Interested in supporting science education in Tucson? All aboard the Physics Bus!

The Physics Bus is a mobile platform chock full of do-it-yourself exhibits that awaken interest and creativity. We want to launch one out of Tucson and we need your help.

The non profit Physics Factory, started by a group of educators with a sense of adventure, has offered tens of thousands of kids eye-popping, mind-bending experiences in science for over 10 years. Recently, we’ve developed a more effective way of getting kids thinking about physics: we bring a bus full of science for kids to explore extraordinary phenomena with ordinary things.

Piloted in Ithaca, NY, and Gainesville, FL over the past year, our interactive museum-on-wheels has been received with overwhelming enthusiasm and high demand. Now our team in Tucson is eager to launch a Physics Bus Southwest.

The organization has started a crowdfunding campaign to reach their goal of $20,000.

$10,000 buys us a solid bus with wheelchair access and air conditioning
$2,000 gets us insurance, licensing and registration
$3,000 allows us to reclassify it, convert it, and outfit it
$5,000 covers the first year of fuel and volunteer support

They have raised $18,100 so far. Want to help them reach their goal or get some more information? Visit the Physics Bus West website.

The percentage Arizona schools spend in the classroom is down this year, and TUSD's percentage is especially low. You can look at this morning's Howard Fischer/Alexis Huicochea article in the Star which gives an overall look at and analysis of the stats, and you can get more detailed information from the Auditor General's Report of Arizona School District Spending for Fiscal Year 2015 which gives a breakdown of spending in every school district in the state.

The information can be taken apart and put together in any number of ways. The most obvious takeaway is, when less money is allotted per student—and as can't be repeated too often, Arizona is 48th, or lower, in the amount it spends per student—the percentage goes down in the classroom. Fixed costs remain fixed costs. You may be able to trim a bit from what you spend on building maintenance, transportation, food services and the like, but they're stubborn costs. You can't make a school too much colder or warmer to save on energy usage, you can only put off building maintenance so long, you can't make bus transportation much more "efficient" without cutting back on safety and student convenience, and you can't cut back too far on food services without cutting back on safety and nutrition. But you can always put a few more desks in a classroom for a few more students, hold on to outdated textbooks a few years longer, cut back on paper and other consumable supplies—and, of course, cut teacher salaries.

Look at teacher salaries. Arizona's are low. By cheating teachers of the compensation they deserve, we're lowering the amount we spend in the classroom. If we did nothing other than give teachers a salary boost while we kept all other district spending constant, we'd increase the percentage we spend in the classroom. But giving teachers a fair wage means districts have to spend money they don't have, thanks to our deadbeat legislature (#deadbeat).

Then look at class size. More students per class means less money is spent per student on our already-low-paid teachers. For example, if 25 students are in a classroom with a teacher who makes $40,000 a year, that comes to $1,600 per student. With 35 students, the cost goes down to $1,143, or $457 less per student spent on teachers. If we did nothing other than lower the number of students in a class, we'd increase the percentage we spend in the classroom. Add that to a raise for teachers, and the percentage increases still more. But if the state doesn't value education enough to spend closer to what other states spend, low teacher salaries and large classrooms are the inevitable result. You gotta keep costs down somewhere, and all those fixed costs are, well, fixed.

I don't make a habit of posting long passages written by other people, but I did it Friday when I put up Richard Gilman's entire post on how scam private schools will pop up if the Empowerment Scholarship Accounts (aka Vouchers on Steroids) become universally available in Arizona, and I'm doing it today with a large portion of an editorial from the Arizona Republic. Because, if those folks can say it better than I can, I'm happy to give them the floor — or the post, as the case may be.

Over the years, the Republic has done some excellent investigative reporting on various aspects of education in Arizona. This editorial, Education needs don't match lawmaker wants, which links to some of the paper's recent articles, is a continuation of the tradition. After describing students who are in the greatest need of increased educational attention, children living in poverty in general and a large portion of our minority populations in particular, and saying we need to make a concerted effort to improve their educational attainment, the editorial criticizes lawmakers for moving in the opposite direction.

Arizona’s GOP majority Legislature is pushing an expansion of Empowerment Scholarship Accounts, a voucher program that takes money out of public schools to pay for private or church school tuition.

Touted as a way to increase school choice and help low-income students, the current program is most used by students in wealthy districts, reporting by The Republic found.

Arizona’s quest for school choice has resulted in a large number of charter schools. The unintended consequence: charters serve disproportionately fewer Latino students, according to the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting.

