Bill Buckmaster has an education-heavy lineup for his Monday show, at noon on KVOI, 1030 AM on your radio dial (It streams live online as well). The first half is a regular Face-off feature with Jeff Rogers and Bruce Ash, two men who never need to be told, "Say what you mean." They'll be talking about SB 1062, the Turn Away The Gays bill, and Common Core.

I'll be on the second half doing my more-or-less-monthly Blogger Beat segment. Bill and I will talk mainly about education, though I never know what else will come up.

State Senator Steve Yarbrough has been sucking at the public teat for years, making loads of money with his various School Tuition Organizations (STO) and related businesses, all of which get their funding from Tuition Tax Credits — aka backdoor vouchers. The courts say the tax credits are legal even though state supported vouchers are unconstitutional, because the money goes straight to the STOs. But at tax time, the taxpayers get 100% of their "donations" back as refunds, making it a distinction without a financial difference, especially to Yarbrough who is living large off these publicly-funded programs.

Now Yarbrough is working actively to cut public schools' already scandalously low funding with three bills which would make it harder for school districts to pass bonds and overrides — SB1182, SB1254 and SB1287.

I co-host a cable access TV show, Education: The Rest of the Story, with Ann-Eve Pedersen, who is President of the Arizona Education Network and understands school finances better than anyone I know. The 5 minute video above is a terrific tutorial on the bills and how they will hurt schools if they pass.

• Image courtesy of shutterstock.com

TUSD hired a group of five consultants to help it develop a five-year strategic plan. The hiring process has earned the district two days of bad press in the Star (here and here) and put a cloud over Superintendent H.T. Sanchez's head. And rightly so. There are questions that need to be answered. Whether the cloud results in a light sprinkle or a thunderstorm remains to be seen.

I only know what I’ve read about possible conflicts of interest in the Star, so I’m not going to weigh in on that issue. But I do want to look at some problems with the consultants themselves — two in particular, Cathy Mincberg and Terry Abbott. Their backgrounds are inextricably linked to the fortunes of Rod Paige. He was the superintendent of the Houston School District who went on to be George W. Bush's Secretary of Education. During Paige's tenure in Houston, the district used deceptive practices to inflate student scores on high stakes tests. Before the problems were widely publicized, the press was marveling at the “Houston miracle.” When Paige moved to D.C. with Bush, he was instrumental in creating and promoting No Child Left Behind, based in large part on the bogus Houston model.

The two consultants are also linked to some of the heavily funded groups that form a major part of the middle-right-to-a-little-left contingent of the conservative “education reform” movement.

Education consultants bring their own agenda to the table, which often has more influence on their conclusions than the feedback they receive from the district and the community. These two consultants who promoted the failed educational policies of Rod Paige and the Bush administration (along with a third Texas educational heavy hitter on the team, Mike Moses) should not be the people advising TUSD about its future.

Whether or not there were improprieties in the hiring of the consultants, it was a botched job. TUSD should find a way to cancel the consulting contracts, then cancel the February 25 meeting with the community, after which it can restart the search for consultants using greater transparency and deeper research into the people being hired.

Here’s a look at the two most troubling members of the consulting team, Cathy Mincberg and Terry Abbott.

• Danny Lyon ©Dektol.wordpress.com, courtesy Etherton Gallery

In my high school teaching days, I did a ten year stint as a photography/photojournalism teacher, which I enjoyed thoroughly (I love the smell of Fixer in the morning!). So going to the Etherton Gallery, 135 S. 6th Ave., is always a pleasure. The photos regularly on display in the back areas of the gallery make my knees weak — some of the greatest photos in the history of the medium, the kind of work you travel to fine museums to see. They're always worth a visit.

Through March 15, you can see a stirring exhibit in the main gallery area, "Danny Lyon: Memories of the Southern Civil Rights Movement." Timed, I'm sure, for Black History Month, these are photos from 1962-1964 taken by the first staff photographer for the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), a 20 year old Danny Lyon. Gripping work.

You can see a few of the photos after the break.

I hosted Robin Hiller's radio show, State of Education, Saturday. I survived my first hosting gig without seriously embarrassing myself (wipe sweat from brow, sigh with relief) and actually enjoyed myself.

My guests were Rep. Bruce Wheeler, LD-10 (Central and Eastern Tucson) and Victoria Steele, LD-9 (Mid Tucson through the Foothills and Casa Adobes).

Wheeler was on the first half of the show. He talked about Empowerment Savings Accounts, whose name should be "Vouchers on Steroids" and discussed his comment quoted in the press: “There are ideologues in this state, unfortunately in high positions, who definitely are out to dismantle public education."

Steele was on the second half (starting around the 26 minute mark) and discussed her Mental Health First Aid legislation and related issues.

Listen to the show after the break.

Saturday from 12-1pm, I'll be guest hosting Robin Hiller's State of Education radio program on KVOI, 1030 AM. You can call in at 520-790-2040.

