The AZ Republic ran two education-related fact checks Tuesday, one on a statement by Gov. Doug Ducey and another on a statement by Arizona Education Association president Andrew Morrill. Ducey's statement was rated No stars: Unsupported. Morrill's statement was rated four stars: True.

I have to admit, Ducey's statement is more misleading than wrong. The Republic gave him no stars because it's based on guesswork, not data. He said during a telephone town hall,

“Arizona will be among the leading states in the nation in new dollars in this slow-growing economy that we’re adding to K-12 education.”

Ducey was referring, of course, to the bump in education funding if his $325 million plan is approved. The problem is, no one knows how much other states will add next year or the years following, so he's just speculating. But the Republic adds at the end of the fact check, "Arizona’s proposed funding increase would likely be at or near the top." Ducey is not so much lying as turning a possibility into a fact.

The bigger problem is, adding $325 million is no reason to proclaim "We're number one!" on anything related to education funding. Even if we add the funding Ducey proposes, we'll still be at or near the bottom of the barrel in per student funding. Actually, his $325 million isn't even new money. It's almost exactly what the courts say the legislature owes the schools by law. Sorry, Doug, if you and the other dead beat dads and moms at the legislature are planning to cough up what you owe for our children's education—and that's without going back and making up for stiffing our children over the past few years—that's nothing to brag about.

For Ducey to make it sound like we're beating other states in education funding makes as much sense as, say, bragging that he wants to get the money moving sooner, not later, when his plan has to make it through the legislature, then be passed by the voters. Best case scenario, if all that happens, the payments will begin in 2017.

HOLD EVERYTHING! STOP THE PRESSES! I just got an email from Daniel Scarpinato, Ducey's communications guy, that says, among other things,

"[Ducey] wants to get this money moving sooner, not later."

Unbelievable. Gotta love these guys. Or, not.

Tim Steller wrote a good column Saturday, Underpaid and disrespected, Arizona's teachers flee. Arizona teachers are leaving the profession altogether, he wrote, or leaving the state for greener—as in higher-salaried—states. It's worth a read, in part because of Steller's support for Ed Supe Diane Douglas' education funding proposal which is the only one among those currently being floated that targets the teacher shortage directly, to the tune of $400 million.

But the story doesn't end with Arizona. Things are tough all over, not only in the current shortage of teachers in the classroom but also in the waning number of prospective teachers in the national pipeline. According to a piece in Politico's Morning Education email briefing:

Many states are struggling with teacher shortages. Teacher pay is dismal. Fewer students are enrolling in teacher preparation programs, drawn to better-paying jobs as the U.S. continues to climb out of the recession. During the 2008-09 school year, more than 719,000 students nationwide were enrolled in teacher prep programs. By 2012-13, that number fell to about 500,000.

A recent Daily Star article said the enrollment in the UA College of Education follows the trend, with an enrollment drop from 1,135 in 2009 to 900 in 2013.

I'm sure Politico is right to say that the improving economy is part of the reason people are choosing other professions over teaching, but that's far from the whole story. The savaging of teachers, which has been promoted by conservatives since the Reagan years and has become a regular drumbeat in the media, is driving people out of the profession. Teachers are thinking, "I work my ass off to educate your children while being paid a ridiculously low salary and having to cope with too many students and too few books and supplies, and all I hear is what a lousy job I'm doing." The disrespect is literally adding insult to injury. And then there's the increased pressure to teach to the test rather than to the whole child.

Would I go into teaching if I were a college student today, or would I stay there after my first few years in the classroom? The profession would certainly be less appealing to me than when I began in 1969 — with a $7,200 yearly salary, by the way, so I certainly wasn't in it for the money.

Case in point. You know those idealistic young people who join Teach for America, generally from the top ranks of college graduates, to spend a few years in classrooms, often in low income areas? Their numbers are down by nearly 25% from two years ago. One reason may be that graduates are having an easier time finding jobs because of the economic rebound, but I doubt that tops the list. TfA numbers were high when the economy was booming. I'm guessing two other factors are deterring top graduates from spending a few years in the classroom before they join their chosen professions. First, who would want to go into that "lousy profession" and work in "failing schools" where they'll get nothing but grief for their efforts? That would put a serious crimp in those feelings of altruism that might have drawn young people to the program. Second, lots of people go into TfA at least in part to burnish their resumes. A few years in the program used to give them a leg up over other applicants for high paying jobs. These days, I'm guessing when you tell a job interviewer that you spent a few years as a teacher, it has less cachet than it did back in the a-little-better old days when teaching was still considered a somewhat noble profession. 

