Yet another article about the drop in the number of students in the nation's teacher preparation programs. Nationwide, the number has slipped from 725,518 in the 2009-10 school year to 465,536 during the 2013-14 school year. That's a 36 percent drop. The bit of good news is, the downward slide leveled out a bit in 2013-14. The numbers still went down, but at a slower rate.

The enrollment decreases at UA and ASU are similar, though a bit less dramatic. At the UA College of Education, enrollment went from 1,135 in 2009 to 900 in 2013, a 21 percent drop. And if I'm reading the numbers right on the ASU website, the numbers at the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College are down from 3,756 in 2009 to 2,737 in 2013, a 28 percent drop.

None of this bodes well for dealing with the dual problems of filling current classroom vacancies and replacing teachers who will retire or just plain leave the profession over the next few years. It's hard to improve the quality of the teacher workforce, which everyone would like to see, when there aren't enough teachers moving through the teacher preparation pipeline just to take care of current vacancies.

Tucson Unified School District teacher Dustin Williams, one of three hopeful candidates for Pima County superintendent of schools, says he has collected more than the required minimum of signatures to get on the ballot.

In an email, Williams, a Democrat, says his campaign has gathered 1,003 signatures thus far. This election, the county asks Democrats seeking a countywide position to collect at least 848. Signatures are due June 1.

The journey is only beginning with our goal of tripling the minimum number required. We are also collecting donations, canvassing, and meeting with several members of the community on a weekly basis. I'm asking for your support. 

Williams teaches 6th-grade math at Mansfeld Middle School, and says that if he is elected he will make it his goal to visit every school district, classroom and meet students, teachers and administrators countywide. We talked to him a couple of weeks ago, read.


The primary election is  Aug. 30, and the general election is Nov. 8.

This story takes place far away from home, but it's part of a growing trend toward high stakes test skepticism we're seeing in Arizona and around the country.

New York's new State Chancellor of Education is Betty A. Rosa, a former New York City principal and superintendent. Unlike our Superintendent of Public Ed, NY's Chancellor isn't elected by the voters. She was elected by her fellow members of the State Board of Regents, a 17 member board elected by the state legislature. Her predecessor was big on state testing and instituted some of the nation's first Common Core-based tests. He She was also a big believer in using test scores to evaluate teachers. The student failure rate on state testing skyrocketed under his tenure, much like it did with Arizona's new 2015 tests, and the teacher evaluation based on the scores punished teachers of students from low income homes and was unreliable to the point of seeming almost random.

Rosa takes a very different position on tests.

Dr. Rosa has criticized the new, more difficult tests that the state introduced under her predecessor, Merryl H. Tisch, as part of its transition to the Common Core standards. She has suggested that the tests were designed so that many students would fail, giving policy makers a chance to point to a crisis in the state’s schools. On Monday, she said that if she had children in the grades taking the exams, she would have them sit out the tests, as the parents of more than 200,000 students did last year.

At the end of last year, the Regents put a four year moratorium on using student test scores in teacher evaluations.

After a fifteen year run beginning with No Child Left Behind, the national nightmare of our high stakes testing mania may have crested. We may be moving toward a saner view of the value of standardized testing in education. The opt out movement, which is part of the reaction to the overemphasis on testing, is very large in New York and growing across the country. Two bills allowing parents to opt their children out of state testing were knocked down in the Arizona legislature this year, but the issue will keep on popping up. Our new law allowing schools to choose from a cafeteria menu of tests indicates a skepticism toward the one-size-fits-all testing regimen.

Editor's Note: A previous version of this story misgendered Merryl H. Tisch. This version has been corrected. 

The Republic ran a story, picked up by the Star, about a study saying Phoenix is the worst city in the country at retaining its college grads. It turns out the study forgot one minor major detail. Phoenix is the home of the University of Phoenix which has students all over the country. Naturally, lots of them don't end up living in the Phoenix area since they never set foot in the city while they attended college. Take them out of the equation, and Phoenix moves up considerably. It's a terrific example of why results of studies, in education and elsewhere, can't be taken at face value. "Buyer Beware" is always the best policy.

The original study concluded that only 36.3 percent of college grads stayed in the Phoenix area, last in the nation and less half the top rate for large metro areas of 77.7 percent. It's even worse when the study only looks at grads of four year colleges: 18 percent retention for Phoenix, eight points below the nearest city and one quarter the retention rate at the top of the scale.

Here's the problem with the Phoenix numbers.

MAG [Maricopa Association of Governments] claims Brookings used data pulled from LinkedIn profiles to determine where students of Arizona and other institutions were living today. That included all of the online students from University of Phoenix and Grand Canyon University — more than 200,000 students in 2014 alone — into the category of Arizona residents while students.
 
[Anubhav Bagley, MAG’s data guru] said only 8,400 University of Phoenix students of its 187,000 enrollment are Arizonans. Over the past 15 years, University of Arizona and Arizona State University between them graduated over 284,000 students.

The authors of the original study went back and revised the Phoenix data to 56 percent retention for all colleges and 41 percent for four year colleges, moving Phoenix out of the bottom ten metro areas. But they didn't change their original report, they just stuck an "UPDATE" about some "good suggestions" they received at the bottom. It's not referenced in the original, so unless you read the report to the end, you'd never know they revised the numbers. 

