As a substitute teacher, I’m privileged to experience the best of Tucson’s schools—and the worst of Tucson’s schools.
On a recent Thursday, I was teaching at one of the city’s best schools, in the Catalina Foothills School District. The next day, I was working in the Sunnyside Unified School District. What I saw convinced me that some children are given the tools to succeed, and some are not. The determining factor too often appears to be a child’s ZIP code.
Orange Grove Middle School is a pleasant series of grayish buildings set against the dramatic backdrop of the Santa Catalina Mountains. I know from experience that middle school students are the most difficult to control. Imagine my surprise when 30 students filed into the classroom, sat down quietly and waited for instructions. I spent most of the day in a state of barely suppressed shock. I had worked with at-risk youth for so long that I’d forgotten that a classroom could be a place where students actually did work and learned.
At one point during second period, the students needed computers, and 30 brand-new MacBooks were wheeled in. These kids, I thought to myself, really do have the tools they need to succeed in the world. (So does the teacher, who had not one, but two MacBooks at her disposal.) There were three occasions throughout the day when I had to ask a student to sit down or be quiet. Otherwise, the students were well-behaved and interested in their studies.
The next day, I was working at Chaparral Middle School in the Sunnyside district. The room I was assigned to was separated from the main building and looked like it was a converted mobile home. Just as on the previous day, 30 students filed into my room. However, they did not sit and await instruction; they ran around the room, threw objects, practiced the art of using obscenities, and caused a general ruckus. I spent 10 minutes getting the students settled and was interrupted by behavior problems on a regular basis. I felt more like a baby sitter than a teacher, and spent most of the day dealing with students who either wouldn’t or couldn’t stay on task.
If this had been an isolated incident, I could chalk it up to my own inadequacy as an instructor, but I have worked for Sunnyside and Catalina Foothills several times, and it’s always the same. The students in the Catalina Foothills district receive excellent instruction and have an amazing variety of electives, resulting in a well-rounded education. Catalina Foothills High School has an excellent theater department, a ceramics studio and a choir class. The students at Sunnyside are too busy with AIMS prep for electives like ceramics or choir. The buildings at Catalina Foothills High are new, clean and reminiscent of a college campus. The campus of Sunnyside High School resembles a prison barracks. (People often dismiss or underestimate the effect the appearance of a campus has on its academic performance, but you will be hard-pressed to find quality education on a campus of run-down buildings.)
The two worlds bear little resemblance, although both are part of our city’s public-school system. The trend is prevalent nationwide. Visit the public school in a rich neighborhood of Anytown, U.S.A., and you’ll likely find a school that resembles our own Catalina Foothills High School. The same is true for poorer areas, where the schools typically mirror those found in the Sunnyside district.
Most children can succeed given the chance. I also believe that there is no connection between race, gender and educational ability. While I have been very critical of the schools in the Sunnyside district, the students there consistently impress me with their creativity and critical-thinking skills. They can succeed, but many won’t under the current set of circumstances.
Education is the backbone of opportunity. If we want to continue to believe our national rhetoric of liberty and justice for all, we must address the inexcusable differences between schools in poorer neighborhoods and those in rich ones. Using property taxes to help fund schools ensures this trend will continue. Until we change that, public schools will work well for the rich, and continue to fail the poor.
This article appears in Nov 10-16, 2011.
The inequality in the education system is how our class war is perpetuated. Thanks Adam for an eye opening article.
Great article. Education in America is deteriorating in general, as the State opts to use money dedicated for public education and charter schools to pay for whatever else is more important than our children’s future…like the legal settlements and judgments against Joe Arpaio and the MCSO, which has cost the Arizona taxpayer more than $50,000,000 since 1993….
I, too, have worked as a sub and tutor in several school systems in Tucson. As the product of a county wide system in another state, the proliferation of separate school systems in Arizona astounds me. It would take a change in state law, but worth it to create one system in each county. It takes a given amount of money to teach each curriculum area to each grade level and this amount can be calculated based on state standards. If this is done and that amount of money were allocated per number of students in each school, the money inequity could be eliminated. Think about it. We wouldn’t be wasting money on top salaries for personnel who have no contact with students in the classroom and would be able to asked these ‘highly qualified’ people to supervise the instruction in county-district classrooms. This change would make an unbelievable improvement for students in all – even the Foothills students. I would vote for this change in a heartbeat.