Bernie Sanders came to town Friday night, and Tucson showed up. More than an hour before the event began, a line of supporters snaked around Reid Park waiting to get into the outdoor performance center. How many were there? Thousands. A Friday night TV news report said 5,000. Isabel Garcia told the crowd they numbered 11,000. The Star said the crowd was probably over 7,000. Whatever the exact number, it was a packed house.

The crowd ranged in age: there were 20-to-30 year olds, middle aged people and older attendees in reasonably equal numbers. Sanders' Tucson appeal doesn't have an age demographic. The crowd was predominantly white, though not exclusively so. Tucson's minority communities were well represented.

The Tucson crowd may have had a white majority, but the entertainment and speakers were definitely more "Tuk-son" than "Too-sohn." A mariachi band warmed things up before the event. Isabel Garcia, a local activist in Hispanic causes and other social issues, spoke first and introduced the other speakers. A young woman from the Apache Nation spoke passionately about the need to protect sacred Apache grounds from being taken over by private interests. Ten-year-old Bobby de la Rosa spoke about his mother, who was deported to Mexico, and the struggles his father, brothers and sister faced coping with her loss to the family, a story which was told recently in the Star. (Sanders said later that he was used to being introduced by local dignitaries, but "I have never heard people—young people—give the kind of statements and stories I've heard in Tucson.") The national anthem was sung a cappella by twin sisters, high school students from Nogales.

And then, of course, there was Rep. Raúl Grijalva, the first Congressperson to endorse Sanders. He said he was asked by other members of Congress why he endorsed Bernie.

"I answered, 'Why not?' Bernie's my friend, and beyond friendship, I agree with his values, I agree with the solutions he's bringing to the American people, and finally, it's way past time when we had a campaign and a voice that speaks truth to power."

Then it was Sanders' turn. He spoke for almost an hour to an attentive, receptive crowd. Nearly every sentence ended with an exclamation point, usually accompanied a hand thrust out to his side, finger pointing at the issue he seemed to be indicating was "Right over there! Look at it!"—as if a mere exclamation point at the end of a sentence wasn't emphatic enough to capture how important, how unbelievably important, it is to focus on the problems this country faces and what needs to be done to fix them. Bernie wins his audiences over with passion and ideas, not polish.

The point that united his speech was stated early and often. "This is a people's campaign," he said, "not a billionaires' campaign!" Again and again, he hit on income inequality, the number of people living in poverty, which is unconscionable in the richest country in the world, and the dangerous power a few very rich people have to dominate the country's politics thanks to the Supreme Court's "Citizens United" ruling.

Ohio just passed a law to increase monitoring of charter schools, and for good reason.

After years of reports ranging from financial mismanagement to poor academic outcomes among Ohio charters, pressure has been building from charter critics and advocates alike to overhaul how the entire sector is monitored.

The bill requires much more in-depth financial and academic reporting from charter schools and management organizations, among many other rules.

Ohio is notorious for problems in the charter school sector. How bad is it? Ohio's charters are being subjected to criticism and ridicule from the school choice crowd.

Ohio's $1 Billion charter school system was the butt of jokes at a conference for reporters on school choice in Denver late last week, as well as the target of sharp criticism of charter school failures across the state.

The shots came from expected critics like teachers unions, but also from pro-charter voices, as the state considers ways to improve how it handles charters.

Ohio has about 123,000 kids attending nearly 400 charter schools - public schools that receive state tax money, but which are privately run.

One after another, panelists at the conference organized by the national Education Writers Association targeted Ohio's poor charter school performance statewide, Ohio's for-profit charter operators and how many organizations we hand over charter oversight keys to as the sponsors, or authorizers, of schools.

Ohio papers are filled with horror stories about charter schools, especially those run by for-profits.

What does this have to do with Arizona? Both states have weak oversight and a poor record of closing charters with bad academic records. And that's bad for charter schools. The whole sector suffers if there's too little oversight and accountability.

Plaintiffs in the decades-long desegregation lawsuit against Tucson Unified  School District say magnet schools have not been given sufficient funding, staffing and other resources to succeed as schools and "much less meet the obligations outlined in the Unitary Status Plan," and magnet requirements. 

