Whenever the school choice lobby in Arizona submits a new bill, you can be sure it will help charter schools, not public schools. As the legislative session winds down, a bill has been introduced to change the state’s funding formula. Charter schools would benefit, but many public schools, especially rural schools, would lose..
Mary Jo Pitzl writes in the Arizona Republic:
A major overhaul of school funding in the name of equitable treatment for all students is making a late debut at the Legislature, drawing complaints that it’s a hasty effort to make significant policy changes that affect half of the state’s $14 billion budget.
The 101-page plan will get its first public airing next week, a week after most committee hearings have wrapped up for the year.
At its core, the bill would increase the base amount of money the state provides for public K-12 schools, while eliminating a number of funding programs that benefit only school districts.
All charter schools, which are public schools, would benefit from the increase, while district-run schools would see a mix of winners and losers, according to an analysis from the Legislature’s budget office. Early estimates are 121 school districts would lose money, primarily in rural Arizona.
The plan proposes an additional $215 million for the state’s K-12 system in exchange for ending programs that benefit district schools, such as more money for experienced teachers. It also would convert Arizona’s program that rewards schools that score high on the state’s achievement tests into a permanent program that, estimates show, benefit higher-income areas at a much greater rate than school districts with higher poverty rates…
Key education lawmaker not in loop
State Rep. Michelle Udall, R-Mesa, is the author of a strike-everything amendment to Senate Bill 1269 that would create the new funding program. The bill builds on a study released last month by A for Arizona, a nonprofit that is a proponent of school choice and the growing charter-school movement.
“This isn’t suddenly brand new language,” Udall said, who is chairwoman of the House Education Committee. She has worked on the plan since October, she said, although traditional education groups such as the Arizona School Administrators and the Arizona Education Association only learned of it in mid-March.
State Sen. Paul Boyer, Udall’s counterpart at the state Senate, learned of the proposal from a reporter.
“If they were smart, they’d know that one vote makes a difference,” Boyer, R-Glendale, said of the bill’s proponents. That’s a reference to the one-vote margin Republicans hold in both the House and Senate, making every GOP vote vital. Boyer has not been shy about breaking from party ranks, a move which has killed numerous bills due to unified Democratic opposition.
Boyer said he has no idea what the bill says and cautioned against the Legislature moving too quickly. All people have to do is look at the mess lawmakers created earlier this month, he said, when they approved a bill that eliminated the election of political party precinct committee members, setting off a backlash that took a lawsuit to resolve.
Other groups, watching from the outside, said they’re alarmed at the seeming rush to make a change halfway through the legislative session.
“That’s the biggest red flag I have,” said David Lujan president and CEO of the Arizona Children’s Action Alliance. “They are trying to put forward major changes to school funding with very little input.”
An idea long discussed
Matt Simon, vice president of advocacy and government affairs for Great Leaders, Strong Schools, a school-choice organization, said components of the bill were long in the making….
“This isn’t the surprise they’re making it out to be,” Simon said of critics. Besides, it’s past time to update Arizona’s 42-year-old school finance system, which was created before charter schools existed and before Arizona became a leading school-choice state.
Besides, he said, when the “alphabets” (shorthand for groups such as the Arizona School Boards Association, the AEA and others) propose education measures, they cost millions of dollars. By tailoring school funding to the student, rather than a system, Simon said funding can even out over a five-year period as aspects of the bill are phased in…
Reach the reporter at maryjo.pitzl@arizonarepublic.com and follow her on Twitter @maryjpitzl.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The deplorable march of the kleptocratic MAGA fascists continues.
One word: SICK!
The same old C##P is happening all across the United States….
Remember DeVos? Former Secretary of Education. Can forget her. She is like a nightmare that will never ever go away
DeVos has been very, very busy spending her ill got fortunate on the charter school push for decades. Still at it. Read the URL below.
As I said above… Same old C##P.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/education/betsy-devos-private-school-vouchers-michigan-rcna21384.
“They are trying to put forward major changes to school funding with very little input.”
Applies to just about everything the ed reform echo chamber does.
“The bill builds on a study released last month by A for Arizona, a nonprofit that is a proponent of school choice and the growing charter-school movement.”
Of course it benefits charters and harms public schools- it was drafted by a group who do nothing but market and promote charters. Public schools and students weren’t even considered.
At the end of the legislative session public school supporters should ask what was accomplished the benefits public school students in the state. The answer will be “nothing” because ed reform never benefits students in public schools. They offer nothing at all to public schools or students who attend public schools and they control national education policy to the exclusion of everyone else. It’s ridiculous, but that’s what happens when you create an echo chamber- you get ridiculous results, like an education policy apparatus that adds no value at all to public schools.
I would have real questions relying on the ed reform echo chamber for school funding analysis.
These are the people who omitted mention of the billion dollars in extra funding that charters received as a result of the PPP program when they analyzed pandemic funding and spending.
How do you miss a billion dollars going to charter schools but not public schools? Why was this omitted in every ed reform “analysis”? Can they be trusted to report accurate information or is the echo chamber now so wholly politicized that they simply omit funding facts that are inconvenient to their lobbying efforts?
Lawmakers should check information submitted by the ed reform echo chamber with an additional independent source. These folks push charters and vouchers. It’s what they’re hired and paid to do. At the very least get a second source to vet the information for accuracy and omissions. I sure wouldn’t base an entire state funding plan on one “report” from a charter lobbying group. That’s nuts.
Charter Schools are, typically, a con, and we have many of these here in Flor-uh-duah-duh. That’s because ne’er-do-wells from around the country flee the law until they hit an ocean and can’t go any further and so settle here. It’s not surprising, therefore, that Flor-uh-duh, home of late-night erectile infomercials and time shares and megachurches the size of small European nations and television networks selling GENUINE ZIRCONIUM JEWELS is also home to King Con himself, Donald J. Trump, who now has 123 million in donations in his Save America PAC. His former fixer, Michael Cohen, says that Trump has no plans to run but keeps dangling this possibility so the rubes will keep shelling out. That makes sense. If he runs again, he loses even worse than before, and the craftier Repugnicans like McConnell want a smarter fascist Maximum Leader this next time around.
This is an article about Republicans and privatizing public education:
https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2022-03-07/why-school-choice-is-suddenly-roiling-the-republican-party
Read it and look for any difference between the Republican position on public education and the ed reform position on public education- anything at all.
There is none. One could overlay the GOP platform on education onto “ed reform” and it would be a perfect match.
You know what else you won’t find? Anything at all for public schools or public school students. Public school students simply don’t exist in the ed reform “movement” other than as a population to be tested and used to promote charters and vouchers. There’s no positive agenda at all and apparently no recognition that one is desirable or necessary.
You see the same in these ed reform-backed state laws. It isn’t that they’re “anti public school” – that’s too generous because it would imply that public school students exist. It’s that public schools and public school students simply aren’t considered worthy of expending any effort at all. Session after session all we get is charters and vouchers. They perform no other productive work of any kind.
There’s a lively “debate” right now in the ed reform echo chamber- the same 150 experts and pundits and lobbyists- should they go back to test and punish or just continue to do nothing at all for public schools?
This is the extent of the “innovation” – it’s 1998 or…nothing.
Public schools can do better than this.They don’t have to accept “negative or nothing”.
Start asking what any of these people have achieved to improve public schools instead of privatizing them and then ask why public schools continue to hire them. Would charter or private schools hire people who were ideologically opposed to those schools? Of course not. So why are public schools hiring ed reformers? You’re not required to hire and pay people who seek to abolish your schools. This is not a mandate. You can look elsewhere.