Is it possible that it’s not the bells and whistles that make the difference? Isn’t it more likely that the home culture of the Foothills kids, compared with the home culture of the Sunnyside kids, is the real difference? Before even hinting that the school’s offerings are the real difference, I would urge the sub teacher to hold a meeting of just the parents or guardians of the kids in each school. I subbed in the slums of Chicago for several years and could pretty well deduce the home life of the kids by their attitudes. Check this out before you come to the knee jerk reaction that MacBooks in Sunnyside will improve the kids’ learning. The inequality may in fact be unwittingly self-induced by the families who choose – certainly without realizing it – to stay down.
I’ve always wished the educational researchers would spend time figuring out why a detectable minority of kids with deprived family background and deficient schools still succeed remarkably well. If we could figure out why that happens, we might see ways that could lead to real improvement.
I agree with your assessment up to a certain point. As a general education advocate, but a parent in the CFSD, I’d like to say that education in AZ isn’t quite equal. It’s one of the reasons I moved into this school district. However, there are campuses around Tucson that “look” like those in CFSD–which have 50+year old campuses in their district, btw. Vail, Amphi etc–any districts with newer schools have “newer” campuses. It’s not just CFSD. So while the Foothills high school is a nice campus, so are others: Ironwood Ridge in Amphi, etc.
Secondly, what you are missing and overlooking as someone who comes into this district inconsistently and not at the elementary level is the level of expectation that is bred into these students from Kindergarten. There is a lot of education shaping that is done at the primary level that you see reflected in middle school and high school. That foundation is huge, and a LOT of work in done in those four elementary schools to create a level of expectation that students will be prepared to enter class ready to learn. This has nothing to do with funding. It’s a philosphical & pedagogical movement that has been well thought-out.
Incidentally, there is a large open-enrollment population of students outside of district families that take advantage of this training, and open enrollment forms are available on the district website and it opens up on Dec.1.
However, until Arizona funds adequately, you will see inequalities. I agree 100%. But your argument for why the difference you note in your article is very surfacy, I have to point out.
Dr. Kamerzell, CFSD superintendent, recently had an op-ed that shows WHY are schools are doing what they are–because she has implemented these non-budgetary structures in place. Sure, some of them like a robust parent-involvement will relate to socio-economic conditions, but any crafty or forward-thinking principal could easily draft some of those “foothills do-gooders” down to the Sunnyside school district to help their schools.
I’ll paste Dr. Kamerzell’s article below. It’s an excellent read.
Using Three Decades of Research to Improve Student Achievement
By Dr. Mary Kamerzell
Thirty-five years of research on school effectiveness show that there are a handful of factors at the school level that account for anywhere from one-quarter to one-third of the measurable variance in student academic achievement. As a result, we must pay attention to those school-level attributes that contribute to our students’ success.
In his What Works In Schools, researcher Bob Marzano names the five most influential school-level factors by order of impact on student achievement: a guaranteed and viable curriculum, challenging goals and effective feedback, parent and community involvement, a safe and orderly environment, and collegiality and professionalism.
The most influential factor of a guaranteed and viable curriculum is a combination of student opportunities to learn and the time to do so. Opportunity to learn is the discrepancy between the intended curriculum, what we call K-12 measurement topics and their grade level benchmarks in our Catalina Foothills School District (CFSD) schools, and the implemented curriculum or what teachers actually teach.
The benefit of time can make a viable curriculum attainable for students.
However, the number of school days that are typically part of an American school year is woefully inadequate to support learning achievement at a “proficient” level for all students.
The “Prisoners of Time” study by the National Education Commission on Time and Learning reported that U.S. schools offered a six-period day on average with approximately 5.6 hours of class time each day. Making an assumption that 5.6 hours are dedicated to classroom time 180 days a year, that means that students spend 13,104 hours in class (1,008 hours per year x 13 years of a K-12 school career). Note: In CFSD, we expect that at least seven hours of class time are part of the basic daily school schedule.
Not all classroom time is used for instruction. There are teaching disruptions caused by a variety of both planned and unplanned activities. These activities diminish the amount of time actually used to teach to academic standards. Although research studies vary widely in their conclusions about how much time is used for instruction in America, no study reports more than 69 percent. If we calculate 69 percent of the available 13,104 hours of class time, it means that only 9,042 hours are actually used for instruction in a student’s K-12 experience.
The second most important school factor influencing student achievement is challenging goals and feedback.
Sometimes this factor is referred to as the combination of high academic expectations and the monitoring of student progress toward achieving them.
