It’s almost a sure thing that the Republican-led AZ legislature will try to add more funding and more students to our two private school voucher systems this year. They try it every year, and they usually succeed. The only questions are, what will their additions look like, and will they make it to Gov. Ducey’s desk?
The Arizona School Boards Association has put together a three minute primer on the state’s two voucher systems: Student Tuition Organizations (aka backdoor vouchers) and Empowerment Scholarship Accounts (aka Educational Savings Accounts, also aka Vouchers on Steroids). The information in the video is pretty accurate, though it’s possible to quibble around the edges. As for its anti-voucher slant, which I agree with, you don’t have to agree to learn more about how the two programs work.
Remember, vouchers have nothing to do with charters. Charters are publicly-funded, privately run schools which get more-or-less the same amount of tax dollars per student as district schools. Vouchers are about using tax dollars to pay for tuition to private schools.
This article appears in Dec 29, 2016 – Jan 4, 2017.
I sure hope they do. It will help straighten out TUSD much faster.
Vouchers won’t help straighten TUSD out, though it will be necessary to continue funding vouchers for alternative schools if state and local education officials cannot get their acts together to do what IS necessary to straighten TUSD out: add funds TOGETHER WITH oversight to ensure that the funds are actually applied to IMPROVE THE QUALITY OF SERVICES TO STUDENTS.
What does not qualify as applying funds to “improve the quality of services to students”?
— giving $10K annual bonuses to central administrators
— compensating Sanchez at the rate of $1,000 a day for 40 “unused vacation days” every year
— taking money from sadly underfunded K-12 programs to add TUSD day care centers
— proposing to invest in Fruchtehendler-Sabino pipelines while magnets like Utterback go begging
— voluntarily giving $3 million in desegregation funds back to taxpayers while several magnet schools don’t have the $$$ to ensure their magnet-related faculty and support positions are filled
Etc., ad nauseam.
The list of idiocies in the application of funds in a district serving 1/3 of the students in Pima County during Sanchez’s tenure is long and depressing. Until Safier’s favorite Governing Board members and Superintendent stop flushing public money which is supposed to benefit STUDENTS and TEACHERS down the toilet, how can it be ethical for us to support anti-voucher advocacy? Sadly, the mismanagement in a district “serving” almost 50,000 students locally is so severe and damaging that students DO need alternatives. Don’t block access to the lifeboats if you can’t keep the ship from sinking.
Another love letter to Ann-Eve Pedersen and the Pima County Democratic Party establishment, pointlessly promoting their pet projects and ideologies. What a surprise.
Like just about everything else in Safier’s blog, this post has nothing to do with improving the lives of students in Southern Arizona, and everything to do with channelling money to his political affiliates. Democrats want the money in the pockets of the political machine associated with public school districts, Republicans want the money in the pockets of the political machine associated with charters and privates.
Who is serving the common good in all this, and asking whether education funds channelled in any direction in this state are actually resulting in quality services being delivered to students, in public district schools, in charters, or in privates? That’s the important question to answer.
This video (and article) are either blantent lies/ or ignorance in action.
Stos DO NOT take from others taxes. They take from citizens who CHOOSE to direct their taxes (that they paid) to private school scholarships.
My children go to private schools, why should MY tax dollars go to a public school? I don’t use them?
Your argument, on the other foot. So is it where MY (not yours) tax dollars go that you care about? Or is it, you just hate private schools?
To “More ideology”: WRONG! The opposition to vouchers has nothing to do with political gains and EVERYTHING to do with not wanting our tax dollars to go to private/parochial schools with no accountability and transparency. I want to know what return on investment I get from my tax dollars allocated to education and with district schools I get that through open board meetings, annual audits, test scores, etc.
To John Hohn: way to go John. So…it is ALL about you. Well, maybe I don’t want to pay for the roads you drive on in your neighborhood. After all, I don’t drive there. I want to designate my road maintenance tax dollars to only go to the roads I drive on. How’s that working for you? There is such a thing as a being a responsible citizen you know. There are expenses that we must bear to be able to enjoy an acceptable quality of life. I believe funding public education so that ALL children have the opportunity to be productive members of society is one of the most critical of those responsibilities. I am SO TIRED of the “IT’S ALL ABOUT ME” attitude!!!!!