Former TUSD teacher and board member Sylvia Campoy, who's the representative for the Mendoza plaintiffs in the suit Fisher-Mendoza v.Tucson Unified School District, sent a mass email where she shares where the plaintiffs stand after news that five TUSD schools may lose magnet status. Here're some details on a proposal they submitted yesterday:

In an effort to meet the Special Master's concerns and ensure the magnet schools the resources and support they require, the Mendoza Plaintiffs have been working on a proposal that would immediately accomplish the provision of support which is drastically needed at the magnets schools. The proposal was presented to all the parties on October 6, 2015.

We understand that the “devil is in the details” and the District has agreed to immediately begin working on the specifics required to make the Mendoza Proposal work. It is the hope of the Mendoza Party that TUSD will fully embrace the Mendoza Compliance Proposal; will put an aggressive plan together in response to the proposal and will, most importantly, immediately and effectively implement the plan. This is an opportunity to “walk-the-talk” of collaboration. The ball is now in TUSD’s court (figuratively and literally).

The Mendoza Plaintiffs have never lost focus of what is authentically needed to support the children they represent and have always been focused on what will best promote the opportunities and educational achievement of Latino and African American students and to that end made the following proposal which was met with large degree of support from District and the Department of Justice. It outlines the critical elements of the Mendoza Plaintiffs’ Compliance Proposal. As the parties respond to the Mendoza Proposal, of course, their input will be considered and discussions will be ongoing.

Compliance Plan Proposed by Mendoza Plaintiffs for Five Schools Special Master Specifically Referenced as Having Not Met Plan Goals (Elementary schools –Bonillas and Ochoa; Safford K-8, Utterback Middle School, and Cholla High School) – Plus Holladay Elementary:

-Push to increase integration in entering grades
-Focus in closing academic achievement gap
-Fill all vacancies by November 1, 2015
-No vacancies at start of next school year
-Implementation Committee Member to monitor:
~In each school once per week
~Report to Plaintiffs and Special Master once per month

TUSD to propose plan with the objective of having more students attending integrated schools.

Almost $1,000,000 was subtracted from the magnet school desegregation budgets from their May to June 2015 submittals.

​Each​magnet school should be fully funded to support their magnet plan at the amount shown in the May 15th Magnet Plans. No decreases should take place.

​All magnet schools should be visibly supported.  

OK, so, Diane Douglas has come out with a serious, multi-faceted plan to improve Arizona education. It's not perfect, there's plenty of stuff to disagree with, but lots of it is pretty damn good. Lots of it. Douglas is an advocate for teachers. She wants to pay them more, she wants them working in classrooms with fewer students, she wants to give them more and better training when they're in college and better mentoring when they're in the classroom.  She wants to cut back on our obsession with high stakes testing. She wants the grades the state gives to schools to include a number of variables, including—and I have to pause every time I write this because it pleases me so much—including taking into account the quality of a school's art, music and PE programs. In other words, she's an advocate for comprehensive, whole child education. Her plan is more pro-education than anything I've seen out of any Arizona Republican in a position of power and authority, maybe ever.

Douglas has gotten some deservedly good press for the ideas in her AZ Kids Can't Afford To Wait plan, much of it from folks who have spend the past nine months belittling her for the squabbles she's been having with Governor Ducey and the state school board.  But some feel they need to add a caveat to their praise for her ideas. Yeah, her plan is good, they say, but because of her antics, none of the people she's pissed off are going to listen to her. From a Republic editorial:

Douglas has alienated nearly every potential reform ally, from Gov. Doug Ducey to the state Board of Education to a healthy portion of the Republican majority of the Legislature.

So, that’s a problem. Leading a parade no one wants to follow is a challenge – a challenge the irascible Douglas has worked overtime creating on her own.

And that’s a shame. Many of her ideas percolate with a wide-based constituency.

If only she had made nice with the Republican power structure, the editorial says, maybe they'd listen to her. Seriously? If Douglas had been a good Republican soldier, they'd be paying attention to her ideas that contradict the party's educational party line? Seriously? When Douglas says we need to come up with new funding to pay teachers more, they'd say, "Diane, you've been so cooperative with the board and the governor, we think, by God, we'll go along with you and push for more money to increase teacher salaries"? And they'll do the same with her testing and state grade proposals? Seriously?

