In the end, it wasn’t even close. When the time came for the TUSD Board to discuss the Freedom Center-created textbook for the high school course, Ethics, Economy, and Entrepreneurship, not a single board member had a kind word to say about it. And since the textbook and the course are inextricably linked, the board’s consensus opinion was the course will not return to TUSD.
[A Personal Note: For this post, I’m once again donning the blogging hat I took off recently. I’ll most likely return to The Range in January, though I’ll be writing less frequently. Stay tuned.]
A bit of history: Ethics, Economy, and Entrepreneurship somehow managed to sneak into the TUSD curriculum in 2016 as a yearlong course which fulfilled the state’s economics requirement and could also be taken for dual credit at the University of Arizona. No one at the district knows how it got there (or at least no one is saying).
The Board is supposed to approve new courses, but they were kept in the dark on this one. Most of them first learned of the course’s existence when I wrote an article about it in the print edition of the Weekly in October, 2017. Since the school year had begun and students were already enrolled, the board decided to let the course stay until the end of the school year, then discontinue it. Possibly, they said, they would take a closer look at the course at a later date.
That later date was Tuesday, December 11. After the textbook was opened to the public for inspection and evaluation, and a citizens’ committee was created to make a formal assessment of the book, it was time for the board to decide on the fate of the textbook and the course.
At the December 11 board meeting, a number of people spoke against the textbook during the Call to the Audience (I was one of them). Only two people spoke in its favor: one of the co-authors of the book and a fellow faculty member at the Freedom Center.
The board members, who had a chance to look over the online evaluations of the textbook—many of them long and detailed, most of them negative—listened to the audience members, then began their discussion. Not one of them had a good word to say about the textbook. At best, some of them said they liked the idea of an elective course on entrepreneurship, but this course and textbook weren’t the way it should be done.
When all the board members had their say, Superintendent Trujillo spoke.
“The administration’s recommendation,” he said, “is not to approve the book or the course.” After he stated the reasons behind the district’s negative recommendation, it was the board’s turn.
“So, do we have a motion?” Board President Michael Hicks asked his fellow board members. Silence. No one offered a motion. The usually contentious board members had a rare moment of unanimity on a potentially divisive issue. None of them liked the textbook, so there was nothing more to say. They agreed with administration’s assessment of the course and accepted the superintendent’s recommendation without comment.
That was it. No fuss, no drama. The Freedom Center-created course will not be returning to TUSD.
Here are a few takeaways from the yearlong process.
The Kochs Off Campus Group Deserves a Great Deal Of Credit
Kochs Off Campus, comprised of University of Arizona faculty and members of the community, has been dogged in its determination to defang, if not eliminate, the UA’s Freedom Center, which was created and is maintained by millions of dollars from the Koch brothers and members of the brothers’ donor network. It was members of KOC who alerted me to the TUSD course and helped me gather information for the article I wrote in the Weekly. They kept their focus on the course, poring over the textbook in detail, using their academic expertise to point out its many weaknesses, and keeping tabs on how the district was dealing with the situation. Many of them spoke during the December 11 Call to the Audience, detailing problems with the textbook and the course. Their energy and commitment were instrumental in removing the course from the TUSD curriculum.
The Freedom Center Does Not Like Publicity
When you read about the decades-long efforts by the Koch brothers and their billionaire buddies to shrink government and wipe out business regulation, the term that crops up most frequently is “stealth.” These folks like to operate behind the scenes, leaving as few fingerprints as possible while they move their agenda forward. (For more information, Jane Mayer’s Dark Money and Nancy MacLean’s Democracy in Chains, one or the other, or both, are required reading.)
The Freedom Center is a libertarian acorn that doesn’t fall far from the Koch brothers’ tree. It avoids publicity while it quietly builds its influence in the university and around the state. That’s how it worked in TUSD, slipping its course into four high schools without the board being any the wiser. The reason the course has been removed from the TUSD curriculum is the Freedom Center’s stealth mission was exposed. Lesson: When someone likes to maneuver in the dark of night, turn on the floodlights.
Amphitheater, Vail and Sahuarita School Districts Should Take a Second Look At the Course
TUSD decided to cancel the course, but Amphitheater, Vail and Sahuarita school districts still offer it to their students. They should take a step back and review the textbook and the course again now that it’s been opened to public scrutiny. The TUSD board website has pages of evaluations of the textbook, and the Tuesday Call to the Audience has some powerful arguments against the textbook and the course. After looking over the new information, the districts may decide to keep the course, but first, they owe it to their students to give it a second look.
This article appears in Dec 13-19, 2018.
How about explaining why the Board didn’t like the textbook and course. We know you hate the Koch Brothers, but what was the problem(s) with the course?