To “Linda Lyon”: WRONG! (What a courteous, subtle writing style you have…)
The opposition to vouchers has everything to do with political gains.
If you took the trouble to look at whether or not our largest local school district in Southern Arizona (TUSD, serving close to 50,000 students, approximately 1/3 of the students in public schools in Pima County) is ACTUALLY “accountable” and “transparent,” and providing a good “return on investment” to taxpayers and holding “open board meetings,” etc., you wouldn’t regurgitate the ignorant, ideologically driven talking points of the Pima Dems.
Observe TUSD board meetings for several years running or enroll a few of your children in one of TUSD’s unbelievably low functioning schools — as many of those commenting in these streams have done — and THEN come back to us and tell us why you want to abolish vouchers. Make sure to mention the details of what you actually observed at TUSD board meetings and on TUSD school sites.
One of my children attended a supposedly “A rated,” reputedly “high functioning” TUSD school. It was irresponsible and non-transparent in so many ways it would take me hours to list them all. We declined the “opportunity” to enroll another of our children in the same school and utilized a private school instead. The education available there was in every way superior. We did not use tax credits to pay the tuition, but for families that cannot afford to pay all the tuition expenses out of pocket, I absolutely support tax credits going to support students’ enrollment in responsible private schools delivering a high quality of education.
It’s unfortunate that the state of Arizona does not regulate and oversee any of its schools properly — public district schools, charters, and private schools applying vouchers — but in the absence of higher quality services available in Southern Arizona public district schools, it is absolutely NOT ethical to try to block parents desperate to secure a good education for their children from using the tax dollars available to fund education to pay tuition in private schools.
Fix TUSD, why don’t you — if at this advanced state of deterioration and rot it is actually still fixable — and then block the exits.
To More Ideology: One of the great things about district schools is they are led by locally elected governing boards. If you are unhappy with the way TUSD is run, you and others can work to elect new board members. That is an option you don’t have in commercial (private and charter) schools. I would also offer that you should not judge every district school in Arizona by one example…whether that example is good or bad. Perhaps my choice of the word “WRONG” was unfortunate, but…just as I am probably not fully aware of what goes on in TUSD, you are not entirely well-informed about what is happening in district schools across the state.
Lets get factual, Linda Lyon: you have no idea whether I am “not entirely well-informed” about what is happening in district schools across this state or in other states. So stop asserting things that have no foundation in fact and no basis in what I have written here. That you are “not fully aware of what goes on in TUSD” was apparent from the specific things you wrote in your post, which assumed that TUSD’s operations were quite different from what they actually have been for some time now.
One fact we do know is that TUSD “serves” a disproportionately large percent of the students in Southern Arizona enrolled in public district schools, and so those of you who like to use the argument that it’s “only one district among many” are simply wrong: its size precludes it being treated as “only one district among many” or as an “outlier” that can justifiably be left out of policy analysis. Policy analysis must include it. If a district of this size is as low-functioning as this district actually is, blocking access to alternative schools becomes a problematic and indefensible policy solution for this region.
When it comes to “working with others” to elect new Board members, here again, observing what ACTUALLY happens in the real world might be helpful in correcting some of your misconceptions. It would take too long to write about what I observed in the 2014 and 2016 TUSD Board elections. Suffice it to say that they were not a model of an informed electorate participating constructively in a democratic electoral process and it was very clear that there were influential parties (including the blogger whose post we are commenting on) actively blocking relevant information from getting to the electorate. The influence of money and interest groups was large and in 2016, as in 2014, the candidates most equipped to provide good leadership did not get elected. So much for “working with others to elect new board members.” Here again: gain some real experience at the ground level and then come back and provide informed commentary.
…and the beat goes on. TUSD …please get the state to take it over.
Parents can get a great public education at a district school, an alternative school, a Catholic school or a private school. Why shouldn’t they be able to decide where their children get their public education?
No school can be excellent for every child. Not possible. Thus the more choices a parent has, the more likely it is that every child will get that excellence.
We have over 5 million students in this country who can’t say 9 when you say 5+4. We have over 7 million who can’t say can’t say nine when you ask them for a number that is 5 more than 4. We have over 6 million who read less than 2 minutes a day because it is so painfully difficult and slow for them to read. No amount of money pouring into district schools is going to solve this.
