Arizona created Education Savings Accounts, aka Empowerment Scholarship Accounts, aka vouchers on steroids. We were the first. Then came Florida, Mississippi and Tennessee. Nevada, where Republicans gained control of the legislature and the governorship in January, just passed a similar program. The major difference is, all the other programs are limited to kids who fall into a few categories. Every year the Arizona legislature tries to add more categories to the mix with the ultimate goal of making the voucher program universal, but it has a long way to go. The new Nevada law includes all children, no exceptions.

Other than the universal coverage, the Nevada ESA is pretty much a carbon copy of the Arizona program. The other major difference is, students receiving voucher money have to take yearly standardized tests in English and math and report the results to the state, while in Arizona, no tests are required.

Here's how it will work in Nevada. If a student has been enrolled in public school for 100 consecutive days, that student will be eligible for a voucher. Like the Arizona version, the money from the state goes into a savings account which the parents can spend on approved educational activities, including tuition, books, tests and tutors. The children don't have to be in school. As in Arizona, home schooled children qualify. Any money that's not spent one year rolls over to the next. If it's not all spent by high school graduation, the remainder of the money can be used for college expenses.

How much money does that come to in Nevada? If you're a low income family, your child gets 100 percent of the state funding the public school received. Higher income families get 90 percent of the public school allotment. That comes to about $5,000 per child, though, if it's like Arizona, special needs children who get extra funding in public schools will also get the extra funding in private schools, which can add $10,000 or more to the yearly total.

We need some good old investigative journalism like this, courtesy of the Akron Beacon Journal, here in Arizona.

No sector — not local governments, school districts, court systems, public universities or hospitals — misspends tax dollars like charter schools in Ohio.

A Beacon Journal review of 4,263 audits released last year by State Auditor Dave Yost’s office indicates charter schools misspend public money nearly four times more often than any other type of taxpayer-funded agency.

Since 2001, state auditors have uncovered $27.3 million improperly spent by charter schools, many run by for-profit companies, enrolling thousands of children and producing academic results that rival the worst in the nation.

And the extent of the misspending could be far higher.

To be fair, we do get some good investigative journalism here in Arizona, especially given how shrinking budgets have stretched reporters to the breaking point — some of it looking at education in general and charters in particular — but this angle is begging to be explored.

The article is chock full of interesting facts.

When private firms audited the charters, they only found misspending in one half of one percent of those they audited. The state's audits found problems in 17 percent.

[The private audits] aren’t designed to detect fraud. They merely check revenues against expenses, ensuring tax dollars going in match receipts and cash balances.

Often, though, the receipts are unavailable.

“You have a system in Ohio, and everywhere else, where every single year charter school operators are getting audited. And every single year, those audits come up clean. It’s because they are not set up to catch fraud waste and abuse,” [Kyle Serrette, director of Education at the Center for Popular Democracy] said.

[snip]

And the difference between state and private auditors was profound: For every $1 private auditors found to be misspent, state officials found $102 in their audits.

Arizona's regular charter school audits, like Ohio's, are conducted by private companies.

TUSD's Drachman Primary Magnet School has about 300 students. State law says that schools with less than 600 students should receive extra funding because of their small size, since it costs more to run a small school than a larger school which benefits from economies of scale. But Drachman doesn't qualify for small school funding because it's part of a larger district which has plenty of opportunities to take advantage of economies of scale. No TUSD schools qualify, nor do schools in other districts with more than 600 students total.

Imagine Elementary Charter School in Tempe has just under 300 students. Currently, it qualifies for the extra small schools funding— hich, so far as I can tell, varies from about $200 to $1,000 per student depending on the size of the school—because it's a single charter school, so its costs are greater because of its small size. The same is true of other charter schools with fewer than 600 students.

Except, that's not exactly true in the case of Imagine Elementary in Tempe. It's one of 17 to 20 (depending on how you count) Imagine charter schools in Arizona, with about 7,000 students total and a central administration. In essence, Imagine Schools is a charter school district, meaning the Tempe charter, like TUSD's Drachman, has all the economies of scale which come from being part of a larger group of schools.

The reason Imagine schools, as well as BASIS schools and some other charters, have qualified for the small school supplementary funding is because each campus calls itself a separate school, and they make a point of keeping each school's enrollment below the 600 student cutoff. The schools have been considered individual units by the state rather than part of a larger group of schools. In other words, they've gamed a system. The small schools funding was set up for small, isolated schools or districts that genuinely have larger costs because of their size. According to the spirit of the law, small school districts and truly separate charter schools which aren't connected to other schools should get the extra funding, not Imagine schools and not BASIS schools which, like Imagine, has about 7,000 students total—or other charter groups that have been taking advantage of the system.

