By all accounts, officials of the Department of Education (ADE) had a successful legislative session. They were able to secure funding for nearly every program they sought and passed all of the bills judged important for furthering the education of the state’s children.

The only real hiccup in the session, Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne said, was the fight over whether AIMS should be retained as a graduation requirement for Arizona public high schools. The end result – a modification to the scoring that allows a student’s high school grades to supplement his or her final score on the AIMS test – was a disappointment, Mr. Horne said, but was nowhere near as bad as removing the test altogether would have been.

He sat down with Arizona Capitol Times for an interview May 24.

It was recently learned that less than $1 million of the $10 million given to the Education Department for AIMS tutoring was used. Why was so little spent when as many as one-third of the students haven’t passed yet?

I think it was a motivation problem and I’m fearful that when the newspapers carried stories that the Legislature might be repealing the AIMS [test] as a requirement for graduation, that caused a lot of students – whose motivation might not have been very high to begin with, who were somewhat motivated by the need to pass the test and graduate – that those students’ motivations decreased as a result.

How do you think this first group of students required to pass AIMS to graduate will fare?

I think that by the time they’ve had five chances, well over 90 per cent of those who would have otherwise graduated will pass the test. I’ve been predicting this for two years now and I think that the prediction will come true.

But, the students need to know that we mean what we say and that we are going to require them to pass the test to graduate so they’ll be motivated to acquire the skills that they’re going to need, not just to pass the test, but for the rest of their lives.

The governor recently signed S1038, which allows students to apply their class work to improve their AIMS score. What are your thoughts on the law?

I opposed the law – I thought it diluted the motivation that we’ve been talking about. I am gratified that the requirement [to pass AIMS before graduating] itself was not repealed, that the students still know they have to pass the test, even though they will get some help with the points.

What kind of message does it send to the students, that the test isn’t the overriding factor in their graduation now?

I think the fact that they do have to pass the test means that there will be motivation for them to study. I believe that the bill that was passed dilutes it somewhat, but it doesn’t eliminate it, so I’m happy that at least the motivation is still there – that passing the test, even though the score can be supplemented with grades – still remains.

Then, to recognize those students who pass all three AIMS tests, I will send a Superintendent’s Certificate to those students. So, employers who want to know whether or not they can pass the proficiencies can ask to see their Superintendent’s Certificate.

Some Republican lawmakers who were strong supporters of AIMS are now opposed to the test because they say it is no longer a “high standards” test. Why has the decision been made to determine the passing score after the tests have been graded?

Those are two separate things that I should address separately.

With respect to setting the score after the students take the test, that’s universal – that’s done in all 50 states and that’s the state-of-the-art. And, to comply with the federal government, you have to do what’s considered the standard of practice…

And the reason you do it after is because you have teachers and other educators – principals, superintendents – and some parents – we had 144 participate in the process – what they do is they rank the questions from easiest to hardest and then they determine what question constitutes proficiency, based on the difficulty of the question, without regard to numbers. Then, that determines the number of questions you have to get right by how many questions there are that are easier than that question.

The reason you do that after they’ve taken the test is that the only way reliably to rank the questions from easiest to hardest is to determine how many students got each question right and the easiest is the one that the most students got right and the hardest is the one that the least students got right, and similarly in between.

Now the other question you asked me was legislators saying they would like to see the test have a higher standard. We still, after three times taking the test, we still have very high numbers of students not passing, so I think that would indicate that we do have a high standard and it’s no answer to eliminate the test as a graduation requirement – that would be to reduce the requirement to zero.

What did you think of the Flores plan the Legislature approved that Governor Napolitano vetoed?

I thought it was an excellent plan.

Did you think that it would have satisfied the judge’s requirements in the federal court order?

If I were the judge, it would have. It’s hard to predict what somebody else will do, but what the judge had said was that the problem was that the increased amounts spent for English Language Learners were determined arbitrarily and there was no basis existing to determine an amount of money that would have a rational basis. If they added money, it would have to be arbitrary at this point.

The plan calls for models for teaching English Language Learners, for determining how much each school needs in order to meet that, and therefore the plan itself provided for a rational basis for determining how much money was needed.