Education tax credits, also designed to increase school choice, also fail to deliver for those who most need help. Tax credit money designated for private schools disproportionately benefits well-off families, according to another Republic investigation.

Public school tax credits also tend to go to wealthier schools, where parents can afford the donations.

Now lawmakers are considering what could be a significant blow to efforts to raise the achievement level of Arizona’s poorest and most disadvantaged students.

Last week I wrote about a new report which concludes that charter schools spend far more on administration per student than school districts. According to the report, charters average $1,403 on administrative costs per student and school districts average $628. The higher costs at charters add up to $128 million a year.

To create the report, the authors went through the Annual Financial Reports submitted to the state by all charters and school districts. They put the data on administrative costs per student for all charters and districts into a long table (It begins on page 26 if you want to look at it). I went through the table to find how much each Tucson-area school district spends on administration per student. As I wrote above, the state average for districts is $628. Here's the local district breakdown, from low to high.

Sunnyside: $548
Amphitheater: $610
TUSD: $614
Vail: $666
Marana: $679
Flowing Wells: $684
Catalina Foothills: $807

Interestingly, TUSD, which is regularly accused of having a bloated administration, is the third lowest on the list, just below the state district average.

The report shows that many of the larger charter districts, which should benefit from economies of scale, actually have some of the highest administrative costs (Costs at some of the smaller charters are below the school districts' average cost). BASIS, for instance, spends an average of $2,275 per student on administration, more than 50 percent higher than the charter average. Here are the numbers for the Tucson-area BASIS schools, from low to high.

Oro Valley Primary: $1,952
Tucson North: $1,976
Tucson: $2,075
Oro Valley: $2,456

One final stat from the study: the amount spent on administration relative to classroom spending. School districts spend an average of 22 percent as much on administration as on the classroom. Charters spend 48 percent.

Filmmakers Nicole Franklin and Jai Tigget premiere the fifth installation of their race narrative, Little Brother—which was filmed right here in the Old Pueblo—at the YWCA Tucson this Monday, Feb. 29. The documentary's goal: to remind people that black boys are more than societal stereotypes. 

Filming of Little Brother started back in 2010. Each 15-minute chapter explores black boys' lives—as well as their fears and hopes for the future in various communities, ranging from Camden, New Jersey, to Chicago, to here in Tucson. Franklin says the documentaries highlight race issues in wake of recent police violence aimed at black boys and teenagers, but that she and Tigget didn't originally want to tell these boys' stories for that reason. 

"We gotta give everyone a chance to be aware of their humanity," she said. "We have to give them that acknowledgement—you know, that, 'I really need to understand who you are,'"

Little Brother: Manchild in the Promised Land, set here in the Old Pueblo, tells the untold history and present of Tucson's black boys and illuminates southwest race relations at large, according to Franklin, who directed this chapter of the docu-series. She says people often forget that black men and women in the southwest were pioneers and conquistadors, but that Tucson Heritage Tours teach this to the local young black community. 

"Our history doesn’t have to be one where we’re just slaves—which is true—but there's so many different aspects to our history. Different colors, different riches. It's just something we can highlight, especially in this chapter." 

The latest news on the Empowerment Scholarship Accounts [aka Vouchers on Steroids] vouchers-for-everyone bill is that it's stuck in the House, temporarily at least. Republican leadership postponed debate on HB 2482. They know the Democrats are against it, but the problem is, some Republicans are concerned about it as well. So until they can scare up the needed votes—and I use the term "scare up" advisedly—the bill is on hold.

But I want to bring up one more thought on the ramifications of offering vouchers for all Arizona children, using a post by Richard Gilman from his Bringing Up Arizona website, an excellent place to go for information and ideas about the state of Arizona education.

I mentioned earlier that the greatest beneficiaries of the vouchers-for-all bill are people of means. The ESA voucher for an average student is between $3,500 and $5,000 a year, not enough to pay tuition and expenses at most of the better quality private schools but plenty to give upper middle class and wealthy parents a way to lower their tuition costs on the taxpayer dime. In his post, Gilman covers another aspect of the bill: that it will encourage shady operators to create private schools on the cheap, lure in the children of unsuspecting parents, then pocket as much voucher money as they can. That's what happened, by the way, when Washington, D.C., offered private school vouchers. A similar problem arises whenever there's a rapid expansion of charter schools. A few years back, for example, horror stories were coming out of Florida about the unsafe conditions and nearly complete lack of education at a number of charters.
Here's Richard Gilman's take.

