State-of-Arizona-Education Articles For Your Inspection

Here are three interesting state-of-Arizona-education articles I've read this week.

Low marks for Arizona in education study. Howard Fischer, Capitol Media Services.

In a WalletHub report, Arizona ranked 48th overall in the quality of its schools. Like most WalletHub studies I've looked at, this one has a quick-and-dirty feel, but the criteria it uses to arrive at its conclusions are reasonable. The problem is, it doesn't take socioeconomic factors into account—family income, ELL students, etc. That's a huge omission.

Can you guess which sectors gained and lost the most jobs in Arizona since the recession? Eric Jay Toll, Phoenix Business Journal.

Construction lost the most jobs—no surprise there—followed by education. Hmm. The recession meant a big cutback n building, so we could have fewer construction workers with no loss of quality. But we're educating the same number of students as before the recession, so to keep quality up, we need as many people in education as before. Cuts in education are definitely going to hurt the children.

Phoenix moves up in Forbes' 'best places for business' list, but education drags down region. Eric Jay Toll, Phoenix Business Journal.

Phoenix moved up 12 positions in the Forbes "Best Places for Business and Careers" ranking, from 56 to 44, but it came in at 103 for education. "[E]ight of the top 10 metros in education all ranked in the top 50 for best places for business and career." Though it's not mentioned in the article, Tucson ranked #103 overall in the Forbes ranking—far lower than Phoenix—but #91 in education, a bit higher than Phoenix.