Tag: Great Leaders Strong Schools

There’s a loud corner on social media and on the Opinion page that would have you convinced that the decades-long effort in Arizona to give families access to more educational options failed. Too exclusive, too expensive, and even too politically conservative, they say.

But click away from Twitter and the evidence says the exact opposite.

We know this because our organizations recently asked likely general election voters what they think about what’s on the K-12 educational menu in Arizona. The sample size was the equivalent of what you’d typically see in a national poll, with a margin of error of 2.8%.

The results were clear: Voters of all stripes strongly support an educational environment that delivers more options for families.

Sixty-eight percent of all voters say they support multiple education options for students, which jumps to 76% for parents.

We also asked voters whether they thought education in Arizona was on the right track or the wrong track. Fifty-seven percent of respondents said they thought education was on the wrong track.

Is it any wonder, then, that support for an exit off that wrong track would be so strong?

Parents in just the last few years have lived through pandemic era disruptions, as well as a growing perception that some schools are more interested in advancing an agenda outside the mainstream rather than focusing on subjects like literacy and numeracy. No doubt many parents’ suspicions were confirmed when we learned recently that scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress were their lowest in decades. Our polling found, in fact, that nearly a quarter of Arizona voters believe a top challenge facing the Arizona K-12 system is that school boards are making decisions best left to parents.

Opponents of giving parents more education options tend to be Democrats, but Democratic elected officials would be wise not to calibrate their policymaking around this base of their constituency; it’s relatively small. After all, 56% of Democratic respondents said they believe education in Arizona is on the wrong track.

Democrats and Republicans are both supportive of an all-of-the-above approach to education, and they like the idea of policies that allow students to attend school – even a private school – outside the public district school assigned to their neighborhood.

A whopping 71% of all respondents and 66% of Democrats said they support Empowerment Scholarship Accounts (ESAs), which allow parents to pay for private school tuition. What about funding for student transportation programs that go beyond the yellow school bus to get students to school each morning and home at the end of the day? Seventy-seven percent of respondents support such programs, and 80% of Democrats are in support of them.

Both parties and unaffiliated voters also support open enrollment, the system that’s been in place since 1994 that allows students to attend a public district school other than their zoned school if there’s space available. Only 15% of respondents said they opposed open enrollment. Parents know that a one-size-fits-all model even in the same school district won’t work for every child’s learning style.

The poll was also illuminating for its insight into different segments of the electorate beyond party. For example, Hispanic voters are supportive of options beyond the traditional public school and, in the case of ESAs, are the program’s strongest supporters.

It can be tempting to listen to the Eeyores and their defenders in elected office and believe that Arizona would be better off if it went back to an old model where students would only attend the school to which they were assigned, regardless of its quality or whether it met their unique educational needs.

Politicians who pursue such a model, however, do so at their own peril. Arizona families and voters of all affiliations believe that more educational options – not fewer – is what we need.

Katie Dauphinais is the Executive Vice-President of Great Leaders Strong Schools. Steve Smith is the Arizona State Director for the American Federation for Children.

A Republican lawmaker may introduce legislation again next year to do away with mandatory English immersion for students who are non-native speakers.

Similar legislation has been introduced by Democrats and Republicans several times over the years and gotten bipartisan support, only to die at some point in the process.

Arizona law requires that non-native English speakers spend two hours a day separated from their English-speaking peers in full English immersion. Voters approved Proposition 203 in 2000 with the hope it would push students to learn English more quickly, but statistics show the program is not successful.

Sen. T.J. Shope, R-Coolidge, said he may sponsor a resolution to give voters the opportunity to roll back the law next session. Since voters approved the law, it would have to go to the ballot box to repeal it.

In 2021, Rep. John Fillmore, R-Apache Junction, and Shope both introduced resolutions to do away with the law, also known as English Language Learners, or ELL. But Shope’s measure passed the Senate and died in the House and Fillmore’s measure passed through the House and died in the Senate. Both resolutions had overwhelming support. Only one of the 60 House members voted against Fillmore’s legislation.