THIS IS AN OPPORTUNITY YOU DON’T WANT TO MISS

Psst, want to make a quick killing? Go into the school business with me. The state’s making it just too good to pass up.

They’re going to put well over $3,000 of taxpayer money in every kid’s backpack, tell his parents nothing more than he needs to get instruction in reading, grammar, mathematics, social sciences and science, and send him out to spend the money on whatever “education” provider he chooses.

Here’s the best part. All you and I have to do to collect this kid’s check is call ourselves a “school,” set up an Arizona address, and accept every child who walks through the door regardless of his race, color, or national origin. And believe me, we’re going to want to lift the money off of any and every of the little snot noses even if they come from New Zealand.

That’s all we have to do. No, really. That’s all there is. We don’t need accreditation or certification or any of that other education crap. You’re no educator, and neither am I. But what difference does that make? The state couldn’t care.

All we need right now is for our buddies in the Legislature to pass this bill they’ve got making tax money available to every kid.

To Greg Berger, reporter and filmmaker with the Mexico-based Narco News, there is no such thing as neutral journalism. There never has been and there never will be.

He runs The School of Authentic Journalism out of Cuernavaca, Morelos, about an hour from Mexico City. It's pretty much the only program in the world that founds itself in the collaboration that burns between media outlets and social movements. The Tucson Weekly's very own editor, Mari Herreras, is an alumni.

"Those of us who have practiced journalism of any kind, believe in supporting social movements and democracy from below," Berger says. "Stories have a big impact with what happens with [a] movement; how movements grow, who is attracted to it, how it gets defined in the court of public opinion."

Berger's voice lights up when he speaks about the school and what it contributes to journalists, social advocates, and the audience overall, around the world. Through the years, the school has trained hundreds of people from the U.S., Latin America and as far as Egypt. 

The school was founded in 2002. Since the inception, it's had shaky finances—as many grassroots programs that do not rely on corporate money do. The school has had its share of big donors and little donors. It went into a hiatus from 2004 until 2010, which is when the school got a major boost from donors. But that money's been invested, and last year was the first time after that six-year recession that the school created a Kickstarter campaign to rely on. 

In the next few days, the school needs everyone's help more than anything. They are trying to raise $30,000 to host its 2016 program.

They are not quiet half way there, with roughly $13,000 and seven more days to go. The deadline is March 4. It makes Berger nervous, but all he can do is keep pushing. If anything, his passion for what he does fuels the hustling mind.

"We have people doing freestyle rap battles on the streets of Mexico City to raise money for the school, people hosting brunches in New York," he says. Berger's is a New Yorker by birth. He's lived in Mexico for more than a decade now. "We don't just want money from people, we want to bring people into the stories we are doing."

Help the school out and be a part of a movement that pushes for pure, humanistic journalism. 

Visit the school's Kickstarter page. Anything counts.

An exhaustive new study by the Grand Canyon Institute and Arizonans for Charter School Accountability concludes that many charter schools spend far more on administrative costs per student than school districts. The higher costs amount to $128 million a year. To arrive at their conclusions, the researchers looked at every Arizona charter school and school district's finances by poring over the Annual Financial Reports they submitted to the state for the 2014-15 school year, which means the results are based on the school or school district's own reporting.

I've looked over the AFRs of individual schools a number of times—they can be found on the Department of Education's website—and analyzed the kind of information used in the study, but I've never gone through the laborious task of compiling AFR data for all Arizona schools. As a result of the thoroughness of the study, the conclusions it reaches can be confirmed by looking over the data. Some tables in the study pull out data on specific school districts, charter schools and charter school chains, and others include information about every district and charter school in the state, allowing readers and researchers to check the study's conclusions and use the data for further research.

This is a 64 page report filled with data and analysis, far too much information for one post, so I'll probably be digging into it in further posts. But for now, here is some of the information highlighted by the authors:

• Charters spend an average of $1403 per student on administration. School districts average $628, less than half.

• School district spending is analyzed by the state Auditor General, but charter school spending is not. The state Charter School Board is the only agency responsible for the oversight of charter schools, and it doesn't analyze charter school spending.

• Though smaller charters would be expected to have larger administrative costs because of the administrative inefficiency common to smaller institutions, in fact, some of the large charter school chains are the biggest spenders on administration per student.

• BASIS charter schools are especially big spenders on administration. However, since most of their funds end up at BASIS.ed, a for-profit Education Management Organization, we have no way of knowing how that money is spent because it's hidden behind a for-profit firewall. 

