Arizona Capitol Times Your Inside Source for Arizona Government, Politics and Business

Gov. Doug Ducey has signed a bill that makes all children living on Indian reservations qualified for private school vouchers.

A top official at the Arizona Department of Education said the state can make changes to Common Core without jeopardizing hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding, thanks to an agreement it reached with a national group that helped craft the K-12 academic standards.

The Arizona Senate is set to debate a bill that would ditch the state's new Common Core school standards.

Everyone in the Common Core debate was a winner after Gov. Doug Ducey asked the State Board of Education to review and overhaul the controversial K-12 academic standards. Or at least that’s how many advocates on both sides of the issue felt.

Despite the uproar surrounding them, most of the goals contained in Arizona’s College and Career Ready Standards seem anything but controversial. Use abstract nouns. Form and use regular and irregular verbs. Tell and write time. Work with addition and subtraction equations. On and on, page after page.

Saying an outside review is necessary, a House committee refused late on March 25 to require a “forensic audit” of the $64 million a year Tucson Unified School District is spending on desegregation expenses.

Saying the tactic is ripe for ballot fraud, Republican lawmakers are determined to criminalize a get-out-the-vote technique that Democrats, teachers’ unions and Latino organizations have used to increase voter turnout in mostly minority, Democratic neighborhoods.

Gov. Doug Ducey sought to split the middle in the contentious debate over Common Core, calling on the Arizona Board of Education to review and possibly replace parts of the K-12 education standards, but rejecting their wholesale replacement.

Gov. Doug Ducey named five new members to the Arizona Board of Education, perhaps the most eagerly awaited appointments the new governor has to make, thanks the board’s role in adopting the controversial K-12 education standards known as Common Core.

Gov. Doug Ducey and Republican lawmakers have boasted their budget includes more spending on education than ever in Arizona’s history. But the numbers behind the cuts to higher education paint a different picture for the state’s university system and community colleges.