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A principal in Brooklyn, NY, doesn't much like the Common Core tests her students had to take. She'd like to tell you why, but she can't.

I’d like to tell you what was wrong with the tests my students took last week, but I can’t. Pearson’s $32 million contract with New York State to design the exams prohibits the state from making the tests public and imposes a gag order on educators who administer them. So teachers watched hundreds of thousands of children in grades 3 to 8 sit for between 70 and 180 minutes per day for three days taking a state English Language Arts exam that does a poor job of testing reading comprehension, and yet we’re not allowed to point out what the problems were.

She can't talk about specifics, but . . .

In general terms, the tests were confusing, developmentally inappropriate and not well aligned with the Common Core standards. The questions were focused on small details in the passages, rather than on overall comprehension, and many were ambiguous. Children as young as 8 were asked several questions that required rereading four different paragraphs and then deciding which one of those paragraphs best connected to a fifth paragraph. There was a strong emphasis on questions addressing the structure rather than the meaning of the texts. There was also a striking lack of passages with an urban setting. And the tests were too long; none of us can figure out why we need to test for three days to determine how well a child reads and writes.

The push for Common Core Standards has taken hits from the right and the left. True, the two sides have different problems with the standards-and-tests package, but the attacks from both sides are having an effect. Poor AZ Ed Supe John Huppenthal has been taking a beating from right wingers during town halls he's held across the state (OK, to be honest, I do feel a few spoonfuls of empathy for Hupp, but they're mixed together with a heaping helping of schadenfreude). And Obama's Ed Sec Arne Duncan has taken a thrashing as well.

Huppenthal hasn't budged, other than to change the name to Arizona's College and Career Ready Standards, which has fooled absolutely no one. But Duncan is beginning to buckle.

Tuesday, Duncan sat in front of the House appropriations subcommittee to defend the education grants which are part of the 2015 budget. Here's what he said related to Common Core.

"I'm just a big proponent of high standards. Whether they're common or not is secondary."

For those of us who read education/political tea leaves, Duncan's retreat from the word "common" in his discussion of "standards" is huge. It sounds like a first step toward a national policy advocating a more voluntary application of the newly designed standards.

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When I was a high school English teacher, I wasn't a card carrying member of the Grammar Police. I didn't believe in rigid enforcement of some of those ridiculous, Latin-based rules which grammar books love to dwell on. And I rarely criticized student speech patterns. I love people-generated language — the slang, the phrasing, the inflection. It feels like folk poetry to me, language that is generated, formed and refined in the crucible of popular communication. I was clear, it's not appropriate in formal writing or during formal presentations to the class, but it's a rich, nuanced form of communication which deserves its place alongside "The King's English."

I remember once I came in after lunch and wrote "Ku-hoo-ul" on the board and asked a female student of mine who said "Cool!" with more panache than anyone else in the class to read it phonetically. The three syllable word was a reasonable approximation of the popular pronunciation. The point for me was, the actual word "Cool!" was only part of the communication involved. The "performance" of the word carried at least half the message.

Another time we got involved in a discussion of the difference between "I'm like/She's like . . " and "I'm all/She's all . . ." as ways to tell other people about a discussion. Both of them are substitutes for "I said/She said . . ." but there's a difference. We decided "I'm like/She's like . . ." simply related the facts of the conversation — "This is what I/she said" — but "I'm all/She's all . . ." was reserved for emotional moments, when you reveal something important, when you argue and so on. Far from being sloppy speech, "I'm like" and "I'm all" convey more meaning than a simple repetition of "I said."

All of which leads to a wonderful column in today's NY Times by Columbia University prof John McWhorter: Like, Degrading the Language? No Way. He looks at the uses of "Like," insisting, correctly, that it can create subtle shifts in the meaning of a sentence. He also looks at the online "LOL" as a way to convey something you can't communicate easily with a string of written words — a smile, a giggle, a "You got that right!"

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Wanna get your message out about where education should be heading? Well, if you're part of the "education reform" movement, meaning the conservative/corporate "education reform/school choice" movement — you know, dismantling public education by cutting funding and demonizing teachers unions while pushing for ever more vouchers and charter schools — it's easy. There's lots of money belonging to a whole lot of very rich folks that's yours for the asking. Case in point: the Walton family.