Parents of kids at the five Tucson Unified School District schools at risk of losing magnet status feel their and their children's voices are being ignored. Some say they have witnessed a more than 40-year-old desegregation lawsuit go from its initial purpose of providing minority students with the same opportunities as white students turn into something that could do more harm than good.

At last night's TUSD board meeting the parents wondered, why is the focus on statistics and not student achievement? 

The schools in question are: elementary schools Bonillas and Ochoa; Safford K-8; Utterback Middle School and Cholla High School. In order to maintain magnet status, and the approximately $64 million per year funding that comes with that, no ethnic group can make up more than 70 percent of the students. At these schools, Latinos continue to be the majority. 

For Ochoa parent and organizer Cesar Aguirre, these schools are being punished for being "too brown."

"Desegregation, integration, what year are we in again? 2014 was the year our district went from having the minority population become the majority population. I am still trying to wrap my head around this whole integration deal," he said at the board meeting.  "Talking to somebody who isn't within our district,  'We are going to lose our magnet programs and the funding that goes with it. Why? Because we didn't have enough white kids at our school.' And he looked at me and said, 'That is straight up discrimination!' Our school is too brown, so we are being punished for it."

"This case 40 years ago was started with the intention of protecting our children to improve quality of education of our children now it is being used to harm our children, to take away the opportunities that we have been fighting for so long. Growing up brown and poor on the South Side of Tucson I can tell you the one thing that got me off the streets ...out of prison...kept me out of selling drugs was education."

Schools like Ochoa and Cholla went from a D rating to a B rating, and many parents and educators attribute the success to the magnet programs, which include service to reduce the racial and ethnic academic achievement gap. The schools are headed upward even though they haven't met the racial balance demanded by the lawsuit. In the meantime, federal court appointed special master Willis Hawley hasn't met with parents or students. Critics at the board meeting said he's view is outdated and out of touch.

Aguirre sent Hawley an email inviting him to meet with parents after the TUSD board meeting, but Hawley didn't show up. 

Last Monday I wrote about the way teachers have been portrayed in TV and film since the 1950s. I only looked at teachers of core subjects — English, math, science and social studies — because when people talk about how good or bad teachers are, they're usually talking about those folks. What I found was a general trend. Core teachers were portrayed as good to very good from the 50s through the 70s. Starting in the late 80s and early 90s, we had a crop of super teachers who weren't just good, they were great, transformative, life changing. At about the same time, we started seeing truly bad teachers who ranged from lazy to incompetent to evil. Here's that graph. (The circles with red centers are stories where teachers are the main characters).
Portrayals of teachers reflect societal attitudes, especially in the popular arts like TV and film where the way the studios attract consumers of their products is by reflecting sense of what the world is like. We had a generally positive attitude toward teachers from the 50s through the 70s, so TV shows and films showed us competent, hard working teachers. Teachers and schools were considered part of the solution, not part of the problem. In the 80s, that began to change. Teachers and schools began to be seen in a more negative light. The Reagan administration made this attitude official when it published a document which declared that because of our failing schools, we were A Nation At Risk. The negative views of teachers were compounded by conservatives' anti-government ideology which turned "failing schools" into failing government schools. At the same time, unions were demonized, so union teachers turned into greedy, coddled government employees who only cared about their paychecks and perks, not the students. Those attitudes were reflected in stories with teachers who were anywhere from bad to awful. The super teacher portrayals during that same time might seem to contradict the general anti-teacher trend, but really, they were just the other side of the same teacher-denigrating coin. The super teachers created a perfect contrast to the run-of-the-mill lazy, incompetent teachers. "That's what all teachers should be doing," the super teacher films say. "If some teachers can make students learn, what's the matter with the rest of them?"

In the graph below, I added TV shows and films that focused on administrators (usually principals), in green, and teachers in the arts and coaching, in yellow. Here, are all three categories together.

Thursday Ed Supe Diane Douglas put out her AZ Kids Can't Afford To Wait plan. It's 156 pages long, crammed full of ideas and reasonably detailed descriptions of problems she sees and changes she hopes to see. [I was on the Buckmaster Show today discussing the plan with Bill and Sarah Garrecht Gassen during the second half of the show. The first half had some interesting discussions about our state universities.] I've only had time to give the plan a quick once over, so I can't go into great detail here. But one thing I know. Douglas has been given an undeserved bad rap by the media. They've focused on some of her antics, mainly her ongoing battles with the state Board of Education, and not the indications that she's serious about Arizona education. Those antics are a power struggle, folks. She's not simply behaving childishly and suing people for no reason. She has a very clear agenda in mind, which is to increase her power and influence. Whether her tactics make sense or not, whether they'll increase or decrease her power and influence, whether we'll like what we see if she gains more power, all that remains to be seen. 

