Right now, the country is having the most public, detailed discussion about race and racism we've had in decades, which is a good thing. The heat generated by the discussion is intense on both sides, or I should say on all sides, since you hear such a wide range of viewpoints. Look at the passionate and wildly different reactions to the deaths of black men and boys at the hands of police. Look at the contrasting reactions to the controversy over the Confederate Flag. With controversy flying and tempers flaring, you might conclude the divisions are deeper now than they were before. I don't know if that's true. More likely, the divisions are just more out in the open.

Lately, I've felt an increasing need to understand the history of race and racism in this country and the way it manifests itself today. Along with trying to keep up with the events and analyses in the media, I've read a few books that have given me a deeper understanding of a subject which, being a white man, I can only know secondhand. A few days ago I recommended the book, Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates, an important, beautifully written book I believe will be read and talked about for decades. Today I want to recommend a very different book: The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander. The book, published in 2010, discusses the War on Drugs, the policing of black communities, our legal system, and mass incarceration, subjects that were talked about far less five years ago when the book came out than they are today. It's reasonable to say that Alexander's book brought focused attention to those problems and laid the groundwork for the way we're talking about them now. It's still the best text on the subject I've read.

Alexander is a Civil Rights lawyer, and she writes the book like a lawyer arguing a case. She brings together numerous incidents and witnesses, creating an overwhelming preponderance of evidence to prove her point. Alexander creates a complex thesis which is hard to summarize in a few words. Basically, she shows how the crackdown on drugs and crime has been directed disproportionately toward black people and black communities and how harmful it has been to black lives, comparable in ways to the Jim Crow laws which legalized segregation and discrimination before the passage of Civil Rights legislation in the 1950s and 1960s.

Uber is giving the UA's College of Optical Sciences $25,000 to research and develop lenses and sensors for car navigation, which could eventually lead to driverless cars being tested in Tucson, according to UA News. 

Gov. Doug Ducey visited the college Tuesday, and called the partnership, "A great day for Uber, for the UA and for the future innovation in Arizona."

(Can the UA have its funding back, yet?)

"Today's announcement is the latest signal that it's working...All  Arizonans stand to benefit from embracing new technologies—especially when it means new jobs, new economic development, new research opportunities and increased public safety and transportation options for our state," he said, according to UA News. "That’s what this partnership is about, and I thank Uber and the University of Arizona for their efforts and commitment to making it happen."

Ducey signed an executive order yesterday supporting the testing and operation of self-driving cars in the state, Ducey's office said in a press release.

Uber's Vice President of Advanced Technologies Brian McClendon says the move puts Arizona on the map as a state that welcomes innovation and new technology. 

“Over the last twenty years, technology has helped democratize access to so many services—working in partnership with forward-thinking universities and elected officials across the United States. We’re still in the early days of what’s possible—and I look forward to working with Arizona to make the next step of that journey a reality," he said, according to UA News.

I can't help it. I find the AZ Board of Ed vs. AZ Dept. of Ed train wreck endlessly fascinating. Diane Douglas is so much fun to watch. If someone can show me how she's done harm to Arizona education during her tenure, how, say, things would be better for our children, teachers and schools if John Huppenthal were still in power, maybe I'll start taking her shenanigans more seriously. Until then, I'll continue getting the same perverse pleasure from her antics that I get watching the Republican presidential race.

The one spasm of guilt I feel over my guilty pleasure is that I'm pretty sure Douglas is up to no good in her attempt to wrest power from the Board. Her dogged persistence makes me pretty certain that others are telling her, "If you can get the power to hire and fire more staff, then you can hire your own people and put some of our Tea Party agenda in motion, so keep fighting them at every turn." If she wins this struggle with the Board, it could mean trouble down the road. But it's hard for me to take the side of Doug Ducey's Board of Education against her. Look, if the two keep fighting, if the hatred between the two sides continues to grow, maybe they'll neutralize each other. With Ducey and his minions in power, I prefer inaction to action.

With that in mind, here's the latest. During the most recent Board meeting, where Douglas forms a minority of one, she kept talking when Board President Greg Miller wanted her to stop. According to Douglas, Miller grabbed her arm, and when she still didn't stop talking, he pushed away her microphone. Douglas claims Miller assaulted her, so she called the cops  on him. The thing is, she was right. He was way out of line touching her, grabbing her, in anger.

