A few days ago, I wrote about an Education Accountability Session sponsored by the Pima County Interfaith Council and others. Though a number of candidates were given a chance to speak — briefly — the highlight of the event was listening to seven young and not-so-young adults talk about their personal educational journeys. These are people who have benefited from a combination of their own hard work, often overcoming daunting obstacles, and educational opportunities they found in Pima County. I was so moved and impressed by their stories, I invited some of them to be on the cable access program I host with Ann-Eve Pedersen, Education: The Rest of the Story. Two of the seven were able to come, though more wanted to. These are busy folks, as you'll learn from listening to Ana Chavarin in this interview. One of the participants wanted to come, and he was even willing to miss some work and lose some of his earnings, but his boss advised against it. Going to work was definitely the right choice. Another participant apologized to me, saying she was tutoring a young student at the library during that time. No need to apologize to this old teacher for her dedication to helping a student succeed.

Ana, who is currently a student at Pima Community College, has a wonderful story to tell, and she tells it with the kind of spirit which has carried her this far and will continue to carry her into the future. It's well worth listening to. It actually gets better about halfway through.

Is there anyone foolish enough to watch an ad from McSally supporters attacking Barber, or from Barber supporters attacking McSally, and think it's the absolute, unvarnished truth? Is there anyone who thinks when a 1975 DUI against a House candidate in, say, Oshkosh, Wisconsin, shows up a month before the election, the timing is a coincidence?

If so, I've got some beautiful beachfront property on Speedway you might be interested in buying. It's a real bargain, and I have lots of offers already.

It's political season, right? Every statement that could affect the election should have a big Caveat Emptor (Buyer Beware) label slapped across it. There may be a kernel, or a few kernels, or lots of kernels of truth in what you hear and read, but there's a reason you're hearing and reading about it now and it's wrapped up in a package carefully designed for maximum impact. Someone is trying to get your vote.

But somehow, even thinking people who pay careful, critical attention to politics don't scrutinize information about TUSD around election time with the same jaundiced eye. Too many people react to a sudden explosion of bad news with, "What did you say? Something terrible, something catastrophic is about to happen at TUSD? Oh my God! The sky is falling!" "You say board member Jones or candidate Lopez is the only person who can avert the catastrophe? Thank God there's someone out there who can make everything right!"

A deputy superintendent who's leaving the district and may, or may not, have a score to settle sends out a worst-case-scenario forecast that TUSD will be $15 million in the hole by the end of the year, and he does it at the request of someone running for the board on a platform that the district is heading for disaster and needs to change direction. Is the report an objective assessment of a district that's dug itself deep into a financial hole? It's possible. Or is the report a politically motivated statement to cast the superintendent and his supporters on the board in the worst possible light? That's possible too. Either way, what better time to drop a hair-on-fire disaster report than a week before the early ballots are dropped in the mail?

Before voters take the report at face value and assume it's an objective analysis of the district's financial state, they need to ask themselves, who will benefit if voters believe it? Then they can listen to what others say about the report, weigh the evidence on both sides and make up their minds.

If there was ever any question whether Doug Ducey will be a more conservative governor than our conservative Governor Brewer if he's elected, those questions have once again been put to rest. Brewer made it clear she thinks the state should pay the schools the $317 million they're owed. Ducey has said over and over that he wants to fight the voter-mandated payment to schools in the courts. After all, he says, money doesn't buy better education, so why not be 48th, or lower, in the amount we spend per student? Balance the budget on the backs of our children? Works for Ducey.

Conservative though Brewer may be, the legislature is well to her right, and Ducey is right there with the lege. Expect that the rare-but-important sensible measures Brewer has taken over the years won't be happening if Ducey is elected. More likely he'll work with his fellow far right wingers in the legislature to reverse whatever good Brewer has done when she's taken a few steps away from the wingnuts.

Of course, we could always elect Fred DuVal for governor, who would create a firewall against the crazies in the legislature, like Napolitano did — and the crazies weren't as crazy back then. That's always a possibility, especially if more people understand what they'll get if Ducey is our next governor.

I went to the Education Accountability Session sponsored by the Pima County Interfaith Council last Sunday expecting to hear candidates talk about education. I was ready for yet another hour or two of the same old stuff. I'd force myself to pay careful attention, hoping at least one candidate for state legislature or the PCC board would say something so wonderful, or so awful, it would make my time there worthwhile. But I got something much better. The candidates weren't given much time to talk. Instead, they got an earful about how important education is to the well-being of both children and adults — and its obvious benefits to our economy — and were given the opportunity to pledge support for adequate funding and intelligent oversight of our schools, from kindergarten through university.

