It took the Arizona Lottery four years and a customer survey to decide to support raising the price of a Powerball ticket to $2, a change the agency says will bring more revenue to the state and to the Lottery winners.

This year marks 10 years since Arizona tribes signed new gaming compacts with the state of Arizona. These compacts provide an avenue for tribes to share gaming revenues with all Arizonans. As of September 2011, tribes have contributed more than $640 million to benefit education, trauma and emergency care, wildlife conservation and business development through tourism. These are real, hard dollars that have flowed to the state in good times and bad. In addition, tribal contributions fully fund the Arizona Department of Gaming, which is one of three entities that regulate tribal gaming, along with funding programs that work to prevent problem gambling.

Gary Filer was sleeping in the back seat of a minivan traveling through Tucson when it collided with a drunken driver going the wrong way on Interstate 10.

Arizona Department of Gaming Director Mark Brnovich points to the Tucson case as an example of a reason to be wary of the tribe’s plans to build a casino at 91st and Northern avenues in an unincorporated area adjacent to Glendale

Given the popularity and practical uses for technology, you’d be hard-pressed to find a school district in Arizona that isn’t giving students a taste of 21st century education.

The spread of laptops, hand-held devices and smart phones in classrooms is driven by rapid expansion of technology itself and by the fact that it’s the world that kids live in today.

The Senate on Jan. 19 approved a two-bill package that expands a program allowing a dollar-for-dollar tax credit for contributions to groups that give scholarships to private school students.

Let’s celebrate those Arizona K-12 public schools — both traditional and charter — that are advancing their students more quickly than their peers toward college and career readiness. Let’s study their strategies and share those strategies so that similar schools might use them.

At least 28 states, including Arizona, will participate in the first Digital Learning Day on Feb. 1, to celebrate innovative teachers and instructional strategies focusing on the use of technology.

Even with the most up-to-date computers and other technology gizmos, key educators say schools will not be able to deliver quality education without effective teachers at the front of the classroom.

In accepting an appointment in January of this year by Gov. Jan Brewer to lead the Government Information Technology Agency, Aaron Sandeen, the “chief geek for the state of Arizona” as described by his kids, knew he would be leading the agency through the biggest change in its 15-year history. In fact, he welcomed the challenge.

Arizona women in a position to influence public policy in education are passionate about the programs they oversee and the students they guide, but inevitably it all comes down to money.