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Arizona: State Commissioner John Huppenthal as Sock Puppet

By dianeravitch
June 23, 2014 //
10

Arizona State Commissioner of Education John Huppenthal admitted he left many comments anonymously on blogs.

This is causing him some problems in his re-election campaign, as some of his comments were highly insulting and inflammatory to various groups.

The Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry canceled plans to honor him at its annual awards ceremony.

Here are what one blog calls his “top ten” anonymous comments.

Huppenthal is in hot water. As one editorialist in Arizona wrote:

“He called poor people “lazy pigs” and made inane comparisons between stuff he doesn’t like and Hitler, but let’s honor the First Amendment here and leave the content of his speech off the table. He did two things wrong – he hid behind pseudonyms, and when caught he offered up a non-apology apology.

“If you’re going out in the public sphere, use your name, be you and own it. Otherwise, you don’t deserve an audience.

“And if you step in it, do not say what Huppenthal did (and in a “statement,” no less): “I sincerely regret if my comments have offended anyone.”

“What a load of horse puckey.

“What he’s saying is, if no one’s offended by what he said, then he’s not sorry. So if there’s no fundamental level of sorry-ness, why are you apologizing?

Mr. Huppenthal, you’re a leader. If you’re sorry about what you posted, say, “What I said was wrong, I renounce it, and I promise not to promote those beliefs again.” If you’re not sorry, say, “Yeah, I said it, I meant it, and I will use my own name from now on.”

Huppenthal is identified on Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education website as “one of Arizona’s leading education reformers” because of his support for school choice and the Common Core.

Categories Administrators, superintendents, Arizona

Linda Thomas: The Arizona Voucher Hoax

By dianeravitch
June 4, 2014 //
35

Linda Thomas is the school board president of a small rural district in Arizona. She is a strong advocate for public education as a public responsibility.

In this post, she reminds us that 85% of children in Arizona attend public schools despite the state ‘s trepidation as the “wild west” of charters.

She also describes the legislsture’s devious efforts to expand vouchers.

She writes:

“When vouchers (aka Empowerment Scholarship Accounts) were first introduced in 2011, only children with disabilities were eligible. That has now expanded to include children: who’s parent’s are in the armed forces, are a ward of the juvenile court, who attend a school or district assigned a D or F grade, are eligible to attend kindergarten, and who received a School Tuition Organization scholarship. This session, expansion efforts include those whose siblings receive ESAs, all first responder’s children and (HB 2291) children currently eligible for free or reduced lunch percent. HB 2291 also seeks to further raise the income threshold of those who qualify by 15 percent ever year going forward.

“ESA funds can be used for curriculum, testing, private school tuition, tutors, special needs services or therapies, or even seed money for college. The program however, requires parents to waive their child’s right to a public education…a right that is guaranteed under the state constitution, in order to receive the benefits.”

School choice, she says, is a smokescreen. The real goal is to transfer public funds to private hands. The one risk to voucher advocates is attaching any form of accountability. They want the money, no strings attached.

Categories Accountability, Arizona, Vouchers

Gene Glass: This is the BASIS Sales Pitch

By dianeravitch
May 24, 2014 //
19

Gene Glass, a distinguished researcher, wrote the following about a charter chain that is regularly lauded by U.S. News & World Report:

Ever Hear a BASIS Schools Sales Pitch?

The Basis charter schools – some ten schools in Arizona and a couple more in places like San Antonio and Washington, DC – have long been a fascinating subject for this blog and others.

US News & World Report continues to rank schools like Basis Scottsdale and Basis Tucson in the top ten high schools in the nation. This happens in spite of the fact that the schools’ practices result in thinning elementary and middle school classes down from a hundred to a couple dozen by graduation from grade 12. Is this the best education in the country or the worst journalism, I ask you,US News? A high school that graduates fewer than 30 students a year hardly deserves the accolades afforded Basis Scottsdale or Basis Tucson. I can assure you that within a radius of 5 miles there are several times as many high school Seniors graduating from traditional public high schools whose test scores and college admissions statistics will outdo those of Basis students.

A little background: About five years ago, Basis decided to open a private school in Scottsdale, AZ. No one knows what their motivation was since their previous schools were all charter schools. Perhaps they saw the eye-popping tuition ($15,000 and up) that was being charged by Phoenix Country Day School or Rancho Solano and thought to themselves, Why not? Basis Scottsdale was created and advertised and by opening day in the fall, seven students had signed up! Basis Scottsdale was quickly converted into a charter school – which had to be quite an embarrassment to Michael Block, Basis founder and a former free-market economics professor at the University of Arizona. This particular little test of the free market failed miserably. Crony capitalism is safer.