School groups also banded together to support the measure including, the Arizona School Boards Association, Great Leaders Strong Schools, Arizona Department of Education, Save Our Schools Arizona, the Arizona Education Association and All in Education.

This year, Sen. Martín Quezada, D-Glendale, and Rep. Diego Espinoza, D-Tolleson, introduced ELL reform resolutions, but they went nowhere.

“I think Republicans know as well that educating Latino kids and Latino people is good not only for them, but for the rest of our economy,” Quezada said. He views the 2000 measure as an anti-immigrant policy, noting that most non-English speaking Arizonans are Latino.

“This was done at the height of the anti-immigrant movement here in Arizona. We’ve got Republican legislators and policymakers at all levels of government who have been very hostile to the Latino community,” Quezada said.

Arizona students test low compared to other states and English language learners have especially low graduation rates. Quezada said the ELL policy, which was modeled on a California program, is somewhat unique to Arizona. As a school board member and a senator, he said he speaks with other legislators and educators across the country who don’t have similar laws in place.

Quezada and Espinoza are considered to be on the far-left spectrum of Arizona state politics, whereas Fillmore dwells on the far-right. Shope is a moderate Republican who occasionally collaborates across the aisle.

Next year, Shope said he will consider trying the resolution again. Fillmore lost his re-election bid and won’t have the opportunity.

“It’s just not top of mind for me I guess, so it’s something I’d have to be reminded of. I agree that we ought to go ahead and change things just like John,” Shope said on August 16. “If it can unite the Fillmore and Shope wings of the caucus, why not?”

Shope was initially prodded into supporting the bill by progressive Creosote Partners lobbyist Gaelle Esposito.

Esposito said they were pushing the bill on behalf of UnidosUS, a nationwide Latino civil rights nonprofit.

“Arizona just as consistently failed these students and it’s because we’re segregating them from their native English-speaking peers and locking them in a room for hours at a time and preventing them access from the research-based, evidence-based teaching methods that will help them learn English,” Esposito said.

The ELL repeal legislation came closest to passing in 2019 when Fillmore first introduced it. It passed through the House and through the Senate committee of the whole, but never passed the hurdle of the Senate floor.

In 2019, the Legislature passed Senate Bill 1014 from Sen. Paul Boyer, R-Glendale, which amended the amount of time that non-native English speakers must be separated from their peers, getting it down from four hours to two, but Quezada says that’s not enough. The only thing that will satisfy him – and many other Democrats – is a full repeal of the law.

 

Earlier this month, Republican candidates in the governor’s race turned up at a school board meeting in Scottsdale.  

In October, a group of Republicans launched what’s effectively a conservative alternative to the Arizona School Boards Association.  

At a policy rollout in November, Democratic governor candidate Katie Hobbs chose her words carefully when she said that parents are needed “partners” in schools. 

Heading into the 2022 governor’s race, the political fault lines surrounding education are moving quickly, with a new focus on parent influence in schools and curriculum items like “critical race theory.” Many Republican candidates are pushing their stances on curriculum ahead of traditional policy questions like school choice and funding for public education. 

“I will stop the ‘woke’ curriculum overtaking our schools, and ensure our kids are given the tools they need to grow and be successful in every phase of life,” states the website for Kari Lake, the GOP primary frontrunner. 

It all amounts to a “pretty large shift” in the conversation about education policy, said Matt Simon, vice president for advocacy and government affairs at Great Leaders, Strong Schools, a pro-school choice group. 

And it has emboldened Republican candidates to emphasize their stances on education, an issue that’s historically been a bigger talking point for Democrats. Chuck Coughlin, a consultant with GOP firm HighGround, told Arizona Capitol Times earlier this month that education is the top issue for Democrats, with immigration the most important for Republicans. 