But that scheme looks like it's coming to an end because of a new section added to the state education budget. For once, the legislature got it right. SB 1476 says, if a charter school is part of a larger entity, the state looks at the total student population, not the individual school populations, and if the total goes over 600, the extra funding will be phased out over a three year period.

In recent news, we learned of allegations that seven Arizona schools cheated on AIMS tests in past years by erasing wrong answers and replacing them with correct answers. Oops, make that eight as of a week ago.

Now we have what looks like the first report of a school cheating on the new AzMERIT test which replaced AIMS. 

Allegations of cheating on standardized tests have prompted an investigation at a Phoenix elementary school.

ABC15 Investigators have learned charges there was cheating on the AzMERIT statewide achievement test at a local elementary school have prompted a formal outside investigation.

The Isaac School District #5 confirms they're looking into allegations that answers were altered at the J.B. Sutton Elementary School in Phoenix.

The school is part of the Isaac Elementary School District #5 .

It should come as no surprise that 94 percent of the school's students are on free or reduced lunch. Cheating by an adult on high stakes tests is a high risk endeavor, and the stakes are rarely high enough to warrant the risk at schools with kids from affluent families. Those students are likely to do well on the tests no matter what, and the schools are likely to get A and B state grades, so why take the chance of getting caught to gain a few points? J.B. Sutton, on the other hand, has a D rating, and its math and writing scores went down in 2014. You can bet the pressure was on at the school, big time.

Here's something interesting. It's not the AZ Department of Education that's initiating the investigation this time, according to ABC15 Investigators. It's the school district.

So we have nine schools where there's a strong possibility that adults altered tests to increase student scores. Does that indicate an increase in dishonesty by teachers and administrators? I don't think so. It's more likely an increase in honesty at the state level. Education Superintendent Diane Douglas isn't a big fan of high stakes tests, unlike previous superintendent John Huppenthal, so she's very likely decided to be more aggressive about the cheating that's always been there but Huppenthal decided to hush up (See Carpe Diem charter school). Posssibly—I'm just guessing here—the changed atmosphere at the Ed. Dept. led the Isaac Elementary School District to be proactive and pursue the possible cheating problem itself before it became an issue at the state level.

Make some time this evening to tell Superintendent of Public Instruction Diane Douglas what concerns you about the state's K-12 education system (I'm sure you won't have to dig to find complaints). 

Douglas is in Tucson as part of her "We Are Listening" tour, which made its debut in Kingman and will wrap up in Springerville. 

Head down to Pima Community College West's Center for the Arts, 2202 W. Anklam Road and share your thoughts between 5:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.

Here's what Douglas had to say last month about the tour:

“I am dedicated to continually improving the state of education in Arizona through conversations with the people it most directly affects—parents, students, teachers and administrators. It is paramount that Arizona not only has the highest standards possible, but that its standards belong to Arizona and are continually improved to best represent both student and local community needs. This process allows us to hear every voice and set high expectations for every child.”

People's comments on state's Common Core Standards, or College and Career Ready Standards, have been gathered throughout and will be presented to the State Board of Education, where they can vote on possible changes. This goes hand-in-hand with Gov. Doug Ducey's request for a "thorough review" of the state's standards for English and math.

I pointed out in a recent post that there's a very strong correlation between state school grades—which are based on student AIMS scores—and family income. (One of the two maps I used is at the top of this post.) Ed Supe Diane Douglas, who, as you know, I don't always agree with, was right on the money on this one when she said, “Standardized and high stakes testing measure demographics, not student achievement or teacher performance.” And now, we have a new article by a promising young journalist that covers similar ground.

The New York Times has a Student Journalism Institute that's convening right here at UA, and one of its journalists, Ben Bartenstein, just published a story, Critics of State’s School Funding Plan Say It Will Favor Charters. If you skip to the bottom, you'll find an interactive map that's far niftier than mine, showing the A-rated schools in the Tucson area along with the family income in the area. (I really need to learn how to do that!)

Most of the article is about Arizona school funding in general, along with a discussion of charters. Bartenstein pulls together lots of good information and a wide variety of quotes from people on different sides of the issue. And he gets it about BASIS. While he acknowledges the accomplishments of BASIS students, he also points out that they're a very select group. (If only the charter chain will admit to its selectivity instead of suggesting that it takes unformed hunks of student clay and turns them into academic world-beaters, I'll stop writing about BASIS so much. But as long as they continue mythologizing their schools and making other schools look like failures by comparison, I'll keep pointing out the truth.)

There's really no reason for anyone to know that Holsteiner Agricultural School, a charter school in Maricopa, exists, except for the families it serves. It's a tiny school, 50 to 60 students max, and it appeared from the outside to be completely unexceptional until Diane Douglas added it to her erase-and-replace AIMS cheating list—possible cheating list, I should say, though the evidence against this and the other seven schools is pretty damning. I began hunting around the web to see what I could find out about Holsteiner charter, and what I found led me to look for more, then more, all of which led me to ask a number of questions I can't answer.

