With Gov. Ducey back in Phoenix after traveling to Palm Springs to kiss the rings of his dark money benefactors Charles and David Koch—"Geez, guys, I can't thank you enough for all you've done to help me get elected, and I need to know what you want me to do next."—it's a good time to take a look backward, then forward at Ducey's record on education funding. Rumor has it Ducey has visited the chiropractor to fix the repetitive muscle strain he caused by patting himself on the back so often, congratulating himself for his plan to give students money from their [state land] trust fund to pay 70 percent of what he and his fellow Republicans owe them, by law. And he's been known to say the added funding is only a first step. So what's his next step?

Let's begin by looking backward. In 2012, Proposition 204 gave the voters a chance to put in a sales tax that would have added nearly a billion dollars a year to education funding. Ducey wasn't only against it. He headed the No on Prop. 204 campaign, which got a $500,000 boost from the Koch Brothers. Ducey said in a tweet, "Anyone who READS Prop. 204 will see NO MONEY goes to children's education." Really? No money? Where does all that money go? According to Ducey, it goes "to unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats." What will those bureaucrats do with all that money? Ducey doesn't say, but he says firmly, "The money will not go to the teachers and classrooms, where it is needed most."

Lies, lies, lies. The money would have gone predominantly to teachers and classrooms. Contrary to popular belief, promoted and encouraged by Arizona's public school haters, we don't spend lavishly on administration. In fact, we have the lowest per student cost for administration of any state in the nation. If you want to find Arizona schools that spend a lavishly on administration, you have to go to charter schools, which devote far more of their budgets to "bureaucrats" than school districts. But something tells me Ducey wasn't talking about wasteful spending at charters.

So. Ducey stood strongly and publicly against a proposition that would have added three times as much to education funding as the $300 million a year he wants to steal from the children of tomorrow to spend on the children of today. Ducey's $300 million plan would move us from 48th place in per student funding to . . . 48th place. We wouldn't budge. That billion dollars he fought against would take us to 45th place, tied with Tennessee. That would still leave 90 percent of the states spending more than us, but it would make a significant difference, improving students' educations and increasing teacher retention by raising teacher salaries, increasing classroom supplies and lowering class size. The kids would have greater opportunities to learn, and the teachers would have a more fulfilling experience every day in the classroom and a more pleasant experience when they got their paychecks at the end of the month. Ducey's plan? It would put us back where we were in 2009—underfunded—when the Republicans illegally cut education funding. (Actually, it would only get us to 70 percent of where we were in 2009. Only a deadbeat dad [#deadbeat] would say he supports his kids by using their own money to restore 70 percent of what he's taken away [I'm sorry, have I said that before? If so, it bears repeating, again and again and again and . . .])

Today's post in honor of School Choice Week: State proposals and lawsuits in Minnesota look at charter schools and desegregation. In general, segregation has increased in our public schools over the last few decades around the country, but charter schools tend to be more segregated than district schools. Should this be considered a civil rights issue? That's the question being raised in Minnesota.

The Minnesota Department of Education is considering making charter schools create integration plans if they have large minority populations. The reporting I've read on the issue is confusing. Does it address charters with large white populations as well as those with large black populations? Is it more concerned with academic progress or desegregation? Whatever the specifics, the proposal is creating heated discussion in the state.

At the same time, a lawsuit accuses the state of allowing greater segregation in its public schools and maintains that charter schools have made the problem worse. A graph in the article shows 65 percent of black charter school students attend schools that are 90 percent minority, compared to 15 percent of students in district schools; 28 percent of white students are in charters with less than 10 percent minority students, compared to 12 percent in district schools.

My research in Tucson also shows that segregation is higher in charter schools than in TUSD. TUSD's student population is 64 percent Hispanic and 21 percent Anglo, which is a reflection of the population of school-aged children in the city. Tucson charters are 53 percent Hispanic and 37 percent Anglo, meaning that charters attract a disproportionate number of Anglo students. In Tucson charters, 35 percent of students attend schools with fewer than 30 percent Hispanic students, compared with 2 percent of TUSD students.

Minnesotans arguing against using desegregation rules with charter schools say that parents make active choices to send their children to charter schools, so it's not the state's concern if parents choose to send their children to schools with high percentages of white or black students.

School desegregation remains a hot-button issue across the country, not just here in Tucson, and the importance of charters in the deseg equation is receiving increased attention.

Today's post in honor of School Choice Week: A Tennessee experiment in improving low-performing schools using a state run, charter-heavy "Achievement School District" (ASD) and a district-run school turnaround model (iZone). Recent research indicates the ASD schools had no overall effect while students in the iZone schools showed measurable improvement.