Not only does Basis engage in ruthless thinning across the grades, but they also practice rigorous selection of students for high academic ability at the entry grades. David Safier has shown as much in his blog, and it hit a sensitive nerve with the Basis people who attempted to refute his charges. The Basis people insist that they do no selection of incoming students and that admission is strictly by lottery. Clearly we have some word play going on here. Stripped of casuistry, I think we can clarify by saying that Basis randomly “selects” incoming students from a very “select” group of applicants. I didn’t realize just how select that applicant pool is until my friend Mimi just happened to drop by a Basis schools sales pitch.

Mimi is curator of a large private art museum in downtown Phoenix. Basis had announced in early 2014 that they would soon open Basis Phoenix, a charter school in the center of the city in order to favor the unhappy parents of Phoenix with the Basis brand of education. Mimi was leaving work late one evening in March when she saw the placard announcing the Basis information meeting in the conference hall of her very own building. The capacity of the hall was 90 persons, but more than 200 people filled the room and spilled out into the hallway. For just a moment, Mimi considered phoning the fire marshal; but on second thought, she decided to squeeze into the hall and catch the sales pitch.

What Mimi told me about what transpired during the Basis sales pitch was filtered through her years as a curriculum supervisor and teacher in big-city schools across the country. The Basis people would surely claim that her views were thus corrupted and biased by her background. I would argue that her views are well informed by years of experience as an educator. Judge for yourself.

Mimi’s Report (with her reflections in parentheses):

I was stunned by the size of the crowd of parents who showed up at this “informational meeting,” but what was more shocking to see was that maybe 60% of the parents were either far east Asian or East Indian. That really seemed weird because I know that the Phoenix Elementary school district is 2% or less Asian. I saw very few Hispanic or African American parents in the room.

The meeting – it was really an hour long uninterrupted presentation with no questions allowed – was presided over by a pot-bellied man in a florescent orange shirt. Orange Shirt stood in the middle of the stage backed up by a half dozen young adults seated in chairs. He referred to his back-ups as “Subject Specialists”; they sat silently through the entire presentation, never said a word, and left without being asked any questions.

The presentation started with a series of video clips projected onto a large screen. The clips showed school teachers as portrayed in popular media like movies, and each one made the teachers look ridiculous. Of course, the famous Ben Stein scene from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off was featured: “Anybody, Anybody?” The message was clear: traditional, ed school trained teachers are fools. Orange Shirt never referred to the Basis teachers as “teachers”; he made it quite clear that Basis employs Subject Specialists.

Here’s how things were going to run at Basis Phoenix, according to Orange Shirt. The school would start with grades K through 4, and each year a grade would be added until a full K-12 school was reached. In the beginning, grades K-4 would have 30 students each and each subsequent year another track of 30 would be added until each grade’s enrollment reached 100.

Two themes permeated the presentation – all of which consisted of Orange Shirt’s monologue with no questions from the floor entertained.

At all grade levels schooling would be conducted as if it were a high school. From Kindergarten up, the students would experience Basis education just like high school education: lectures, passing from room to room for each subject taught, individual lockers, etc. Children who go through a Basis school will be high school and college ready at the end.

Self-selection. Orange Shirt was emphatic. Basis does not select its students; admission is by lottery. (Of course, if Basis doesn’t “select” then it can claim to be just like a traditional public school that takes all comers – a fatuous claim, of course, since a lottery from among a pool of “self-selected” applicants is hardly comparable to taking on all comers.) Yes, there is a lot of thinning going on across the grades. (Parents have reported that the curriculum resembles a gauntlet of paper-and-pencil tests.) And yes, lots of students choose to continue their education back in the dreaded traditional public schools. But – and Orange Shirt was emphatic on this point – students “self-select” out of the school; Basis does not do any selecting.

Orange Shirt rattled off a series of features of a Basis education:
“Subject Specialists” have not been corrupted by having their brains filled with a lot of “ed school” nonsense.
Students will study Mandarin in Grades K – 3. (Presumably this will make the school more appealing to those highly motivated Asian families.)

Parents are to drive their children to the front entrance, drop them off, remain in the car, and drive away promptly; no congregating at the entrance to the school.

Parents are not used as volunteers in the classroom. (In fact, the whole idea of parent involvement in the school was strongly discouraged.)

Orange Shirt’s monologue took up 45 minutes. No time was allotted for questions from the parents. I pressed forward toward the stage at the end of the talk; Orange Shirt did not seem too receptive to questions but I managed to ask him how much his “Subject Specialists” are paid. “Each contract is individually negotiated,” he said. Sure, what better way to keep the employees in the dark and off balance in any negotiations.

