Imagine my delight at seeing a front-page-with-a-picture, feel-good story about TUSD in today's Star: New TUSD outreach program gives biotech students leg up. It sounds like a great program: 240 students from Pueblo and Tucson High participating in a Biotech Pipeline.

Students will gather information on nearly two dozen local biotech businesses and conduct interviews to make career connections, learn what companies are looking for and how that connects with what they are learning in the classroom.

It looks like TUSD is making a concerted effort to get positive news out about the district, and it appears to be working. That's a good thing. If the district is making incremental progress, which I think it is, and the community is learning about it and lending its support, that's good news all the way around.

With that in mind, here's a grab bag of positive TUSD stories I've pulled together from the media and from Superintendent H.T. Sanchez's Team Member Updates, which he sends out as emails and posts online. I have to admit, I don't have first hand knowledge about all the items on the list, so I'm presenting them without any analysis. Others should feel free to chime in with comments.That's something I don't have to tell regular commenters, but I'm sure others of you in the Tucson community, and especially the TUSD community, have information the rest of us can benefit from.

• Reaching out to dropouts. In July, more than 100 people knocked on doors of students who have dropped out of school. The preliminary results look promising: "Many [of the students contacted] have returned, including 43 out of 50 students who were seniors last year, but who did not have enough credits to graduate."

• TUSD Strategic Plan completed. TUSD has put together a lengthy, ambitious five year strategic plan which was approved by the board. The fact that the process was public and that a wide variety of community members were involved makes it more likely the district will feel compelled to stick with it and show positive results.

After seeing so many readers offended by Linda Ronstadt's recent comments (which came as a followup to an interview she did on NPR's Diane Rehm Show) regarding Downtown Tucson's newer "Stalinist buildings," I was reminded of a photo I took downtown back in October of 2013.

The photo was taken in the empty lot on Broadway Blvd. and S. Fourth Avenue, just north of Tucson Yoga and behind The Cadence student housing and Centro Garage complexes on Congress/Toole/4th. I was fishing for information on the lot via Facebook, not looking to evoke Cold War-era imagery from the 1950s East Berlin.

That said, I've mashed up the original and black & white versions of the photo with images from Stalin's actual razor-wire-fenced East Berlin and elsewhere with stock photos of the latest behemoth University of Arizona student housing complexes to be built off campus (which is key to Ronstadt's and others' ire) in decidedly still-historic neighborhoods.

There's a great, reasonably new website in town: Bringing Up Arizona. It's a researched-based site about education headed by Richard Gilman, a former Daily Star reporter and editor who also was a senior vice president at the New York Times and publisher of the Boston Globe.

You can find a number of interesting reports on Bringing Up Arizona, but my favorite part is a series of slides called "Overcoming the Education Divide." In 15 slides, it illustrates the overwhelmingly strong correlation between Arizona's school grades and students' family income. Using the Tucson and Phoenix areas, it shows the "A" schools concentrated in the affluent areas of town and the grades descending from there as family income lowers. Anyone who wants solid data on the subject — maps, scatter graphs and bar charts — that's the place to go.

I did some similar research, though not nearly as thorough, and presented my analysis in a segment of the cable access show I do with Ann-Eve Pedersen, "Education: The Rest of the Story," which is at the top of this post.

Two insider baseball news bytes from the world of "education reform" for people who like to pay close attention to this kind of thing.

First, Michelle Rhee is leaving Students First, a pro-school-privatization organization she founded. Rhee is a curious figure in the education world, someone lots of people have fallen in love with until they learned more about her. She lied about her success in her few years of teaching, which helped her land the job as Washington, D.C., schools chancellor. She made the cover of a few magazines due to her no nonsense, tough-as-nails approach to improving schools. Under her aggressive leadership, under-performing teachers and administrators were fired and those whose test scores went up were rewarded. Some D.C. schools saw too-good-to-be-true spikes in their test scores which turned out to be, well, too good to be true. There was clear evidence of cheating by some staff members, but Rhee chose not to conduct a thorough investigation. Instead, she left the D.C. schools and founded Students First, which never measured up to her hype. In a wonderful piece of understatement, a former Students First staffer said, "I'm not claiming that she's egomaniacal, but . . ." Rhee will chair the board of a charter school chain run by her husband, ex-NBA star and current Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson.

It's a decade-old study about the relationship between books in the home and student achievement, but the study is new to me and every bit as relevant now as it was then, especially right now at the beginning of the school year.