The candidates might be taking cues from a gubernatorial race across the country. Many analysts think that an eleventh-hour comment by Democrat Terry McAuliffe – “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach” – helped Republican Glenn Youngkin beat him in the Virginia governor’s race. 

The conservative message on education ties together a mix of issues ranging from pandemic restrictions on learning to questions about curriculum content. 

“It’s more important than ever that we empower Arizona parents and families at a time when we’ve seen teachers unions locking down schools; a rise of racialized, anti-America curriculum; school board members collecting dossiers on parents; and even the Department of Justice treating concerned moms and dads like domestic terrorists,” GOP candidate Karrin Taylor Robson said in an emailed statement.  

Simon said the pandemic has given parents a new view on education and led to “parents not only wanting to be invested in knowing that their students are achieving, but really being a participant in finding an instructional model that works for their child.” 

Robson and Matt Salmon, another GOP candidate, also mentioned familiar issues like support for school choice and, in Salmon’s case, opposition to the 2020 Proposition 208 tax hike. 

But some in Arizona education policy, particularly on the Democratic side, indicated frustration at the newfound focus on what they see as political issues at the expense of educational aims. 

“I think it’s distracted from what we should really be focusing on,” said David Lujan, a former Democratic legislator who helped organize the Proposition 208 ballot measure. Lujan pointed to high school graduation and third-grade literacy rates as concrete goals that should be the focus of education policy. 

“I think it’s great that parents are involved in the process, but I think they’re becoming almost political fights rather than what’s best for kids,” he said. 

Chuck Essigs, a lobbyist for the Arizona Association of School Business Officials, said districts should address teaching issues if they arise, but the current political environment has led to some ill-advised mixing of two separate things: funding and curriculum.  “It’s not good public policy to be combining those issues,” he said. 

There’s also a question of whether the emerging politics of parental involvement and school curricula are only political winners for Republicans. 

In a statement sent by his campaign, Democratic governor candidate Marco Lopez didn’t directly respond to questions about parent issues, but said the state needs to invest more in education to help drive the state’s economy.  

“Right now we’re almost dead last in the nation when it comes to investing in educating them and that’s simply unacceptable,” Lopez said in the statement. 

But Julie Erfle, a liberal consultant and commentator, said parent involvement schools fits with Democratic values and that parents who are invested in their children’s school might be more willing to agitate for more education funding. To make this messaging work, she said, Democrats need to separate parent participation and skepticism of schoolteachers.  

“You don’t have to embrace parent involvement and then make teachers the bad guy.” 

In her comments at the policy rollout on November 4, Hobbs said, “We absolutely need parents as partners in our education system.” (Hobbs’ and Aaron Lieberman’s campaigns didn’t respond to emails seeking comment for this story). 

Still, Erfle said that increasing funding as a means to improve educational attainment remains a principal goal for Democrats and is their best play for political support.  

“To me, that’s where Democrats should be focusing,” she said. “Do we want more tax cuts for the wealthy, or do we want more money in our classrooms?” 

 

While efforts to broadly expand Empowerment Scholarship Account, or vouchers, eligibility failed this year, school choice advocates found other reasons to celebrate the legislative session. 

They got a range of wins from open enrollment policy changes and voucher access tweaks to transportation modernization grants and flexible instructional time models. 

Public school advocates say that the Legislature didn’t prioritize education this session, saying more resources should’ve been allocated to addressing the teacher shortage, providing full-day kindergarten and ensuring every school has a counselor, nurse and librarian. 

But legislation that did pass highlights the different options students have in the state and give parents more information to make decisions, said Matthew Simon, advocacy and government affairs vice president for Great Leaders, Strong Schools. 

“This was one of the best sessions for kids and families in 20 years, probably since ’94,” Simon said. 

A few of the measures praised by school choice folks started as bills early in the session but didn’t make it to the Governor’s desk the first go-around. They were later rolled into the budget bill governing K-12 education. 