Sponsored by the PCIC, Literacy Connects and the UA Department of Education, the session played to a don’t-tell-the-fire-marshal overflow crowd, many from various religious congregations around the city, as well as other interested folks. The crowd was attentive and responsive, cheering for quality, well funded education rather than the candidates of their choice.

The highlight of the session was seven young and not-so-young adults who shared their personal educational journeys, people who benefited from a combination of their own hard work, often overcoming daunting obstacles, and educational opportunities they found in Pima County. One speaker learned English through Literacy Connects and is currently studying at Pima Community College. Another speaker who is undocumented spent seven years taking courses at PCC paying out-of-state tuition. He was able to speed up his coursework when he was granted in-state tuition, but now, PCC degree in hand, he is faced with having to pay out-of-state tuition once again at UA — and he still can’t get a driver’s license.

Don't read any further. Just go to Howard Fischer's article, Arizona 6th worst in the U.S. for teachers. It's all there. However, if you want my take on his story and a quick summary of some of the facts and figures, read on.

Teachers don't go into the profession for the money. I've never heard any teachers, when asked what they do, answer, "I'm a teacher. Ka-ching!" But that's not to say that poor-but-honest teachers wouldn't like to have a little more change in their pockets.

A study reported that Arizona is 44th in its starting salary for teachers, and that accounts for the different standards of living in the states.

Median teacher salaries? Arizona is 48th.

And along with their low salary, Arizona teachers can look forward to bigger class sizes. True, that means more students to love, but ...

Recent reports say more than a third of Arizona's teachers leave every year (A TUSD administrator I spoke to estimated about half of those are retirees, which makes the actual "leavers" more like one in six). Arizona can't replace all of them. Hundreds of classrooms are staffed with long term substitutes, who will be replaced by other long term subs if districts can't find teachers to fill the slots.

I'm sure some of the leaving teachers move on to other professions, though the weak job market isn't exactly encouraging the exodus. But how many of the exiting teachers are finding students to love in other states where they can earn higher salaries, teach fewer kids, and maybe get a few classroom perks like boxes of Kleenex, crayons and — be still, my heart — paper supplied by the district? I don't know the numbers of those who have fled the state, but for teachers who are footloose enough to pack up and go, what could possibly convince them to stay?

The Arizona Republic didn't simply endorse David Garcia for Superintendent of Public Instruction. It called him a "great choice" in its headline. The endorsement could hardly be more glowing.

David Garcia has the experience, temperament and vision to be a great superintendent of public instruction.

He invested his career in education and — unlike some past superintendents — does not view this job as a stepping stone to higher office.

He is well-prepared for a complex and multifaceted job.

The next sentence sums up the Editorial Board's view of Diane Douglas:

This sets [Garcia] far above his opponent Diane Douglas, a one-note candidate who gives little indication that she understands anything about modern education.

There's much more in the endorsement worth reading, but I'll just pull out one more sentence. After saying Garcia is endorsed by two former Republican Superintendents, Lisa Graham Keegan and Jaime Molera, the paper quotes a comment Molera made:

In explaining his endorsement, Molera said, "Arizona does not need someone who will bring extreme and nonsensical views into our K-12 system."

That's not coming from some Democratic Party operative with a partisan agenda. That's a Republican calling Douglas' views "extreme and nonsensical."

Before I get into my choices for the TUSD school board, I want to make sure readers understand that these are my own personal picks. They’re not official endorsements from the Tucson Weekly.

I’m going to begin the discussion of my support for Adelita Grijalva and Jen Darland by looking at the way school boards interact with superintendents regardless of the specific issues facing a district. Their interaction fits somewhere on a style-of-governance scale. At one end of the scale is a rubber-stamp board. The superintendent makes suggestions and recommendations, and the board simply signs off on them. On the other end is a micromanagement board. Board members peer over the superintendent’s shoulder watching his/her every move, play “Gotcha!” at every actual or perceived misstep and give frequent, detailed instructions about how to run the district.

Both extremes on the scale are examples of poor governance. Superintendents shouldn’t have a carte blanche for every hiring and policy decision they make, but they also shouldn’t be treated with the kind of suspicion and negativity Republican members of Congress show toward President Obama. An effective board should occupy a position somewhere between the two extremes, and it should slide up and down the scale depending on changing circumstances and the decisions that need to be made.