All I can say is that it was a bizarre experience. Looming over the proceedings were the personalities of Michael and Olga Block, the Basis founders who were spoken of reverentially. A picture was painted of small children treated as adults. I couldn’t help thinking of my own grandchildren and how I would never want them treated like miniature college students by the Basis Subject Specialists.

Yes, Mimi. Bizarre indeed. I wonder how much the average reader of US News and World Report knows about what goes on in the Best High Schools in America.

Gene V Glass
Arizona State University
National Education Policy Center
University of Colorado Boulder

_________________________
Gene V Glass Blog: http://ed2worlds.blogspot.com
Regents’ Professor Emeritus Tweets: @GeneVGlass
Arizona State University Homepage: http://gvglass.info

Research Professor
University of Colorado Boulder

Categories Arizona, Charter Schools

Arizona State Superintendent: More Money for Vouchers and Charters than for Public School Kids

By dianeravitch
May 16, 2014 //
7

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.

Categories Arizona, Charter Schools, Vouchers

Tucson: The Radical Message of the NPE Conference

By dianeravitch
March 18, 2014 //
9

David Safier writes a terrific blog about education and politics in Arizona.

He made the trip to Austin to the first annual conference of the Network for Public Education and found he was in an alternate universe, where people care passionately about the preservation of public education.

He attended along with several other Tucson residents, including Robin Hiller, not only executive director of NPE, but director of the parent group called “Voices for Education” in Tucson.

Safier wrote:

“The term “education reform” was disparaged at the conference—not because the attendees are anti-reform, but because the term has been co-opted by the conservative-led school privatization movement.

“We’re not against reform,” said Julian Vasquez Heilig, an associate professor of educational policy and planning at the University of Texas, during his talk that opened the conference. “We want to reform the ‘reformers.'”

“Hiller sat on a panel looking into the “opt out” movement, where parents refuse to let their children take high-stakes tests and teachers defy their districts by refusing to administer the tests. TUSD’s Sanchez participated in a panel with other superintendents discussing the challenges of “leading schools and districts in an era of high-stakes accountability.” (I was on of a panel that looked into charter schools, virtual schools and vouchers.)

“Though a major thrust of the conference was the fight against the “education reform/school choice” agenda, the atmosphere was more upbeat than negative. It felt like a gathering of the progressive education tribes. K-12 teachers and administrators, university scholars and parents from around the country who had heard of one another’s efforts and had read each other’s news articles and blog posts met face to face for the first time. The overriding feeling at the conference was, “We’re not alone.”

Categories Arizona, Network for Public Education

David Safier: Corporate Reformers Fund Fake Dems to Support Vouchers in Arizona

By dianeravitch
February 20, 2014 //
6

David Safier is a journalist and friend of public education in Arizona. In this post, he explains how the usual assortment of corporate reformers amd make-believe Democrats have descended on Arizona to push vouchers.

First, they donated handsomely to the campaign of the State Superintendent of Public Instruction John Huppenthaler, who uses his platform to promote the destruction of public education.

Now they are spreading campaign contributions to wispy-washy Democrats, hoping to divert more money away from public schools.

At some point, public education collapses, and Arizona has a pure choice system, with hyper-segregation.

And with it, the end of an essential democratic institution.

Is this what the plutocrats want?

Yes.

Categories Arizona, Corporate Reformers, Democrats for Education Reform, Education Industry, Vouchers, Walton Foundation

Arizona Chief of Public Schools Makes Robo-Calls Promoting Private Schools

By dianeravitch
February 17, 2014 //
34

John Huppenthal, Arizona’s state superintendent of PUBLIC instruction, is taking part in a campaign to urge parents to take advantage of tax credits to send their child to private school. He is doing it with public dollars. But, as usual, follow the money.

.

This video contains the robo-call he has made so far to 50,000 parents, touting the virtues of private schools.

Question: Why isn’t this man State Commissioner of Non-public Schools? Why is he “State Superintendent of Public Instruction?

He should be ashamed of himself. Presumably it is his job to improve public instruction in Arizona, not to urge parents to abandon it.

But, wait!!

A teacher in Arizona sends Huppenthal’s explanation:

“Below is a letter sent to all the public school teachers in AZ this week by John Huppenthal who is our elected Republican State Superintendent of Public Instruction. He is trying to dig himself out of a hole.