The study looked at the difference between black and white children's reading and math test scores in kindergarten and first grade. Taking the children's race as the only factor, the black children scored quite a bit lower than the white children — 40 percent of a standard deviation lower for the stat-savvy among you.

When the study controlled socioeconomic status (SES), the gap went down to 13 percent of a standard deviation difference between the black and white kids. That's still a significant difference, but the gap has closed considerably.

Then the study added the number of children's books in the home into the equation. Just like that, the gap between the black and white children essentially disappeared.

Racial factors were irrelevant in the kindergarten and first grade test scores of the children, according to the authors of the study. Take race out of the picture and keep the parent(s)' occupation and income more-or-less equal, and the controlling factor in student scores on the tests was simply the number of children's book the child had access to. And not just in reading where you would expect a correlation. It was equally true with math.

A few things before I begin. First, this isn’t an official endorsement from the Weekly. David Garcia is my personal pick for Arizona's Superintendent of Public Instruction. Second, I’ve supported Garcia since early in his campaign and held a fundraiser for him at my home. However, I’ve taken the time to learn about the positions of his primary opponent Sharon Thomas, watched the public television debate between Garcia and Thomas and heard Thomas speak in person, so I know enough about her to make an informed decision.

I’m confident David Garcia will make an outstanding Superintendent of Public Instruction. His qualifications in terms of educational background, job experience and personality put him well above Sharon Thomas and miles above the Republican candidates.

Garcia is an Associate Professor of education at ASU. That means he’s studied the subject of education in depth; it also means he’s taught teachers. He’ll bring an understanding of education issues to the job Arizona hasn’t seen in decades (It’s been something like 30 years since we’ve had an educator as Superintendent). To those qualifications Garcia adds practical experience working in the Arizona Department of Education as an Associate Superintendent of Public Instruction under two Republican superintendents. He also worked as an education research analyst at the state legislature. Garcia is a Democrat who knows how to work with Republicans and has gained their respect for his expertise even when they don’t agree with him, which will be an invaluable tool when he works on education issues with the legislature.

H/T to Blog for Arizona's Carolyn Classen on the nine people who met Wednesday's 5 p.m. filing deadline for Tucson Unified School District's governing board.

The candidates for the Nov. 4 election, including incumbents Adelita Grijalva and Michael Hicks, according to Classen:

Rene Bernal , applied software engineer at Honeywell, political newcomer

Debe Campos-Fleenor, owner of financial/ insurance agency, ran before in 2012

Don Cotton, self-employed businessman, ran before in 2012, father of 2 TuSD students

Miguel Cuevas, former TUSD board member, elected in 2008, lost in 2012 (came in 4th for 3 seats, out of a pool of 12 candidates), project coach at AFNI, www.votemiguelcuevas.com

Jenifer Darland, policical newcomer, community activist, mother of 2 TUSD children, www. darlandfortusd.com, https://www.facebook.com/DarlandforTUSD

Adelita Grijalva, current board member and President, has served since 2004, https://www.facebook.com/pages/Adelita-Grijalva-for-TUSD-School-Board/130007817047419, daughter of CD 3 Congressman Raul Grijalva, mother of 2 TUSD students

Michael Hicks, current board member, elected in 2010, https://www.facebook.com/pages/Michael-Hicks-for-2014-TUSD-School-Board-Member/112861325429566, father of 2 TUSD students

Betts Putnam-Hidalgo, community activist & part time teacher, ran before in 2012, mother of son at TUSD school, https://www.facebook.com/pages/Stand-with-betts-for-TUSD/204287006336384

Francis Saitta, Pima Community College adjunct math/ science teacher, ran unsuccessfully for PCC Governing Bd. in 2012

Want to know more about the candidates and ask them questions? The Racial Justice Team at St. Mark's Presbyterian Church is hosting a candidate forum on Wednesday, Aug. 27, 6:30to 8:30 p.m. at St. Mark's, 3809 E. 3rd St.

The Weekly is planning coverage for this particular election. Some of the candidates maybe familiar to our readers, as they ran in the 2012 election, a contentious race with 12 candidates on the ballot, including three incumbents. Read that story here.

In March, the TUSD Board decided not to renew the contract of Rex Scott, the principal of Catalina High. Because the vote was taken in the discussion of the issue occurred during executive session, the reasons for the decision aren't public, but it was clear at the time that a significant factor in the vote was the school's D rating with the state.

The new state scores are out, and Catalina High earned a C for the 2013-14 school year. Scott did a detailed analysis of the numbers and found the biggest gains came from the lowest scorers in general and the ELL students in particular. The state changed its way of computing the scores, but according to Scott, even under the old system, Catalina would have moved up to a C.

