The writing on Arizona’s education wall

by David Safier

Things are shaping up to move Arizona education a few more steps backward this year.

First, Ed Supe John Huppenthal performed as expected and declared Mexican American Studies to be in violation of the law created to put MAS in violation of the law. In an act of extraordinary dickishness, he decided to make the fines against TUSD retroactive to last August. Apparently, Huppenthal believes legal appeals should be punished. It's another example of Republicans believing they are the law, period. As I understand it, 10% of TUSD funding going back to August will be deducted starting now, but it will be refunded if Huppenthal determines TUSD comes into compliance by June. But he declared, there is no way to fix MAS. It has to be eliminated. This is another example of Republicans' refusal to consider anything that might seem like a compromise. Undoubtedly, if Mark Stegeman's idea of turning MAS into elective courses had passed the board, the outcome would have been the same. No surprise there.

However, MAS isn't over 'til it's over. Another court case is questioning the constitutionality of a law constructed for the sole purpose of making one program illegal. If the suit succeeds, the law goes and MAS stays.

Next, after months of discussions and negotiations between Lisa Graham Keegan and Scott Barrett from the conservative, school-choice-above-everything side and the Arizona Education Network and the Arizona Education Association from the let's-fund-our-public-schools-and-improve-them side, the Keegan/Barrett side ended up doing pretty much what it set out to do in the first place. Coming up with a stable funding base for education has devolved to thinking about maybe extending the one percent sales tax. The takeaway from all those discussions is, Keegan, Barrett and Brewer want to pick and choose what schools to fund and what teacher salaries to raise while they shift as much funding as possible toward charters and private schools. What the conservative side arrived at is pretty much what it laid out in a position paper months ago — another example of Republicans' refusal to consider anything that might seem like a compromise.

And finally, with the legislature scheduled to resume tomorrow, the governor and the Republican legislators are lining up the education bills. Not on the agenda: putting back any of the $180 million taken away from public school budgets last year.

One bill would create an initiative to change the constitution so vouchers for religious schools, now unconstitutional, would be just fine. That would open the voucher floodgates which have been shut by the church-and-state provision. Since about 70% of Arizona's private schools are religious (a similar percentage to the rest of the nation), unless vouchers for religious schools are constitutional, straight-ahead voucher programs are unlikely to fly.

Another bill would expand private school tuition tax credits (back door vouchers) so people can pretend to contribute even more of their own money to School Tuition Organizations, only to get all of it back at tax time. The new scholarship money has no income ceiling on it, meaning even more millionaires' kids can go to private schools on the taxpayers' dime. But it stipulates the money can only go to students who transfer from public schools. All that means is, parents put their kids in a public school for a year, then they spend the rest of their K-12 years in private schools free of charge.

Another bill would allow district schools to hire teachers without teaching credentials.

And then there are the still-vague proposals to reward "succeeding schools" by giving them more money while starving "failing schools." The concept of merit pay will move beyond the realm of teachers and into the realm of entire schools, and maybe entire districts.

It's going to be another zero sum game for school children — or, more likely, a minus sum game — with the privileged garnering more government-funded educational privilege and everyone else losing educational quality as a consequence.