Archives for category: Arizona
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Arizona: Teacher Exodus Grows, Due to Low Salaries and Mandates

By dianeravitch
June 15, 2015 //
50

Teachers are leaving Arizona in record numbers due to low salaries and persistent legislative intrusion in their classrooms.

In the Phoenix area alone, there are more than 1,000 open teaching positions.

“”We think this is the largest documented teacher shortage that Arizona has faced in decades,” said Andrew Morrill, who is the president of the Arizona Education Association and a former high school English teacher.

“Morrill points to three factors that are affecting the shortage. He says the state’s teacher salaries are among the lowest in the country, the state requires so many exams and guidelines that seasoned teachers feel limited in their ability to be creative, and according to a recent Census report, the state is dead last in dollars spent in the classroom.

“Teachers are leaving the profession. They’re leaving in debt and they’re leaving in tears,” said Morrill.

This is a predictable result of the test-and-punish policies of the Bush-Obama administrations, as well as the corporate-media assaults on the teaching profession in recent years.

Categories Arizona, Teachers

Arizona Supreme Court Rejects Charter Appeal for Equal Funding

By dianeravitch
June 13, 2015 //
16

Long ago, in the late 1980s, charter advocates said they could get better results at less cost. They said, give us autonomy and hold us accountable. Part of the apeal of the charter idea was the cost savings that would certainly occur by eliminating bureaucracy.

Now, however, charters say they need the same funding as public schools. There apparently are no cost savings.

The Arizona Supreme Court turned down a request by charter schools for equal funding.

“The Arizona Supreme Court has dismissed a request to review a lower court’s previous opinion that the state’s education funding formula is constitutional despite the fact that charter schools do not get the same amount of funding as traditional school districts…

“The court of appeals ruling in Novemeber stated that the fact that charter schools provide students with free, adequate education is enough to satisfy the law regardless of whether their funding is equal to traditional public school districts.”

Categories Arizona, Charter Schools, Funding

Gene V. Glass: Education Reformers and the “Shoe Button Complex”

By dianeravitch
June 8, 2015 //
36

Gene V. Glass, emeritus professor at Arizona State University and an associate of the National Education Policy Center, ponders the ubiquity of the “Shoe Button Complex” among leading “reformers” of education.

In this essay, he recalls a story of a man who became the nation’s leading vendor of “shoe buttons” a century ago. He cornered the market on shoe buttons. He knew everything there was to know about shoe buttons, and he became a very rich man. His great success persuaded him that he was an expert on everything. The essay then refers to the “reformers” who think that their fabulous wealth entitles them to opine on how to re-engineer schools. They don’t listen to people who work in schools or people who are researchers and scholars of education, because those people are not fabulously wealthy; in the eyes of those who have cornered the market on shoe buttons or computers, the opinion of mere educators counts for nothing. Educators, in the eyes of “reformers,” are the status quo because they are educators. Better to trust someone who has never taught or studied the subject in depth.

Glass suggests that Bill Gates and his wife Melinda may be prime examples of the Shoe Button Complex. And then there is Arizona, where he finds this scenario:

Jan Brewer, Republican governor of Arizona and famous for issuing a tongue wagging to President Obama, appointed Intel ex-CEO Craig Barrett to chair a council—Ready Arizona–to study and recommend public education reform for the state. It is unclear what Barrett knows about education. One suspects that we are encountering another case of the Shoe Button Complex. Barrett is urging businesses to push school reform. His public utterances strike familiar chords: the future of the entire state rests on the test scores of little kids; more science and math majors will attract businesses to the state; it’s a global economy. After all, the public schools are “suppliers” of labor for businesses. And at Intel, “if a supplier didn’t meet our specifications, we would call the supplier and say, ‘Meet our specifications or we will fire you.’” Apparently, Barrett shares his fellow Republican Mitt Romney’s pleasure in firing people.

