Arizona district placed at the 72nd percentile. The median Massachusetts district placed at the 55th percentile.
The Urban Institute rolled out one of the most powerful statistical techniques yet to also rank the states. Rather than use state tests score for its ranking, as Reardon of Stanford dit, it used NAEP, the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Think of all Hispanic students living in a two-parent household making $80,000 per year, or one parent household making $30,000. In the UI ranking, we placed 13th for those students math and reading scores and an infinite variety of similar apples to apples comparisons. Massachusetts placed first.
The Stanford Study suggests that our districts may not be in 13th place, that we may be much higher.
Its hard to believe that charters would drag down that ranking. AZ Black students in charters outscore Black students in districts. White students in charters outscore white students in districts, Hispanics outscore Hispanics.
Massachusetts may be ahead of us, or it may not be. Our academic gains from the end of 3rd grade to the end of 8th grade are clearly higher than theirs. If they are truly ahead of us, that means that their academic gains from kindergarten through 3rd grade are significantly higher than ours.
We should go and see what the number one state in the nation is doing from kindergarten through 3rd grade. We should also go and see what the number two district in the nation (large), Chandler, is doing from 3rd through 8th. We should also go and see what Saddle Mountain (top one percentile of all districts) is doing from 3rd through 8th. Or just go ask Mark Joraanstad, the executive director of the Arizona Schools Administrators. He was the Superintendent of Saddle Mountain during the period of the Stanford Study and clearly the driver of those results.
Battered and bruised Tucson Unified placed at the 67th percentile in the Stanford study. But, look at what little it took to be 17 percentile points above average: 5.1 academic years in 5 years of study. Not nearly enough to even partially close the achievement gap. But, its not below average.
No Frances I mean unaccountable as in TUSD. Who has actually held them accountable for any of the malfeasance the past 25 years? They have damaged the labor force in Pima County. It’s no wonder the voters say NO to bond elections.
I have more trust in the good parents that take part in the child’s education by moving them to alternatives. They are voting with their feet. That’s all they had left.
As well as for everybody should be for peace in the world, everybody should perceive the best level of education. I think that people who have understood this simple truth in Arizona are very wise. These are the people who have realized the value of education and they can truly say that they are continuous learners. These people can inspire and motivate others to do so as well. I am sure that students and learners of Arizona will only benefit from the fact that they could use the http://bestofwriters.com/ for all of their educational endeavors.