Donald Trump has finally told us what he thinks about education, making it abundantly clear he hasn't thought much about the subject. Before this, he's made general pronouncements about wanting guns, not Common Core, in schools, and being for school choice. And of course, "I want the parents, and I want all of the teachers, and I want everybody to get together around a school and to make education great." Most of his current proposals are nothing new, a restatement of the standard "education reform"/privatization agenda, including an emphasis on vouchers. His advisors wrote him a speech, he read it, and now he'll be able to return to what he really cares about, which is TRUMP MAKING AMERICA (and Trump)GREAT AGAIN!

"School Choice," which Trump says will lead to "Increased Student Performance," is the uniting theme in his proposals. There's no solid evidence that charter schools or private schools increase student achievement—most studies come out as a wash, with little difference in achievement between district, charter and private schools when they compare similar students—but never mind. Facts never have never stood in the way of Trump's runaway assertions before.

Here is Trump's vision of school choice.

As President, Mr. Trump will establish the national goal of providing school choice to every American child living in poverty. That means that we want every disadvantaged child to be able to choose the local public, private, charter or magnet school that is best for them and their family. Each state will develop its own formula, but the dollars should follow the student.

It's all about poor children, according to Trump's statement. No mention of the rich children whose parents will be able to send their children to toney private schools on the taxpayers' dime, though they're clearly included in the plan. Later the proposal says he wants school choice "to bring hope to every child in every city in this land."

Trump is in favor of portable funding, where federal money follows the child. It's another conservative educational standard, which would gut Title 1 programs in schools with a majority of low income students and transfer money to schools with more high income students. And of course, he's for teacher merit pay and ending teacher tenure laws.

Before Trump gave his speech on education at a charter school in Cleveland, Ohio, he had a photo op talking with an African American student to show how much he cares about those What-the-hell-do-you-have-to-lose? folks. Then in the speech he talked up the value of school choice, including charter schools, as a way to increase student performance, especially among poor and disadvantaged students. Problem is, the charter where he spoke, Cleveland Arts and Social Sciences Academy, isn't exactly a model of educational excellence.

Bad school choice, Donald.

The for-profit charter is currently owned by Pansophic Learning, founded by Ron Packard. Packard is the man who co-founded and was the CEO of K12 Inc., the notoriously bad, privately traded corporation which runs a string of low performing online schools in a number of states. Now he's buying up a bunch of brick-and-mortar charters, mainly in Ohio, which is known to have some of the most corrupt and low-performing charter schools in the country. He bought a number of schools from White Hat Management, which has received almost as much bad press as K12 Inc. for its poor schools and profit-centered management, and some from another charter network. The school where Trump spoke got a D for its Performance Index on Ohio's 2014-15 school report card, which is "a composite of scores across multiple grades and subjects that Ohio uses to summarize results." It did even worse in the value-added category, which measures how individual students' achievement grew over the school year. There, it got an F. You could say, "Well, that's just Cleveland," but the Cleveland Municipal schools got a C grade from the state.

Anyone who reads my posts know I don't put a great deal of stock in comparing schools by their achievement scores, which are more an indicator of the schools' zip code than their educational quality. But Trump apparently thinks charters, along with private school vouchers, are the answers to improving school performance.  He might have looked around for a better school to make his case.

Get ready for a flashback weekend, because The Zombies are coming to Tucson.

No, not undead, brain-eating humans, but the 1960s band that graced us with the sultry song “Time of the Season” and the twangy love song “Can’t Nobody Love You.”

Sorry, newsletter readers, this performance is happening over the weekend: Saturday, Sept. 10 at 8 p.m., the English rock band will grace the Rialto Theater, 318 E. Congress St., with local musician Brian Lopez. The show is all ages and and tickets range from $30 to $51 on Ticketfly. Doors open at 7 p.m. 

I’m sitting here at one of the best coffee houses in our fair city, sipping a wonderfully strong latte, and even in the presence of a pleasing atmosphere that includes a terrific java jolt, I cannot think of one reason why a theater of the stature of the Invisible Theatre would produce Coming Apart, a totally bland play suitable only for—well, maybe community theater, in its rawest.

Seriously, I’m trying to think of a reason. Artistic director Susan Claassen has a supporting role, but I don’t think that was reason enough, even for satisfying whatever yearning she has to tread the boards. Which, by the way, she does frequently anyway with her show, A Conversation with Edith Head.