Of course, what Barrett is actually and unknowingly talking about is crony capitalism: Linking government and business in relationships that favor the economy. Whether the intellectual, moral, physical, and aesthetic well-being of young people is benefited by their education probably never occurs to Barrett and his ilk. Or perhaps “well-being” to Barrett means having acquired a taste for consumerism and a job to support it. In fact, most industry leaders would like to see specialized training pushed down as early in the curriculum as possible so that high school graduates appear in their HR departments job-ready, trained at public expense. And if training kids for Intel just happens to involve piping a bunch of online courses into Arizona public schools, well so much the better since Barrett also serves on the board of K-12 Inc., the nation’s #1 supplier of cyber-courses. Whether the former CEO of Intel knows everything there is to know about selling microprocessors AND education, or whether this is merely another manifestation of the Shoe Button Complex remains to be seen.

Categories Arizona, Economy, Education Industry, Education Reform, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Jobs

When the Free Market Fails, Try Crony Capitalism.

By dianeravitch
June 3, 2015 //
10

Gene V. Glass of Arizona State University is one of the nation’s top education researchers. He has recently watched the proliferation of charter schools in Arizona, which is often called “the Wild West” of the charter movement. Deregulation means that laws prohibiting nepotism and conflicts of interest don’t apply to charter schools. Self-dealing is okay. For-profit charters can’t be audited because they are “private corporations.”

Now Glass finds a new phenomenon: when a private school couldn’t attract enrollment, and its finances were in bad shape, it converted to being a charter. No tuition. All paid by the public. The free market failed, says Professor Glass,and crony capitalism came to the rescue.

Categories Arizona, Charter Schools, Funding

Heavens to Betsy: Arizona Charters Face Possible Budget Cuts!

By dianeravitch
June 1, 2015 //
12

Arizona loves its charters. It is generally known as “the Wild West of charters,” a state where charters may engage in nepotism and conflicts of interest without sanction because they are not covered by those laws (remember, they are deregulated from such mundane regulations as self-dealing).

But what have we here? The Arizona legislature actually cut millions of dollars from small schools, a bonus many charters were accustomed to receiving. The charters with fewer than 600 students could lose a total of $15 million by some estimate. Some charters kept their enrollment below 600 to get the bonus. The Arizona State Attorney General has been asked to issue a ruling on the legislation and its impact on charters.

The Arizona Charter Schools Association believes the department did not calculate the formula as the Legislature intended.
“The association is exploring every option to lessen these devastating cuts. The total impact is more than double what legislators had been told when they voted for the state budget,” association CEO and President Eileen Sigmund said in a statement.
“The impacts will be real and immediate, as some of our smallest schools stand to lose nearly $1,000 per pupil on July 1. We are engaged with the governor’s office, lawmakers and ADE to resolve this crisis.”
The change in the formula also would affect the amount that the charters receive under the Proposition 301 program, which provides money for teachers through a sales tax. Douglas’ letter asks Brnovich to rule on that as well.
According to a spreadsheet used by the Department of Education to calculate the cuts, 207 schools will face cuts affecting about 85,000 students. About 15 percent of Arizona’s public-school students attend charters.
Many charters cap their enrollment to take advantage of the extra funding for small schools — a model that is now threatened.
Peter Bezanson, CEO of the Basis Schools charters, said that the total cut to his network could be almost $4 million.
“I can say without qualification that Basis will not grow any more in Arizona with this new funding reality,” he said. “We won’t add any more schools.
“We had wanted to give fairly significant increases in teacher salaries this year and those increases are not possible,” he said. Basis has 15 schools in Arizona.

In a state where charters have gotten more or less whatever they wanted, and public schools are underfunded, this comes as a shocker.

Categories Arizona, Charter Schools

Arizona: Reformster Revolving Door

By dianeravitch
May 29, 2015 //
8

From a reader in Arizona. Being a reformster means never being accountable when your promises don’t pan out:

“What does private/public partnership really mean?

“Well, in Arizona it means alliances that enable seamless, chameleon–like, transitions from one high profile, high-paying, private or public policy position, to the other.