We’ve tried the spending experiment on steroids. In New York, spending went from 12 billion to 24 billion in a single school district in a few short years – no detectable impact. In Kansas City, a federal judge told school superintendents: “Let your dreams run wild, I will fund them” and he did. it took a decade to dig out from the wreckage.
We have every bit of evidence that school choice is healthy for Arizona. From 2011 to 2015, our combined math and reading gains on NAEP were the highest in the nation. From 1992 to 2012, murders by juveniles in Arizona fell from 70 to 7 while our at-risk population more than tripled.
The opposition to vouchers is to show that we believe there is value in educating all children, not just our own.
Vouchers could educate all children. Now that would be a value.
jhuppent@hotmail.com writes, “…the more choices a parent has, the more likely it is that every child will get […] excellence.”
Nope. Because if there is no oversight that guarantees quality, it could well be that all the choices will be faulty. Perhaps you will end up choosing between entrusting your child’s education to “bad” or “worse,” not “good” or “excellent.” A choice between “bad” and “worse” pretty much sums up the current state of education in the state of Arizona, thanks to more than 20 years now of misguided state level policy.
Turns out there’s this field called “public administration,” jhuppent. And when you care about delivering quality products through public institutions, you have to know something about it. Also social science: it can be useful for elected officials administering public institutions to know what kinds of conclusions can and cannot be drawn from data — and how the conclusions you can and cannot draw should relate to public policy. Try it some time…
Sorry “Choice does not guarantee excellence,” but there are patents out there that create oversight by pulling their kids from a failed school. It is up to the parents because if the Board can not get the schools to straighten out, the parents would be free to walk. Many families have carried the tuition burden for years in an attempt to get their children and excellent education.
Send these people school shopping and they will get results! The opposite has become true in public education where they can’t seem to figure out their failings so they simply blame others. That won’t work any more.
Let’s make education great again.
Parents who don’t know how to tell a good school from a bad one do not create “oversight.” As it turns out, identifying a quality educational institution requires somewhat more expertise than choosing your favorite kind of cereal in the grocery store.
Try superimposing your “choice” model on the field of medicine. Do patients know enough to evaluate the quality of hospitals? Of their own doctors’ quality of care? In most cases, no. Not unless they’ve been to medical school.
The disrespect for credentialed and experienced educators in this state is astounding. Together with the poverty level wages — “salary” is not an appropriate term for what teachers are paid here — this attitude drives teachers out of the classroom and out of the profession. And, as a result, Arizona parents get what they deserve: uniformly low quality schools when compared to what is available in other states, poor educational results, and CHOICE between the frying pan, the fire, and the furnace: poorly overseen district schools, unregulated charters, and irresponsible privates.
Hurray for Arizona.
The parents of over 4 million students in this country rate their child’s school a “D” or an “F”. They have no choice, they are stuck. One of them, the parent of a special needs child, was so beside himself he accosted his school board with a rifle.
You can say that these parents can’t tell a good school from a bad school but likely they can tell that their school is not very good for their child.
80 percent of 8th graders can’t do fractions procedures or understand them conceptually – a fourth grade standard. Thirty percent of 8th grade students take and pass algebra, yet only 1% can do the simplest prealgebra word problem and less than 9% can do the very simplest polynomial manipulation. Education is a huge Potemkin village.
Trapped is the correct adjective for these students, trapped by the parents who want to parasite off the resources that they bring to the school without returning commensurate value. Only school choice can remedy that situation. Those 4 million students have no chance to achieve their potential in life without it.
Not many are fans of locking students into bad educational environments and providing no alternatives, but if you’re going to allow “choice,” why not also provide oversight and effective quality control? That would be the responsible thing to do.
Does anyone deny that there are bad charter schools and private schools in existence, where students’ best interests are not served?
This is from an informational flyer written by an employee of the Arizona Department of Education: “Among the key lessons taken from Arizona’s experience with many various forms of school choice is that in nearly every instance, the haste to enact a program was not accompanied by a prudent investment in the necessary infrastructure to oversee it. This has left the ADE [Arizona Department of Education] and ASBCS [Arizona State Board of Charter Schools], among others, under-resourced to handle the demands of an ever-expanding system. [] the ASBCS is tasked with overseeing 535 charters serving 145,000 students, yet it has a staff of only 9. By its own account, it is severely understaffed for the amount of work it is required to undertake by law.”
