Today David Garcia, Democratic candidate for AZ Ed Supe, filed his signatures to get on the ballot.

Dr. David Garcia, candidate for Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction, officially filed his nominating petition signatures this morning.

Dr. Garcia and team turned in over 8,000 signatures, far surpassing the 4,804 signatures required to make the ballot.

Thanking his volunteers for their hard work, Dr. Garcia stated, “With more than 400 volunteers already signed on in support, we are poised to run one of the largest grassroots campaigns in the state. I’m looking forward to an exciting summer of voter outreach and numerous candidate debates.”

Dr. Garcia is an Associate Professor at ASU and the former Associate Superintendent of Public Instruction for Standards and Accountability. He is widely regarded as a national expert on education policy and research.

On Hupp's right flank, his Republican opponent, Diane Douglas, submitted her petitions as well. We'll get a chance to see if Hupp does the political hokey pokey in the primary ("You put your right foot in, and you shake it all about"). Douglas is way to his right, especially in her condemnation of Common Core. Will he call Douglas a "barbarian at the gate" during the campaign, or will he try and play nice with the right wing voters who hate the Common Core and vote way beyond their numbers in the primary?

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On Tuesday I wrote that the mayoral election in Newark, New Jersey, was a referendum on "education reform," aka education privatization. The election results that night had "reform" candidate Shavar Jeffries losing to Ras Baraka, a Newark high school principal who wants to improve the very damaged Newark school system, not dismantle and replace it.

I just finished reading an incredibly good article on the Newark education battles in the New Yorker: SCHOOLED: Cory Booker, Chris Christie, and Mark Zuckerberg had a plan to reform Newark’s schools. They got an education. Unlike most education stories, this one doesn't take sides. It lays out the plans by the privatization/charter school advocates, a coalition of ex-Mayor Cory Booker (Democrat), Governor Chris Christie (Republican) and Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook founder, party unknown), to transform Newark's schools, which have been controlled by the state since 1995, and the problems they encountered along the way. It's very long, but it should be required reading for anyone who wants to understand the size and scope of the problems facing inner city schools and the monumental difficulties that confront anyone who wants to change things, no matter what their motives may be. I came away shaking my head. No easy answers to be found anywhere.

I want to make clear, these are my personal endorsements for the Sunnyside School Board recall election. They don't represent an endorsement from the Weekly.

I support Beki Quintero and Eric Giffin to replace board members Bobby Garcia and Louie Gonzales.

The current issue of the Weekly has an excellent story on the candidates and the history of the Sunnyside recall election. The Star asked questions of the candidates and published their emailed responses. I won't repeat what you can find there.

Though Superintendent Manuel Isquierdo isn't on the ballot, he's at the center of the election. The two current board members in the election support him and voted recently to extend his contract. Candidates Quintero and Giffin believe Isquierdo is a liability to the district and should not have gotten the contract extension. The fifth candidate, Mike Polak, also thinks the district has been mismanaged by Isquierdo.

I can't say whether Sunnyside suffers from corruption in the legal definition of the term, but it's definitely suffering under Isquierdo's leadership. There is a great deal of favoritism, distrust and paranoia inside the district, most of which stems from Isquierdo's leadership style, and board members Garcia and Gonzales are part of the problem. For the district to regain its footing and earn the trust of the community, those two board members need to be replaced.

Giffin served previously on the Sunnyside board and voted against hiring Isquierdo in 2007. Quintero was part of the recall effort and has allied herself with Giffin. Polak ran for Tucson City Council in 2103 as a Republican where he lost 27 percent to 72 percent and seems to be hoping that he has better luck running for school board.

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UPDATE: Huppenthal's "Barbarian at the gates" comment gets multiple derisive tweets from conservative Michelle Malkin ("So you think we're 'barbarians at the gate?' You ain't heard nothing yet, pal."). Hupp's primary opponent Diane Douglas chimed in with tweets of her own ("Yesterday my opponent called us 'barbarians' for wanting to #StopCommonCore in #AZ")

We've already established that Arizona Ed Supe John Huppenthal loves vouchers. Loves 'em. Records robocalls to parents telling them to flee public schools for private schools. Plans to give students more state money to go to private schools than they get when they go to public schools. Loves vouchers.

