Three encouraging takeaways for me from Thursday’s walkout.

A Sea Of Red: 50,000 to 75,000 teachers and supporters filled the streets of Phoenix and gathered in front of the state Capitol. Thousands of others lined the streets in Tucson and, I imagine, other cities as well. A terrific show of unity.

Good #RedforEd Ink: The media appeared to be awed by and delighted with the teachers and the walkout. The Yays! far outweighed the Nays in print and on TV news.

The Governor’s Seal Of Approval: Ducey had nothing but positive things to say about teachers Thursday. No talk of political theater. Nothing about teachers deserting their classrooms and their students. In a televised interview, he said, “I’m listening to these teachers. I think citizens have a voice. They have a right to petition their government. I think they want to be heard, and they are being heard.”

Ducey’s almost-endorsement of the walkout is huge, as is his acknowledgement that teachers deserve a 20 percent raise. Governor One Percent got religion a few weeks ago and increased his salary offer twenty fold. He even said—be still my heart—that the work Arizona’s teachers have done makes them worthy of a raise.

“These teachers have earned the pay raise. They’re getting the results and outcomes inside the classroom. . . . Our public districts and our public charters are improving faster than any state in the nation.”

The improvement he’s talking about is Arizona’s scores on the 2015 National Assessment of Educational Progress ( NAEP) test, which went up while most other states stayed flat.

It’s not time for balloons and confetti falling from the ceiling, not by a long shot. The teachers aren’t happy with what Ducey is offering, and the legislature isn’t ready to vote for Ducey’s budget plan. If the lege were ready, if Ducey had pulled together the votes he needed, I imagine the legislators would have stayed at the capitol Friday rather than heading home for a three day weekend. It looks like the walkout will continue Monday. After that, who knows? Everyone is a long way from getting to Yes.

But the thing is, Ducey is on the record. He’s said the teachers deserve their 20 percent raise and the support staff deserves a raise too, though I don’t think he’s put a figure on it. And the Republican leadership in the legislature appears to agree, even if it doesn’t agree with Ducey’s way of getting there (The Democrats were already on board with the teachers). And while Ducey didn’t exactly praise the walkout, he gave it half a thumbs up by folding it into the democratic notion of citizens petitioning the government.

Ducey said it, and he can’t unsay it. Well, yes he can, and probably will. But he’s already set a tone of accepting the teachers’ salary hike demands. Meanwhile, recent national polling shows the public still likes and respects public schools and school teachers, no matter how hard Republicans have tried to demonize them, and they recognize teachers are grossly underpaid.

Things are going to get tense and dicey on the education front in the next few weeks. It’ll make things a little easier for teachers starting out with a surplus of good will from the public and the press and an agreement from most Republican elected officials that the educators’ basic demands are just.

UPDATE: Ducey announced Friday afternoon that he has reached a deal with Republican legislative leaders on a teacher raise. What’s the deal? That remains to be seen.

UPDATE 2: Some education advocates filed a ballot initiative with the state to raise income taxes on individuals making over $250,000 or households making over $500,000 to be used for salary raises and other educational needs. Who are the “advocates”? That remains to be seen.

This article appears in Apr 26 – May 2, 2018.

6 replies on “The Teachers Are Right. Their Strike Makes Sense. I Know Because Ducey Said So.”

  2. “Tucson Unified School District students continue to score far below the statewide average on the AzMERIT test, with less than 30 percent of TUSD students passing either the language arts or math portions of the test….” By Hank Stephenson Arizona Daily Star Jul 29, 2017.

    This “across the board” salary increase demand by Arizona Teachers, is nothing more that a Scam, in TUSD, in rewarding TUSD Teachers with an Ineffective Instructional Program with a Salary Increase. Why? A generally Incompetent/Inept Faculty? Administrative Inference in the Development/Implementation of a Teachers Instructional Program?

    Students in TUSD are no more or less able to learn that other Students in Arizona Public Schools. Wake Up Parents of TUSD Students if you are at all concerned with the Future of your Children!!! Demand that the Academic Environment in TUSD is Changed!!!…and…that Teacher Salary Increases are based on Merit!!

  3. Hey Francis

    Ever taught K-12? If you had, you might notice an odd phenomenon: the same teacher stands in front of a class of students, delivers the same instruction for a unit of study, assigns and grades thes same homework assignments, and when it comes time for the test, some of those kids who have received exactly the same things from the same teacher pass, and some fail.

    Why?

    Some kids have learning disabilities or attention deficits, some have more support in the home as theyre completing homework assignments, some have had better instruction and some worse in the grades leading up to the grade in question, some have had a death in the family or parents going through a divorce, just to name a few of the factors besides Teacher Competence and Quality of Instructional Program that will affect testing outcomes. Add language barriers and the problems of poverty and you multiply the likelihood that kids whove received decent instruction will still get low scores.

    TUSD has problems, but they dont originate primarily with its teachers and they wont be solved by introducing merit pay schemes any more than they will be solved by giving school boards more leeway and public vote shaming.

    Raising salaries across the board enough so that competent teachers dont have to teach in other districts and / or leave the profession to stay out of poverty is a good first step towards improving services to students. Watch TUSD closely and see if what they do with any funds granted to them as a result of the current RedforEd walkout is actually raise their salary levels enough to fill all their classrooms with qualified, permanent faculty. Theyre saving so much money now by employing drastically cheaper long term subs in many classrooms: imagine what it would do to their fund allocation to not only pay the qualified teachers they currently employ 20% more, but to bump the cost of staffing the sub-filled classrooms up from hourly wage + no benefits to (20% higher) salary + benefits. Will the state be giving them enough money to cover accomplishing that? If it does, will the money be applied that way?

    Stay tuned.

  4. Ducey’s almost-endorsement of the walkout is huge, as is his acknowledgement that teachers deserve a 20 percent raise. Governor One Percent got religion a few weeks ago and increased his salary offer twenty fold. He even saidbe still my heartthat the work Arizona’s teachers have done makes them worthy of a raise. The Governors Actions will speak louder than words. He wants a big re-election win and needs to resolve the education funding issue ASAP in order to do so. Will the Republican state legislators help him try and secure a win in November by passing the desired funding or will they be the Governors excuse? Most likely the legislature will punt on this issue and put it on the ballot in November. Remember, the Governor also has to appease his biggest donors, the Koch Brothers, who oppose district public schools.

  5. Thats right, Sandy Eliscu Kravetz, and just last night the “budget” that Ducey proposed included an EXTRA 30% for the Koch brothers three “educational centers”–2 at ASU and one at UA, the so-called “Freedom Center” where you can learn all about the benefits of eugenics (hint! the Nazi’s killed the wrong people) and the tragedy of democracy as a political system (hint! it hurts us all). Now, above and beyond the 5.5 million dollars that were originally offered in a line item of the proposed budget, there is 7 million dollars proposed to go to these great learning opportunities. If you are pissed off, as a taxpayer, at being forced to pay for this drivel instead of K-12 funding demand that these funds go to K-12 instead.

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