The Waltons own Walmart. Four of the descendants of founder Sam Walton have a combined worth of $140 billion. On the Forbes 400 richest people in America list, they're numbers 6, 7, 8 and 9, with the Koch brothers just above them (numbers 3 and 4) and Michael Bloomberg just below (number 10). Their Walton Foundation gives away lots of money every year, close to $300 million in 2013. More than half of the money, $164 million, is listed under the category, "Systemic K-12 Education Reform Grants."

I wrote two recent posts about the possibility of Teach for America coming to Sunnyside School District, here and here. TFA received the largest single Walton Foundation contribution, $20 million. Next highest is Charter Fund Inc.: $14.5 million. Then comes the KIPP Foundation, which runs a string of highly rated charter schools (their high rating is open to question, by the way): $8.8 million. Next is the Children's Scholarship Fund, which spreads around vouchers: $8.6 million. Then comes the California Carter School Association: $5.6 million.

A mere $620,000 goes directly to Arizona institutions that I could find, $400,000 to the Arizona Charter Schools Association and $220,000 to the Arizona Autism Charter School.

I wrote a longish post Tuesday about the possibility that Teach for America (TFA) will set up a program in the Sunnyside School District. I still don't have official confirmation for the story, but I haven't heard any denials either. As I wrote in the earlier post, the information, though not official, is well enough sourced that I'm reasonably certain some kind of a deal is in the works between Arizona's Ed Supe John Huppenthal and Sunnyside Supe Manuel Isquierdo.

Here's where this gets a little more interesting. Sunnyside has a recall election coming up in May which, in a sense, is a referendum on Isquierdo and his policies, since the two board members whose seats are on the line vote with the superintendent, giving him a 3-2 majority. If either of them loses, the majority will shift. The question is, will Isquierdo try to push a vote on the Teach for America issue with the current board at, say, the April meeting where he's likely to get a favorable vote, or will he wait to see how the recall turns out before deciding an issue which will have a significant impact on the district?

Here's a much-too-short description of Teach for America: It's a national program that gives college graduates a five week summer boot camp in education, then sends them out to teach in some of the most challenging schools in the country. They sign up for two years, often as a break between college and their "real job" and as a way to bolster their resumes. Many end up quitting before the two years are up, finding the job of teaching 30 to 40 hard-to-reach children is far more difficult than they imagined, especially with little educational background or training.

I've heard that Sunnyside School District is working with Ed Supe John Huppenthal to bring a group of Teach For America (TFA) teachers to the district. My understanding is, Huppenthal has promised to help Sunnyside with the initial costs to sweeten the deal. The latest version of the state budget includes $500,000 for Teach For America, which gives Huppenthal some walk-around money to peddle his wares.

Full disclosure: The Sunnyside/TFA connection is rumor-mill information, but the rumors are pretty well substantiated.

Teach For America already has a presence in other areas of the state, but currently it has no southern Arizona beachhead. Sunnyside would be the first. Superintendent Manuel Isquierdo likes to stay in Huppenthal's good graces, which may have something to do with his willingness to accept the TFA program.

My understanding is, Huppenthal's people approached TUSD with a similar offer, but it was rejected.

Teach For America is a controversial program. It's promoted by advocates for the conservative/corporate "education reform" movement, people who are big on high stakes testing, charter school expansion and de-professionalizing of teaching. It's criticized by progressives who are advocates for well-funded public schools and well trained, experienced teachers. Like most facets of the "education reform" movement, TFA is phenomenally well funded, with $500 million in assets and a $250 million a year revenue stream, a mixture of public and private money. The organization has lots of friends in high places — rich donors as well as legislators at the state and national levels.

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Here are some short items about TUSD, some of the positive things happening in the district which deserve to be spotlighted. The district gets plenty of bad press (I sometimes participate in the piling on) while the good stuff is too often ignored. Some of the items below were in the Star. Others are from Superintendent H.T. Sanchez’s regular Team Member Updates. Clearly Sanchez is putting the items in the best possible light, but they look good to me as well. TUSD has a right to crow when good things happen, and the rest of us benefit from hearing about positive developments.