Well said. This is the kind of point rational thinkers and sane administrators take into account when making policy decisions about public institutions: “That might be a good idea in theory, but in practice we don’t have the funding or the infrastructure necessary to oversee its sound implementation.”
In the jhuppent@hotmail.com post above, another flaw in the thinking behind “choice” policy is apparent: why would we assume that it’s fine to give parents who rate their schools (correctly or incorrectly) as “D or F” alternatives while leaving the children of those who don’t recognize that there are problems with their children’s education in failing schools? What if we handled the medical system this way? “You only deserve to have a good physician if you know enough about medicine to be able to tell a good one from a bad one.”
The state has a responsibility to the children of parents who cannot or will not move children from their neighborhood “government school” as well as to the children of parents who can and will move them if alternatives are provided.
As long as the state of Arizona is refusing to play any role in guaranteeing some minimal level of quality in educational institutions which make use of public funds, it is acting irresponsibly and failing to protect the best interests of citizens and the future health of our communities and economy in Arizona.
I agree with “prudent investment in infrastructure” as a strategy, and would like to include raising dismal salaries too. The Bureau of Labor Statistics says that high school teachers right here in Tucson are paid 43% below the national average. Maybe their current, hardly extravagant pay makes some commenters jealous and outraged, but I think it is a disgrace. No wonder good people leave and schools end up with unqualified subs on daily-rate pay in semi-permanent positions.
TUSD is evil. Sanchez is the devil. TUSD is evil. Sanchez is the devil. Local fetish for some herein. Taxpayer paid choice is great for private religious indoctrination schools, but not for women’s reproduction. We need taxpayers to subsidize creationism as science. Choice on steroids.
If only it were reproduction Frances. But it has become annihilation. That doesn’t even belong in an education discussion regarding private school vouchers. Hopefully you understand the difference between education and abortion funding.
No, she doesn’t. She’s one of those who supports using public schools as indoctrination centers for her version of what is moral, as she has revealed in her sad little post. Publicly funded schools in a pluralist society, Frances, are inappropriate places for you to think of instructing other people’s children in your beliefs about how “women’s reproduction” should be handled in our society, but thanks for slipping up and letting us know that your desire for public district schools to spread your beliefs about “women’s reproduction” is one reason you oppose vouchers.
As for your cracks about TUSD and Sanchez, those of us who ACTUALLY care about financial transparency and appropriate uses of public funds in public institutions will keep expressing our legitimate concerns. Those of you who have no REAL interest in transparency in public institutions — just an APPARENT interest when you bash charters for lack of transparency but fail to care about public districts’ transparency — go ahead and make your disparaging comments, slipping up now and then as you did above to let us know what your real concerns are.
Tammy . Hopefully you understand hypocrisy.
Frances Perkins – your evil/devil comment is appreciated. Because it is so easy to batter down than it is to make better. Solutions require effort and thought. Despite occasional issues my family has had good results from TUSD. But for the knee-jerks there is never mention of goodness or decency or great kids or effective programs or dedicated professionals. Just people on the outside spewing toxic, obnoxious Twitter-type political insults.
Actually, Sunriser, many of the comments about the quality of administration TUSD is experiencing are not coming from the “outside” or from “knee jerks” unwilling to invest “effort and thought.” They are coming from the district’s teachers and former teachers and parents and former parents, many of whom have made a deep investment in working or volunteering for the district or in informed citizen advocacy directly related to improving services to students in the schools in which your children are or have been enrolled.
There are many people like you who react unthinkingly to commentary that is insufficiently “bright” and “sunny” and “positive,” and insult those who have taken the trouble to do the observations that produce informed critiques of the district’s operations.
If you are unwilling to do the work needed to distinguish FACTS from “toxic, obnoxious Twitter type political insults,” that does not speak well of the quality of oversight you, as a parent, exercise in assessing the functioning of the institution to which you’ve entrusted your children’s education. It says nothing about the quality of the commentary you unwisely insult.
It could be that your children are enrolled in one of the more high functioning (translate: high SES) of TUSD’s many schools, and you’re simply ignorant of the inequities in the district or the serious problems south and west side schools have been experiencing under the Sanchez administration. If so, that makes you a beneficiary of privilege who turns a blind eye and a cold shoulder to fellow citizens whose children are not well served by our public institutions.
