Ridesharing service Lyft announced yesterday that it has expanded to offer statewide services to a total of 40 states, including Arizona.

Before today, there were only eight states that had full coverage from Lyft, but this gives them the largest coverage area of any ride sharing company in the U.S. (we're looking at you, Uber), with services available to 94 percent of the U.S. population (287 million people).

Although Uber's ride service launched in Tucson several years ago and its food delivery service launched in the city last month, Lyft’s introduction will offer residents an alternative to Uber, which has been  entrenched in controversy over the last year.

Reports came out last week that Trump will decide any day whether to keep Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. DACA recipients, or Dreamers, together with immigration lawyers, activists and allies gathered in front of Tucson City Hall, on Aug. 29, to say they're not going anywhere.


The Obama-era ruling protects close to 800,000 people whose parents brought them into the country, undocumented, as children. DACA makes it legal for them to work, get a driver's license, pay in-state tuition to college and to live their lives without fear of deportation.

"We continue to hear these threats against DACA," said Jessica Rodriguez, a member of the humanitarian organization Living United for Change in Arizona. "This is not going to stop. We're going to continue to take the streets. We're going to continue to call on our officials. We are not going to stop."

Immigration attorney Mo Goldman said to focus energy toward local elected officials.

"Call out representatives like Rep. McSally, who has said that she supports the DACAmented community and the Dreamers," he said. "She's been out there. She said it, and she needs to be held accountable. She needs to be on the phone talking to the White House."

Democrat Paul Durham won 45 percent of the vote in today's Ward 3 three-way primary in the race to replace Tucson City Councilwoman Karin Uhlich, who is stepping down after three terms.

Durham easily outpaced his Democratic rivals, teacher Felicia Chew (who got 32 percent) and small business owner Tom Tronsdal (who got 22 percent).

Turnout was light across Ward 3, where 5,307 votes had been counted as of 7:51 p.m. Tuesday.

Durham had raised more money and done more mailers than the other candidates, but he won the north-central ward the old-fashioned way: He walked door to door for months and personally asked for votes.

Durham thanked Ward 3 voters in a prepared statement.

"I campaigned on a plan to make Tucson a leader in sustainability and stand up to the Trump administration," he said. "From tonight’s results, it’s clear that the residents of Ward 3 share that vision."

He also thanked Tronsdal and Chew, saying that they "ran great campaigns and deeply care about the issues confronting Tucson. Councilmember Karin Uhlich leaves behind big shoes to fill, but I hope to earn the respect of Tucsonans that she has earned. I look forward to running city-wide this November alongside Councilmembers Richard Fimbres and Steve Kozachik and meeting even more people from every corner of Tucson."

Durham will face independent candidate Gary Watson in the November general election, where both candidates will vie for the support of voters citywide.

The only other primary contest pitted Mike Cease against Michael Oatman in the Ward 6 Green Party race. Cease cruised past Oatman with 64 percent by capturing 51 votes.

Democrat Steve Kozachik is seeking a third term representing the central-city Ward 6 against Cease and Republican Mariano Rodriguez.

Ward 5 Councilman Richard Fimbres will face no opposition as he seeks a third term.

About 600 protesters waving familiar posters gathered in front of Pima County’s Administration Building on Tuesday evening: Refugees Welcome, Black Lives Matter, No Human is Illegal. In an age where almost every week, people take to the streets to voice their outrage with the government, people are getting creative. “Dumbledore's Army accepting members” and “Ctrl+Alt+Delete” are a few of the more creative signs.

The focus of Tucsonans Against Racism Protest and Rally was County Supervisor Ally Miller, who announced her white pride on Facebook, only hours after a white supremacist mowed down a crowd of protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, on Aug. 12. For the last week, citizens and fellow board members implored her to apologize for her comments.

And now it seems the time for apologies has passed, at least for the hundreds that gathered on Tucson’s downtown. People want her gone. It was no accident this rally was planned on the day Trump addressed supporters in Phoenix. Inside the Phoenix Convention Center, Trump hinted at pardoning former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio for illegally continuing racist practices, and Trump decried the “very dishonest media,” blaming them for the backlash to his “many sides” statement following Charlottesville. Outside, thousands protested and were finally dispersed when police set off tear gas into the crowd. In Tucson, people chanted—families with toddlers in strollers, old ladies waving American flags, teenagers standing up for their future.