A board’s position on the governance scale is essentially a measure of its trust or distrust of the superintendent, and sometimes a measure of individual member’s sense of self-importance. Board members who believe they’ve chosen a competent, trustworthy person to head the district tend to trust the direction the superintendent is heading. They should look at the superintendent’s recommendations carefully and modify or vote against them when it makes sense, but when it’s a judgement call, they are likely to give the head of the district the benefit of the doubt. Their motto might be, “Trust but verify, and maintain a healthy skepticism.” Board members who question the competence and motives of the district head tend to distrust recommendations that come from the district, scrutinize every move in microscopic detail and only vote with the superintendent reluctantly. Their motto might be, “Distrust and scrutinize, because the superintendent is very likely incompetent and a scoundrel.” Sometimes, if their egos and sense of self-importance are large enough, they think they can run the district better than the person hired by the board to do the job. They make regular attempts to dictate district policy on issues large and small.

I happen to think the board made a good choice when it picked H.T. Sanchez to be superintendent. He’s not the perfect superintendent, but — full disclosure here — I wasn’t a perfect teacher in my 30+ years in the classroom, even though I gave my heart and soul to teaching and believe I did a good job in the classroom. I’d love to believe there’s such a thing as a perfect teacher or superintendent, but I’ve never met one myself. Like me and every other human being, Sanchez makes mistakes and will make more, I’m sure. But my sense is that he has the right focus and laudable goals, and he’s moving the district in a positive direction, both internally and in its relationship with the community. He’s willing to take chances, to make bold moves to improve students’ educations. On the whole, I trust his leadership, though I’m ready and willing to criticize him when I think he’s making a serious error.

I'm still working my way through the education discussion at the Thursday night debate between Fred DuVal and Doug Ducey in Tucson. Here's the biggest educational gaffe of the night, made by Ducey. It's one of those classic "When I was a boy" blunders. He was talking about how today's schools in Arizona and across the country are under-performing compared to schools in other countries, and he compared them to the wonderful schools America's K-12 youth attended back when.

"Anyone that’s my age in this audience or older grew up in an America that was number one in the world in K-12 education, and so far and away number one, we didn’t know who number two was."

Ducey graduated high school in 1986, so his "We're Number One!" glory days were the 1980s. Those were his happy-go-lucky teen years, so he probably didn't read the Reagan White House document, A Nation at Risk, which came out in 1983, when he was a freshman. [NOTE: Ducey graduated college, not high school, in 1986, which means his high school graduation rate was probably 1982, a year before A Nation at Risk was published but part of the time the report is referring to. I regret the error.] It didn't exactly trumpet the excellence of our schools. Quite the opposite. In its early paragraphs, the report said:

The educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people. What was unimaginable a generation ago has begun to occur—others are matching and surpassing our educational attainments.

Things got even more dire in the next sentence.

If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.

Not exactly a ringing endorsement of the schools Ducey attended which, according to him, were "so far and away number one, we didn’t know who number two was."

Lots of talk about education at the Thursday night debate between Fred DuVal and Doug Ducey in Tucson. It was scattered throughout the 90 minute forum. I'm working my way through the tape I made of the event, but I want to spotlight the boldest educational proposal of the night. It came from DuVal, about attracting more and better teachers to Arizona schools.

"I would go to the Board of Regents and say, any student who graduates in the top third from our universities and goes into teaching and stays for five years ought to have their student loans relieved. It is wrong for our smart students to leave university with a debt load that means they can’t make a responsible economic choice to go into teaching. We want the best of our students to go into teaching, because it’s the most important thing we do."

College grads can into teaching with its modest salary and not have to worry about a significant chunk of their paychecks going toward paying off loans every month. If they stick around for five years, their loans are forgiven. It's a terrific incentive for any college graduate with a desire to teach.

Focusing on the top third of the graduating class can have the dual role of encouraging prospective teachers to work harder in college so they can make it into the loan forgiveness group, and encouraging the best and brightest graduates to spend at least five years in the classroom. Some may leave before year six, but that's still five good years they've given to Arizona's children. Others will get hooked on the pleasures and challenges of the classroom, or decide to move up to the administrative level. It's a win-win all the way around.

The day after the DuVal/Ducey debate in Tucson seems like a good time to air this. Ann-Eve Pedersen, parent of a TUSD student, president of the Arizona Education Network and my co-host on Education: The Rest of the Story, put together a segment "thanking" Doug Ducey for helping to put Arizona near the bottom of the nation's per-student funding list.