In response to this post, Rothwell and I received a number of good suggestions about how to deepen and refine our analysis in the future. Several pointed out that Phoenix is home to the University of Phoenix, with its large online student body, many of whom don’t live in the Phoenix metro. When Rothwell redid the numbers taking this into account, Phoenix's retention rates improved to 56 percent for two- and four-year institutions and 41 percent for four-year institutions.

The Republic ran another article noting the error in the original study. I haven't seen a similar correction in the Star.

Sometimes I see comments on my posts or I hear education talk from friends and others that let me know, lots of people are confused about the difference between district schools, charter schools and private schools. So here's a basic—very basic—description of the three types of schools. There's lots more to say, lots of subtle and not-so-subtle similarities and differences, but these are the basics.

School districts and all the schools inside them are publicly funded. They get a mixture of state, federal and local funds distributed on a per student basis. The students attend for free.

Charter schools are also publicly funded. They also get a mix of government funds—not an identical mix but also allotted on a per student basis—and their students also attend for free, no tuition required. Sometimes charters have students pay fees for some supplies or activities (so do school districts, though generally not as often), and some of them beg, cajole and guilt parents into contributing to the school. But if a child gets in, he or she walks through the front door the first day without having to pay for the privilege. And—this is important—charter schools can't be religious schools.

Private schools are privately funded and privately run educational institutions, and they charge tuition. They can be directly affiliated with any religious denomination. In fact, more than 70 percent of private schools in Arizona and nationwide have a religious affiliation.

On the list of political offenses, this one doesn't rank very high, but hey, I'm an old English teacher, and "Thou Shalt Not Copy" is one of the commandments in my code of classroom conduct. The same commandment applies in the worlds of journalism and publishing.

Ben Carson published an op ed on February 26 about the patriotism of "our brothers and sisters in the Territories of American Samoa, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands.” Trump used the same wording in an op ed he published on March 9. And that's only the beginning. The two columns share about half of their language. Clearly, without any room for doubt, the Trump column lifted specific wording and the general concept from Carson's column. You can see the two columns side by side here.

I'm sure neither Trump nor Carson penned their op eds. I don't know if either of them even bothered to look at what was published under their names. Someone in the campaigns probably decided it was a good idea to pen a column, and some staffer wrote it. Trump picked up Carson staffers when he left the race, so one of them might have done the cut-and-paste from what was already on the Carson hard drive, with a few variations.

Trump's not the first political or academic plagiarist, and he won't be the last. Still, when Joe Biden didn't bother to attribute part of a speech he gave to the original speaker awhile ago, it cost him big time. It might have even cost him a chance at the presidency. Rand Paul got caught copying stuff straight from Wikipedia and other online sources without attribution, but he never got far enough in his presidential bid for it to come back to haunt him. Authors get their hands slapped for this kind of thing and lose prestige and credence which they have to earn back, if they can.

Will the Trump campaign word theft matter? Of course not. Next to the stuff he's gotten away with so far, this is like taking an extra M&M out of a candy bowl without asking first. The guy is good enough, he might even work it into his speeches and get cheers for his efficiency. "Who has time to make sure every word I say is mine? How PC can you get? There's just not enough time. I'm too busy Making America Great Again. U.S.A. U.S.A. U.S.A." (The crowd goes wild.)

In my last post, some comments about University High led me to look at how the school's total enrollment numbers have changed over the years, and that led me to look at changes in the school's ethnic balance. The TUSD website is a statistics-rich environment with detailed numbers about enrollment and attendance starting with the 1996-97 school year and continuing to the present, broken down by gender and ethnicity, school and grade. So I dug into the tables to see what I could find. Here are some stats, with a bit of analysis to follow.

• In 1996-97, UHS had 624 students. In 2013-14, it had 992 students.
• In 1996-97, 431 UHS students were Anglo (69.1 percent) and 111 were Hispanic (17.8 percent). In 2013-14, 493 were Anglo (49.7 percent) and 322 were Hispanic (32.5 percent).

No question, the total number of students at UHS went up over the years, even as the total TUSD student population dropped. The percentage of Hispanic students increased as well. But the district has a far larger percentage of Hispanic students now than in 1996. At the same time, more out-of-district students are attending UHS than previously. That's where the numbers start getting complicated. Basically, the ethnic balance at UHS has changed in pretty much the same way as the ethnic balance in the district, but the number of students who have come to UHS from outside the district has increased. I'll sort the various factors out as well as I can below.

By the way, none of what I'm writing is about the quality of UHS, its curriculum or anything like that. It's only about crunching enrollment numbers to see what I would find.

The latest turn in the dance and duel between TUSD and the decades-old desegregation case is, U.S. District Judge David Bury ruled against three out of four of the district's proposed changes. The background on the changes is so complicated and convoluted, I'm not going to go through the details. Alexis Huicochea describes the decisions in her article in the Star. The short story is, Judge Bury permitted the suggested changes at Drachman Montessori K-6 Magnet School and rejected changes at Borman Elementary, Collier and Fruchthendler Elementary Schools and Sabino High. All the changes involved adding grades to the schools.