• The Star’s Alexis Huicochea has a good piece about C.E. Rose, a K-8 school with 93% of its students on free or reduced lunch. Its students score far higher on state tests than most students from low income families. TUSD plans to turn the school into a district-run charter — that brings about $1,000 more per student to the school — and to try and replicate its success at two schools that were closed, Wakefield and Richey. They will reopen as charters.

• Another story covered by Huicochea is TUSD’s pledge to support all students no matter their immigration status, which received unanimous support from the board. According to Sanchez, “The designation is the first of its kind in the nation for a school district. It means we pledge to help all students pursue a higher education regardless of immigration status and it supports the April 9 National Educators' Coming Out Day led by the Dream Educational Empowerment Program of United We Dream and Scholarships A-Z, an organization that helps undocumented immigrants attend college.”

Friday night was the Tucson premier of the new César Chávez film at the Harkin Theater, sponsored by the Arizona César E. Chávez Holiday Coalition. It was a great turnout, a nearly full house in one of Harkin's larger theaters, with a few empty seats in the front rows.

It's a good film, well worth seeing. For someone like me who is Hispanic-history-challenged and is trying to fill in the gaps, it provided a factual and emotional sense of the beginnings of the United Farm Workers, some of which I knew, some of which was new to me. And in a country which gives Martin Luther King his due, a film like this is long overdue. It helps give Chávez the recognition he deserves, alongside King, for his successful fight to bring greater economic and social justice in our country. Long after the film has left the theaters, I hope it will become a regular part of history classes in schools around the country.

[Note: I depend on the kindness of email strangers to tell me things I don't know, and this post is one example. If you have something I may be interested in, you can contact me at [email protected] — until they give me an email address of my very own.]

I've posted twice about the lege's third try to give what is essentially a no-bid contract to a Utah company, Imagine Learning, to supply software for ELL students — first here, then in a post showing that the Arizona bill, HB2485, is taken directly from an ALEC model bill. Now a kind email stranger showed me the bill's latest incarnation.

The original HB2485 is being turned into a strike-everything bill dealing with transmitting affidavits, which has nothing to do with the original. Meanwhile, the Imagine Learning language has been brought over to SB1488: K-12 education; budget reconciliation; 2014-2015. It's a big bill, and many of the details are way above my pay grade, but if you scroll down to section 15-216, you'll find the Imagine Learning bill's language is one part of the budget package.

The fact that it's no longer a stand-alone bill means two things, as I see it. First, anyone who votes for the bill can deny they supported the Imagine Learning part, saying they voted for the overall budget and had to take the good with the bad. Second, it means people who want to vote for the whole education budget bill have to vote for the Imagine Learning part whether they want to or not.

Full disclosure: I'm a friend of Rex Scott, the principal of Catalina High. I find him to be smart, capable and diligent, the kind of principal I think I would like to work for as a teacher. That will undoubtedly influence what I say here. That being said . . .

My sense is that TUSD made the wrong decision voting not to renew Rex Scott's contract. But with a 4-1 vote and Sanchez's agreement, I have to think there were some good reasons for the vote, just as I'm sure Kristel Foster's no vote was made thoughtfully.

Here are some of my concerns about the decision.

I strongly object to the state's "Live by the AIMS test, die by the AIMS test" mentality. Catalina High's "D" state rating, which is the primary reason for the non-renewal, is based almost entirely on the student scores on the AIMS test, which I find to be a questionable measure of the quality of the school or its principal. In this case, the school score was only 2 points below a C. The AIMS test being the blunt instrument it is, having 2 points deciding whether or not Scott's contract is renewed doesn't make sense.

Another problem is, if I'm right about this, a high school's state grade is based almost entirely on the AIMS test taken by sophomores, which means the school has taught the students for less than two years. In the case of Catalina High, the turnover rate makes many students' tenures even shorter. According to the Star article, the school has the highest turnover rate of any TUSD high school: 58.1 percent. Add to that the fact that the students speak 40 different languages and standardized tests are, in many ways, reading tests (even the math sections). The students' weak English language skills are a major component of their test scores. Imagine the challenge ELL teachers have trying to teach students who speak so many languages and come to the U.S. from so many distinct cultures.

With a high turnover, a United Nations worth of languages and less than two years to educate the students before the test — often far less than two years — casting a principal aside because of a 2 point deficit on the state score seems highly questionable.