Either way — if you are not paying enough attention to notice grave and conspicuous problems in your own children’s school or if you are ignorant of the serious problems in poorer areas of the district — it makes your commentary of little value in discussions of the district’s affairs, and your insults and disparagement of commenters who take their responsibilities as parents and citizens more seriously than you do is contemptible.
If you don’t like what you see in informed discussions of TUSD, why don’t you confine your attention to happier pieces like movie and restaurant reviews? That would seem a more appropriate activity for someone with your inclinations and temperament. TUSD commentary is not for the lazy, or for those with no civic conscience.
Someone is really reacting “unthinkingly” to a sensible comment and is showing that they’re butt-hurt in a long-winded six paragraph style. This makes your commentary of little value and it is contemptible. Looks as if Sunriser’s comment made you oversensitive and you became very defensive, then offensive, because of it.
Idle hands are the devil’s tools and they’re not useful for fools.
No reason to melt over it snowflake. Sunriser’s comment is not nearly as offensive as you think it is.
When you disparage commentary conveying valid facts, you just discredit yourself.
Keep it up, if that’s how you like to spend your time. Personally, I find your tag-on “6 like” comments amusing, in that they show in yet another way what I’ve seen frequently in other contexts: the FACTS do irritate some people in Tucson so much they pick up shit-balls and throw them at those who report honestly about matters of serious public concern. It’s one of the fun features of the Tucson scene, together with the ignorant, malfeasant PCDP bottom feeders running our local public institutions and public schools turning out tens of thousands of deficiently educated “citizens.”
Are the three related (media and comment stream shit-ball throwers, malfeasant PCDP bottom feeders running public institutions and failing schools)?
Gee, I wonder.
Gee, I guess six paragraphs wasn’t enough.
All your doing is getting offended and then getting defensive. It’s boring and it makes your commentary boring. Also, you could make your boring points in many less words than you have.
I thought you could be stronger than that, but a snowflake can only stand so much heat.
“Getting offended and then getting defensive” is not all that’s going on here. There’s also (in SOME comments) the reporting of valid facts.
I wonder if KDYIBTR could pony up a comment that actually had some policy-knowledge and genuine thought content to it, instead of just cheap disparagement of others? Or would that be too “boring” for him? (Or her — but I’m guessing it’s a him.)
I’ll keep checking back to see what KDYIBTR comes up with.
Here’s a crib note for you, KDYIBTR: the subject of this blog is “Private School Vouchers.” (That’s what the comment streams are for, in case you didn’t get the memo: sharing opinions on and discussing the pros and cons of the topic of the blog to which the comment stream is attached.)
The point was made in one of the comments above that when the largest local public school district in our region includes many schools mis-applying funds and offering deficient services to low-SES populations — schools like Utterback that no one who knows the FACTS can argue do not need to be escaped, it’s difficult to believe cutting off constituents’ ability to access alternatives is good public policy.
Perhaps you’d like to respond to that argument. What’s your counter-argument? And what are the FACTS supporting it?
(Oh SORRY — 6 paragraphs again — now 7. I must be REALLY straining your attention span. How inconsiderate…I will aim to KEEP IT SIMPLE when replying to you in the future.)
Wow, 4 dislikes on the above post in less than 15 minutes since it was posted. And this on the comment stream of a blog piece originally posted over three weeks ago, which it’s hard to imagine multiple parties are following avidly, looking for new comments.
What do those 4 immediate “dislikes” tell us? Someone owns multiple devices and wants to win the like / dislike war? I.e., KDYIBTR REALLY dislikes that comment (x4)?
I wonder.
Only one device here, I just have friendly backup.
But you just proved how you always get 7 in a small amount of time.
Imagine that.
Yup, just as I expected – another comment devoid of policy knowledge and thought content, but full of cheap disparagement of others.
As for the 7 likes on my post, over what time period did they accumulate? Do tell.
I caught you artificially inflating the dislikes on one of my posts within 15 minutes of the post going up. You are commenting on the 7 likes on my post almost 24 hours after the post went up. Perhaps I messaged six friends after posting my comment and wrote something like this, “Check out what this sad jackass has been doing in the comment stream on David Safier’s blog from 3 weeks ago on vouchers,” and they all took a look and expressed their opinions.
There – only 3 paragraphs and I’m pretty much done. Perhaps I’ll check back now and then, though, to see if you ever do manage to develop a substantive, fact-based opinion on vouchers.