Late Wednesday night at the state legislature, SB 1120, the bill to create a forensic audit of TUSD's desegregation budget, was in front of the House Appropriations Committee. Superintendent H.T. Sanchez made a strong, detailed statement at the hearing. Senator Steve Farley, who represents part of the Tucson district, followed. He began his statement by saying,

"I hope you've been able to see from talking with our new superintendent that this is not your father's TUSD. There is a whole new spirit at TUSD. As a father and parent at TUSD [Farley has a child at Tucson High], I checked it out very carefully. I visited the classrooms. I see the great job the teachers are doing, and the administrators are doing. As a parent, I am very happy with the direction TUSD is moving."

The bill went nowhere, thanks in good part to Sanchez's statement and his detailed answers to questions from the legislators. Unless someone figures out a way to attach it to some other bill at the eleventh hour, the forensic audit is dead.

It did me good to hear Farley's endorsement of TUSD. With so much negativity enshrouding TUSD like a cloud obscuring the daily good work of teachers, support staff and, yes, administrators, the problems in the district are overemphasized and its successes are too often overlooked.

For those who have forgotten or are too young to remember, Farley was paraphrasing an old car ad whose tagline was, "It's not your father's Oldsmobile." Don't dismiss the Olds, the ad urged. Take another look, it's not the car it once was, it's not the car you think it is. That's what Farley was talking about. "There is a whole new spirit at TUSD," he said. Take another look.

The Arizona Sate Senate is debating legislation that would rid Arizona of the Common Core standards. A Senate committee said yes to HB 2190 a couple of weeks ago. 

The committee passed the bill with an amendment allowing the state Board of Education to collaborate with the Arizona Education Standards Steering Committee (committee would be established if the bill gets the green light) in adopting new standards and redeveloping new assessments.

If it becomes law, the state would go back to the standards that were in place in 2010, while new ones are established. The board and committee would have until Aug. 1, 2017 to re-work the standards for English language arts, American history, science and math.

Opponents of the bill, which is sponsored by Oro Valley Republican state Rep. Mark Finchem, say the state has already spent tons of money establishing Common Core in the classrooms, and that ditching those for new ones would cost another few million dollars. But people who hate the standards, including Superintendent of Public Instruction Diane Douglas, say they are too federally-driven. 

Last week, Gov. Doug Ducey said Arizona doesn't need to get rid of Common Core. While he isn't a fan, he asked the Board of Education to conduct a thorough review of the language arts and math standards to better adapt them to Arizona. 

He asked for the involvement of parents, students and teachers from around the state.

"We can learn from others, but at the end of the day the standards need to come from Arizona and they need to help us achieve our objectives," Ducey told the board. "And in any instance during your review, you find situations where Arizona standards can outperform the ones already adopted, I ask you to replace them."

The Senate previously trashed two other anti-Common Core bills—SB 1305 and SB 1458.

Last year, efforts to kill the standards failed, including a bill that was vetoed by then-Gov. Jan Brewer.

More than 40 states have adopted Common Core. 

Fareed Zakaria has a terrific column in the Washington Post, Why America’s obsession with STEM education is dangerous (STEM is an acronym for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math). Zakaria is not a technophobe or a Luddite. He just understands that an overemphasis on science/tech education can rob students of other kinds of learning that both enrich their lives and encourage creativity — the kind of out-of-the-box thinking that leads to innovative ideas and bold entrepreneurship.

Zakaria knows the Asian educational model, which leads to high test scores people like to use against our methods of schooling, first hand.

Americans should be careful before they try to mimic Asian educational systems, which are oriented around memorization and test-taking. I went through that kind of system. It has its strengths, but it’s not conducive to thinking, problem solving or creativity. That’s why most Asian countries, from Singapore to South Korea to India, are trying to add features of a liberal education to their systems. Jack Ma, the founder of China’s Internet behemoth Alibaba, recently hypothesized in a speech that the Chinese are not as innovative as Westerners because China’s educational system, which teaches the basics very well, does not nourish a student’s complete intelligence, allowing her to range freely, experiment and enjoy herself while learning.

Last week I interviewed Nancy Montoya, executive producer/reporter for Media Source America, on the show I cohost on Access Tucson, Education: The Rest of the Story. We talked about Arizona's education cuts at the K-12 and college levels and the efforts of a newly created group, Arizona Stands Up, to inform Arizonans about the importance of education and put pressure on the legislature to increase funding for education in future budgets.

This is the second part of the interview. In Part One, Nancy talks about her extensive broadcasting experience, her production company and her work with others to promote education in the state.