Sen. Paul Boyer’s voucher expansion bill would have made more than 700,000 students eligible according to Joint Legislative Budget Committee estimates. But it didn’t receive a vote in the House because two House Republicans and all House Democrats opposed it. A revived version was tacked onto the K-12 budget bill but also failed. 

However, an amended version, which makes it easier for low-income students who also attend D- or F-rated schools to receive a voucher, was successful. It kills the “100-day rule,” instead cutting the time students must spend in a public school before being eligible for a voucher to 45 days. 

The change did not add to the roughly 200,000 students now eligible for the program, which was enough to get the holdouts onboard. The nixed expansion frustrated Steve Smith, the Arizona state director for the American Federation for Children, who said it boxed out students he said needed school choice the most. 

“While we had certainly a lot of great improvements, there’s an entire population of students who are the most vulnerable, who maybe aren’t cheering as loud,” Smith said. 

Black Mothers Forum Founder Janelle Wood said that even though the expansion failed, the proposal, coupled with parents’ experiences during the pandemic, gave the scholarship accounts more awareness.  

“It started to open the eyes of parents — especially parents in my community, black parents — and to start that dialogue with many of them,” Wood said. “Many of them hadn’t even heard of Empowerment Scholarship Accounts and didn’t even know they exist.” 

The K-12 budget also revived most of Boyer’s transportation modernization grants bill, allowing districts and charters to put money toward grants for parents and carpools to be reimbursed for driving students to school.  

“Rethinking transportation options to be more efficient and family friendly is important to school budgets but most critical for families whose transportation options are a barrier to the right school for their kids,” said Becky Hill, government affairs director for yes. every kid.  

 Arizona Education Association President Joe Thomas calling the addition of policy to the budget “dangerous” and state Superintendent Kathy Hoffman lambasting the add-ins. 

“The #AZGOP has the majority in both chambers – dropping massive policy changes in an amendment minutes before floor is no way to legislate,” Hoffman tweeted in response to a floor amendment that laid out some of these changes. 

The budget also brought about transparency measures to Arizona’s open enrollment policies, reviving language from another of Boyer’s bills. School choice proponents have argued that while Arizona has long allowed students to apply to attend any public school, the process can be opaque and confusing. 

“Having one of the most robust overhauls of our open enrollment statutes since 1994 was a huge win for kids and families, particularly because it impacts every school-aged kid in Arizona and makes sure that families have access to the information they need to make the most informed choice while they’re looking around at public schools,” Simon said. 

The changes to open enrollment prohibit schools from limiting admission based on ethnicity or race, national origin, sex, income level, disability, English language proficiency or athletic ability. They also require school districts to post enrollment and transportation information on their websites, as well as information about current capacity among other changes. 

The $50 million in formula funding for special education and $1 million for gifted students was another bright spot in the budget, Simon said. 

“That is a great start, a huge start, really, to a conversation about how we support our special needs students as well as our gifted students,” he said. 

The budget also outlines the creation of a school financial transparency portal, which will show school-level data for districts and charters on how they spend their money.  

Outside of the budget, the passage of HB2862 was a win for school choice, too. The legislation gives schools more options than being simply in-person or online. It allows seat time to also encompass project-based learning, independent learning, mastery-based learning and mixed remote and in-person instruction. 

School districts and charters can also stagger schedules and offer courses in the evenings or on weekends.  

Wood said she hoped the added flexibility helped students who were working outside of school or taking care of siblings or who had parents working odd hours. 

Hill said the legislation gives educators options for how students earn learning time without risking school funding. 

“(It) transforms “seat time” – enabling students to learn at their own pace, not a state mandated pace,” she said. 

Wood said that with all of these measures, she was now most interested in implementation. 

“Now my question is, who’s going to be a part of the implementation process?” she asked. “What do these laws look like lived out? Who is going to be at the table formulating what this looks like policy-wise?” 

A bill proposing changes to instructional time models for Arizona’s K-12 schools could reduce limitations that have prevented them from adopting non-traditional models more tailored to the needs of individual students. 