If the old formula the state used for calculating high school letter grades had stayed in place, Catalina still would have been a “C” and would have earned 103 total points. That is a 15 point gain over two years and a five point gain from last year, when the school was at 98 points. . . . The thing that makes me proudest is that the kids who received a great deal of our time and attention this past year (sophomores who failed both AIMS Math and Reading as 8th graders) played the biggest role in helping the school to earn a “C.” Their needs were a consistent area of focused, substantive efforts by our staff and those endeavors on their behalf were a large part of our school improvement plan.

Congratulations to the students, the staff and those members of the community, parents and others, who have supported the students and the school.

And some shame goes to the TUSD board which voted 4-1 for Rex Scott's non-renewal, with Kristel Foster the only dissenting vote. I'm sure they had their reasons for the lopsided vote, but according to the Star article that came out at the time, the school's state score was the major reason for the vote of no confidence for Scott.

By JULIANNE LOGAN
Cronkite News

WASHINGTON – Chandler mom Lindsay Barnes already knows what the National Retail Federation is reporting in a recent study – it costs a lot to send kids back to school.

The federation said this month that families will spend an average of $101.18 per student for school supplies alone, a 12 percent increase from last year. When clothes, shoes and electronics are included, the tab runs to $669.28 per family with kids in kindergarten through high school, its data showed.

Barnes said she is “beyond dreading” back-to-school shopping for her Kyrene School District second-grader. She is particularly concerned by the amount of classroom supplies she expects she will have to buy, after getting a list last summer requesting “a ridiculous amount of supplies.”

“They wanted something like 72 No. 2 pencils,” Barnes said. “I don’t see why a first-grader would need that many pencils. I don’t even think I’ve used 72 pencils in my entire life.”

The retail federation report speculated that one reason for the increase in school-supply spending could be “school districts’ growing requests for classroom supply contributions.”

“I honestly feel like we’re footing the bill for the entire school,” Barnes said. “It didn’t seem fair.”

Mandy Taylor, who teaches sixth grade in the Phoenix area, said she understands parents’ frustrations because she is in the same boat. Taylor said she sends about $500 of her own money each year on classroom basics such as pens, paper and “inspirational posters.”

“I am very appreciative to parents that are willing to spend the extra dollar and help out,” said Taylor, who said parents are never required to buy supplies, let alone specific brands. She asks parents to look at the supply lists as suggestions.

“I know it may seem ludicrous and a bit ridiculous” to ask for specific products, she said. “But we go through a lot, mainly pencils, and the name brands, like Crayola, hold up better. We know they will last all year.”

Kyrene Schools spokeswoman Nancy Dudenhoefer said teachers have to ask because there’s only so much in the budget for supplies. The state only provides “a certain number of funds and that doesn’t go to pencils,” she said.

Ashley Dammen, an Arizona Department of Education spokeswoman, said the state provides funds to each district for classroom resources but it has “no requirement for schools to provide teachers with supplies.” The state leaves it to the districts to decide “how they spend those funds,” she said.

Time to clear some stories off my desktop that I'll never find time to get to on their own. Most of the mini-stories have links so you can learn more if you're interested.

• School is in! Best of luck kids. Best of luck teachers. Best of luck administrators, administrative assistants, bus drivers, custodians, cafeteria workers and anyone I left out. Have a great year, all of you. And parents, give those kids every chance to succeed by being there in any way you can.

• Not enough teachers. Fewer experienced teachers. A shortage of teachers in some fields and some geographical areas. Those are problems plaguing Arizona, and we're not alone, as you can see from the NPR story, The Teacher Dropout Crisis. Irony alert: while the conservative "education reform" movement cries "Throw the bums out!" hoping to get rid of bad teachers and replace them with great teachers, it's beginning to look like there aren't enough teachers to go around. Maybe indulging in less teacher bashing and paying teachers a living wage would help.

• Waiting for Godot the court-ordered school funding hike. Anyone familiar with the Samuel Beckett play — two men wandering around an empty stage waiting for Godot to show up — knows how Arizona public schools (including charters) feel about now, with Gov. Brewer and Republican legislators swearing they'll appeal the court ruling that says the lege has to come up with $300 million extra for schools now and $2.9 billion over the next five years. Keep waiting, kids, the money may come sometime, after you've gone through a few more years of crowded classrooms, inadequate supplies and teacher shortages.