“Here are a few examples:

“THEN: Rebecca Gau, Director of the Office of Education Innovation for Governor Jan Brewer was responsible for implementing the Education Reform Agenda, after work at the Morrison Institute of Public Policy and AZ Charter Schools Association.

“NOW: Rebecca Gau is the Executive Director of Arizona’s Stand For Children, and organization that advocates for school leaders, quality teachers and excellent schools for every child and high academic standards. Stand For Children is currently involving itself in a local public school board matter in the title one, Alhambra Unified School District. Curious? Indeed, because Stand For Children featured a former Alhambra superintendent, Dr. Karen Williams, on their website two years ago.

“The organization offers a Stand University for Parents, advocates for children and features blog pieces on why OPTING-IN for testing, is the way to go. But, whose children is Stand For Children, standing for?

“THEN: Pearl Chang Esau served as the Executive Director of Teach For America, Phoenix and was responsible for growing the number of corps member leaders who teach for two years in hard-to-staff public and charter schools before launching their own careers.

“NOW: Pearl Esau is the Executive Director of Expect More Arizona, “The movement (Where did I hear that word? Ah, yes,TFA promos) dedicated to building the collective public will needed to achieve a world-class education for all Arizona students.”

“THEN: Greg Miller founder of Challenge Schools (charter group) was appointed to the Arizona Board of Education and served on the Charter School Board.

“NOW: Greg Miller is the President of the Arizona State Board of Education, and a charter millionaire (see Glass: http://ed2worlds.blogspot.ca/2015/02/arizona-has-no-concept-of-conflict-of.html?m=1
challenging an elected State Superintendent of Public Instruction.

“THEN: Eileen Klein, formerly with state government in Florida, was paid to serve as Chief of Staff for Governor Brewer, and Director of Policy for the Arizona House of Representatives and chief advisor to the majority leadership. During her tenure in the administration of the governor, the Arizona Commerce Authority, the state’s leading public/private economic development organization and launching Arizona Ready, an education reform plan to align statewide education goals across the P-20 spectrum, began. She worked with the Arizona Board of Regents to develop a performance-based funding model for the university system. She is a former Arizona Board of Education member.

“NOW: Eileen Klein is finishing out a three year contract (2013-2016) as President of the Arizona Board of Regents and the Arizona Higher Education Enterprise (AHEE) at a time when state funding cuts to the three public universities amounts to $99 million dollars and several community college funding is eliminated entirely.”

Categories Arizona, Corporate Reformers

Arizona: This Teacher Won’t Be Bullied, Refuses to Resign

By dianeravitch
May 25, 2015 //
21

Audrey Amrein-Beardsley writes about a veteran teacher who refused to bow to the Great Data God.

Lisa Elliott is a champion of public education. She says in the accompanying video, which you must watch, “This is my home. These are the children I teach.” Her refusal to resign after 18 years of exemplary service, her going public with her courageous resistance, is exemplary. I am happy to place her on the blog honor roll.

Lisa Elliott, a National Board Certified Teacher (NBCT) and 18-year veteran teacher who has devoted her 18-year professional career to the Alhambra Elementary School District — a Title I school district (i.e., having at least 40% of the student population from low-income families) located in the Phoenix/Glendale area — expresses in this video how she refuses to be bullied by her district’s misuse of standardized test scores.

Approximately nine months ago she was asked to resign her teaching position by the district’s interim superintendent – Dr. Michael Rivera – due to her students’ low test scores for the 2013-2014 school year, and despite her students exceeding expectations on other indicators of learning and achievement. She “respectfully declined” submitting her resignation letter because, for a number of reasons, including that her “children are more than a test score.”

The post includes a video of Lisa Elliott, standing up to the VAMinsanity.

Categories Arizona, Data and Data Mining, Honor Roll, Testing, VAM (value-added modeling)

Who Deleted Gene Glass’s Post About Conflicts of Interest in Arizona?

By dianeravitch
May 22, 2015 //
2

Last February, Professor Gene Glass posted a hard-hitting post about conflicts of interest in Arizona. I reposted it on this blog.