HB 2862 would allow school governing bodies to adopt instructional time models that utilize a mix of modalities and schedules. The bill would make possible models like project-based learning, independent learning, mastery-based learning, mixed remote and in-person instruction and staggered learning times. 

If passed, the bill wouldn’t immediately change the functions of classrooms. Changes must be given two public hearings within school districts, meet the total required number of instructional hours for each school level and keep the amount of remote instruction offered below 50% in order to continue to qualify as a brick-and-mortar school. After the first year, the maximum amount of remote instruction allowed in in-person schools will reduce to 40%. 

The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Michelle Udall, R-Mesa, said current state law requires that Arizona schools either define themselves as in-person or online schools, and there is little room to incorporate new learning models within either category without risking a loss of funding.  

Another barrier to schools offering more personalized learning is the requirement that each course meets a set number of hours a year to qualify as a full-time course. For example, high school courses must meet a minimum of 123 hours a year to count toward instructional time, and to be full-time students, high schoolers must take at least four courses that meet a minimum of 123 hours a year. 

“So even if they had, for example, two really long courses, and then their other courses were all shorter and didn’t meet that 123 hours, their students would only be counted as half-time, even if they were meeting the full instructional hours, because some of those courses were too short,” Udall said.  

Her bill, which got approval in the Senate Education Committee on March 16, would allow flexibility in course lengths so some can be shorter than the 123 hours in high schools’ case, as long as students are meeting the full required amount of time per day when all their courses are added up.  

“We don’t really want schools deciding how long a course should meet based on what they get paid for,” Udall said. “We want them deciding how long a course should meet based on the needs of the students and how long it takes to learn the material.” 

Alternative models for K-12 schooling like staggered start times, asynchronous learning and project-based learning could help make school more accessible for students who are sick or have medical conditions, and students with behavioral problems who may be suspended from school for the safety of their classmates, but still need to learn, Udall said. 

Emily Anne Gullickson, president and founder of Great Leaders, Strong Schools, said seeing the effects of the pandemic on the education system has made people more open to the bill’s proposals. 

She said in the past, people have heard phrases like “seat time flexibility” and thought that meant less teaching and learning for students.  

“Instead, what it’s doing is it’s maintaining the amount of instructional hours, it’s just how schools structure that learning time … not lowering the bar on the rigorous learning expectations or the time that we want them teaching students,” Gullickson said. “We have so many more points to look to to prove that it’s not catastrophic for students and teachers — in fact, it’s actually embraced.” 

While they haven’t been implemented on a wide scale in Arizona, organizations like the Center for the Future of Arizona have created programs that schools can utilize to offer more non-traditional learning options. 

The Arizona Personalized Learning Network, a product of the Center for the Future of Arizona and Knowledge Works, has partnered with four Arizona school districts to offer personalized competency-based learning systems.  

Peter Boyle, director of educational leadership and innovation at the Center for the Future of Arizona, oversees the Arizona Personalized Learning Network. He said the changes the program helps facilitate include things like implementing flex-schedule periods, intervention and enrichment blocs. 

“The pandemic really sort of accelerated some trends that were already in motion in terms of the research around the power of learner-centered education … and there was already some traction here in Arizona to move systems towards that way,” Boyle said. “We are looking forward to what that future expansion might look like, building off of the work that we’re doing currently with our district.” 

Udall’s hopes for her bill’s reception can be summarized in what she said is one of her favorite quotes, commonly attributed to Henry Ford: “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”  

As Ford saw the opportunity to innovate from the horse to the automobile, Udall hopes people see the possibilities that could arise from opening their minds to what education could be, rather than what it is. 

“I think sometimes we get so caught up in needing to know exactly what it’s gonna look like when we change things that we miss the bigger picture and we lose out on some of the great innovation that can happen that can really change things for the better,” she said. “And so, I don’t know what all it can look like. But if we don’t grab this flexibility, we’ll never know.”