It is one thing to identify essential knowledge and skills, it is quite another to define the level of performance expected from students. Providing timely and specific feedback to students about how their work compares to a quality standard will inform both the teacher and student about what should happen next, in terms of what the teacher does to plan for instruction and what the student does to learn.
The third school-level factor is parent and community involvement. Marzano defines it as “the extent to which parents in particular and the community at large in general are both supportive of and involved in a school.” He clarifies that not all types of parental or community involvement are beneficial to a school. Effective involvement falls into the three categories of communication, participation, and governance.
It is the responsibility of the school to initiate communication and provide an atmosphere in which parents sense that the school welcomes not only their ideas but their physical presence. Schools that involve parents and community in day-to-day operations report lower absenteeism, truancy, and dropout rates, attesting to what Marzano calls a possible “spill over” effect on the home environment.
Governance refers to the establishment of specific structures that give parents and community a voice in key, school decisions. In our Catalina Foothills schools, we enjoy the involvement of parents and other community members in defining an improvement agenda for the school, as teacher assistants and guest experts/presenters, and as members of a variety of advisory committees.
The fourth school-level factor that influences student achievement is a safe and orderly environment. The establishment of rules and procedures for general student behavior and for behavioral problems with enforcement of appropriate consequences will go a long way toward creating a productive climate for learning. A school that does not commit itself to this factor undermines its efforts at improvement.
Finally, the school-level factor of collegiality and professionalism pertains to the way in which staff members at the school interact and the extent to which they approach their work as professionals. Collegiality is characterized by the authentic interactions among staff that are professional in nature. In their book What’s Worth Fighting for in Your School?, researchers Michael Fullan and Andy Hargreaves described the behaviors as constructively analyzing and criticizing practices and procedures, demonstrating respect for each other, and openly sharing failures and mistakes. Collegiality is not about social interactions and friendship among teachers.
One aspect of professionalism is a sense of efficacy on the part of teachers. In Building Collaborative Cultures, Kent Peterson explained that efficacy is grounded in teachers’ perception that they can effect change in their schools.
Another aspect of professionalism is the level of teacher participation in development activities that enhance the teacher’s pedagogical knowledge—how to teach the subject to various kinds of students.
If research-based reform of our schools matters to us, we need to pay attention to the more than three decades of study that define the factors at the school level that positively correlate to student academic achievement.
Teacher- and student-level factors influence academic performance too, but all of the adults, including parents and community members, who work or participate in some other way in the life of their school have much to say about its effectiveness.
Mary Kamerzell, Ph.D., is superintendent for Catalina Foothills School District.
I am a parent in CFSD. I have a child who is now at Orange Grove, and went through Sunrise Elementary from Kinder. While I wholeheartedly agree with you that funding in AZ is not equal, and we have major funding issues with a state legislature that doesn’t recognize the importance of quality education to a sustainable and safe state/economy; with all due respect I must disagree with your conclusion and argument.
I can see how from the surface of occasional subbing you might make the mistaken argument that it’s all money. But it couldn’t be further from the truth. Yes, the district families support education and pass bonds/overrrides that allow for Macbooks and a 21st Century citizen student.
But what I am hearing is that the students in Sunnyside, or other “poorer” communities you sub in aren’t engaged and aren’t acting ready to learn. That’s the crux of your argument. However, this isn’t related to money.
What you haven’t observed at the middle school or high school level is that in elementary school, there is a lot of teaching students HOW to be students. There is also an environment that starts in elementary schools that there are high expectations and oddly enough–these kids RISE to meet them. 🙂 It’s a pervasive expectation that is integrated in every faucet of their learning, from the very beginning of day one. The kids are trained to know that they go to school to learn, and that doesn’t mean they don’t have fun–but they GET that there is a reason they are at school every day, and it’s not to goof off.
Another is, and I hate to say it, but to some degree it’s the family unit. There are many families in this school district that value education and prioritize it above many other things. It’s a large part of the culture. When there are class parties, parents are talking about the education of their kids. Parents meet for lunch/parties, and they are talking about the education of their kids. Parents sit in baseball bleachers, and are talking about the education of their kids. You don’t see that when you substitute occasionally in the higher levels. I think a long-term sub at the elementary level would see this to some degree. But when parents are that concerned about their kids’ education, the support at home will follow.
Those are two big parts of what you have observed in students ready to learn, and neither has to do directly with education funding. There is also a large open enrollment population of students outside of the district boundaries who attend CFSD schools. And these students excel within the schools too. I don’t think you can underestimate an atmosphere of high expectations in a school district. I think it helps that CFSD is smaller, with only 7 schools, and this can be managed. But there is concerted effort to create this type of atmosphere.