I'm not a student of Roberts Rules of Order, but I'm reasonably certain it doesn't tell the chair of a meeting to grab someone or push away her microphone when she's out of order. I'm guessing there's a procedure the chair is supposed to follow. Miller's impulsive action was a small act of violence against Douglas, but an act of violence nonetheless. It was an attempt to scare and bully her into silence. He had absolutely no right to touch her, especially in such an aggressive manner. I would think every advocate for woman's rights should feel indignant right along with her.

Should she have made this a police incident? From a political standpoint, absolutely, even if she didn't think Miller's action rose to that level of aggression. Douglas goaded Miller into an impulsive act, then she used political judo to turn his action against him. It was a very clever maneuver for a novice.

Tucson Unified School District wants to bring more local, healthy eats to its schools, so the district is partnering up with the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona and a network of local farmers.

The purpose is to provide students with fresh meals, as well as help out farmers from Tucson and other Southern Arizona lands.

“It’s a great opportunity to help our children get the proper nourishment they need to become the leaders of tomorrow. We’re also glad to expand our local support for Arizona farmers, which will now include small farms within a close proximity to the community we serve," says Shirley Sokol, TUSD's director of Food Services, in a statement. 

From a TUSD press release:

Regional small farmers grow high-quality, nutrient-dense produce, but they face ongoing challenges to find stable and consistent markets for their products. Through the coordination of planting and harvesting schedules, farmers can work together to build up larger volumes of product and then sell it to institutional buyers, including Tucson Unified School District.

With its existing warehouse storage and refrigerated trucks, the Community Food Bank is well-positioned to manage these efforts and oversee the farmers as they enter into the larger marketplace. Additional grant funding from the USDA will go to coordinating and planning for the future of the partnership.

Michael McDonald, CEO at the Community Food Bank says, “Everyone wins in this partnership. Kids get to enjoy fresh, local produce, and learn about the diverse crops that flourish in our region; local food producers increase sales; and the money stays in Tucson to benefit our local economy. The Food Bank couldn’t be more excited to be part of this.”

Kara Jones, Farmers’ Market Manager at the Community Food Bank, will oversee the partnership. She says, “Tucson Unified School District has proven its commitment to local produce and to our community’s health and economic stability. It’s all very much in line with our vision of a healthy, hunger-free future and we’re glad to have the opportunity to participate in such innovative work.” 

I rarely read a book that I find to be transformative, that not only adds to my knowledge and understanding of an issue but significantly alters my way of thinking about it. Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates is one of those works. It's a new book and currently sits at number two on the New York Times' nonfiction best seller list. 

Coates' book is presented as a letter to his teenage son. It's his attempt to describe what it's like growing up black in present-day America from the inside out, using his own life as his touchstone. He presents his world from a personal, subjective point of view. This isn't a sociological or political text. In the book Coates renders his confusion, his questions, his grief, his anger and his joys with literary clarity, and with a depth that can't be captured in a dry, "objective" discussion of the issues.

It would be incorrect for me to say I "understand" the book. You can only understand the world he's trying to capture if you've lived it, if you've felt it in your psyche and your nerve endings. Intellectual understanding, even combined with valiant attempts at empathy, can't substitute for being there on a day by day, minute by minute basis. I'm an older, white, privileged male who does his best to comprehend the nature of racism in this country, but I know I'm looking at that world from the outside. Coates grants me the ability to get as close to what the life of a black man is like as any recent work I can think of.

People compare Coates' book to James Baldwin's electrifying 1963 work, The Fire Next Time. It's a valid comparison, but for me, the experience of reading Between the World and Me is more like what I felt when I read Ralph Ellison's great 1952 novel, Invisible Man. That's the only other book I can remember that gave me the momentary sense of living the black experience, and helped me understand how distant it is from my experiences and how limited my understanding will always be.

This book deserves to join the literary canon alongside works by Baldwin, Ellison and Toni Morrison. So let me end by quoting what Morrison wrote about Between the World and Me.

“I’ve been wondering who might fill the intellectual void that plagued me after James Baldwin died. Clearly it is Ta-Nehisi Coates. The language of Between the World and Me, like Coates’s journey, is visceral, eloquent, and beautifully redemptive. And its examination of the hazards and hopes of black male life is as profound as it is revelatory. This is required reading."

When my principal first introduced high stakes testing for sophomores at the Oregon high school where I taught—it was 2000 or just before—he told teachers, "Don't wait around for this to go away. Trust me, this one isn't going away." He was referring to the tendency of teachers to slow walk some changes suggested by higher-ups, especially ones that seem unproductive or counterproductive, expecting that they'll lose momentum and end up on the ash heap of ineffective school change ideas. But this time, my principal was right. High stakes testing had legs, and it's only grown stronger. Until, maybe, now.