People of every age, creed and color shouted, “This is what democracy looks like,” and held their signs high as cars passed, honking their approval.

Pima County Supervisor Ally Miller, who made the news last week when she declared her "white pride" on Facebook after would-be Nazis marched in Charlottesville and killed one counter-protester (along with injuring others), decided to skip today's Board of Supervisors meeting.

Miller dashed off an email at 6:13 a.m. this morning letting county officials know she was unavailable for the meeting.

"I am sending this to notify you that I will be unable to cal (sic) in to today's board meeting: August 21, 2017," Miller wrote in her brief message. "Please notify the Chair."

Miller was expected to get roasted during the Call to the Audience segment of the meeting after her Facebook comments earned widespread condemnation outside of her immediate circle of flying monkeys.

"I'm sick and tired of being hit for being white... It is all about making us feel like we need to apologize," Miller wrote in response to a post about Charlottesville on political gadfly's Shaun McClusky's Facebook page. "I am WHITE—and proud of it! No apologies necessary."

Where is the pride this morning?

Tucson will be voting on Strong Start, an initiative to fund a preschool program through a half cent sales tax. San Antonio, Texas, has created a similar system, with significant differences. A long Politico article has the details. Here's a brief summary.

San Antonio voted in a 1/8-cent tax to fund a pre-K program, with 54 percent voting yes. The size of the sales tax increase was the product of necessity; it was the most state law would allow. The city set up four pre-K centers, three of them built from scratch, to teach 2,000 children a year, a tenth of the city's 4-year olds (Strong Start Tucson's goal to place 8,000 three and four year olds).

The centers open at 7:15 a.m. for breakfast. The regular school day ends at 3 p.m., but about 40 percent of the kids stay for an extended day program for children of working parents, which goes to 6 p.m. Many parents say they couldn’t enroll their children in pre-school without the extended day, says Sculley. Pre-K 4 SA is free for 80 percent of the families, who qualify under the Texas law for disadvantaged or military households. The other 20 percent are middle-class families with an income of more than 185 percent of the poverty line—$44,000 for a family of four. They pay tuition based on a sliding scale.

Education Next published the results of its latest poll on education issues. As with all polls and studies, these results should be taken with many grains of salt. But Education Next is a serious publication and it has been conducting these polls for awhile, so its numbers are worth a serious look. For me, the most surprising result is that the support for charter schools is down, significantly. More on that, and other findings.

When Education Next first asked the charter school question in 2013, 51 percent supported charters and 26 percent opposed them. In the most recent poll, the numbers converged: 39 percent supporting, 37 percent opposed. The results held pretty steady until this year, when both sides changed about 12 percent. Why has support weakened? I have no idea, but interestingly, it's not connected to political party. Republicans tend to like charters more than Democrats, but both groups' support slipped by nearly the same amount. If this is a real trend which continues over the next few years, the charter movement's growth could slow considerably.

Support for vouchers went up a bit this year, and opposition declined. Lumping together tuition tax credits and government-funded vouchers, support is about 50 percent and opposition is about 35 percent. But a funny thing happens when the question refers to the use of "government funds" to pay for the vouchers. Support drops to 37 percent, and opposition rises to 49 percent. The public likes the idea of helping people pay for private school until they realize they're the ones footing the bill.

For the past few years, I've put up a chart of TUSD's enrollment numbers beginning in 2000. The district has a detailed table of daily enrollment for those years separated out by grade, ethnicity and gender. However, it wasn't updated last year because, I was told, of a change in computer operations. I recently received the 2016-17 numbers from the district and was told the daily enrollment count will return to the district website toward the end of this year.

Here is the updated chart.
A few things before I look at the numbers. I've consistently used the enrollment numbers on the 175th day because they seem to have less random variation than other days during the year. However, the numbers I'm using this year are somewhat different than last year's. The reason is, I hadn't noticed until I looked over the numbers for this post that I had included preschool enrollment in the count, which skews the count, especially for the past school year. Preschool numbers have increased slowly over the years, but they made a big jump this past year, increasing by 300 children. If I included them in the chart, the enrollment loss for this past school year would be smaller. This corrected chart only includes K-12 numbers.

The chart shows an average decline in district enrollment of about 350 students a year from 2000 to 2007. The numbers take a plunge from 2008 to 2012, averaging about 1600 a year, then the yearly decreases slow. Over the last three years, the average loss has been about 650 students, which is an improvement from the previous seven years but still a serious problem for the district.