Here's what I've learned since Diane Douglas took the helm in January. She deserves to be taken seriously. She wants to change Arizona's education in ways that she thinks will improve things for students. Though I disagree with some of her ideas, I agree with a hell of a lot more than I would have expected. During the campaign for the general election, I underestimated her intelligence and gave her too little respect as a person. People need to take her seriously, whether they agree with her or not. And educational progressives should do what they can to create strategic alliances with her, join forces so that in areas where there is agreement, they can work together and maybe put together the public relations push and the legislative votes necessary to actually move the needle, even a little bit, so we improve the education we give to our children.

Remember Douglas' statewide listening tour, where she traveled all over and listened to people's ideas and concerns about education? Well, a funny thing happened. She listened. Lots of the ideas in her plan are the kinds of things that never would have come up if she sat around the office with her staff, or conferred with principals and superintendents. Many of the ideas are there, I'm certain, because she heard them again and again from teachers and parents who spoke while she listened—when she was in Tucson, Douglas spent a minute introducing herself and gave hours of time to people who aired their views at the microphones placed around the auditorium—and she decided that many of the problems and solutions she heard are worthy of attention.

Now, to the plan. I'm going to deal with areas where Douglas and I agree, and only some of them because 156 pages of ideas can't be crammed into a single post, and I haven't had time to digest everything in the document. I want to stress areas of agreement, where people across the aisle can work together. There's plenty of time to talk about areas of disagreement later.

Members of the UA's Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace want to bring back some attention to when Tucson Unified School District and other educational entities banned Middle East Studies from several schools.

In 1983, the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona, Tucson Unified School District, and UA administrators "collaborated to discredit the Near Eastern Center (now renamed the Center for Middle Eastern Studies). The vicious campaign of censorship and intimidation climaxed in 1983 with the banning of Middle East outreach materials including resource books, literature, maps and films," the groups say.

The exhibit, which debuted Sept. 28 during Banned Books Week, features photographs and archival materials from that time. The groups sponsoring it hope to help fight censorship at schools and elsewhere.

Here's the background (from the article "The Middle East Studies Ban" by Gabriel Schivone for Tucson Weekly):

In 1983, (U.S. Rep. Raul Grijalva) sat on the Tucson Unified School District board, which in effect sanctioned the termination of a Middle East-studies outreach program (and the banning of its books), designed for district teachers by the University of Arizona's Near Eastern Center, due to allegations of "anti-Israel, pro-Arab" bias.

In a report to the district, the TUSD compliance officer, Sylvia Campoy, recommended the program's elimination and book-banning. In remarks published by the Arizona Daily Star on Sept. 16, 1983, Campoy justified the move by saying that "the Israeli government apparently was not contacted for materials." Since the Near Eastern Center failed to consult a foreign government, the program therefore promoted a "significant bias ... of a decisively anti-Israel and pro-Arab character," in the words of Campoy's report.

The Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona, which led the local campaign against the program, was supported nationally by the Anti-Defamation League and American Jewish Committee. The federation pointed to a so-called conspiracy of "Arabists" allegedly in control of U.S.-based oil companies Mobil and Exxon, accused of influencing Middle East centers on university campuses across the country.

"I call it the buying of America," said TUSD board member Eva Bacal at the Oct. 18, 1983, board meeting.

The program materials that TUSD barred from district classrooms included a series of books, bibliographies, pamphlets, resource guides and teacher handbooks covering Middle East history and cultures, as well as maps, videos and a novel entitled My Enemy, My Brother.

One area of materials that critics found among the most objectionable were maps of the Middle East used in TUSD classrooms, and in a history course for TUSD teachers. "Israel was notably absent" on one map, wrote Carol Karsch in a 1985 report submitted to a U.S. Congressional committee on behalf of the Jewish Federation. A TUSD parent told the school board in October 1983 that in class, her son "was shown a map that eliminated the presence of Israel in the Middle East."

You can find the exhibit at the UA's Student Union Gallery "Shadow Box," on the third floor of the Grand Ballroom, 1303 E. University Blvd. It is free, but you are welcomed to give some donations. For more info, check out the event's Facebook.