Tennessee received $500 million in federal Race to the Top money to improve its lowest performing schools and doled it out to various improvement models. According to a Vanderbilt Peabody College study, where the districts created turnaround iZone schools, they saw "moderate to large positive effects in Reading, Math and Science with strong consistent effects across subjects for Memphis iZone schools." The ASD schools had years with gains and years with losses, ending up with no overall improvement.

Democrats in the Tennessee state legislature are using data from the Vanderbilt study to try and close the Achievement School District and turn the schools back to the districts, which will have the option of keeping them as charter schools or revoking the charter agreements.

In honor of School Choice Week (yes, that's really a thing), I'll be writing a few posts about charter schools. Today' post: The Walton Family Foundation plans to spend $1 billion on charter schools and other items on the school choice menu over the next five years.

Don't worry about the foundation funded by the Walmart fortune going broke spending all that money. It's already putting out about $200 million a year to promote the privatization/"education reform" agenda. Over the years, about one-quarter of the nation's charter schools have been recipients of Walton Foundation startup money. The foundation may be deciding to focus more of its regular expenditures on the charter sector, or maybe it's planning to pitch in a little more on top of what it's already giving.

The Foundation says it's planning to target low income communities in urban areas like Los Angeles and new Orleans, meaning it has a dual purpose of expanding charters in places like L.A. (the Waltons aren't the only philanthropists working on that, they have company) and tweaking the program in places like New Orleans which are already dominated by charters.

Which makes me wonder. Lots of big-bucks philanthropists along with mid-level players like hedge fund multi-millionaires and billionaires (yes, in today's wonderful world of growing income inequality, just having a billion or two makes you a minor player) are giving lots and lots of money to charters and the groups that support them. Yet one of the original selling points for charter schools was that they can do more than the bloated school districts, with their administrative overload and teacher union bosses, with less money. But if you look at the charters that get press for their accomplishments (some deserved, some not), they all get money beyond their state allotments, sometimes lots of it. Do charters, even successful charters, have any right to claim they're getting more educational bang for the buck, or are they proof that you can't do education on the cheap?

A new bill in the Arizona legislature would make it a felony for anyone to collect mail-in ballots and drop them off at a polling place. Because, Voter Fraud.

Now, there's plenty of evidence no evidence whatsoever of voter fraud when people pick up ballots. None. People could be sorting through the ballots they pick up and throwing some of them away, but, no evidence.

However, one thing is indisputable, according to Rep. J.D. Mesnard, R-Chandler.

“What is indisputable is that many people believe it’s happening,” he said. “You can’t really argue with that. And I think that matters.”

Nope, can't argue with that. Some people believe it's happening. And that's good enough for me J.D. Mesnard.

There you have it. When you're a Republican, facts don't matter. It's what some people think, with absolutely no evidence, that matters. I could go down the long list of faith-based Republican "facts," but why bother?

A "Comic Stylings of J.D. Mesnard" Bonus Feature: Back in 2009, Mesnard was working for Senate Republicans as Staff Policy Advisor. He put out a delightfully deceptive list of facts showing that Arizona's education funding was just fine, thank you. The list had lots of comic moments, but this one is my favorite.

We are 26th in funding per classroom of students.

Not bad, eh? 26th. Right in the middle. How dare anyone say we don't support our kids' educations?

Let's see, how do you compute the "funding per classroom of students"? You count the number of kids in a classroom and multiply it by the amount of funding per student. So every time you add a student, you increase the "funding per classroom." At the time, Arizona was 50th in student-teacher ratio, meaning we had more students in each class than any other state in the nation.

I don't know why Mesnard didn't take the next step and recommend we put ten more kids in every class so we could be NUMBER ONE IN FUNDING PER CLASSROOM OF STUDENTS! (We're Number One! We're Number One! We're Number One! )

Here's the background. Gov. Ducey wants us to vote in $300 million a year to fund K-12 schools. His plan is controversial because he wants to use money from the state land trust and put in all kinds of economic triggers that could cut the extra funding back to zero. And it's money the state already owes the schools by court order—actually only 70 percent of what the state owes. So Ducey shouldn't be patting himself on the back proclaiming he supports education—which, of course, hasn't stopped him from going on a 24/7 "I support education" public back patting tour.

But for now, let's put everything aside but that one figure: $300 million added to school funding.

Money matters in education despite protests to the contrary from the "Don't throw money at education" crowd. And our per student funding level is very low compared to most other states. The census puts us in 49th place. Bottom line, we need more funding.