I KNOW the family and parents play a critical role- but where were the parents of these under-performing students educated? Bad Schools. This is a cycle. You can’t withhold the tools of success from people, education, and then point fingers at them when they fail.
I knew people would talk about the parents, and I wish I would’ve addressed that in my article. I did have a rather narrow word limit to contend with, so I did the best I could. Thanks for the feedback!
Thank you for an eye opening article from a perspective that we don’t hear from enough! I hope you become a consistent contributor!
What about vouchers ? Parents of the Sunnyside school could use the vouchers to pay for another school … private or maybe the one in Catalina. I imagine that would prompt the Sunnyside school to clean up its act . Maybe segregate the crazies from the serious students or send them home if they won’t behave. It would also assure that the kids get a real education and become a productive member of society so they can pay for all those taxes that the folks in this post seem to think will make everything better.
I know the education establishment seems to dislike vouchers since they diminish the local school’s monopoly status, but it doesn’t sound like you have much to lose if your child is in a classroom with kids being inventoried until they can drop out.
An interesting and thoughtful discussion on education….thanks to all. I will contribute my knowledge and experience as a early learning professional in public, private schools and currently with Head Start. Yes, money and how it is allocated reflect our values and our politics. And in turn the quality of our children’s education. Head Start began in the 60’s. Enrollment is open to families living below the Federal poverty level. It began as an educational experience for 4 year olds and has now expanded to sometimes include infants.
A major emphasis has always been to involve parents[ usually mothers]. Last week I spoke with 8 Black Head Start teachers. All of them had been parents of Head Start children. Now all 8 were either enrolled in BA programs, had BAs or had MA’s. This is proof that if opportunities are available to people living with generational poverty, as these women were, lives will be changed.
Shouldn’t all American children be given an equal opportunity to a quality education. Why should it come down to where they live or how motivated their parents are? Don’t they all deserve a safe/clean environment, modern equipment and qualified teachers? If all schools were funded at the same amount of money per child wouldn’t that be a start? We’re all in this together–it’s time we start caring.
Thank you for sharing your first-hand experience with the inequities you have seen in our school system. I hope that you will continue to contribute your commentaries.
Cindy Sigmon
My, now adult, “children” attended CFSD schools from elementary grades through high school. I also happen to be a teacher in the Sunnyside District. It’s the POVERTY thing, STUPID!!!!… And it DOES take MONEY !!! The exposure, that is offered in affluent homes, the abundant resources that are taken for granted by the children of affluence, and the extravagance of financial security , have a huge impact on attitude and thus academic success.. Travel, books, philosophical conversations at the dinner table, healthcare, extra curricular activities that are part of the repertoire, opportunities that money can buy, and parents,themselves , who are more often than not ,highly educated , most certainly affect the educational atmosphere . That being said, the struggle, on the “southside” of every town, has to do with actually putting food on the table . The “struggle” is not about competition to which esteemed university one’s kid is admitted.( BTW,the comment above praising the endless parent-talk about academia is true and,in my experience, was one quality that I, as a parent and a teacher , found to be a bit obnoxious …as if school performance was THE measure of success,much more valuable than character.). Dysfunction is certainly not exclusive to poor neighborhoods. The community on the southside is a community of human beings,too.These are families with the same hopes and dreams as any families. These parents want exactly the same thing for their children as any parent does. POVERTY is the difference. It takes $$$ to give students the opportunities that wealthy communities take for granted..(above and beyond computers) . It is not unusual for some of my high school students to work all night and come to school exhausted , in order to help support their families.. I would say that that shows enormous resilience. The EXPECTATIONS are family first. There is no simple fix to the problems of inequality in education . NCLB is certainly not been the answer in leveling the playing fields, nor is the demonization of teachers, or parents ,or communities. The best I can come up with is to start recognizing the strengths of the various communities and take what works from all of them. BTW, if anyone believes that there are not behavioral issues ,drug problems, cheating, and bored ,obnoxious , unsupervised challenges in the Foothills schools, then I know a bridge you can buy in Brooklyn!
