Lisa Graham Keegan is the bluebird of "education reform" happiness. Keegan, former state legislator who sponsored Arizona's original charter school bill (and got it passed by threatening Democrats that a voucher bill was coming next if the charter bill failed), then the Superintendent of Public Instruction who got charter schools rolling (and budgeted as little as possible for charter school oversight to make sure the "invisible hand of the marketplace" could work its magic), isn't one of those privatization proponents who spends all her time talking about "failing government schools" and abysmal standardized test scores. She'd rather write, as she did in a recent op ed in the Capitol Times, that you can find excellent schools everywhere.

These models of excellence can be found in charters, traditional district schools, and district magnet schools. They’re in likely and unlikely places: affluent areas and low-income communities, rural, suburban, and urban.

Isn't that nice? Yes it is. And I have to say, I agree with her wholeheartedly — up to this point, anyway. Unfortunately, though, her sunny depiction of educational excellence is a soft-sell setup for her real point: that we should give more money to the schools she defines as "excellent," a definition that just happens to favor district and charter schools with lots of kids from high-income families.

Keegan, who has played a major role as an educational advisor to both former governor Jan Brewer and current governor Doug Ducey, is pushing Ducey's "results-based funding model" which awards "excellent" schools with more money. She and Ducey maintain that successful schools deserve to be rewarded for their success.

The reward system ignores a few education-related points. First, in most European and Asian school systems—the ones that eat our schools for lunch, "education reformers" never tire of reminding us—extra money is funneled into schools where student performance is low to cover the cost of improving the quality of the schools, not into schools where students are already doing well. Second, the Keegan/Brewer/Ducey definition of "excellence" leans heavily on standardized test scores, and, as virtually every reasonable study indicates, in the U.S. and around the world, test scores rise as family income rises.

"Vrag naroda" is Russian for "Enemy of the People." I didn't pull the phrase from some online English-to-Russian translation engine. It is, or was, a much used term in the Soviet Union to describe people who the leadership believed were dangerous and were sent away to some distant prison camp, or executed. Until Stalin died, anyway. Nikita Khrushchev, when he came to power, decided to tone down the rhetoric a bit, because he thought Enemy of the People "eliminated the possibility of any kind of ideological fight."

Trump apparently disagrees with Krushchev. He thinks Enemy of the People is an excellent term to use against people, like journalists, who state facts or espouse views he finds objectionable.

A few weeks ago when I wrote about the literary antecedent of Trump's use of the phrase—Ibsen's play, An Enemy of the People—I was being too clever by half. It's true that Ibsen uses the term ironically to refer to people who try to tell the truth—journalists, scientists, whistleblowers—and are condemned for their efforts by the powers that be, just like Trump is doing. But really, that was an English major/English teacher showing off. Far more important is the Soviet Russia reference, given the Trump campaign and administration's many ties to Russia. Trump, I'm certain, didn't pull the phrase out of thin air, any more than the use of the word "purge" to describe the ousting of people suspected of loyalty to Obama from positions of influence is a coincidence. It's a chilling reminder of the close philosophical, ideological and personal connections between the people surrounding Trump and Russia.

Did you know grandmas can't print? Did you know you can only read the Declaration of Independence in the original historical version? Yeah, neither did I.

I don't give much of a damn whether or not schools teach cursive. If it's a choice between cursive or recess time, I say go with recess. If it's cursive or a has-nothing-to-do-with-teaching-to-the-test project, I say go with the project. But if there's time enough and it doesn't cut out anything valuable, sure, why not? Teach cursive if you want.

But I hate ridiculous, sounds-like-common-sense con jobs trying to justify anything, teaching cursive or otherwise. That's what this post is about.

I read an article about the revival of cursive in the classroom. Arizona is now requiring cursive instruction, which is part of a national movement, so it's news. I've heard arguments that cursive instruction encourages some kind of higher level thinking, but so do any number of other educational activities, so that's a silly argument. But not as silly, as ridiculous, as logic-challenged, as maddening, as the arguments in this article.

One cursive proponent says, if children know cursive, they can read a letter from grandma. Sounds logical, right? Grandma sends a birthday card or a postcard from Italy, and the poor little grandchild looks at it, turns to mommy in tears and says, "I (choke) can't read what grandma wrote (sob)." My question is, how stupid is grandma—or grandpa, to make this less sexist (though the article doesn't mention him)? Didn't everyone in that generation learn to print? That's what I do when I send birthday cards or any other written communication to my grand children. I print, so they can read it. For the younger one, I write in all caps, since that's all she writes and reads at this point. That's being, I don't know, thoughtful. Considerate. Loving. My cursive is such a miserable scrawl even I have trouble reading it sometimes, so if I wrote cursive, I'd have to slow down anyway to make it legible. It would take as much effort as simply printing, so they can read it.

But if you don't think about it, you might say, yeah, that makes sense, let's teach kids cursive so they can read grandma's letters.