A new poll from Phi Delta Kappa International, administered by Gallup, shows that people are starting to shift their ideas about the value of high stakes testing. Some 64 percent of people polled said they thought there was too much emphasis on standardized testing in public schools. Among people whose children were in public schools, the number was slightly higher, 67 percent. When asked if standardized test scores should be part of teacher evaluations, 55 percent said no. Among people whose children were in public schools, the number went up to 63 percent.

Gallup's analysis of the survey breaks down the data further. When people were asked the best ways to measure the effectiveness of a public school, student engagement with their classwork was at the top of the list and testing was at the bottom. Testing also placed at the bottom both in ways to create an accurate picture of a student's progress and ways to improve schools.

Arizona is getting ready to go all in on last year's AzMERIT scores. We already know the overall passing rates for the state. Scores are down from the AIMS test. And we know why: because the bar was intentionally set higher. But we have yet to learn the individual school scores. Before we see the scores, though, we have a pretty good idea which schools will be the high fliers—schools that draw students from high income families—and which will be criticized for failing their children—schools that draw students from lower income families. But which schools will beat the odds? We won't know that for awhile, nor should we feel confident those "Why can't other schools be that successful?" results actually reflect student achievement.

Here's something that, as Donald Rumsfeld might say, is a known known: Attaching high stakes to standardized tests decreases whatever validity the tests might otherwise have. If the test results are important enough, schools and teachers will find all kinds of legitimate ways to help students get higher scores than if they weren't coached. Take, for an example, oh, say, me. When I was teaching in Oregon during the first few years of our high stakes state tests, I'm reasonably sure I helped a number of students just make it over the passing line on their 10th grade writing tets by teaching them the best way to approach the writing sample. I tried to make them better writers in the process, but if I hadn't given them approaches focused on boosting their scores, some passing students wouldn't have made the cut.

And then there are the illegal ways of raising student scores that involve cheating, not by students but by teachers and/or administrators. How often does it happen? The probable answer is, it happens far more often than we know about.

Here are some cases of proven and possible cheating which have made the news:

Atlanta, Georgia. The biggest cheating scandal in the country was in the Atlanta schools, where eleven educators were found guilty of cheating and eight of them went to prison. That should have been enough to scare every other Atlanta teacher straight, but it doesn't looks like it did.

When a jury convicted 11 former Atlanta educators in a test-cheating conspiracy in the spring, some education experts thought it may signal the end of high-profile academic misconduct cases for the 49,000-student school system.

But the Atlanta Journal-Constitution has reported on multiple cases of possible improper grading practices in recent months, "including cases of principals pressured to alter grades; retaliation against those who balked; and supervisors allegedly ignoring or implicitly approving the signs of cheating," the Associated Press writes.

Why would the latest group of cheaters be so stupid after seeing what happened to some of their colleagues? Well, if they had cheated before and didn't do it this time, the significantly lower test scores would be a smoking gun pointing to earlier test fixing, and maybe they were under so much pressure to get those scores up and keep them up, they felt they had to continue regardless of the risk.

Before the scandal broke, I should add, Atlanta schools were considered some of the most successful in the country because of their high test scores. They got an award from Ed Sec Arne Duncan.

This story, well reported by KVOA News, is disturbing on a number of levels. Let's start with the facts.

During a class lesson, Spanish teacher Kristen Maurer at Vail's Empire High School used a picture of Obama, distorted to mimic the crassest of racist stereotypes. The picture shows Obama with gigantic lips, exaggeratedly big ears and crossed eyes, the kind of portrayal found on the worst emails, websites and posters from Obama haters who want to add a racist flavor to their rants. (I won't put the image in this post. You can see it in the news report.) It was part of a lesson where Maurer showed a series of pictures and asked students to describe in Spanish the emotions portrayed in the pictures. Among the other photos was one of Oprah Winfrey with a startled expression on her face and her head pulled into her neck in a way that created double chins. According to the student who complained about the use of the images, Maurer said Winfrey looked terrible and counted her neck rolls in Spanish. The other two photos shown in the article are of Jennifer Aniston with a big nose and Ronald McDonald.

One more detail. The class laughed loudly when the picture of Obama came on the screen.