How much more? I went through the figures in a post last week, so I won't repeat the details here. The fact is, if we want to reach 46th place in per student funding, tied with Tennessee, we need to add a billion dollars a year. Let me say that again. If we want to move up three notches and only have 45 states spend more money to educate each of their children than we do instead of the current 48, we need to increase our total K-12 spending by $1 billion a year. Including the $300 million Ducey is recommending, we have another $700 million to come up with.

No matter how you play with our current surplus and the rainy day fund, there's no way Arizona can add $700 million a year to its education budget and sustain it year after year. Yet somehow, other states manage to spend considerably more than we do, even states with similar average incomes and poverty levels, so it's not ridiculous to say we can do it as well. But there's only one way to make the numbers work, unless you believe in magic ponies. Raise taxes.

There it is, the dreaded T word.

I'm not expecting to get any love from Ducey and the rest of the Republican office holders for my suggestion that we raise taxes. But the sad thing is, Democrats don't think much of the idea either, or at least that's what they say in public. When Democratic legislators held a press conference before Ducey's State of the State Address, they explained how to raise school funding without raising taxes, because as everyone knows, you shouldn't be for higher taxes. How do we know that? Because Republicans and Democrats both tell us all the time, that's how. Democrats, are supposed to believe in science, facts and basic arithmetic, not magic ponies, and they say correctly, we need more funding, not just for schools but for child services and road repair and other things we've been slighting for years, but they say they can do it without raising taxes. True, Democrats want to bring in a little more money—not nearly enough, but a little more—by ending some tax breaks. But new taxes? Who needs 'em?

I hadn't revisited Dr. Faustus by Shakespeare contemporary Christopher Marlowe since I read it as a high school junior, but I often think of it when I walk down the produce aisle in winter and see fresh grapes and berries on display. After my most recent visit to Sprouts, I decided to take my first look at the play in decades to see if my memory was accurate. Turns out it was.

I remember two things from my high school reading of "Dr. Faustus," which retells the old legend of a doctor who sells his soul to the Devil in exchange for power and knowledge. I remember the first lines of a passage I had to memorize, where Dr. Faustus asks Mephistopheles to conjure up Helen of Troy. On seeing her, he says,

Was this the face that launch'd a thousand ships,
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium—
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.

And I remember a brief scene where Faustus is showing off, using his devilish powers to perform parlor tricks for a Duke and Duchess. The Duchess asks for a dish of grapes even though it's the dead of winter. No mortal could produce fresh grapes at that time of year, but Mephistopheles leaves and returns a moment later with the fruit, which the Duchess says are "the sweetest grapes that e’er I tasted." When the Duke asks how he did it, Faustus replies, Mephistopheles sped to the far east where it was summer and brought back the grapes.

Arizona's Superintendent of Public Instruction doesn't have much power or authority. An Ed Supe can work with the legislature to pass legislation, like Huppenthal did putting an anti-Mexican American Studies statute on the books, then declaring TUSD's MAS program out of compliance and demanding that it be dismantled (Douglas has done nothing similar, and I dearly hope she never does), but it's the legislature and the governor-appointed State Board of Education that actually make the big education-related decisions. So there's not much sense grading Douglas on how much she's actually accomplished during her tenure. Instead, I want to look at how she did in her recent ascension to the bully pulpit in her State of Education Address. Let's look at the positives, negatives and neutrals in order, one by one.

⬆️ "For education, it is too early to tell if we are only spending enough money to settle a lawsuit and temporarily placate the public, or if we are seriously taking the first step to building the best education system in the nation, right here in Arizona." Absolutely right. This legislative session will let us know if Ducey and his legislative enablers hope to "placate the public" by paying 70 cents on the dollar on what they owe the schools by law or plan to increase the K-12 budget in a more substantial way.

⬆️ "During my first year in office I saw firsthand the barriers keeping many of our children from an excellent education." Yes, there are barriers to education, and Douglas has done a credible job of describing them during her tenure.

↔️ "But there is reason to be cautiously optimistic." I wish I could agree, but since Douglas said "cautious," not just "optimistic," I'll give this a neutral rating.

⬆️ "AZ Kids Can’t Afford to Wait! turns voter feedback into actionable proposals to improve Arizona’s education system." The document Douglas put together had lots of "actionable proposals" which are generally sensible and reflect comments and suggestions from people across the educational spectrum. It's more of an educational document than a political document, which is a good thing.