It looks like all the bad press for-profit colleges have earned recently has taken a toll on the University of Phoenix. Its enrollment has been cut in half over the past five years, from 460,000 to 213,000. Between Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday morning its stock dropped from 28.04 to 22.17 and is at 19.62 as I write this. 

The reason is the bad reputation for-profit colleges have picked up recently. Problems have been reported on for years by the less-than-mainstream press but was only reported by the MSM, then acted on by the Obama administration, more recently.

Once a cash cow industry, for-profit education companies have struggled to overcome criticism of the quality of its education and the costs. They're the sore spot in the national debate about value of higher education.

For-profit colleges only enroll roughly 12% of the country's students, but accounted for about half of student loan defaults in 2013, according to federal data.

Those types of stats spurred the Obama administration last March to limit federal aid dolled out to for-profit colleges — a challenge for places like the University of Phoenix.

President Obama announced another initiative in January to make community college free. For-profit universities compete for many of the same students that community colleges take in.

What's ahead: The numbers are telling: Apollo Education Group had revenues close to $5 billion in 2010. This year it will be lucky to take in $2.7 billion.

Finally. It's official. The poor in Arizona get screwed on taxes and the rich make out like bandits. Howie Fischer says so, mainly citing a piece on WalletHub. Fischer is right. WalletHub is right. Arizona is a tax haven for the rich and a tax hell for the poor. That means every Republican legislator who complains about high Arizona taxes—in other words, every Republican legislator (If any of you is an exception, please let me know and I'll apologize publicly)—is a liar. They don't give a damn about high taxes on the poor, because, if you're too poor to contribute to campaigns, who the hell cares what happens to you? They just want lower taxes for people who can afford to pay the piper.

In general, WalletHub is a font of half-baked statistics (I mean, it declared Tucson the fifth best city in "Efficient Spending on Education" because we spend so little on schools). But in this case, they got it right, and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, which Fischer also cited, got it even more right in its Distributional Analysis of the Tax Systems in All 50 States. Skip down to page 33 for the Arizona information. Arizona is "#8 of the Terrible 10" when it comes to tax inequality. By its calculations, the top 1 percent pays 4.6 percent of its income on state and local taxes. The bottom 20 percent pays 12.5 percent. (They exclude elderly taxpayers from the study). Here's the graph breaking it down.

Nothing fazes Tucson Unified School District Board Member Michael Hicks. 

Last month, state Sen. Steve Farley paid a visit and called Hicks out for supporting a bill that hopes to take all of the desegregation money away from TUSD.  Hicks said in that meting that he would back up his support for the legislation, if the district agreed to hire an auditor.

Understandable—keeping track of where the money is spent is a good thing. The district has said they are not against that, but TUSD Board Member Cam Juárez told me a few weeks ago, there is no money to hire an auditor. 

Hicks may be at it again.

I wrote yesterday that there are new funding amendments in two separate bills also attacking TUSD's deseg money. According to the photo above provided by Farley's Facebook, a "Charles" Hicks supports one of the proposals—an amendment to SB 1120, which would freeze deseg funds until there is an audit and the appropriations committee reviews the results of such audit. 

TUSD Superintendent H.T. Sanchez is testifying against both amendments in front of the House Appropriations Committee's hearing today. More info on that should be coming our way soon.

From Farley's Facebook:

"He's at it again. Rogue TUSD board member Michael Hicks (aka Charles) signed up in favor of the 1120 striker in House Approps this morning that would endanger $64 million annually from TUSD's court ordered deseg budget, working against his own superintendent who will be testifying against."

There seems to be a last-minute attempt to take money from Tucson Unified School District's desegregation funds. 

This morning, state Sen. Steve Farley announced that the House Appropriations Committee  is taking on an amendment to SB 1120 tomorrow, which would require Tucson and Phoenix school districts to pay for a "forensic audit" of their desegregation spending by the auditor general. The committee would hold the desegregation funds until it reviews the audit.

"That would in effect chop $64 million annually from TUSD and $87 million from PUSD—meaning school closures, teacher firings, and class sizes pushing 50," Farley said on his Facebook. "Bear in mind that both districts are already required by federal judges and court-appointed Special Masters to undergo similar audits on a regular basis."