Hupp also loves Common Core. (Irony alert: Private schools don't have to use the Common Core standards Hupp loves, and their students don't have to take the state tests he says are essential to judge student progress in public schools.)

Hupp loves Common Core enough to call its right wing opponents “barbarians at the gate."

“I have put my career on the line to stave off the barbarians. I very likely could lose this election,” Huppenthal said. “I’m okay with that because I felt I did the right thing for this education system.”

So far as I can tell from the article, Hupp isn't calling folks like me barbarians, people on the progressive side of education who are concerned that the testing associated with Common Core will be even more damaging than our current high stakes tests connected with No Child Left Behind. I have no problem with individual school districts and states adopting the standards, which have had very little field testing, and modifying them as teachers and administrators see how they work. But that can't happen so long as the tests are a Damoclean Sword hanging over educators' heads, threatening them with staff firings and school closures. That's why I'm an opponent of Common Core in its current form.

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Newark, New Jersey, is about as distant from Tucson as a place can be, so writing about today's mayoral election in Newark on a Tucson blog may seem a bit strange. But the race is one of the many battles between those who believe in the "education reform" movement, for philosophical, political and financial reasons, and those who believe it's leading us in dangerous directions. The results of the election could have a nationwide educational impact.

Former Newark mayor, now Democratic Senator Cory Booker, is an education reform advocate who goes beyond most of the Democrats who support what is predominantly a conservative educational movement by supporting vouchers. He hitches his education wagon to the likes of Jeb Bush and, to some extent, the Walton (Walmart) family along with other conservative power brokers in promoting an education agenda which could dismantle our flawed but very important and valuable system of public education.

Two Democrats are vying for Booker's empty mayoral spot: Ras Baraka and Shavar Jeffries. They're both formidable candidates with strong backgrounds. One area where the differ significantly is education. Basically, Jeffries is the "education reform" candidate and Baraka is more of an advocate for improving, not replacing, our current public school system.

Like so many races, this one is being fought using outside money. The contribution which has gotten the most attention is $850,000 for Jeffries from Education Reform Now. ERN is the 501c3 wing of Democrats for Education Reform (DFER), a group I've written about in the past which is closely allied with some of the country's most conservative education groups and spends lots of money trying to get candidates exactly like Jeffries into local and statewide office.

Back in February, TUSD convened its first district-wide Strategic Planning meeting, to begin the process of creating a 5 year plan. I was invited to participate in the all-day meeting as a member of the community, not as a blogger, and I wrote about my experiences that day from the point of view of a participant. I gave the meeting reasonably high marks, and that from someone who generally hates meetings of this kind.

At the end of that first day, people were asked if they wanted to continue the process. Those of us who expressed interest gathered the last two Saturday mornings. I was among them.

My impression so far is, the process continues to be worthwhile, both for the participants and the district. But it's only a process. What really matters is the quality of the product and how well it's implemented.

The people who are participating include community members like myself, parents and staff (mainly administrative staff). Too often in meetings like this, the leaders, meaning the administrators, take a dominant role and guide the other participants toward foregone conclusions. Here, the "leaders" worked hard to assume the role of moderators, making sure the group stayed on task and that its ideas made it onto paper, but not directing the rest of us toward a pre-determined goal.

Earlier this week I gave Julia Toews, the Head of BASIS Tucson, an opportunity to write a post on The Range stating her views about her school. Mainly, she was responding to a post I wrote which maintained that BASIS has a highly selective student body.

I found Toews' argument that BASIS does not have a select student body to be unconvincing. However, I understand why she tried so hard to defend the school against the "selectivity" charge. If, as she claims, BASIS truly had a representative student body which included students from across the academic spectrum, that would mean its high test scores and Top Ten ranking in U.S. News & World Report would be truly exceptional, that BASIS had figured out a remarkably successful method of educating students. However, if its student body is made up of some of the top students in the area, that would mean it is just one of many schools across the country — district schools, charter schools and private schools — that offers a rigorous, challenging education to high achieving students. If the latter is true, and I believe it is, that means BASIS' students should not be used as an example of a charter school succeeding where district schools fail.

