Education

(Update) Why is a right-wing independent expenditure committee supporting a Democratic candidate?

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Last week I posted about the right-wing American Federation for Children independent expenditure committee, and asked why it is supporting the widow of the late Senator Jorge Luís Garcia who is running for LD 3 Senate, Maria Garcia. Why is a right-wing independent expenditure committee supporting a Democratic candidate? "I never knew Jorge to support the positions advocated by this organization. What's up Maria?"

Maria never called me to explain herself, but she did speak to the Tucson Weekly that did a follow-up report to my post. National GOP Group Spending Big on Tucson Dem's Race:

A national group of uber rich Republicans recently dished out more than $19,000 in one of Tucson’s legislative races to defeat a longtime Democratic incumbent — by funding her Democratic challenger in the primary election.

An independent expenditure committee called the American Federation for Children sent out a mailer supporting Maria De La Luz Garcia, the widow of former Senate Democratic leader Jorge Garcia, who is running against Sen. Olivia Cajero-Bedford in Westside Tucson’s Legislative District 3.

The organization is headed by well-known conservative billionaires, has ties to the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), and pushes mostly conservative candidates in elections. For example, it spent more than $20,000 supporting former Arizona Senate president Russell Pearce in his recent recall election, and another $12,000 supporting Tucson’s own version of Pearce, Sen. Al Melvin, in his last election.

Another take on the “Dismantling MAS Vote” question

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by David Safier Pamela Powers Hannley wrote a post discussing TUSD School Board candidates, focusing on Kristel Foster. It covered lots of ground, but I want to look at one issue in the post — the question asked of Foster and others by Mark Stegeman: Would you have voted to dismantle MAS rather than let … Read more

Questions about employment and MAS purity: Will the real Kristel Foster please stand up?

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by Pamela Powers Hannley

Activist and educator Kristel Foster began campaigning for a seat on the Tucson Unified School District (TUSD) Governing Board not long after the board voted 4-1 to shut down the embattled Mexican American Studies (MAS) program– rather than lose $15 million over a program that had been declared illegal by the state of Arizona.

From the get-go, Foster made it clear that she was running as a "save MAS" candidate. In fact, when Foster and fellow "save MAS" candidate Ralph Ellinwood spoke at Drinking Liberally (DL) in June, the audience was twice the normal size, due to a strong showing of MAS stalwarts who came to cheer them on– including ThreeSonorans blogger Abie Morales and Tucson Weekly reporter Mari Herreras.

Unfortunately for Foster, since the August 8 Drinking Liberally kibitz fest, Morales has started attacking her for being an MAS turncoat. (He's even calling for MAS supporters to suggest possible write-in candidates.)

The special guest for the August 8 meeting was supposed to be Cam Juarez (also a "save MAS" candidate). Unfortunately, it poured down rain that night, and the DL turnout was very low. As a result, Drinking Liberally reverted to DL Classic Mode (ie, everyone sits around and endulges in free-form political discussion, with no official speaker). On that fateful night, four TUSD board candidates were present– Foster, Juarez, Betts Puttnam-Hildalgo, and incumbent Mark Stegeman. 

Stegeman asked the others the $15 million question: Would they have voted to shut down MAS in order to avoid the $15 million fine from the state? Puttman-Hildalgo and Juarez said, No. They said they would have defied the state ruling and voted with board member Adeltia Grijalva to retain the program– regardless of the cost to the district. (This is the MAS true believer stance.) Foster said she would have voted with the majority to shut down MAS, hence the attack from the ThreeSonorans blog. This looks like a giant flip-flop from a long-time, in-the-trenches MAS supporter.

After the jump is her Facebook explanation. Also, the plot thickens with the question: Should a Sunnyside School District employee vote on the next superintendent of TUSD?

Visualizing AIMS and _other_ school performance data

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Posted by John Denker On August 2nd, the Arizona Dept. of Education released the 2012 AIMS results and other data. I plotted up some of the data in the form of maps, so that you can easily see the location of the high-scoring schools and the low-scoring schools.  The plots along with some explanation and … Read more

The other education privatization

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by David Safier When I write about the privatization of education, I'm usually talking about the charter school movement, especially the for-profit wing, and vouchers. But there's also the growing private market in tools for the traditional district-based public schools discussed in this Reuters article, Privatizing Public Schools: Big Firms Eyeing Profits From U.S. K-12 … Read more