So, I felt that that plan would have met what the judge said the judge was looking for. If the judge were acting in accordance with prior decisions, then this plan would meet what the judge was calling for. But, again, it’s hard to predict what a judge will do.

Another bill signed into law limited the kinds of food that elementary and junior high schools could sell in vending machines (H2544) to exclude foods of “minimal nutritional value.” Why should schools not have the option of selling candy bars and soda?

I see it as a parental choice and a parental control issue. Most parents want their children to eat healthy, teach them to eat healthy and resent it when the schools undermine that by having vending machines where the kids can get candy bars and sodas. And, in some cases, the kids were eating candy bars and sodas in place of lunch.

Those parents who don’t care if the students eat unhealthy foods can still put candy bars in the lunch boxes if they want to, but the great majority of parents who teach their children to eat healthy, I think are gratified that the schools will no longer undermine what they are teaching their children.

We still have a job to do with high schools – we’re going to do our best to try to get voluntary compliance from the high schools, and if we’re not successful with that, we’ll try to get the law extended to high schools.

Why does the department need the ability to place a school district into receivership for financial mismanagement?

When it came out what was happening at Colorado City – there were allegations that they had spent money for the classroom on an airplane, that they had sold property below market value to a church that some of the people in control [of the district] were associated with and that they
were unable to pay their teachers and the teachers were complaining that their checks were bouncing and that they were continuing to overspend their budget and were unable to catch up – people were amazed to find out that no branch of the government had any authority to do anything about it. Under federal bankruptcy law, you cannot force a governmental or quasi-governmental body into bankruptcy – they have to choose to go into bankruptcy. And, if they choose not to, no one had any authority to deal with the situation.

This was an effort to get some authority to deal with a totally out-of-hand situation.

Does this give the Department of Education the ability to go in and correct its budget and make sure that teachers are getting paid and money is being spent appropriately?

Yes.

Part of the debate on that bill was that you were in favor of a version of that legislation that would have not limited ADE’s power to put a district in receivership for only financial mismanagement, but allowed it for “gross mismanagement.” What was the reason for that and what mismanagement were you thinking about?

There were disputes over a number of provisions in the bill. We won some and we lost some. For example, they are having the State Board [of Education] put the district in bankruptcy. Some of the versions in the Legislature would provide that we would have to go to a court to do that. And we said, “No, the State Board should do it without going to court because of the delays involved,” and we won that contest.

One that we did not win was one that dealt with similar situations that were non-financial issues. My prediction is that the next time some major event happens it won’t be financial, it will be something else, and we’ll be like the French, who, on the eve of World War II were well prepared to fight World War I. We’ll have to go back for new legislation and there’ll be the lengthy delay we’ve had in this case.

So, I thought, if we’re going to have legislation, we may as well solve the problem at its fundamental level, which is when there’s gross dysfunction in some branch of government – it doesn’t have to be us, it could be some other branch of government – somebody should have the ability to do something about it.

How would you rate the impacts this session’s legislation will have on the way your department and the state’s public schools operate?

I don’t think there were any major issues this year, so I wouldn’t predict any substantial changes.

How would you judge the department’s success in getting the legislation passed you were seeking?

We did very well. We were successful in almost everything that we attempted. That would include changing the process for changing rules [for the State Board of Education], which under an archaic system took forever. Now it will be able to be done in about a month. It included getting funding for phase one of what we call the information warehouse, which is a step forward in our computer capabilities. It included getting additional people for our Management Information System.

Past administrations had been funding people who had helped schools with SAIS [Student Accountability Information System] with Title II monies – Title II monies, which are federal monies, are intended for technology in the classroom, so I put a stop to that and said we would be using the Title II monies for technology in the classroom. We got funding for replacing those people, so we will still have people who can help the schools with SAIS.

We got $10 million appropriated for [AIMS] tutoring next year.

I think the legislative leadership was very responsive to the needs of education.

[Editor’s note: The department provided a list of nine bills it was able to get signed into law. In addition to the items above, it also included limitations on charter school fees; the ability to collect fees for GED diplomas and transcripts; redefining “special education” to be consistent with federal law; modifications to the Family Literacy program; and changes to the process of resolving disputes over a student’s special education status.]

Thank you very much.

Thank you. It was my pleasure. —