“According to an article in the Arizona Republic on Feb. 13, front page headline, he “recorded a series of calls touting a program that diverts taxpayer dollars to private schools. Public-education advocates, however, were outraged at the calls, which they claim are politically motivated and inappropriate given his role as the state’s top advocate for public instruction.”

“The robocalls went out to about 15,000 families in low-performing school districts in Phoenix and Tucson on Tuesday. In them, Huppenthal promotes Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Accounts”……(we all know that’s a fancy title for “vouchers”)……”The program is open to special-ed students, children in foster care, children whose parents serve in the military, and children who attend public schools that received a “D’ or “F” grade from the State Department of Education.”

“In defending himself, he goes on to say “I’m the Superintendent of Public Instruction, not the Superintendent of Public Schools.” Say what?!! OK that makes a whole lot of reformy sense I guess.

“He is up for re-election in the fall against Democratic candidate David Garcia, who stated in the same article, “…The answer is to improve public schools, not abandon public schools.” One to watch, perhaps? We shall see.”

Yes, we will watch this election.

Categories Accountability, Administrators, superintendents, Arizona

Arizona: 25 Néw Charters to Open in Phoenix

By dianeravitch
January 21, 2014 //
13

Twenty-five new charter schools will open in Phoenix, targeting low-income Latino students. The project is funded mainly by the Walton Foundation. The schools will rely on Teach for America recruits.

The story in the NY Times notes that charter schools in Arizona get more public funding than public schools and charter schools get lower test scores.

This is privatization for the sake of privatization, taking advantage of a chance to break public education with low-wage workers and promises.

Categories Arizona, Charter Schools, Teach for America, Walton Foundation

David Berliner Invites You to Try a Thought Experiment

By dianeravitch
January 21, 2014 //
26

David Berliner has designed a provocative thought experiment.

He offers you State A and State B.

He describes salient differences between them.

Can you predict which state has high-performing schools and which state has low-performing schools?

The Roots of Academic Achievement
David C. Berliner
Regents’ Professor Emeritus
Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College
Arizona State University

Let’s do a thought experiment. I will slowly parcel out data about two different states. Eventually, when you are nearly 100% certain of your choice, I want you to choose between them by identifying the state in which an average child is likely to be achieving better in school. But you have to be nearly 100% certain that you can make that choice.

To check the accuracy of your choice I will use the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) as the measure of school achievement. It is considered by experts to be the best indicator we have to determine how children in our nation are doing in reading and mathematics, and both states take this test.

Let’s start. In State A the percent of three and four year old children attending a state associated prekindergarten is 8.8% while in State B the percent is 1.7%. With these data think about where students might be doing better in 4th and 8th grade, the grades NAEP evaluates student progress in all our states. I imagine that most people will hold onto this information about preschool for a while and not yet want to choose one state over the other. A cautious person might rightly say it is too soon to make such a prediction based on a difference of this size, on a variable that has modest, though real effects on later school success.

So let me add more information to consider. In State A the percent of children living in poverty is 14% while in State B the percent is 24%. Got a prediction yet? See a trend? How about this related statistic: In State A the percent of households with food insecurity is 11.4% while in State B the percent is 14.9%. I also can inform you also that in State A the percent of people without health insurance is 3.8% while in State B the percent is 17.7%. Are you getting the picture? Are you ready to pick one state over another in terms of the likelihood that one state has its average student scoring higher on the NAEP achievement tests than the other?

​If you still say that this is not enough data to make yourself almost 100% sure of your pick, let me add more to help you. In State A the per capita personal income is $54,687 while in state B the per capita personal income is $35,979. Since per capita personal income in the country is now at about $42,693, we see that state A is considerably above the national average and State B is considerably below the national average. Still not ready to choose a state where kids might be doing better in school?

Alright, if you are still cautious in expressing your opinions, here is some more to think about. In State A the per capita spending on education is $2,764 while in State B the per capita spending on education is $2,095, about 25% less. Enough? Ready to choose now?
Maybe you should also examine some statistics related to the expenditure data, namely, that the pupil/teacher ratio (not the class sizes) in State A is 14.5 to one, while in State B it is 19.8 to one.

As you might now suspect, class size differences also occur in the two states. At the elementary and the secondary level, respectively, the class sizes for State A average 18.7 and 20.6. For State B those class sizes at elementary and secondary are 23.5 and 25.6, respectively. State B, therefore, averages at least 20% higher in the number of students per classroom. Ready now to pick the higher achieving state with near 100% certainty? If not, maybe a little more data will make you as sure as I am of my prediction.

