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

When school ends May 25 for the Tucson Unified School District, the countdown begins on what is to become of its Mexican American Studies program.

Auditors submitted a draft report on it, and Schools chief John Huppenthal is expected to make his decision on the program’s fate by the end of this month.

Implementing new technology, competition, accountability and effective funding will be the key to preparing Arizona’s children for the complex global marketplace that now awaits them, a panel of education experts said Tuesday.

The state's largest teachers union is mulling a lawsuit against a new state law it says unfairly restricts the way it can use union dues to communicate with members about political issues.

Arizona State University president Michael Crow says the school will cope with the latest $90 million reduction in state funding by increasing tuition, attracting more students and cutting costs in various places.

Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction John Huppenthal has replaced Attorney General Tom Horne with private attorneys to defend him in an ethnic studies lawsuit filed by 11 Tucson Unified School District teachers.

For many undocumented students, the only realistic hope of becoming legal U.S. residents is Congress passing legislation dubbed the DREAM Act, short for Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors. As proposed last year, the act would offer undocumented students without criminal records a path to citizenship if they complete two years of post-secondary education or military service.

Carina Montes, an A-grade high school student and JROTC member, would normally have good chances as she applies for college scholarships. But Proposition 300, a voter-approved law that requires students who can’t prove citizenship to pay out-of-state tuition and denies them access to state and federal financial aid, is preventing even some of the most qualified students from getting access to a college education.

The American Dream Academy is one of a growing number of organizations trying to boost the academic achievement of Latinos by teaching parents the basics of the U.S. education system and how to prepare children for college. Both are foreign concepts to many in the Latino immigrant community.

The cultural clash over Tucson Unified School District’s ethnic studies program used to be one of Phoenix against the Old Pueblo.

A new conflict has emerged, however, which pits teachers in the program, their supporters and the Pima County Democratic Party against two Democratic school board members, the district’s superintendent and a Tucson group dedicated to improving public schools.

School choice advocates managed to beat the sine die clock to revive a proposal to expand the school tuition tax credit program, but even scaling down its potential fiscal hit wasn’t enough to persuade the governor that it wouldn’t negatively impact the state’s coffers.