Fred Carmichael’s play is lifeless, dull and empty. That sounds harsh, but there’s no way around it.
The piece gives us a couple, both writers, Colin (David Alexander Johnston) and Frances (Susan Kovitz), who after 21 years of marriage announce simultaneously one morning that each wants a divorce. The piece squanders whatever potential that synchronicity might contain. It’s downhill from there, and the distance isn’t a short ride.

What we are in for is a series of memories of their meeting and courtship, in which their accounts differ radically. Well, semi-radically, anyway, coercing from us a chuckle or two. They each have work to do, so they decide to share the house until certain deadlines are met.

Plans for the next few days: Pick up a copy of local author Shannon Baker's new book Stripped Bare, join the foraging movement from the couch and study up on the upcoming local elections. 

Just in case you've got time to squeeze in a movie or two, Casa Video sent us this list of their most popular rentals from the last week. Enjoy!

1. The Jungle Book
   
   

The hyper-American culture of hip-hop has been around for a whopping 40 years, and has gone through countless changes. We’ve heard party music heavily focused on seconds-long drum breaks propelled by two turntables and a DJ, to boom-bap beats, heavy dark samples and witty MCs rhyming about the “trife” life, to extremely melodic and catchy beats paired with rhymes that at times are clever, but at most are one dimensional.

Different times saw different mindsets, different work ethics and different inspirations. Yet, can these disparate minds and styles continue to create simultaneously as the genre itself begins to have a real human history? Can pivotal members of the culture (the old heads like Pete Rock) who have honed in their craft and who represent the old-school exist alongside rappers whose sole purpose is to make cash (the young bucks like Young Dolph) in rap.

In a perfect world, yes. But nothing’s ever easy in hip-hop.

It is good old ageism that’s not allowing old heads and young bucks to happily co-exist? A recent clash between the two suggests no way. The 44-year-old Pete Rock, who’s been creating hip-hop since the late ’80s and is one of the most influential hip-hop producers on earth, went after 26-year-old rapper Young Dolph on social media.
Rock reacted on Instagram to Dolph shooting a music video in which he spit the line “I had he had “cocaine running though my vain” with a child beside him. The clip prompted Rock to say “we have to raise our children better than this.” And he called Dolph “hot garbage.”

Dolph took to Twitter, insulted Rock, and said the cocaine bit was a nod to his parents being crack addicts and being born with crack in his system.
Rock shot back, taking a stand against “mumble rappers” and said “Y’all don't care about the culture, so why are you in it?"

Rock has a point. Many new rappers claim they don't like older hip-hop, that it doesn't resonate with them and it's not a culture they want to be in. In fact, rapper Lil Yachty said in a recent Billboard interview that he couldn’t name five tunes by Tupac Shakur or The Notorious B.I.G., two of the most influential MCs in hip hop.

Everyone should know where they came from.

Every year on April 15, Major League Baseball has Jackie Robinson Day in honor of the player who broke the color barrier in the MLB. Robinson is not only remembered as being a great player, but is also noted for his use of nonviolence as he was bombarded with hatred and threats of violence though his career.

Teams and players honor Robinson on his day by wearing his number, 42. However, he is also honored throughout the season as his number is retired universally in the MLB.

There is another player who in the eyes of many people is as great as Robinson. A player and a humanitarian.

Roberto Clemente was a Puerto Rican baseball player who played 18 seasons in the MLB with the Pittsburgh Pirates from 1955 to 1972. In his career, he was able to win two World Series championships, hit 240 home runs and is part of the 3,000 hits club.

Clemente was also a philanthropist and did not do it for personal or public admiration, but because he knew the struggle of growing up in poverty being that he lived it. He always reached out to the youth, despite his busy schedule, holding baseball clinics in both the United States and his native Puerto Rico.

Clemente was quoted as saying “Everyone knows I've been struggling all my life. I believe that every human being is equal, but one has to fight hard all the time to maintain that equality.”

His given nature tragically ended is life as Clemente died in a plane crash on its way to Nicaragua with aid for earthquake victims on Dec. 31, 1972. He was 38.

At the moment, the Pittsburgh Pirates are the only team in baseball to have his number, 21, retired. Not only would the creation of ‘Roberto Clemente Day’ allow fans old and new to remember this great player and person, but it would also resonate with the demography of the MLB.

A large percentage of the baseball player in the MLB are Latino, with a large number of them being Afro-Latino. Clemente was an Afro-Latino.

For now, Clemente is remembered by many, but it would not hurt to see him remembered and honored by all.

Your weekly guide to keeping busy in the Old Pueblo.