​In State A the percent of those who are 25 years of age or older with bachelors degrees is 38.7% while in State B that percent is 26.4%. Furthermore, the two states have just about the same size population. But State A has 370 public libraries and State B has 89.
Let me try to tip the data scales for what I imagine are only a few people who are reluctant to make a prediction. The percent of teachers with Master degrees is 62% in State A and 41.6% in State B. And, the average public school teacher salary in the time period 2010-2012 was $72,000 in State A and $46,358 in State B. Moreover, during the time period from the academic year 1999-2000 to the academic year 2011-2012 the percent change in average teacher salaries in the public schools was +15% in State A. Over that same time period, in State B public school teacher salaries dropped -1.8%.

I will assume by now we almost all have reached the opinion that children in state A are far more likely to perform better on the NAEP tests than will children in State B. Everything we know about the ways we structure the societies we live in, and how those structures affect school achievement, suggests that State A will have higher achieving students. In addition, I will further assume that if you don’t think that State A is more likely to have higher performing students than State B you are a really difficult and very peculiar person. You should seek help!

So, for the majority of us, it should come as no surprise that in the 2013 data set on the 4th grade NAEP mathematics test State A was the highest performing state in the nation (tied with two others). And it had 16 percent of its children scoring at the Advanced level—the highest level of mathematics achievement. State B’s score was behind 32 other states, and it had only 7% of its students scoring at the Advanced level. The two states were even further apart on the 8th grade mathematics test, with State A the highest scoring state in the nation, by far, and with State B lagging behind 35 other states.

Similarly, it now should come as no surprise that State A was number 1 in the nation in the 4th grade reading test, although tied with 2 others. State A also had 14% of its students scoring at the advanced level, the highest rate in the nation. Students in State B scored behind 44 other states and only 5% of its students scored at the Advanced level. The 8th grade reading data was the same: State A walloped State B!

States A and B really exist. State B is my home state of Arizona, which obviously cares not to have its children achieve as well as do those in state A. It’s poor achievement is by design. Proof of that is not hard to find. We just learned that 6000 phone calls reporting child abuse to the state were uninvestigated. Ignored and buried! Such callous disregard for the safety of our children can only occur in an environment that fosters, and then condones a lack of concern for the children of the Arizona, perhaps because they are often poor and often minorities. Arizona, given the data we have, apparently does not choose to take care of its children. The agency with the express directive of insuring the welfare of children may need 350 more investigators of child abuse. But the governor and the majority of our legislature is currently against increased funding for that agency.

State A, where kids do a lot better, is Massachusetts. It is generally a progressive state in politics. To me, Massachusetts, with all its warts, resembles Northern European countries like Sweden, Finland, and Denmark more than it does states like Alabama, Mississippi or Arizona. According to UNESCO data and epidemiological studies it is the progressive societies like those in Northern Europe and Massachusetts that care much better for their children. On average, in comparisons with other wealthy nations, the U. S. turns out not to take good care of its children. With few exceptions, our politicians appear less likely to kiss our babies and more likely to hang out with individuals and corporations that won’t pay the taxes needed to care for our children, thereby insuring that our schools will not function well.

But enough political commentary: Here is the most important part of this thought experiment for those who care about education. Everyone of you who predicted that Massachusetts would out perform Arizona did so without knowing anything about the unions’ roles in the two states, the curriculum used by the schools, the quality of the instruction, the quality of the leadership of the schools, and so forth. You made your prediction about achievement without recourse to any of the variables the anti-public school forces love to shout about –incompetent teachers, a dumbed down curriculum, coddling of students, not enough discipline, not enough homework, and so forth. From a few variables about life in two different states you were able to predict differences in student achievement test scores quite accurately.

I believe it is time for the President, the Secretary of Education, and many in the press to get off the backs of educators and focus their anger on those who will not support societies in which families and children can flourish. Massachusetts still has many problems to face and overcome—but they are nowhere as severe as those in my home state and a dozen other states that will not support programs for neighborhoods, families, and children to thrive.

This little thought experiment also suggests also that a caution for Massachusetts is in order. It seems to me that despite all their bragging about their fine performance on international tests and NAEP tests, it’s not likely that Massachusetts’ teachers, or their curriculum, or their assessments are the basis of their outstanding achievements in reading and mathematics. It is much more likely that Massachusetts is a high performing state because it has chosen to take better care of its citizens than do those of us living in other states. The roots of high achievement on standardized tests is less likely to be found in the classrooms of Massachusetts and more likely to be discovered in its neighborhoods and families, a refection of the prevailing economic health of the community served by the schools of that state.

Categories Arizona, Class size, Education Reform, International, Massachusetts, Poverty, US Education
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