Toews presents some facts and figures to "prove" BASIS Tucson represents an academic cross section of Tucson area students. One bit of data she doesn't mention, however, is the students' AIMS scores. They provide an interesting look at the academic achievement of students entering BASIS. More on that later in the post, including a request that Ms. Toews supply some information I don't have access to.

Toews begins by dispelling what she calls "a myth that we serve only middle and upper income students." She’s right, I’m sure, that BASIS has lower income students. I’ve never thought differently. She isn’t able to calculate that number by counting students on Free or Reduced Lunch, because BASIS Tucson doesn’t offer free or reduced lunch. Using other indicators, however, she leaves the impression that upwards to a third of the students are from lower income families.

For the sake of argument, let’s accept her estimate. That has no bearing on whether the school is academically selective. Look at TUSD’s University High School (UHS), for example. It requires an entrance exam for admission, meaning it is academically selective by definition. About 30% of UHS students qualify for Free or Reduced Lunch. Toews didn't offer figures for the ethnic makeup of her student body, but for the sake of completeness, here are the stats for UHS: 51 percent Anglo, 31 percent Hispanic, 11 percent Asian American and 3 percent African American. The UHS data makes it clear that a school can have an academically select group of students with high achievement scores and top national rankings and still be reasonably diverse in terms of its students' economic status and ethnicity.

While the rest of the world is handing out Bachelor of Arts in Law degrees, the University of Arizona will finally catch the United States up to speed. The James E. Rogers College of Law at the UA will be the first university to offer a Bachelor of Arts, according UA News. This is a step up considering Arizona leads the nation in increased tuition costs and education funding cuts.

“A Juris Doctor is a highly valuable degree and there are roles that only lawyers can serve,” said Marc Miller, dean of the James E. Rogers College of Law at the UA. “But training a broader range of students will serve society, open careers in areas of substantial regulation, respond to changes in technology and the forces of globalization, and invite opportunities for the delivery of new and more accessible legal services.”

Here’s what the program will have to offer:

Students will receive core legal training, including instruction in key substantive areas of the law, such as property, contracts, torts, constitutional law, administrative law, and criminal and civil procedure. Students will acquire critical skills such as the ability to “think like a lawyer” and the ability to make clearly written and organized legal arguments. On graduation, students will be well-equipped for direct employment in an increasing number of jobs where legal training is an advantage, or to pursue further legal education in law school.

Students are required to take four core law courses, totaling 12 units. After completing these core classes, students may specialize in upper-level courses in areas as wide-ranging as employment law, family law, business law, international law, trade law, Native American law, and environmental law.
Possible careers open to graduates of the program include, as illustrative examples, positions in corporate compliance, tax advising, business management, trade, banking and finance, conflict resolution, contracts administration, city planning, health administration, resource management, human resources, policy analysis, and legal technology consulting.

As part of the new undergraduate program, a 3+3 program will be available. This program will provide academically talented University of Arizona undergraduates with the ability to complete their Bachelor of Arts in Law—and the Juris Doctor—in only 6 years of study.

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I read an article in today's NY Times about dot-com billionaire Jack Ma, who created China's Alibaba Group, which is "China’s largest online retailer, with merchandise volumes that lag only Walmart, worldwide." Before he was a billionaire, he was an English teacher.

Which got me to thinking about that much maligned college major, English, that "useless major" which produces a bunch of ne'er-do-wells who become English teachers (guilty as charged) and low wage salary slaves in dead-end professions. So I put the research skills I honed as an English major to work — I was able to transfer them from the library and the printed page to the World Wide Web thanks to the mental agility I picked up as a lit critician — and searched for English majors who have moved beyond their expected confines.

It shouldn't be surprising that lots of songwriters were English majors, like Mark Knopfler, Paul Simon, Kris Kristofferson (who was about to become an English Lit teacher at West Point when he decided to pursue songwriting instead) and Chris Isaak. Sting's training as an English major and English teacher is all over his work. He referenced the Odyssey in his song, "Wrapped Around Your Finger" ("Caught between the Scylla and Charibdes"). And he named one of his albums "Ten Summoner's Tales," punning his name, Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner, with the character in The Canterbury Tales, The Summoner.