David Safier

by David Safier The courts ruled that the legislature stiffed Arizona schools by not adjusting the school budget for inflation as they were required to do under the voter approved Prop 301 in 2000. That meant the legislature had to add $82 million to the school allotment to cover inflation this year. A lot of … Read more

by David Safier

We have an early sign that new TUSD Supe H.T. Sanchez might be willing to stand up to Huppenthal and do what's best for TUSD. It's just an early sign, mind you, but it's a positive one.

We're in the first stages of The Battle over Mexican American Studies, Part 2. Huppenthal and his conservative cronies won a clear victory in Part 1, getting TUSD to cave and completely dismantle the MAS program, including going into a classroom when class was in session and packing up a set of "Banned Books," then hiding them away in a storage closet. That's an ultimate humiliation for the students and the program they loved, and the fact that TUSD did it on its own was truly shameful.

Now, because of the Unitary Plan imposed on TUSD by court order, the district has to create a new Culturally Relevant Curriculum. It's not going to be a duplicate of the MAS program — I can say with reasonable assurance, MAS is never coming back in its original form — but the new curriculum has to have some multicultural substance to satisfy the court. Huppenthal, et al, are not going to like anything TUSD comes up with. Hupp's DOE is going to do whatever it can to water down the proposed CRC beyond recognition. If that doesn't work, Hupp will try to dismantle the new CRC programs just like he did MAS.

Hupp has already said the CRC curriculum that's been presented to him doesn't get his blessing, not because of the content per se, but because the curriculum isn't rigorous enough and, more important, it's not completely aligned to state and common core standards. This is just a first shot across the bow, of course. If this ploy doesn't work, Huppenthal is perfectly willing to go after the curriculum with his HB 2881 cudgel, the law written to give him the power to shut down any mulitcultural program that's too strong for his liking.

H.T. Sanchez's response to Huppenthal was pretty damn good. The curriculum isn't good enough for you? Sanchez asked. Fine, please show us how it's done.

"One of the key challenges that remain is the lack of model curricula in literature, government or social studies that incorporates the rigor of the common core standards," Sanchez said. "Without model curricula in these areas, there is no standard by which to judge our CRC (culturally relevant) curricula. …"

by David Safier

The Star has an article this morning about Arizona school districts converting some of their schools to charters. The reason districts are doing this is simple. A district charter school gets $1,000 more per student than its other schools. With Arizona schools underfunded by thousands of dollars per student compared to schools in most states, it's no surprise districts are taking advantage of the extra funding that flows to charters.

The article is pretty good, but it contains one howler — not from the reporter Jamar Younger but from Eileen Sigmund, president of the Arizona Charter Schools Association, the well funded cheerleader for charters in the state. She warns districts that there are certain expectations and standards they need to meet if they plan to open charter schools.

"The reason we have charters is to improve student achievement and provide parents a choice," she said. "A charter is a contract to improve student achievement."

In 25 words, she manages to say that charters "improve student achievement" twice. Really? The truth is, if traditional public schools want their charters to be the educational equivalent of those touted by Sigmund, they'll have to lower student achievement by 10%. That figure comes from a recent Stanford study saying Arizona's charter school students lag behind similar students in
traditional public schools by 22 days per year in reading and 29 days per year in
math. By my calculations, that's more than a 10% difference.

The national numbers in the Stanford study give charters a slim edge over traditional public schools in reading: the equivalent of 8 days extra instruction, about 4%. The study finds no discernable difference in math. When you break the national numbers down, charters outperform traditional public schools in 11 states and underperform in 8 states. In the rest of the states, it's a wash. Once again, as has been pointed out in numerous studies, similar students do about the same in charters as they do in traditional public schools.

by David Safier

No surprise here. Hupp and his DOE don't like the "culturally relevant" lit classes the TUSD board approved for the beginning of the school year. Let me rephrase that. It's not that Hupp, et al, don't like the courses. The problem is, it's not clear the courses will dot every i and cross every t of the state standards.

Yep, that's the problem. Because no doubt every other course at TUSD and across the state has been thoroughly updated to meet DOE's rigorous state standards. The Common Core curriculum will make those standards obsolete soon, but that doesn't enter into Hupp's thinking — not yet, anyway.

TUSD is standing by its decision to begin the course — for now, anyway. We'll see what happens in the few weeks before school starts, whether TUSD decides it doesn't have time to implement the courses and says it needs to wait another year or it sticks by its decision to implement the courses. This will be an interesting test for the new TUSD Supe. Will he show backbone, or will he hem, haw and go along to get along with Hupp?