So, the tools necessary to succeed are – MacBooks??!?
chapparal rules
Hello, Mr. Jaobs.I am surprised of how you have compared the rich and the poor in the city of Tucson. I am a product of the school district of Sunnyside. It is sad that many have viewed the southside of Tucson already as a criminal,destructive, and dangerous place. However, I can say the same thing with Catalina Foothills. I believe the only reason why their isnt so much negative comments from their is because of the same reason Rich Vs. “Poor”. Have you ever heard of survival of the fittest?. Maybe thats why are education has been affected. So many Budgets Cuts ,could it be true that we are poor and that the rich do have more privalages. But do we have the same values. Maybe thats why we are treated as “lower class” because they have handed alot of opportunities to the rich.Im not writing for a debate but to give my opinion on your article if thats ok. I have graduated and now currently going to college. I wouldnt change what district or neighborhood I grew up in. It has made me the person I am today. I think the diffrence of sunnyside school district and others is that, for instance my teachers werent my teachers but my ficilitators, and no matter the circumstances that we have been brought up in, I believe we have learned alot.So you say that the middle school kids were being disruptive? and you couldnt get their attention?… Chaparral middle school? and you said that Sunnyside high school looked like a jail?, I went to chaparral middle school, and I graduated from Sunnyside High School, You cant assume just because of a group of kids. I believe if we really did care what was going on and dislike the way such like “poor” are being brought up then why not make a diffrence? why not get out of our comfort zone. why not be equal?.. not for pity or campassion but to have a better society and have a just and fair education in Tucson Arizona. Catalina might be a better school in many ways, but its not perfect and neither is Sunnyside.-Karla
Mr. Jacobs,
I am the proud principal of Chaparral Middle School and I take great offense that you labled my school as the worst of Tucson’s schools. I am aware that you were a guest teacher in one of our classrooms, and I am aware now that the behavior of the students was not what we expect from our kids. But, again, I am very offended that you threw this label at our kids in the manner that you did.
I appreciate the other points that you made in your article and it is always a struggle to understand the inequities of school funding. That is a whole other discussion for another time. Our school is 30 years old and but it is one of, if not the most well-kept schools in our district. We are very proud of how clean and orderly our building is.
Your article has given us the opportunity to challenge our students’ behaviors and how they treat our guest teachers. This type of behavior is unacceptable to our staff, community and students and we must own the fact that we didn’t represent Chaparral in the manner that is expected of them. In a strange twist, the students’ behaviors on that particular day actually show how effective our teachers are. Our kids come from some tough environments and they displayed behaviors, though completely unacceptable, that they are capable of showing. These behaviors are kept to a minimum when the teacher is present. Again, to me this shows the quality of teachers that I have on my staff. In the 4 years that I have been principal here, not once have I had to go into the classroom of the teacher that you covered for that day to deal with unruly behavior. Our students have the ability to be very rude and unruly, but when the teacher is present, they are some of the most respectful and well-behaved students around. To repeat, their behaviors on the day you were a guest teacher were unacceptable and we have had long talks with our students about this.
Your article, in all honesty, angered many of my students. In reaction, our teachers have held class discussions, some in the form of Socratic Seminars, to talk about why somebody feels that students from a specific part of town will not succeed. I will not go into all the challenges that our students face day in and day out in their lives because I am not making excuses for their behavior. I will post other comments by teachers here at Chaparral that may refer to these challenges, but we don’t use them as excuses for not succeeding. Our students here at Chaparral and in the Sunnyside Unified School District are given an excellent opportunity at a quality education and they must be held responsible for putting in their part. But, please remember that they are kids and they will make mistakes.
In closing, I invite you to come down and spend a day with me and see all the good that is happening at Chaparral. We are very proud that we have obtained the label of “Performing Plus” and that we are making the academic and social gains that we strive for. We are not content with where we are, but we are proud of how far we have come. I have some of the hardest working and caring teachers that I have ever seen in my nearly 20 years in education. Our teachers work hard for our kids and our kids work hard for our teachers. We did not behave to our expectations, and we are addressing that, but please come by and see the quality of student that attends Chaparral Middle School.
John Benavidez
Principal
Chaparral Middle School
I would challenge any teacher to come and walk the streets of our neighborhoods and see where many our children come from and how they live. When students are deprived of their basic needs; food, shelter, hot water, security, and sadly sometimes love, the academic focus takes a distant back seat. Many of our students face adversities and challenges that no teenagers should have to endure. I believe our students are privy to their parent’s (guardian’s) financial hardships, their plight to make ends meet and their mere struggle to make it from one day to the next. Many of our students are robbed of a childhood. While kids should play happily and simply enjoy life, our students are selling tamales, working at the SWAP meet, or cleaning yards to help out at home. This is not to say CF students don’t have family responsibilities or don’t work, but I’ll bet my paycheck that their earnings don’t pay their rent or electric bill.
