Month: October 2013

by David Safier

I don't know which fact is more interesting: that there was a symposium on Common Core organized by Sen. Andy Biggs at the Capitol that had an overflow crowd, or that both the San Francisco Chronicle and the Seattle Post Intelligencer picked up the AP article about it, at least on their websites. When it comes to immigration and education, Arizona is national news.

Biggs said absolutely, his symposium wasn't a setup by the anti-Common Core crowd to give Huppenthal a hard time. The Bigg-man doth protest too much, methinks. The panel had Huppenthal on the pro Common Core Arizona College and Career Ready Standards side (It's got a new name, so that means it's not Common Core anymore, right?) and three people against it. It sounds like the crowd might have been packed with people against the Common Core as well.

It may be that none of the journalists know how stacked the panel really was. Half the panel, two out of the four, was made up of a Goldwater Institute employee and someone else connected to G.I. by less than one degree of separation — and G.I. does not like Common Core. First there was Jonathan Butcher, ed director of the Goldwater Institute. Then there was Sandra Stotsky, a University of Arkansas prof. Why fly in a prof from Arkansas when we have profs galore here in Arizona, you may ask. The reason is, she's in the university's Department of Education Reform, which sits at the more conservative end of the conservative education spectrum. Also in that same department is Jay Greene, who is a Senior Fellow at the Goldwater Institute. Jay P. Greene's Blog gives Stotsky a regular forum. Another regular on Greene's blog: Matthew Ladner, former ed director of the Goldwater Institute. A very incestuous group, Butcher, Stotsky, Greene and Ladner. (The fourth panel member, by the way, was from a Mesa charter school and also doesn't like the Common Core a whole lot).

by David Safier

The headline for my column in the Weekly is, Craig Barrett might be the most powerful man in Arizona education, but should he be? That captures the column pretty well. I'm often surprised how few people know who Barrett is, but I shouldn't be. I'm so immersed in all things educational, I see his name and deeds cropping up on a regular basis, but he prefers to fly under the radar. He occasionally allows himself to be quoted in a news article or writes an op ed. He was reasonably visible when he helped campaign against Prop 204, the one cent sales tax for education. But his real power isn't in swaying public opinion. It comes from whispering in Governor Brewer's ear and steering the legislature toward adopting his educational ideas.

The purpose of the column is to let people know who Craig Barrett is — a politically conservative ex-CEO of Intel worth hundreds of millions of dollars — and what an outsized, potentially destructive role he plays in determining the future of education in Arizona.

I squeezed as much as I could into my allotted 750 words; there's much more I didn't have room for. The most important thing to know is, Barrett heads Brewer's Arizona Ready Education Council (AREC), and he has some dangerous ideas that will probably be turned into bills in the next legislative session. Here's a condensed version of the ideas coming out of Barrett, AREC and Sen. Chester Crandell, who is the point man for conservative "education reform" legislation.

Don't add a penny to K-12 school funding. Freeze it right where it is, even though we're spending about 20 percent less than five years ago and we're near the bottom of the nation in per-student funding.