A guest column appearing in the Aug. 26 Arizona Republic, "State students improving in reading but too slowly," was based on a report last June by the same author, who got his statistics all wrong and which I have refuted in detail. (See www.azed.gov/statisticalresponse.)
I have been working hard and fighting hard for high standards, accountability of schools, teachers and students to meet those standards.
"Progressive" educators, on the other hand, believe there should be no
standards. My public response to this has been that this produces graduates
lacking in the knowledge needed for the modern economy and for citizenship.
Here are some of our achievements:
• Standards: Working with task forces of high-quality teachers, and
with the state board, we have reformed standards to make them much more. The
chief historian of the History Channel held a press conference and stated:
"In developing the Multimedia Classroom, we analyzed the history curriculum
of every state and it was Arizona that stood head and shoulders ahead of the
other 49."
• Accountability: Two years ago, we had 81 schools that were in their
second year of being underperforming. A third year of being underperforming
meant that they were subject to state takeover. We sent highly trained
Arizona teachers and principals to work with those schools. Seventy of the
81 raised their test scores enough to become performing schools. The
remaining 11 became subject to state takeover. Nine are now performing.
• Accountability of students: We insisted on keeping the schedule for
the requirement that students pass the AIMS test to graduate. Principals and
teachers from all over the state have called me to tell me that they have
never seen the students work so hard.
• Classroom discipline: A high priority has been an initiative for
strict classroom discipline. Strict classroom discipline is a necessary
precondition to academic achievement.
• Parental choice: I have been a strong supporter of the charter
movement since I was a legislator in the 1990s. As chair of a conference
committee, I killed the Hartley amendment, which would have limited the
growth of charter schools. Since then, Arizona charters have grown to where
we are clearly the country's leader in parental choice.
• Artificial barriers to becoming a teacher: If you have content
knowledge and want to switch careers to teaching, you no longer have to go
back to school for two years. Now, we have an "alternate pathways" program
under which you can take a six-week course in teaching methods, become a
full-time paid teacher immediately and continue to take courses while
teaching to obtain full certification.
• Bilingual education: We have eliminated the failed experiment of
bilingual education for English-language learners and are insisting that
they learn English as quickly as possible so they can compete academically.
Despite Arizona's status, which we hope will change, of being 49th out of 50
states in funding per pupil, our emphasis on academic rigor in the classroom
is paying dividends. Arizona students perform above the national average in
the SAT, the ACT, the TerraNova (taken by all students from second through
ninth grades), and in RAND and Standard & Poor studies of the National
Assessment of Education Progress adjusted for demographics.
There's more to achieve, but let's not ignore the legitimate good news.