Secondly, many of our students are not exposed to the experiences, places, and ideas that their wealthy counterparts often take for granted. Many of our students live very sheltered and one-dimensional lives. What percentage of our students have ever been to the U of A campus, to Phoenix, or north of Irvington for that matter? I think we’d all be unpleasantly surprised to see just how deprived our children are.
This is a sad testimonial of how economic status effects education, facilities, and opportunities for our children. As an educator of 31 years, 21 of them in the Sunnyside District as a teacher and counselor, I have seen failures; but I have also seen many students who were able to rise above their environment and go on to do great things with their lives and their careers. Moreover, Sunnyside is changing the culture of education and I believe Chaparral has some of the most phenomenal teachers that I have ever had the pleasure to work with. I invite any educator or substitute to come and visit Chaparral and observe what our teachers are doing in the classroom and how they relate to this population of very resilient children.
Barb Mathers
School Counselor/JAG Coordinator
Chaparral Middle School
To Mr. Jacobs
I will begin this retort with a mention of thanks in sarcastic prose, for the attempted War Mongering you have set between two schools and their students. I hope, for your sake that you do not resemble the weasley character from either The Princess Bride or Lord Of War. Thank you for single handedly causing an emotionally competitive uproar between two schools or districts that before today had no issues other than friendly competition , if even that.
In the spirit of gentlemen’s competition I offer you a challenge. Come visit my classroom and walk with me through the neighborhoods surrounding Chaparral. It will only take you about a mile to understand and we have several pairs of shoes from which to choose. Come watch a Soccer game and shake the rough, strong hands of the supportive community around us. And watch as our kids DON’T cry as they slide tackle on gravel.
I then challenge you to obtain a teaching certificate from any of our local Community Colleges and a contract with the Sunnyside District. Since you seem to have a passion for the written word you may Intern with me if you like. Although we may have to change your name to protect you from the repercussions of crowning us as the Worst School. After celebrating your success at obtaining a contract , spend 1 full school year developing the necessary relationships to inspire, reach and teach our tenacious, unpredictable, under resourced and underappreciated, rumor bound Cougars how to read and write. If at the end of that year you wish to re-write this article and perpetuate the propaganda you under support, I will hand you the pen, or a # 2 pencil ( do they still have those in other districts?) I would say you could use my log in but I would imagine you would rather use a Macbook.
Sincerely
Mark K Berry
7th Grade Language Arts
Chaparral Middle School
Sunnyside Unified School District
It is fatuous to argue that demographics do not make a difference. Just how much of the difference in student performance is directly attributable to the outside of school learning experiences students in CFSD enjoy? But if we are only considering what happens in school then we need to drill down at least a little beneath the surface to discuss why Mr. Jacobs has noted such stark differences between SUSD and CFSD.
This article deals only on the surface. We only read descriptions of what are essentially “choices” that two districts have made. The real question that is not addressed in a serious way in this article is how two districts that get roughly the same per pupil funding from the state chose to spend their money in such different ways that these differences emerged. There is no denying that CFSD parents have subsidized their schools. Beyond that, SUSD is at a real disadvantage in funding its programs, especially when they pay their superintendent an outrageous amount of money. The programs in each of these these districts reflect both demographic differences AND financial choices.
The legislature requires the state auditor general to issue a report showing the percent of each district’s budget that goes into the classroom because that is where students actually learn. SUSD is considered a “large district” by the state and enjoys the economies of scale that a “medium-large” size district like CFSD does not enjoy. Even with these economies of scale, CFSD spends more of its resources in the classroom than SUSD. Where districts spend money is a choice, and SUSD has not chosen to spend as high a percentage of its funding in the classroom.
The facts are the facts- most students from Catalina Foothills go to college, and most from the southside do not. Yes, parental and environmental factors are critical- that’s obvious. But so is the school. In my vast experience with Tucson schools (as a sub and full-time teacher), I stand by every word of this article as the truth.
Do people enjoy being reminded of how far behind they are? Of course not. I understand some of the resentment (although getting mad at me won’t solve anything- let’s get those angered kids to the LIBRARY where they can actually make some progress!).
I challenge anyone reading this to inspect the issue for themselves. Stop by a few classrooms at a southside middle or high school; then swing by Orange grove or Catalina Foothills.
You will be able to confirm what I wrote over 2 years ago.
It’s good to be alive!
Adam Jacobs
12-9-2013