Arizona's ongoing tuition tax credit scam was well documented back in 2009 courtesy of some terrific investigative reporting, and it continues to come up in our media now and again. Nothing has changed—what else is new in Arizona?—but at least it's out in the open for anyone who wants to read about it. It's nice to see this Oldie But Goodie getting some national coverage in a New York Times story, DeVos and Tax Credit Vouchers: Arizona Shows What Can Go Wrong. The story's poster child for tax credit profiteering is our own state Senate President Steve Yarbrough.

The Times story begins, "Steve Yarbrough is one of the most powerful men in Arizona." Then it talks about our backdoor voucher program, tuition tax credits, where people give money to School Tuition Organizations and get all of it back when they pay their taxes, meaning their "donation" costs them nothing. The taxpayer picks up the tab, since 100 percent of that money otherwise would have gone into the state coffers. The STOs use most of the money to pay for students' private school tuitions. It can pay for poor kids to go to private schools, but the money can also be used to pay full tuition for millionaires' sons and daughters to attend the most exclusive, expensive private schools in the state. The more you know about this program, the worse it gets.

The dirty secret hidden inside the voucher plan, the Ka-ching! that puts a twinkle in Sen. Yarbrough's eye, is that ten percent of the tuition tax credit money goes to pay the STO's overhead. If your STO pulls in, say, $18 million, like Yarbrough's Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization did in 2014, the most recent year with an online tax form from the STO, that means $1.8 million can be used to pay for the expense of collecting money from donors and handing it out to schools. That's good money if you can get it. Yarbrough gets a $125,000 salary out of the deal. But as the Times piece points out, that's only part of his total take. He owns HY Processing which does the bookkeeping/tech work for the STO, for which it makes $636,000 a year. Yarbrough owns the building that houses the STO, which brings him $52,000 in rent. The STO paid for his car.

I imagine Yarbrough smiles all the way to the bank when he's on his way to the State Capitol to do "the people's work"—with Steve Yarbrough being Steve's favorite "people."

As most everyone knows by now, H.T. Sanchez resigned as TUSD superintendent Tuesday. You can read the official Separation and Release Agreement here. It's a clean break agreement. No one is admitting guilt on either side. Members of the board can't speak badly about Sanchez, and Sanchez can't speak badly about the board. If anyone violates this "non-disparagement" agreement, that person can be sued and, if found guilty, is responsible for paying the damages. That should effectively button lips on both sides. Sanchez gets $200,000 for leaving, which I figure is more-or-less half of what he would get in salary if he stayed until his contract was up.

People in the community will continue to talk about Sanchez, I'm sure, but TUSD is saying, "Let's move on." I agree.

What comes next? Unless the board majority has a Plan B with someone already in mind as the next superintendent, the next step is up in the air. So, a few thoughts.

First, I'm folding my hands and praying a secular prayer that the board hires a competent, effective superintendent with as little fussing and fighting as possible. I'm not sure how many great potential superintendents are job hunting right now, but I imagine a number of applicants for the job will be reasonably capable. A great superintendent can move a district forward, usually by small steps, not by leaps and bounds. A bad superintendent can be a drag on the district and bring it down a few notches. A competent, caretaker superintendent can keep things running with a modicum of efficiency and, with a bit of luck, lower the hysteria level just a little. I'll add that I hope the new superintendent is both confident and cautious. People will be pushing and pulling the Supe from all directions, and the best response, at least in the near future, is to plot a steady course instead of bending with whatever wind is strongest.

I'm Jewish. I've watched intently as the antisemitic alt right has grown in prominence during and after the presidential campaign. Breibart.com gave the haters a voice, orchestrated by Steve Bannon, Breibart's executive chair. Trump retweeted some of the alt right's garbage because he liked the way it sounded. After his election, he made Bannon his closest advisor, making Bannon the most powerful man in the White House except for, or maybe including, Trump himself. An exultant group of alt righters gathered in D.C. after the election, ending their celebration with a speech by Richard Spencer who exalted white people using language reminiscent of the Third Reich. He ended his speech with, “Hail Trump! Hail our people! Hail Victory!"

But through all that, I honestly wasn't very worried that antisemitism would rise to the level of a serious problem. I've been focused on the very real threats to Muslims and Hispanics whose daily lives have been harmed and whose feeling of safety within our country has been imperiled. Worrying too much about antisemitism as I sit on my reasonably safe, secure societal perch has felt a bit self indulgent. Sure we're seeing some visible signs of hatred toward Jews, but it has always been there hiding just under the surface, and watching it peek its ugly head out of the cess pool where it lives didn't seem too consequential.

Until now. Now, following the desecrations of Jewish cemeteries and the bomb threats called into Jewish Community Centers across the country, including our JCC here in Tucson, it's beginning to look real. I'm still trying to keep it in context. The Trump administration's moves against immigrants and Muslims are a far more immediate, day-by-day concern. But I'm no longer unconcerned about the threat of antisemitism.

Arizona's Republican legislators are pushing a vouchers-on-steroids-for-everyone bill. Betsy DeVos, Trump's new Secretary of Education, loves vouchers and private schools far more than public schools. A bill being pushed in Congress would change the way the Feds give money to the states, requiring that the money go to students attending private schools as well as public schools.