The amendment is specific to any school districts that get $15 million or more in deseg funding:

A. Notwithstanding section 15‑910, Arizona Revised Statutes, a school district that budgets more than $15,000,000 for desegregation expenses in fiscal year 2016‑2017 may not spend any monies for desegregation expenses in fiscal year 2016‑2017 until the auditor general conducts a forensic audit pursuant to subsection B of this section and until the house of representatives appropriations committee reviews those audit findings pursuant to subsection C of this section.
B. The auditor general shall conduct a forensic audit of any school district that budgets more than $15,000,000 in fiscal year 2016‑2017 for desegregation expenses pursuant to section 15‑910, Arizona Revised Statutes. The audit shall examine the desegregation expenses of that school district for at least the most recent fiscal year, but not more than the three most recent fiscal years, at the discretion of the auditor general. The costs of conducting an audit pursuant to this subsection shall be deducted from the monies that the school district receives for desegregation expenses.
C. The auditor general shall submit the findings of the audit conducted pursuant to this section to the members of the house of representatives appropriations committee. After receipt of the audit findings, the house of representatives appropriations committee may take either or both of the following actions:
1. Refer any evidence of misfeasance, malfeasance, misappropriation of monies or criminal conduct that is demonstrated in the audit findings to the attorney general.
2. Recommend proposed legislation to adjust desegregation funding for that school district or other school districts, or both, as a result of the audit findings."
Amend title to conform.

Farley pointed out that the amendment is the handy-work of the Arizona Tax Research Association, which he alleges are trying to kill public education. He also brought that up at a TUSD board meeting he attended in February to discuss another bill seeking to defund desegregation programs, SB 1371. 

TUSD Superintendent H.T. Sanchez testified against that bill in early February and plans to travel to the House committee's hearing tomorrow and testify against this new proposal. 

(Added after publication):

He has said the district does not oppose an audit. What's concerning is the threat of freezing those funds while a review of such audit takes place.

"TUSD's spending is already scrutinized by a court-ordered special master, the Fisher plaintiffs, the Mendoza plaintiffs, an appointed school budget operations expert and a federal judge," he said in a statement. "We have no concerns about another audit. We just ask that a reasonable timeline be set so that we are not forced to try to meet court-ordered desegregation requirements without the funding we need to fulfill them."

 Sanchez will also discuss a House amendment to SB 1076, which would change the way the state funds schools over the cap on property tax.

"The amendment could mean that districts wouldn't learn about their state funding levels until the school year is halfway over. For TUSD, a loss of $8 to $18 million would have to be absorbed in a matter of months, resulting in drastic cuts to programs, jobs and services," a press release from TUSD said. 

Gov. Doug Ducey says he is against the Common Core standards, but isn't asking the state Board of Education to get rid of them, yet. Instead, Ducey proposed a thorough review of the language arts and math standards to search for ways they can be more Arizona and less federal government.

The involvement of parents, students and teachers from around the state are a must.

"We can learn from others, but at the end of the day the standards need to come from Arizona and they need to help us achieve our objectives," Ducey told the board this morning. "And in any instance during your review, you find situations where Arizona standards can outperform the ones already adopted, I ask you to replace them."

As I read this story Sunday, I kept flipping back to the front page to make sure I was reading the Business section of the NY Times and not The Onion. The story has the tone of deadpan absurdity perfected by The Onion's faux news. Yep, it was the Times. The story is written by Robert Frank, who is the CNBC wealth editor (really, that's his title). He also wrote "Richistan," which exposed the ways of the wealthy, so maybe he had tongue planted firmly in cheek as he wrote this seemingly laudatory story. Or maybe not.

I recommend you stop reading this post, link to the story, A High School Where a Student Might Letter in Polo, and read the whole thing. Honestly, I can't do it justice. But let me give it a try.

William I. Koch, the sports/playboy billionaire brother of the famed David and Charles "Koch Brothers," put up $60 million to open a private high school so his children had a school they could attend near his Palm Beach, Florida, home. (Thoughtful dad. How people are willing to pony up $60 million for their children's educations?) Tuition is a hefty $25,000 a year, though I'm guessing if William was asked about increasing spending for public schools, he'd say money doesn't matter and complain about people who want to "throw money at schools."

Here's a wonderful stat from the story about the growing education spending gap.

High-income families now spend, on average, seven times as much each year on education as lower-income families, up from four times as much in the 1970s, according to one study. From 2007 through 2011, while the broader economy was weak, enrollment at private schools with tuition averaging $28,340 jumped 36 percent, according to federal data.

Polo wasn't part of the original curriculum. It began as an attempt to serve the needs of one student who was a competitive polo player. The school started the program so he wouldn't have to miss so much school. Really, isn't that what a good education is all about, meeting the needs of your students?