by David Safier A little over a month ago, I made public an email sent by Dennis Bakke, the national CEO of Imagine Schools, to the principals, directors and developers of his schools around the country, 18 of them here in Arizona. Bakke's basic message: We own the schools. The school boards either should do … Read more
by David Safier I never pretend to be objective, but I try my best to be fair. I go after G.I. regularly — fairly, I believe — but when a suspicion turns out to be wrong, I should say something. Which is what I'm doing here. Matthew Ladner put together three policy briefs comparing public … Read more
by David Safier I'm doing my best to ferret out specifics of Arne Duncan's educational directions concerning charter schools. General directions are easy. Specifics are harder to figure out. I hear good things in a short interview the Republic's Pat Kossan had with Duncan while he was in Arizona. Shorter Duncan: We need good charters, … Read more
by David Safier Kavanagh wants to sweep money from special funds to help balance the state budget. It's a terrible idea on its face, as many people have pointed out. But one of his terrible ideas gave me a potentially good idea. Kavanagh singled out, in particular, an 80-cent-a-pack tax on cigarettes approved by voters … Read more
by David Safier I gather most of my information sitting here behind my MacBook. If Google Search, Google Alerts and the newspapers somehow disappeared from the web, I'd probably fold up my laptop and go home. Except that I'm already home. So I'd just fold up my laptop and do something else. From this vantage … Read more