A clear takeaway from the study is that the state needs greater transparency from its charters and also needs to exercise greater oversight. This study of administrative costs is just one example of areas where we know too little about how charter schools operate.

"You get a private school voucher! You get a private school voucher! You get a private school voucher!" (h/t Oprah). That's what the bill passed by the Arizona Senate sounds like to most people's ears. If the bill becomes law, in a few years every child in the state will be eligible to receive an Empowerment Scholarship Account voucher. But it's more complicated than that. Let's look at the bill and its ramifications in a bit of detail.

First, the ESAs aren't simply vouchers for private schools, where the state picks up the cost of private school tuition, or a portion of the cost. They're vouchers for every child who isn't enrolled in a publicly funded school, district or charter. As well as children attending private schools, it includes a wide variety of home schoolers. So long as the children aren't enrolled in publicly funded schools, parents can get accounts containing taxpayer money they can draw on for any approved educational cost. That includes private school tuition, of course, but it can also include textbooks, educational therapies or services, tutoring, tuition for a learning program, the cost of tests such as the SAT and so on. If parents want to be entirely responsible for their children's educations or if they want to create a cafeteria-style, pick-from-the-menu education strategy which includes tutoring, individual classes and so on, the ESA lets them do that, all on the taxpayer dime. If any money is left over at the end of the year—and many home schoolers would have lots of money left over—it can be rolled over year after year. Anything left at the end of K-12 can be used for college. The idea of subsidizing home schooling, and even encouraging home schooling by dangling the prospect of having money left over to pay for college, creates all kinds of frightening scenarios in which parents who aren't equipped educationally or emotionally to educate their kids will be lured into trying to provide education on the cheap by the prospect of subsidized college education.

Next, to qualify for an ESA, a child must spend at least 100 days at a publicly funded school. That's a little more than half of a 180 day school year. So, put your five year old in a public kindergarten, leave the child there for the whole year or just the first hundred days, and you get the next twelve years of non-public education paid for by the taxpayer.

But how much will the state pay for each child? That's a phenomenally important question. The answer is somewhere between $3,500 and $5,000 per year for most children, based on estimates I've read. Children who need educational assistance beyond the normal classroom—they have physical or mental handicaps, they qualify for ELL, etc.—get more money allotted to them, just as they do in all publicly funded schools. It can be upwards to $20,000 a year, and maybe more in some cases.

I taught To Kill a Mockingbird many times, and every time I reread it, I choked up. It's a wonderful, evocative piece of literature. As for the movie, forget about it. I lost it over and over as I watched; it's almost unbearably poignant during the last half hour. I would probably have a similar emotional meltdown with the book or the movie today, but that good, warm, self-satisfied feeling I used to experience at the end would be gone. Looking at Mockingbird from the perspective I have today, especially after reading Harper's first novel, Go Set a Watchman, which was just published recently, I find the book to be both paternalistic and misleading. If I were still teaching, more than likely, Mockingbird would not be part of my curriculum.

What a wonderful guy Atticus Finch is in Mockingbird! He's a lawyer who takes the case of a poor black man and defends him against a false rape charge. The loss in court makes his struggle to right the wrongs of society all the more noble. He's hated by the town's white racists and beloved by the black community, and by Scout, his very young daughter who idolizes her father and narrates the book through a child's innocent eyes. To me, the book always read like a parable for our time, about how good white people should act and how, in spite of all the losses, we must continue to fight until racism is no longer the written and unwritten law of the land.

But the book is not a parable of our time. It's a tale out of the 1930s. At the time, Atticus could defend the black community of Maycomb County and not worry that they might attend Scout and Jem's school or move in next door. His nobility was built on the well established arm's distance between Maycomb's black and white communities. I wouldn't have been able to say that for certain a few years ago, but Harper Lee told us it's true in the novel she wrote before she began Mockingbird.

Go Set a Watchman took place in the 1950s when it was written, during the beginnings of the modern civil rights struggles. In that book a grown up Scout, who, like Harper Lee herself, had moved to New York and returned to her home town for a visit, is horrified to find that her beloved father has joined with the KKK, and he was one of many among the town's civic leaders. Atticus despises the NAACP and its lawyers for coming into southern communities and stirring up trouble. He doesn't want black children going to white children's schools. He wants things to stay as they were back in the 1930s when he could defend members of the black community and rest assured they would still "know their place." His depression-era style of tolerance and acceptance had little to do with the genuine social change which was being demanded by civil rights leaders in the 1950s.