In addition to TUSD’s evaluations, those interested in the (many) problems with the course and textbook can visit the Kochs Off Campus! web page containing detailed and expert reviews critical of this textbook. https://kochsoffcampus.wordpress.com/ethic…
RE: “UA’s Freedom Center, which was created and is maintained by millions of dollars from the Koch brothers and members of the brothers’ donor network”
You forgot to mention MILLIONS OF TAX DOLLARS. The legislature gave $5 million of OUR money to the freedom schools in 2016, $7 million in 2017 and $2 million this year.
The Kochs have become liberal Democrat progressives. Tucson should embrace them.
I read the comments by Guy Senese (Philosopher of Education) and was immediately convinced the book was worthless. Why? I labored in the field in the early ’70s receiving an M.Ed from Temple U. The department was heavily engaged in what was then called Linguistic or Conceptual Analysis and Alfred North Whitehead was a charter member of its pantheon. Writing a book, a textbook at that is serious business requiring care in simply getting things right in developing a coherent course. Misspelling – mangling- the name of Whitehead summarily disqualifies the “textbook” for the course. Senese than goes on to eviscerate this nonsense beautifully.
One note: I am not buying to the claim that the course and accompanying text magically appeared or was “sneaked” into the TUSD curriculum. The Koch organization spends too much in this arena for its work product to be adopted with no one noticing. Follow the money.
So let me get this straight. An apparently universally panned, terrible textbook that can’t even get basic spelling correct sneaks into TUSD, Amphitheater, Vail AND Sahuarita school districts?? That’s not stealth. That’s a systematic, identifiable process.
Yes, it’s a great thing that the community can come together and defeat this kind of nonsense after the fact. But it would be far better to identify how it repeatedly happened so it can be prevented in the first place. That would be some good investigative journalism, TW.
The Kochs also favor mass immigration and open borders. Seems like they’d get along with the TUSD board just fine.
Rick Spanier and gehci keep following this story. We don’t know, yet, how it got into other districts… but at TUSD, for SURE (its not even contested!) the textbook and course snuck in. I have a trail of emails showing that it was accepted at the curriculum level (by a director who had never had anything to do with curriculum but was head of the department anyway, to save their job from a scandal at Tucson High that got them fired as principal, as best I understand) but the trail stops there. The Board never saw the course, never saw the textbook, never approved either. The Kochs and the Freedom Center are not at all above stealth, and they took advantage of a time period when the TUSD Board was allowing its superintendent to run the district without any oversight from the Board majority whatsoever. (That said, I do understand that the Board cannot notice every single high school class that enters its schools , and I do understand that when the current Superintendent did an audit of courses to check for this very problem, Phil 101, as it was called at that time, was not the only one that was unapproved.) The real question to me is….hasn’t the Templeton Foundation read the textbook that it paid for? It should be embarrassed to have this book associated with its name.
Read the book,”Democracy In Chains”, and you will understand completely the Koch’s motives for trying to undermine the Public Education System in the United States. Like “ALL” Republicans and Libertarians they intend to destroy or manipulate public education to wrest it out of the federal government’s hands. After the Supreme Court decision in 1954 Brown Vs the Board of Education
conservatives in Virginia shut down the public schools for 5 years rather than allow integration into their pristine all white schools. Also in the Koch’s gun sights are Social Security , Medicare, Medicaid, and the U.S. Postal system. Their intent is to weaken the federal government to a shell of it’s former power , give each state more power to regulate it’s own affairs, and reduce taxes on the wealthy so that none of their money is used for the greater good. In other words, an Oligarchy where the wealthy
make all the decisions and if the peons live or die don’t make it their problem. Kochs are the bullies of the world trying to make us play the game their way or not at all. If you utilize the Public Education
System, enjoy your Social Security income, need Medicare or Medicaid, and want your mail to consistently arrive at a nominal cost remember them next time you vote. Democrats started all of these programs and Republicans are determined to destroy them.
What a forum for self-righteous, ignorant BS this blog and its comment stream are. Hilarious to see people who wouldnt recognize one of the many factual errors, subversions of transparency, improper uses of public funds for teaching of politically tendentious material, or evasions of proper board governance involved with the MAS curriculum if these abuses hit them upside their deluded heads working themselves up into a froth over the Freedom Center curriculum.
Should have known Davids resolution to stop this noxious pseudo-information feed wouldnt last long.
Congrats, David. You have now proved that not only your information about our school systems is unreliable and misleading, the information you provide about your own intentions is unreliable as well. No surprise there. Lack of reliability in one area does tend to spread to others.
Outrageous that the AZ legislature is spending out tax dollars to support something like the Freedom Center while at the same time underfunding our public education. Shameful.