Bury's decisions are based on his assessment of whether the changes would help or harm desegregation at TUSD. I hope they lead to more integrated (or desegregated) schools in the district over the long term. If that's what happens, Bury did good. But my concern is that district schools which currently have a more than 70 percent Hispanic population—that's the line at which they're considered segregated—won't end up with more heterogeneous population, and schools with large Anglo populations will lose Anglo students to charter schools and neighboring districts like Vail and Catalina Foothills. If the long term result is fewer Anglo students in TUSD, shrinking both the size and heterogeneity of the district, without a significant increase in desegregation, then the decision is harmful. I fear that's what will happen.

Anyone who presents the TUSD desegregation problem as a simple issue—either that all the district has to do is A, B and C to desegregate the district and everything will get better, or that TUSD should throw up its hands and forget about the whole desegregation thing—is wrong. I've looked at districts across the country to find clear answers for ways to successfully integrate urban districts with a majority of minority students—in other words, districts similar to TUSD—and I haven't found any magic bullets or magic ponies. No one seems to have discovered the formula for doing it well. But TUSD is bound by law and by its educational mission to keep looking for ways to create more heterogeneous schools.

This year, not one but two bills tried to allow parents to opt their children out of high stakes state testing. Both failed. On the other hand, in what I believe is a first in the nation, the legislature put a bill on Ducey's desk to allow schools to choose the state test they give to their students from a menu of options.

Basically, the "Opt Out" question boils down to how important and valuable you believe high stakes testing is. People who think the tests are a vital and accurate measure of student achievement are against allowing students to sit out the test because that messes up the sample. How can you measure the achievement of a given classroom or school unless all the students—or at least 95 percent of them—are tested? Then there are people who think our obsession with yearly high stakes testing is damaging our children's educations. They maintain the tests aren't a valid measure of student learning and achievement, they turn classrooms into teaching-to-the-test factories, and they stigmatize teachers and schools with students whose socioeconomic situations mean most of them will do poorly on the tests. Those people want to encourage parents to opt their children out as a step toward changing or eliminating the current testing regimen. (Full disclosure: I'm an opt out advocate for the reasons mentioned above.)

The state testing menu is a new and untried idea which is backed by most Republicans but has garnered a certain amount of bipartisan support. It goes like this. According to the bill, in addition to the yearly AzMERIT test which is currently required at all public schools, district and charter, "the State Board of Education shall adopt a menu of locally procured achievement tests to measure pupil achievement of the state academic standards." Districts and schools can choose any test from the menu, or they can find a different test and ask the board's permission to use it. The one exception is, if a school has a D or F grade, it has to stick with the AzMERIT exam.

Yesterday I took a look at the amount of money that goes into the classroom in Arizona school districts in general. Today I'm taking a look at TUSD's numbers.

The Auditor General's Report of Arizona School District Spending for Fiscal Year 2015 has a two page spread for every school district in the state. The layouts are all the same, the only thing that changes are the numbers for each district. The TUSD numbers are on pages 392 and 393 if you want to look them over yourself.

The big pie graph, top left, shows the percent of the total district budget spent in various categories. The biggie is Instruction, the classroom component, which is at 48.7 percent for TUSD, well below the state average of 53.6 percent. The rest of the money is spread out over six categories: Administration, Plant operations, Food service, Transportation, Student support and Instructional support. On the second page is a graph showing how the spending percentages changed for the seven categories since 2001. In 2015, TUSD's Administration and Food services spending end up close to where they were in 2001, and the other four non-classroom categories are up between one and two percent. Classroom instruction, on the other hand, is down five percent.

Bottom line, TUSD should spend more in the classroom, no question. Why is the Instruction percentage down since 2001 while other areas either stayed even or increased? It's easy to use those numbers to condemn TUSD for its overall awful-ness or give reasons and rationalizations to explain the numbers. Instead, I want to ask, "Compared to what?" How do TUSD's numbers compare to what other districts are doing?

Each district is compared to what's called a "Peer average," and TUSD doesn't look good in the comparisons. Unfortunately, unless I missed something, the report doesn't name the "peer" districts. If I'm right that the "peers" aren't listed, we're relying on some formula the auditors used without knowing what it is. That being said, TUSD's "Peer average" districts put 56.5 percent of their budgets into instruction, three percent higher than the state average and eight percent over TUSD. Why, or how, are those districts devoting so much more to Instruction? Maybe they're doing a better job with their students than TUSD. Maybe they're better money managers. Or maybe their situations are different enough to explain some of the disparities. Without knowing the districts, I don't have the answer.

I created a head-to-head comparison between TUSD and Catalina Foothills district to see what I could learn from two known local quantities. Cat Foothills is on pages 88 and 89 of the report if you're following along. I chose Cat Foothills before I looked at its numbers, because it's a local district that's on the other end of the school district continuum from TUSD. Unlike TUSD, it's one of the highest performing districts in the state, it has a high income population and its facilities are reasonably new. So how do the percentages stack up? I put them in the table below.