Recently, Glass went looking for his post, and strange to say, it had disappeared! Gone!

Here is the post. Enjoy!

Categories Arizona, Charter Schools, Scandals Fraud and Hoaxes

Arizona: Retired Principal Exposes Charter Chains’ Financial Games

By dianeravitch
May 15, 2015 //
13

The United States never allowed for-profit “public schools” until the charter industry emerged. Now they are spreading.

Jim Hall, a retired principal in Arizona, has formed Arizonans for Charter School Accoubtability to expose their sleazy deals and to show how children and taxpayers are cheated.

Jim Hall is a hero of public education, helping to save a democratic institution from profiteers.

He gathered information about two of the state’s many for-profit charters are using tax dollars to make big profits, while public schools are suffering continual cutbacks. It was shared in the mainstream media.

CBS 5 in Phoenix reported:

PHOENIX (CBS5) – A Valley charter school watchdog is criticizing large charter management chains for directing more dollars away from the classroom than most traditional public schools.

“These schools are made to make a profit,” said Jim Hall, the founder of Arizonans for Charter School Accountability and retired longtime Valley school principal.

“Someone needs to find out how they’re spending their money, and there needs to be transparency,” Hall said.

CBS 5 Investigates examined budget data and IRS tax filings for dozens of charter schools. Among the findings:

Some charter management chains spend as little as 40 percent of their budgets in the classroom, directing as much as 60 percent of their budgets to administrative expenses, plant operations and debt payments for facilities. Traditional school districts spent an average of 54 percent of their budgeted dollars in the classroom during the 2013-14 school years, according the Arizona Auditor General’s Office. The comparison may not be “apples to apples” because charters pay real estate costs out of their operating budgets while traditional school districts do not.

Some nonprofit chains outsource daily operations to for-profit charter management companies. Two examples in Arizona include the Leona Group and Imagine Schools.

Categories Accountability, Arizona, Charter Schools, Education Industry, For-Profit, Honor Roll

Gene V. Glass: The Triumph of School Choice in Arizona–NOT!

By dianeravitch
May 12, 2015 //
9

Gene V. Glass, distinguished researcher of education at Arizona State University, surveys the amazing spread of school choice in Arizona and asks what are the results of the spread of choice. You have heard the stories about how vouchers and charters will “save poor kids from failing schools,” will create competition to improve public schools, will work wonders for everyone. It turns out that Arizona is the choice capital of the world but is still waiting for that miraculous success that its advocates promised and still promise.

 

Professor Glass shows how dramatically choice has spread across Arizona, with the urging of choice advocates in the government and the private sector.

 

Glass writes:

 

Now Arizona is the school choice capital of the world: 1) 500 charter schools – soon to be closer to 600 if New Schools for Phoenix has its way, and they will; 2) huge virtual academies run by out-of-state companies like K12 Inc.; 3) open enrollment laws; 4) tuition tax credits subsidizing families sending their kids to religious schools; and 5) a history of active homeschooling. In fact, the number of students whose parents have “chosen” is staggering. There are 1,100,000 students of K-12 school age in Arizona. Of that number, 180,000 attend charter schools, 200,000 have exercised their right to switch school districts under open enrollment laws, and about 80,000 attend private (mostly religious)schools or are homeschooled. That amounts to more than 400,000 “choice students” in Arizona out of a population of a little more than one million for a choice ratio of about 40% plus.

 

With nearly half of all students enjoying the benefit of choice – with its effects on driving incompetent teachers out of work, shutting down bad schools, stimulating private and public schools to reach higher levels of effort and innovation – the condition of K-12 education in Arizona must be nothing short of fantastic!

 

But, to hear the state’s politicians and business leaders speak of it, Arizona’s school systems are terrible. Below average; lagging behind other nations; a threat to the economy of the entire state; not preparing students for college or careers; in need of major reforms; bring on the Common Core. Arizona’s education system is the paragon of choice, and yet it is a mess. Somebody needs to get their stories straight.

Categories Arizona, Charter Schools, Vouchers
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