David Safier

by David Safier Raena Janes, who founded the La Paloma Academy charter schools, has a Q&A in today's business section. Naturally, she sings the praises of her schools. What's her secret? The school emphasizes character. "We demand that our students are respectful and caring." Sounds good, right? Why can't school districts do that? The answer … Read more

by David Safier

The Douglas County School District near Denver broke campaign laws by paying a scholar to write a "scholarly" puff piece about the district just before the school board elections. The TUSD connection is, the Douglas district's superintendent is Elizabeth Celania-Fagen, who was TUSD supe before John Pedicone. What makes the connection less than trivial is, Fagen is one of the few public school superintendents in the nation to embrace vouchers, and the recent school board elections pitted her pro-voucher, anti-union candidates against a more progressive slate. (The progressives lost.) Meaning, we may have been lucky that Fagen chose to leave Tucson.

Also part of this story is, national conservative money poured into the elections on the pro-voucher, anti-union side. Both the Koch Brothers and Jeb Bush supported the "reform" candidates, with direct contributions to candidates and by funding independent campaigns. School board elections are being nationalized, mainly by big money conservatives, because the "school reform" movement is both pro-privatization, anti-government and anti-union, a three-fer for conservatives. Schools are a political battlefield, now more than ever.

While the conservative money flowing into a local school board election is perfectly legal, the district buying a "scholarly report" before the election isn't, according to a Denver judge. The report was written by Rick Hess, a somewhat respected conservative educational scholar working with the American Enterprise Institute, who should now lose whatever respectability he currently has. He got $30,000 to write about how wonderful and innovative the school district is.

by David Safier Only four giving days until the end of the public school tax credits for the year. Please, if you pay state taxes, take advantage of the 100% back offer. Give $200 for an individual, $400 for a couple, to any public school or combination of schools — charters count — and you … Read more

by David Safier

Welcome to Ed Supe John Huppenthal's world, which he shares with other conservative Republican candidates across the country who aren't quite wingnut enough to satisfy the truly addled wingnuts. Hupp is being attacked by Diane Douglas, a primary challenger from the right. How will he respond? That'll depend on how seriously he takes her challenge.

To find out what's wrong-headed left-headed about our current Ed Supe, there's no better place to look than Seeing AZ Red. According to a post, Hupp's main sin is his embrace of the Common Core. The often gullible right hasn't been gulled by Hupp's changing the name to Arizona College and Career Ready Standards. They know it's still the Common Core.

It has also become difficult to sell the [Common Core's] leftist standards — long in multiculturalism, self esteem and social justice and short on actual education — to the groups he is addressing. “Unwavering“ in his commitment to Common Core, Huppenthal admits outside of the rebranding, nothing will actually change in his Obama-influenced vision for Arizona classrooms.

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FrontPage Mag exposes the shocking Common Core ‘Exemplars’ and the Daily Caller reveals graphic sex and the praising of Communist Castro.