Pick of the Week

It's another Second Saturday Downtown, which means all manner of fun in the heart of our community. On the art front, you won't want to miss Etherton Gallery's opening of Shadowlands, featuring new prints by Alice Leora Briggs and selected photographs by Joel-Peter Witkin and Roger Ballen. All three artists do dark, challenging and provocative work that's not for the easily offended. The opening is from 7 to 10 p.m. at Etherton, 135 S. Sixth Ave. More info here. Over at the Rialto Theatre, legendary British psychedelic pop rockers The Zombies will take the stage, along with local opener Brian Lopez. Doors at 7 p.m. at Rialto, 318 E. Congress St. Across the street at Hotel Congress, Crystal Radio is hosting a record-release party for the band's debut release, Ghost in You. Doors at 7 p.m. at Club Congress, 311 E. Congress St. You'll find more music at the Scott Avenue Stage between Congress and Broadway, where  Belinda Esquer plays from 6 to 7 p.m., Los Guapos play from 7:30 to 8:30 p.m. and Haboob plays from 9 to 10 p.m. Plenty more is going on all day and a lot of it is free, as you can see from this schedule.

OSIRIS-REx

As you should have learned in last week's cover story, the UA has teamed up with NASA to send a spacecraft on an asteroid hunt. The launch is scheduled for Thursday, Sept. 8, at 4:05 p.m. Cool, right? So, how can you best celebrate the launch? You've got a few options. The UA and Time in Cosmology Center will be partying at Hotel Congress with extraterrestrials from planet, stargazing, live music and (of course) watching the launch live. The event is free, and festivities start at 4 p.m. Or, head over to Borderlands Brewing Company for Brews for Bennu: OSIRIS-REx Launch Watching Party to watch live as the mission begins. They reccomend showing up around 3:30 p.m. so you don't miss out. Borderlands Brewing Company, 119 E. Toole Ave.  

No, by that headline we don’t mean you’ll be foraging for lost peanuts and spilled M&Ms hiding in your couch cushions. We’re talking about using your laptop to access (specifically, to buy) foods from the great outdoors that have already been foraged for you.

Foraging is perhaps the most grassroots method of obtaining sustenance. (In fact, it’s literally related to grass roots—or amaranth roots, or purslane roots… Ugh, please forgive us the gratuitous word play.)

You already know all about it if you read the Weekly’s recent review of John Slattery’s new book Southwest Foraging, which illustrates what foraging means in the Sonoran desert, detailing where to find certain desert plants and how you—yes, you—can collect grains, cacti, seeds and weeds and to make tasty treats in your own kitchen.

But maybe you don’t want to find them, grind them, or frankly do anything except eat them. And that’s OK! Participating in this most primordial of food movements doesn’t necessarily mean you have to get out there with your gardening gloves, tongs, spade or what-have-you to obtain your own plant ingredients. Such a situation shouldn’t bar you from partaking in foods gathered from your own backyard (we mean it figuratively this time)—and you should partake of them, because they’re often the healthiest choice, not to mention the most sustainable.

If you lack the time (or energy—admit it) to forage for yourself, we give you permission to forgo Slattery’s book… because he also has an online business. Through Desert Tortoise Botanicals, he sells the stuff he gathers and/or makes with the our lovely desert’s floral bounty.
Lots of his shop’s products are medicinal, not edible—tinctures, salves, et cetera. But many are both salutary and savory, like his chaga chai tea, “Sonoran cocoa” (made with mesquite meal), wild oregano honey or prickly pear juice.

All Desert Tortoise Botanical products are described in detail on the website (ingredients, uses, medicinal properties), and all are quite affordable (Sonoran Sleep Tea, $9; Fire Cider, $13.50).
Of course, if you do want to forage for yourself, you can buy Slattery’s book at Desert Tortoise Botanicals, too.

OSIRIS-REx, the asteroid-hunting space probe designed by the UA Lunar and Planetary Lab in partnership with NASA and Lockheed Martin, is scheduled for liftoff from Kennedy Space Center at 4:05 Tucson time today.

The plucky space probe will spend two years chasing down the near-earth asteroid Bennu and then spend another two years studying the asteroid before flying right up next to it to gather a few ounces of asteroid dust. Then it will fly on back to Earth and send the sample back to the Utah desert.

You can read all about the seven-year mission here.

Watch the liftoff at a launch party at Hotel Congress this afternoon. And the gang at downtown's Borderland Brewing is throwing a Brews for Bennu bash.