Arizona’s public schools are among the most severely underfunded schools in the nation.
Arizona has the misfortune of having a state superintendent who doesn’t like public education.
If it was up to John Huppenthal, he would give everyone a voucher and shut down public education.
As it happens, students who go to charter schools get more funding than those in public s hools.
Vouchers were supposed to save money by costing less, but Huppenthal wants to give them more money.
When you read articles about Arizona by local blogger David Safier like this one, you are reminded what charters and vouchers are really about.
They are not about “saving poor kids from failing schools,” because they don’t.
They are not about improving education by competition, because they don’t.
They are not about helping disabled kids get better services in voucher schools, because that’s just the Carmel’s nose under the tent to get vouchers legitimized.
They are not about accountability in exchange for results, because they are not accountable and they don’t produce results unless they skim.
They are not about saving money, because they eventually demand the same or more than public schools.
So what are they about?
Privatization.
Getting government to abandon responsibility for public education and equal opportunity.
Greed.
And all the other possibilities that privatization, deregulation, and lack of oversight make possible, like nepotism, fraud, and corruption.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
To me, it seems the monied class is seeking to devalue anyone who is in a service job. Finding ways to turn student learning into a product helps to pave the way to make profits from a service. I find it puzzling and degrading that service workers are looked down upon. But it seems that, despite having earned degrees, teachers are viewed by many as servants without opportunity to grow financially unless they decide to agree with the leadership, advancing the privatization goals.
What better way to do this than to take find new graduates willing to get inside the teaching profession, stay a couple of years, and assume roles of experts? This undercuts traditional education from its roots…teachers, principals, schools of education, curriculum design, and leadership. If providing a service is considered menial and valueless, providing low paid hourly jobs instead of professional salaries will be the profiteers’ choice. It is a means to an end.
Their goal seems to be to replace educators with monitors who may be paid even less than first year teachers are now.
I think this embodies the feelings of disrespect that veteran teachers began to realize, resulting in droves of retirees. Younger teachers are seeing their opportunities dwindle and feel that they may have entered the wrong profession.
I can honestly say that the thing most hurtful to me and my colleagues was the feelings of disrespect that crept into the kinds of nitpicky subjective evaluations we endured, while the fake objective lists were randomly used to “observe” us to collect “data”. I want to know when opinions became “scientific data”.
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…then it is time to close colleges that graduate future teachers….and close the profession. Why waste 4 years on an education degree and money on varied certifications, etc.? Why get that Masters in Special Ed or Administration to move up the ladder. Those administrative jobs are being filled by TFA alums and Broad “graduates” with free “gift” degrees. So sad to want to be a teacher, and be treated like the bottom of the barrel. So sad to have spent money and years working toward a goal, to be rewarded with a closed door of no opportunity because the scabs were already GIVEN the teaching jobs, without the benefit of certification or high qualifications or even a knowledge of the subjects they teach. Its shameful. The TFA scabs need to wake up out of their cult-like trances. The Ed Reformers need a shakedown. But…how?
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Diane you hit the nail on the head when you called Arizona “The Wild West of Charter Schools”. This was all sold to the public as ‘CHOICE’…..and we were instructed to give our ‘customers’ (students) ‘knock your socks off customer service’ so that we would stop losing them to the local charters. (I work in a public school.) We got sold that mantra about 3 years ago…..and I had to ask myself, “Am I at my weekend waitressing job or at school?”
I have attended training at the Arizona Department of Education, and saw THAT EXACT QUOTE (‘knock your socks off’) on the walls as we got off the elevators…….so this is coming from the top down.
But so is the push for Charters and Vouchers that we are supposed to be keeping our students from enrolling in! Can you say DOUBLESPEAK??
In my district, we learned how to get more per pupil funding by slipping through a loophole (from an adjacent, ‘highly performing’ district)….we ‘flipped’ 3 of our elementary schools to ‘district-run charter schools’…..but so did quite a few other districts…..and guess what?? They are going to close this loophole in one year, so all of the work we did to help our kids was for naught.
The parents and general public that I speak to about this runaway train is TOTALLY CLUELESS!! I speak to many people about our state Department of Education, and am backing David Garcia who is running against Huffenpuff…….he is a BAT, and wants to put fully fund PUBLIC education.
Come join us at Arizona BATs if you want to join the discussion and fight!! ^0^
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Thank you Vin!
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The attack on public education in Arizona is out of control. I am a school board president for a small rural district and can tell you first-hand about the impact. #ASBA and #AEA are both working hard to represent and fight back, but it will take all of us to turn things around. The most significant action we can take is to support pro-public education candidates. I totally back #DavidGarcia, he will be an incredible Superintendent of PUBLIC instruction! I’ll be joining AZ BATs and encourage folks to also follow my blog at RestoreReason.com and on Facebook at RestoreReason. My latest post on vouchers: http://wp.me/p3aqgr-hI.
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Linda Thomas, join the Network for Public Education, if you have not done so yet
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There are so many wrong headed policies in AZ. Most are based on politics and not kids. David Garcia is the only hope for public education in this state.
http://dg4az.com/
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