I have two Tucson-area legislators scheduled to talk with me.

Bruce Wheeler from Legislative District 10 (Central and Eastern Tucson) will be talking about the education bills working their way through the legislature, most specifically the proposed expansion of the voucher program, Empowerment Scholarship Accounts. In Tim Steller's Friday column, Wheeler is quoted saying, “There are ideologues in this state, unfortunately in high positions, who definitely are out to dismantle public education." I've heard that said in private, but this may be the only time I've heard an elected official say it for the record.

Victoria Steele from Legislative District 9 (Mid Tucson through the Foothills and Casa Adobes) will talk about her bills for Mental Health Awareness and her bill to extend the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) Ratification deadline.

• Image courtesy of shutterstock.com

Let’s take a look at the group — actually the groups — behind the robocall Ed Supe John Huppenthal made advising parents to send their kids to private schools on the taxpayer dime — in other words, in support of vouchers. The whole story deserves one of those complicated diagrams with names and arrows and circles, but I’m not a diagram guy, so I’m going to try and draw the picture in words.

The short version is this: Huppenthal recorded a robocall giving parents the “great news” that they can take advantage of “alternative education choices for their children, including private school. That’s right! You may be able to send your child to private school for free!”

It’s part of a $250,000 PR push for Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Accounts (ESA) paid for by Alliance for School Choice. Its partner organization, American Federation for Children, spent $63,000 on an independent expenditure campaign to help Hupp win his 2010 election. It's no surprise the Alliance for School Choice has Hupp on speed dial.

From there the story gets more complicated, involving the Walton family which owns Walmart, Betsy DeVos who is part of the Amway fortune, and a faux-Democratic group that pours money into voucher-friendly Democrats’ campaigns. You’ve heard tell of the vast right wing conspiracy. This is the story of a small part of the vast, well funded conservative/corporate “education reform” movement which spends hundreds of millions of dollars a year to get out its pro-voucher, pro-privatization message.

It's an oldie but a goodie, brought back from 2010 in Wednesday's article from the Capitol Times, Controversy swirls around Huppenthal’s pitch for private schools. When he was a state senator, John Huppenthal introduced legislation that would have put the subject of vouchers to a public vote. First, it would repeal language in the state constitution prohibiting the use of public money for religious instruction, then it would create a voucher program for students at schools designated as failing. If anyone had a question about where our Ed Supe stands on vouchers, this should put it to rest.

In his justification for the 2010 legislation, Hupp used a line of reasoning which is, to be polite, unbecoming a future superintendent of public instruction.

“Obviously you’re not getting an education at a failing school so it’s probably incorrect to even call it a public school. A failing school is not really a school.”

Not really a school.

All those teachers working their tails off in difficult circumstances aren't really teachers, I guess. Same with the administrators. In Huppenthal's vision, it's a building filled with losers who are beyond help. Absolutely no education going on there.

A fascinating story from Brahm Resnick on a robocall that went out using the voice of Arizona's Superintendent of Public Instruction John Huppenthal to remind parents of the state's Empowerment Scholarship Accounts and how they can be used to pay for private schools. Because of course he doesn't, Huppenthal fails to see an issue being the guy who oversees the state's public education system and meanwhile shilling for funds to be pulled from that system to send students to private schools. As you might imagine, some within the public school community see things otherwise, as does Huppenthal's likely opponent in his forthcoming campaign to be re-elected:

Warning: This is going to get pretty wonky, so now is the time to flee if you don't want dive deep into the weeds of educational theory. That being said . . .

The Star published an AP article, High-tech RI project tackles low-income word gap. It's an interesting piece about a project in Rhode Island "that aims to boost the language skills of low-income children by using recorders to count the words they’re exposed to." That may or may not be a valid way of increasing children's school readiness, I'm not sure. But pay close attention to the next quote.

Studies show poorer children enter school having heard millions of fewer words than more affluent children, a disadvantage that can limit future educational success and occupational opportunities.

[snip]

A landmark 1995 study found that children in families receiving welfare hear less than one-third as many words per hour as their more affluent peers, and they reach age 4 having heard 32 million fewer words than children from wealthier families. Students who begin school with this disadvantage are less likely to succeed academically or professionally later in life.

First, don't accept any statement that begins with the words, "Studies show." Studies don't "show" anything. They indicate. They conclude based on an analysis of the data collected. No study should be taken at face value, and that's doubly true of educational studies.

Second, there's a serious question whether the much-quoted "landmark study" referred to here is worth much.

I had always accepted the validity of the study about the number of words spoken to children in different socioeconomic groups until a friend, Carole Edelsky, Professor Emerita at Arizona State University whose area of specialty is language and education, told me I should question the findings. She pointed me to an article that takes the original study to task. Edelsky is right. The study was poorly constructed and the conclusions demonstrate a potentially destructive racial, ethnic and economic bias.