And yet, the latest research indicates that voucher students do worse than similar students who stay in public schools, according to a recent article in the New York Times.

Yeah, I know, it's the New York Times, and what right-thinking, pro-privatization School Choice advocate listens to a paper Trump assures us is spouting Fake News and is an Enemy of the People?

OK then, you might want to listen to the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a conservative, pro-school choice think tank, whose research is discussed in the NY Times article. The institute published a study in July, 2016, about Ohio's voucher program, which began in 2005. The results for the voucher students weren't good.

The students who use vouchers to attend private schools have fared worse academically compared to their closely matched peers attending public schools. The study finds negative effects that are greater in math than in English language arts. Such impacts also appear to persist over time, suggesting that the results are not driven simply by the setbacks that typically accompany any change of school.

The authors were hoping for a different result, they wrote, but they showed themselves to be honest researchers.

Let us acknowledge that we did not expect—or, frankly, wish—to see these negative effects for voucher participants; but it’s important to report honestly on what the analysis showed and at least speculate on what may be causing these results.

In the same spirit of honesty, I need to add one positive the researchers pulled from their data: the achievement of students who could have chosen to use the vouchers but stayed in public schools actually improved. The authors drew the conclusion that the public schools improved their instruction out of concern that, otherwise, too many students might leave for private schools. If that finding is confirmed elsewhere — and if it's an actual increase in student learning and not just a result of more intense teaching to the standardized tests — it's something educators should look at more carefully.

The threat is all too real for many people around the country, especially in areas like Tucson: someone coming to their door asking about their immigration status. The group United We Dream has put together a simple flier telling people what to do in case they find themselves in that situation. You can download the flier in English, Spanish, Arabic, Chinese and Korean.

At the second TUSD board meeting in as many weeks, the board punted on the topic of keeping or firing Superintendent Sanchez. Last week, on Feb. 14, the action item was removed from the board's agenda. On Tuesday, Feb. 21, it was the meeting's sole agenda item. After an executive session which ran hours longer than scheduled, the board members walked into the standing-room-only meeting room, listened to members of the audience speak out for and against Sanchez, then told the audience the item had been tabled. See y'all next week!

None of us regular folks know exactly why a vote on Sanchez's future was delayed. The decision was made in executive session, and the board members are supposed to keep those sessions confidential. So the next step is anyone's guess. Sanchez may yet be fired; he may be allowed to remain with conditions; or the board may simply vote against the call to get rid of him and be done with it. I have a feeling the board doesn't know much more about the outcome than the rest of us.

So, nothing happened. But I observed something and drew a conclusion which may or may not be accurate. What I observed was, there's not a whole lot of passionate community support for the "Fire Sanchez" movement. There are probably a significant number of people in the community who are dissatisfied with his performance as superintendent, people who wouldn't be unhappy to see him go, but if the meeting is any indication, the core group of Sanchez haters, the people with fire in their bellies, is reasonably small.

Full disclosure: I think Sanchez should stick around at least until his contract runs out in 2018, so that may color my subjective, anecdotal observations. I claim no scientific rigor here. That being said, I watched carefully, and this is what I observed. If I'm wrong, I'm sure others will let me know.

In a recent tweet, Trump called the press "the enemy of the American people." Days earlier, though he didn't use the phrase, he made a similar accusation about our courts when they ruled against his Muslim ban. I'm sure Trump had no idea he was quoting the title of a 19th century play, An Enemy of the People, by Henrik Ibsen, in his tweet, nor could he know how ironic the play's title is or how clearly it reveals his intentions. The "enemy" in the play is a man who dared speak truth to power. Power, as it often does, did everything it could to suppress the truth.

We're not very familiar with Ibsen these days, but we know Steven Spielberg, and most of us have seen Jaws. The opening of the movie is based loosely on Ibsen's play.

Late one night in Spielberg's little tourist beach town, we see a swimmer killed by a shark. When the coroner confirms to the police chief that it was a shark attack, the chief decides to close the beaches until they're safe. The mayor disagrees. It's the beginning of the summer tourist season, he says, and closing the beaches would be disastrous for the town's economy. The mayor convinces the coroner to change the cause of death, to say the swimmer was caught in the blades of a boat's propeller — in other words, to lie. The mayor forbids the police chief from closing the beaches. It takes two more shark attacks before the mayor acknowledges that the police chief was right and closes the beaches, which is when the hunt for the Great White begins.

Ibsen's original Enemy of the People has a similar setup. A small town's economy is based around its health baths. A local doctor discovers that the water is contaminated and writes an article which he submits to the editor of the local paper. The editor is eager to print it, both to report the problems with the baths and to use it as a way to expose the corruption running rampant in the town's government. But the mayor intervenes. He convinces the editor that printing the truth would be bad for the town, so the editor pulls the doctor's article. In its place, he runs a statement by the mayor praising the quality of the baths.