My chart only shows the total numbers year to year. A look at the grade-by-grade changes in the detailed district tables reveals a few problems and one bright spot.

The state has released scores on the AzMERIT tests given this spring, meaning we can compare TUSD's 2017 scores with its scores two years ago when students took the first AzMERIT tests, and with the state scores. I'll lay out the results the numbers first, then I'll try to figure out what they mean, and don't mean.

But first, let me repeat my intense dislike of our obsession with high stakes, standardized tests. They only test what's testable in a fill-in-the-bubble format. They're susceptible to being gamed, meaning the better teachers are at teaching to the test, the better their students' results. That means the reliability of the results as a measure of student achievement is questionable. Also, the emphasis on the tests distorts the curriculum at the same time it stifles teachers' creativity and their ability to tailor their teaching strategies to their students' needs. The yearly tests make the education we give our students worse, not better. Nonetheless, the tests are out there, and people will talk. So with these caveats in mind, I'll talk too.

Here's a summary of the AzMERIT results, without analysis or interpretation. Statewide, fewer than half the students passed the test in every grade. The passage rates range from 25 percent to 48 percent. However, the average passing rate rose about 4 percentage points since the first test was given in 2015. TUSD's passing rate is considerably lower than the state's, averaging 11 points lower in Language Arts and 13 points lower in Math. The district's average passing rate didn't change in Language Arts from 2015 to 2017 and went up one percent in Math, meaning TUSD's scores showed less improvement than the state as a whole. White and Asian students scored considerably higher than Hispanic, Native American and African American students at the district and the state level.

Now, some analysis. First, the passing rates. As any teacher knows, you can create tests that are easier and harder, and you can move the grade curve up or down depending on where you set the cut scores. The old AIMS test was thought to be too easy and too many students passed it, so the state created a harder test and set the passing scores at a level that fewer students passed. So the fact that far fewer students passed AzMERIT than AIMS doesn't mean our students know less than they did a few years ago. It just means we have a tougher curve on a tougher test.

Fewer TUSD students passed than the state average, and at both the TUSD and state levels, White and Asian students scored higher than Hispanic, Native American and African American students. That information is about as surprising and revelatory as saying the yearly temperature in Tucson is higher than it is in Seattle. Of course Tucson is warmer, that's how the global climate is structured! Of course Whites and Asians outperform Hispanics, Native Americans and African Americans on standardized tests, that's how the households' economic and educational status is structured! And of course the state outperforms TUSD on standardized test scores, the district has a lower percentage of high scoring White and Asian students and a higher percentage of Hispanic, Native American and African American students than the state as a whole.

None of this is a judgement on any group. Far from it. It's a judgement of our society's shameful economic, racial and ethnic inequality. If we lower the levels of inequality, the gaps in student scores will close as a result. It's overstating things, but not by much, to say we could learn as much about student achievement, and save ourselves a whole lot of money, by getting rid of the tests and just looking up students' zip codes.

My last post was about the likely distribution of the new results-based funding which will go to 17 percent of Arizona's schools. The details are in the earlier post. Here's the short version: Only 35 percent of the state's district schools cater mainly to higher income students, but they represent 65 percent of the schools getting results-based funding for the 2017-18 school year. The economic inequity is even greater for charter schools.

Results-based funding is a very big deal. The lucky schools getting the money will boost their teachers' pay by between $2,000 and $4,000 a year and still have lots left over to buy educational extras other schools can't afford.

Thanks to results-based funding, increased educational inequity will be added to our growing income inequality. But as bad as things are the first year, they'll be far worse after that, with an even bigger piece of the pie going to schools in high rent areas. The details of how this works get a bit complicated, but they're important. Without knowing what the future will bring beyond year one, people will underestimate how truly awful the new results-based funding law is.

When results-based money is given out this school year, 2017-18, it will be based on schools' average AzMERIT scores. Since the standardized test scores correlate so closely with students' family incomes, that could mean that nearly all the money would go to schools in higher rent areas, but an added stipulation guarantees that about a third of the schools are in lower rent areas. According to the current projection from the Arizona legislature's Joint Legislative Budget Committee, 114 district schools with higher income students and 61 schools with lower income students will get the funding.