The teacher was obviously going for shock value and laughs to spice up to her lesson and get her students involved. Racist stereotypes, as well as mockery of someone's looks, can elicit laughs, in a picture or a well told racist, sexist or homophobic joke. Her use of the racist exaggeration of Obama's face and her mockery of Winfrey's looks, inappropriate anywhere, are wildly inappropriate coming from a teacher in a classroom setting. I have no idea if Maurer is especially racist or if she dislikes Obama, frequents websites and receives emails from the hate groups that spread these distorted pictures. If the images express her personal attitudes, then the racist stereotype she depicted is dipped in venom. If not, she's clueless, unaware of her own latent racism and oblivious to the terrible message she's sending when she legitimizes portrayals like this in her classroom. It's OK to trot out racist portrayals in public, she's telling her students, especially when they're used in fun. As a teacher, she's giving students license to accept these kinds of portrayals, even embrace them. When the students get to college, Maurer's lesson will help them feel comfortable attending a come-in-blackface-and-wig frat party where fried chicken and watermelon are served because, "Hey, it's all in fun, and besides, I really like hip hop music. When I was in high school, my Spanish teacher showed us this picture of Obama with big lips, it was hysterical!" She's also telling them that ugly woman jokes and fat woman jokes are just fine.

If the Marijuana Policy Project's initiative to legalize weed in Arizona lands on the ballot and passes next year, the state's education system could see a revenue of more than $40 million annually once the regulations are implemented, a press release from MPP says.

As a sign of good faith, MPP presented the state with a fake check for that amount during a news conference in Phoenix earlier today. 

“Generating revenue for our schools isn’t the only reason to pass this initiative, but it’s an important one,” says a statement by Lisa Olson, a Mesa teacher who participated in the news conference. “I support it because it will not only improve public education, but also public safety. Regulating marijuana would replace dealers on the streets with store clerks who ask for ID and only sell to adults.”

The Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol proposes taxing marijuana at 15 percent from licensed retail stores selling to adults 21 and older. A lot of that money will be used for implementation, and enforcement of regulations. All additional tax revenue collected, 40 percent would go to the state's Department  of Education for school construction, maintenance, and operating costs, and another 40 percent to the department's full-day kindergarten programs, the release says.

The estimate is based on marijuana sales in Colorado, but adjusted for differences in state population and marijuana consumption rates according to federal survey data, MPP says. Total retail marijuana sales in Colorado exceeded $253 million in the first six months of the year, generating roughly $16.6 million for public school construction, according to the Colorado Department of Revenue, MPP says. 

The group has to collect more than 150,000 valid signatures to get on the November 2016 ballot. The campaign has already collected about 60,000 total signatures since May.

“We’re finding a lot of support among parents,” says J.P. Holyoak, chairman of the Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol. “They don’t only see it as more money for schools, but also more control over marijuana. Marijuana should be sold by businesses that pay taxes and follow laws, not by cartels and criminals that evade them.”

Gene Glass, Emeritus Professor at ASU, Professor at University of Colorado Boulder and Fellow at the National Education Policy Center, wrote in a blog post Monday,

Recently I asked my dean to switch my affiliation from the measurement program to the policy program. I am no longer comfortable being associated with the discipline of educational measurement.

Glass has been involved in psychometric work and research since 1960, during a time when "psychometrics promised it could win . . . the wars on poverty and ignorance." It never quite realized that promise. Worse, it has become a tool used against public education.

Measurement has changed along with the nation. In the last three decades, the public has largely withdrawn its commitment to public education. The reasons are multiple: those who pay for public schools have less money, and those served by the public schools look less and less like those paying taxes.

The degrading of public education has involved impugning its effectiveness, cutting its budget, and busting its unions. Educational measurement has been the perfect tool for accomplishing all three: cheap and scientific looking.

International tests have purported to prove that America’s schools are inefficient or run by lazy incompetents. Paper-and-pencil tests seemingly show that kids in private schools – funded by parents – are smarter than kids in public schools. We’ll get to the top, so the story goes, if we test a teacher’s students in September and June and fire that teacher if the gains aren’t great enough.

There has been resistance, of course. Teachers and many parents understand that children’s development is far too complex to capture with an hour or two taking a standardized test. So resistance has been met with legislated mandates. The test company lobbyists convince politicians that grading teachers and schools is as easy as grading cuts of meat. A huge publishing company from the UK has spent $8 million in the past decade lobbying Congress. Politicians believe that testing must be the cornerstone of any education policy.

The results of this cronyism between corporations and politicians have been chaotic. Parents see the stress placed on their children and report them sick on test day. Educators, under pressure they see as illegitimate, break the rules imposed on them by governments. Many teachers put their best judgment and best lessons aside and drill children on how to score high on multiple-choice tests. And too many of the best teachers exit the profession.