First the [possible] cheating story. Holsteiner Agricultural School's state grade made an almost unbelievable jump from a "D" in 2013 to an "A" in 2014. It turns out, the jump very likely shouldn't be believed. On the 2014 tests, an unlikely number of wrong answers were changed to right answers.

"(S)tudents in the fourth grade corrected their responses to the right answer 83 percent of the time in reading and 85 percent of the time in mathematics," a letter from the Education Department states.

The school superintendent's answer to the cheating allegation raised a huge red flag for me.

Holsteiner Superintendent Tanya Graysmark, however, told The Arizona Republic in an e-mail Friday that her school has done nothing wrong.

"We worked with our students all year on best test practices (to go back and check their answers and make any necessary changes to their test — to do the best they can) prior to turning it in," she said. "This may have caused a lot of erasure marks," she wrote.

Graysmark should have said, "I'll look into it," instead of denying there was any wrongdoing and suggesting that the school's eagle-eyed fourth graders made mistakes on their first pass through the test, then went back, found the mistakes and came up with the right answer over 80 percent of the time.

I decided, if Graysmark would make a comment that questionable and self serving, she and the school deserved a closer look. Here's what I found.

Tucson's incorrigible Steve Gall won't give up. State bills he's worked on to mandate structured recess in Arizona schools, or recommend structured recess, or recommend a certain amount of weekly physical activity for kids during school hours, have gotten close but never made it into law in recent legislative sessions. He's volunteered for years in TUSD, organizing physical activity with kids in a number of schools. His urging helped lead the district to recommend 90 minutes of physical activity a week in its schools.

Steve is one of the voices in an article, Active 'Brain Breaks' Increase Focus, Leaning, Teachers Say, in the Arizona School Boards Association newsletter, AZEDNEWS. We shouldn't need an article to tell us that kids' brains go numb after sitting in class too long, and there's nothing like moving the body for a few minutes to get their brains moving again. What group of people should be least in need of that reminder? Educators, of course. But in today's "skill building," test-driven educational world, seat time is too often equated with learning time, and recess, or even stretch, jump and run-in-place exercises in the classroom, are considered time wasters.

It's a good article with lots of links to other resources, including GoNoodle.com, a site devoted to helping teachers create quick, fun brain breaks for their kids.

The battles between Diane Douglas and the Ducey-supported state Board of Education have been all over the papers and The Range recently. What's going on is a power struggle. The outcome will help determine the kind of policy that comes out of the state education administration, but right now, the two sides are jostling for position, not policy.

In most reports, we hear more about Douglas' agenda than about the Board's. This video is a bit of a corrective. Remember back when, when Douglas said Ducey and the board president, Gregory Miller, want to move money from district schools to charters? You'll learn more about that, and about President Miller, in the video by Ann-Eve Pedersen, my cohost on the cable access show, Education: The Rest of the Story (which, by the way, may end its run shortly if Access Tucson is forced to close its doors).

Fun fact: Gregory Miller is CEO and Superintendent of Challenge Charter School in Glendale—population, about 530 students. His salary is $122,000. His wife, Pamela, the Executive Director and Vice President, also gets a $122,000 salary. Their daughter, Wendy, is principal and secretary of the school. Her salary is $99,000. Watch the video to find out who determined their salaries.

Here are a few interesting stories from places other than Arizona.

Minnesota Governor Pledges to Veto a $400 Million Increase in School Funds. The problem, according to Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton, is that a $400 million increase in school funding isn't enough. He's demanding that the Republicans add another $125 million to the total.

Newark, NJ, Mayor Joins Mob, Blocks Major Thoroughfare. It wasn't actually a mob Newark Mayor Ras Baraka joined. He came together with hundreds of teachers, parents and students who were protesting the control of Newark schools by the "education reform"/privatization leadership in the state capitol.

Bank Robbers Who Stole Billions From Citizens and Communities Go Free. These aren't people who rob banks. They're bankers who rob people. "Five big banks have agreed to pay about $5.6 billion and plead guilty to multiple crimes related to manipulating foreign currencies and interest rates, federal and state authorities announced on Wednesday." No one, so far as I know, is going to jail.

Los Angeles Takes Money From Businesses, Gives It to Employees. The L.A. city council voted 14-1 to phase in a $15-per-hour minimum wage by 2020. L.A. joined Seattle, San Francisco, Oakland and other cities by ratifying the raise.

First Lady Kicks Butt, Thinks She's a Good Role Model for Children. Actually, it was a heavy bag Michelle Obama kicked, and punched (rather convincingly, I might add). It was part of her “#GimmeFive” campaign on healthy living, showing kids that exercise can be both fun and good for you.