Posts tagged education
#ClassroomsFirst is #TotalBS

I’d love to have a frank discussion with Arizona voters about education funding. I’d like to know if they really believe more of the same is going to change things or if they just don’t care that we’re in a battle for last place with states like Mississippi. For decades, Republicans have told us that …

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The secret behind those ‘Highly Performing’ charter schools

Let me start by making a confession. My oldest son attends a BASIS school. BASIS schools are some of those “highly performing charters” that reformers love to use an example of everything that’s right with charter schools, while traditional school advocates use as an example of everything that’s wrong. I suspect the majority of folks …

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Holding schools accountable without punishing kids

Arizona’s first school accountability bill is working its way through the state legislature. SB1444 would base a portion of schools’ state funding on performance, starting at 1 percent the first year and incrementally increasing to a total of 5 percent after five years. The ‘performance funding’ as it’s called, is based on two factors: overall …

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Arizona legislature off to a fantastically kooky start

Republican legislators do not like it when Arizona Republic columnist Laurie Roberts calls them kooks. They want us to believe they are serious lawmakers. But who, in her right mind, would call these bills anything other than kookery? We have a bill that tells the federal government to “go fly a kite.” Another one that …

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Charter school headmaster apologizes for political statements on Prop 204

Last week I wrote about an email blast sent to the parents of students at Veritas’ Archway Classical Academy by Headmaster Erik Twist, encouraging them to vote No on Prop 204. Arizona law prohibits public schools, which includes charter schools, from using public resources to try and influence an election. The email was a last …

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Head of popular charter school crosses the line, uses public resources for personal politics

Erik Twist, Headmaster of Veritas Archway Classical Academy in Phoenix, recently sent an email blast to the school’s parents explaining his opposition to Proposition 204. Prop 204 seeks to permanently extend the one-cent sales tax to fund public education, which includes charter schools like Veritas. In the email Mr. Twist rattled off a number of …

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Will Prop 204 save education or hurt the poor?

Most of this year’s ballot propositions are easy NO votes, mainly because all but two of them were referred to the ballot by the state legislature. And as anyone who reads this blog knows, I’m no fan of our current state legislature. I intend to vote NO on all of the legislature’s propositions, with the …

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Weighing in on Arpaio, immigration & education on Sunday Square Off

I join Robert Robb of the Arizona Republic and former candidate for Phoenix mayor, Jennifer Wright, on 12 News Sunday Square Off. This week’s topics include Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery’s moderate immigration plan, the lack of state funding for education, and the end of the criminal investigation of Sheriff Arpaio.

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Arizona’s winning formula: Prisons instead of education

We all know it’s better to invest in prisons than in education, right? I mean, why not throw millions at a declining prison population instead of spending it in the classroom? Last week, buried among the headlines of the Republican National Convention, sandwiched between Clint Eastwood’s conversation with a chair and Governor Brewer’s accidental endorsement …

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Veterans told they don’t have enough “skin in the game” to deserve minimum tuition exemption

College athletes have earned their way into college, but veterans have not. Those aren’t my words but rather the sentiment of House Republicans such as John Kavanagh who refused to give military vets an exemption to the minimum tuition bill that recently made its way out of committee. Mr. Kavanagh said, “I’m a veteran and …

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AZ legislators reforming education through censorship, guns, poor nutrition, and fewer college graduates

Arizona’s legislators have certainly made education reform a top priority at the Capitol. Unfortunately, their “fixes” do more harm than good. Let’s start with Senator Ron Gould’s guns on campus bill. Here’s a classic example of a legislator determined to fix something that isn’t broken. I speak about this bill in detail in an earlier …

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Republican lawmakers determined to make higher education unattainable for low income Arizonans

Fundamental to American life is the idea that if one works hard, studies hard, he/she can overcome a life of poverty and realize the American Dream. But these days, the American Dream is virtually impossible without a college degree, and while President Obama works to make college tuition more affordable, Arizona’s Republican legislators take the …

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Just because it’s a charter school doesn’t mean it’s a better school

For the last decade, many Arizonans have come to believe “charter” is synonymous with “better.” Our public education system has consistently ranked among the worst in the nation, while media reports have highlighted some successful Arizona charter schools bucking the trends. But now we learn that a large percentage of Arizona’s charter schools aren’t so …

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2012 holds the promise of unexpected surprises

In 2012, we should “expect the unexpected.” How do I know that? Well, according to numerologists, 2012 is a number five year (this is based on the sum total of the numbers: 2+0+1+2=5). And the only thing one can predict in a number five year is that it is unpredictable. Taking that into consideration, I …

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Making Cents of School Unification and Consolidation

There’s a lot of talk these days about school reform. President Obama has addressed it in his Race to the Top initiative, challenging states to find creative ways to turn around failing schools and advance top-notch teachers. Hollywood has addressed it in the highly acclaimed documentary, Waiting for Superman, by portraying the struggles of ordinary …

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State Superintendent Huppenthal determined to keep accents out of classrooms

The state with a Governor famous for saying “we have did” now wants to clamp down on a serious English problem in our schools: accents, as in Spanish accents. In order to avoid a probable federal lawsuit for civil rights violations, the state agreed to end its articulation monitoring of teachers in English language immersion …

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Classrooms of Mediocrity

American schools spend an awful lot of time focusing on student deficiencies. In our zeal to leave no child behind, we concentrate our resources on those who have lower than average test scores in reading, math or science, while doing little to advance students’ average or above average abilities. This lopsided take on a one-size-fits-all …

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