⬆️ "While on my We Are Listening tour, the call for more education funding was loud and clear. Arizonans asked me to fight for more money for our classroom teachers. It didn’t matter if the attendees were urban or rural, conservative or liberal, or Republican, Independent or Democrat―no other topic came close in terms of the volume of feedback I received." Recent polls indicate that a majority of Arizonans think we should raise teacher salaries. And they're right, we should.

⬆️ "In response to that clear message from the people of Arizona, in September I called for an immediate appropriation of $400 million for this fiscal year to go to classroom teacher salaries and classroom size reduction." Good proposal. It's worth noting that it's more than the $300 million-plus in Ducey's proposal, and Douglas is only talking about teacher salaries and classroom size. She's not saying it's enough to cover all our educational needs—unlike Ducey, who says less than what Douglas proposed is plenty enough.

Gov. Ducey wants to add something like $300 million a year to K-12 funding, pending approval from voters. For the moment, let's forget about all the problems involved in using the students' trust fund money to cover the tab and adding all kinds of triggers which could mean the money would stop in a few years. Let's just look at that number, $300 million a year.

That sounds like a lot of money to put into our schools, $300 million. The first thing to remember is, it's not new money. It's the amount the legislature took away from our schools in 2009. That's what the courts say we need to bring us back to where we were before the 2008 recession—and it's really only 70 percent, not the whole amount. But still, $300 million. Sounds like a lot of money. Unfortunately, in terms of what we spend per student on K-12 education compared to other states, it's not much at all.

Let me explain Arizona's education funding situation in a way that even an English teacher like me can understand.

Arizona has a million students in K-12 public schools, give or take. A million students. So if the lege says, "Here's a million dollar education present kids, enjoy!" that means each student gets a crisp, new dollar bill. "Buy yourself a dollar meal at McDonalds, kid, you deserve it. If you want fries or a drink with that, you're on your own."

That's what a million dollars is worth when it's spread out over all our public school students. That's our starting point. Each million equals one dollar per student.

So, Ducey's $300 million proposal amounts to $300 per student. As a friend of mine used to say, that's better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, but when schools need to replace aging educational materials and provide materials they've had to cut, fix their under-maintained buildings and buses, lower class size and raise teacher salaries, $300 per student doesn't stretch very far.

So what do we need? What's a reasonable figure that would help Arizona dig itself out of its education underfunding, give students the resources they need and give teachers the salaries they deserve, enough to keep them from fleeing the profession?

Ducey can spin his budget priorities however he wants in his pronouncements, but a budget is a moral document. It indicates what you value. And Ducey, contrary to his pronouncements, does not value education, or children in general, especially poor children.

Lots of ink and pixels have been spilled talking about Ducey's proposed budget, its priorities and deceptions. I'm going to narrow-focus on his statements about K-12 education versus his actual budget proposals, but there's so much more to look at. Howard Fischer gave us a sense of the whole budget picture in his opening paragraph about the budget plan Saturday:

Gov. Doug Ducey proposes to restore less than 10 percent of what was cut last year from state universities, give the Department of Child Safety just two-thirds of what it requested, but add another 2,000 beds to house inmates.

Today, Fischer notes that Ducey has decided to "ignore what, for the moment, is free money from the federal government to provide care to more of the children of the working poor." If you're turning down free money from the Feds for children's health, knowing you can cancel the program in the future if you think it's costing the state too much money, that speaks volumes.

But back to K-12 education. Let's look at how Ducey described that part of his budget in his op ed published Friday, the same day he released his budget proposal. First statement:

On Friday, I announced an additional $106 million for K-12 education – that is on top of the $224 million supplemental for fiscal year 2016, which was part of our $3.5 billion funding package.

Question: When is additional education money not additional education money? Answer: When it's a mandatory increase based on inflation and the increase in our student population. That accounts for $47 million of the $106 million. Almost half of Ducey's "additional" money is really stay-even money.

Here's another statement from the op ed.

But not every child plans to go to college – their K-12 experience also needs to prepare them for life. Which is why we’re targeting high-need employment sectors with a new, $30 million investment in career and technical education.

A "new, $30 million investment"? It's hardly new, when that's exactly the amount Ducey and his legislative enablers cut from JTED (Joint Technical Education District) programs last year. So it would be slightly more accurate to call it a restoration of funds—except that would be wrong too. The "new, $30 million investment" is actually $10 million a year spread over three years, and instead of restoring the money to existing JTED programs, it's a matching funds grant for programs sponsored by businesses to train people for jobs the businesses think they need. The general consensus is, if the cut JTED funds aren't restored, the program will die.