|
Kryptos
Stranger

Registered: 11/01/14
Posts: 12,848
Last seen: 14 minutes, 10 seconds
|
AZ begins demolishing public education, paving the way for right wing indoctrination 3
#27863068 - 07/14/22 09:35 PM (1 year, 9 months ago) |
|
|
So, in recent news...AZ has passed a voucher program. The voters rejected the program, but the GOP legislature rammed it through anyway because fuck voters. Then, more recently, they removed teaching requirements, such as even a basic certification.
Of course, every time you pull a kid out of school, the school loses 11k in funding for the year...which means they have to cut their budgets, and the schools become lower quality, and more people pull their kids out...Of course, school funding is already pretty bare-bones, that's why they have trouble hiring teachers. By removing requirements for teachers, you end up with people that are interested in access to children more so than teaching, whether it be for political indoctrination or...more nefarious deeds.
In entirely unrelated and coincidental news, GOP activist and prominent example of likely Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, Charlie Kirk, is starting up an explicitly right wing ideological school in Arizona. Christian school, obviously. Now that he can collect money from public funding, while simultaneously not needing to actually have qualified teachers.
Of course, with the lack of oversight, those school vouchers can be taken by...anyone. I could drive down to AZ, say I'm teaching a school out of the local park, charge parents $7k per kid, and just...leave. With the money.
first quoted article
Quote:
In 2018, the voters of Arizona made clear how they felt about a plan to use public money to fund private education: They voted against it, or as Arizona Republic columnist Laurie Roberts described it: “Actually, they didn’t just reject it. They stoned the thing, then they tossed it into the street and ran over it. Then they backed up and ran over it again.”
Despite the nearly 2-to-1 rejection, the Republican-dominated Arizona legislature has just approved the nation’s largest school voucher scheme, one that makes every Arizona student eligible for taxpayer-supplied funds to attend private and religious schools as well for online education, home schooling, tutors, etc.
It is the only approved universal voucher program in any state at the moment — and it speaks volumes about what critics say is a hostility to publicly operated and funded school districts, which still educate the majority of Arizona’s children.
Gov. Doug Ducey (R) has said he will sign the legislation, which, as the right-wing Heritage Foundation said, means that Arizona was able to “reclaim its title as the state with the ‘most expansive’ ” school voucher program in the nation. Ducey was not shy about claiming the prize, tweeting, “The biggest school choice victory in U.S. history.”
Privatization of public education gaining ground, report says
One thing missing from the legislation: any kind of accountability that would let the public know what the schools getting the voucher money are actually doing. Yes, students entering the voucher program would have to take a national standardized test annually — but the state won’t see the scores, and unless a particular school has at least 50 voucher students attending, parents can’t see even aggregate scores. That doesn’t worry House Majority Leader Ben Toma, the bill’s prime mover, who said accountability would come from parents who “know what’s best for their children.”
State Sen. Christine Marsh (D) tried to add accountability measures to the legislation last week but failed. According to 12 News, she wanted amendments that would have required private schools taking in students with vouchers to do things such as check the fingerprints of employees and implement academic standards and testing. It quoted her as saying: “We have no financial transparency and we have no academic transparency. I’d like to know how many families that earn maybe a million dollars a year are getting voucher money versus how many families earning maybe 30 or 40,000 a year are getting voucher money.”
That sentiment is, however, outside the concern of proponents of school choice — alternatives to district-operated public schools — who don’t just want options for low-income families but for all families.
Besides, Arizona Republicans have not concerned themselves much with accountability issues in “choice” programs. The state’s charter schools — which are publicly funded but privately operated — are allowed to pretty much do whatever they want. The state has no cap on the number of charters and allows charter owners to opt out of procurement requirements and accounting guidelines required of state agencies. The state auditor general isn’t allowed to monitor charters — and it is no surprise that there have been numerous scandals involving financial fraud in the sector. (You can learn about some of this here.)
13 ways charter schools restrict student enrollment
Approximately 28 percent of publicly funded schools in Arizona are charters, and they enroll about 20 percent of students in the state. The nonprofit Center for Education Reform announced in May that Arizona had “made a comeback to overtake Florida as the first place winner in the advancement of charter schools.” More good news for Arizona’s GOP.
What the public isn’t told about high-performing charter schools in Arizona
Under the new voucher plan, all 1.1 million students in Arizona who can enroll in a public school can get vouchers — technically known as Empowerment Scholarship Accounts — in the form of a debit card worth about $7,000 and use it for educational purposes. The current voucher plan in Arizona helps fewer than 12,000 students.
The voucher legislation almost didn’t pass because a few Republican lawmakers were concerned about the level of funding for public school districts — a chronic problem in Arizona, whose per-student funding is at or near the bottom among all states. The Arizona Constitution has a school spending limit approved by voters in 1980, and, according to the nonprofit Arizona Center for Economic Progress, “is antiquated and based on what school needs were like in 1980.”
The legislature reluctantly lifted the cap for the just-completed school year after it became clear that draconian cuts would have to be made in schools as a result of costs sustained during the pandemic and a serious teacher shortage.
To secure passage of the voucher plan — which the legislation estimates will cost the state’s general fund up to $33.4 million in 2023, the first year, and $125.4 million by 2025 — legislators agreed to boost public school spending, but, again, the spending cap will have to be lifted. In the budget Ducey signed this week, public school districts will get a boost of more than $1 billion — though the legislature will have to raise the school spending limit again — which is nowhere near what Arizona school districts say they need to meet student needs.
Opponents of the voucher program have a way to postpone it: They have the chance to collect enough signatures over the next three months to put it on the ballot for a vote in 2024. The program would then not go into effect in 2023 as planned.
Exactly how many students will choose to avail themselves of the money remains to be seen. According to the Private School Review website, Arizona has 242 religiously affiliated private schools — the majority Christian and Catholic — that serve nearly 48,500 students. It says the average tuition cost is $7,309, which compares to $10,255 in average tuition for nonreligious private schools in Arizona.
Democrats said they worried about a “predatory market” of private schools that will be opened in a hurry when the voucher program begins. Republicans were not concerned.
second quoted article
Quote:
New legislation signed into law in Arizona by Republican Gov. Doug Ducey (R) will allow teachers to be hired with no formal teaching training, as long as they have five years of experience in fields “relevant” to the subject they are teaching. What’s “relevant” isn’t clear.
The Arizona law is part of a disturbing trend nationwide to allow teachers without certification or even any teacher preparation to be hired and put immediately to work in the classroom in large part to help close persistent teacher shortages. It plays into a misconception that anyone can teach if they know a particular subject and that it is not really necessary to first learn about curriculum, classroom management and instruction.
The legislation was championed by Ducey, who has described it as a positive change that will entice “great teachers” into the classroom and help alleviate Arizona’s teacher shortages.
The state has been struggling with severe shortages as thousands of teachers have left the state in recent years for reasons including low pay, insufficient classroom resources, and so many testing requirements and teaching guidelines that they feel they have no flexibility and too little authentic instructional time.
A new analysis by the National Education Association found Arizona near the bottom of a state list of spending per student in 2015-2016, the latest data available. The U.S. average per-student expenditure was $11,787; Vermont had the highest, $23,557, and Arizona was near the bottom, $7,566. Teachers’ salaries in Arizona were in the bottom 20 percent of states.
The United States’ growing teaching shortage: How it looks state by state
Arizona had previously allowed noncertified teachers to be hired in fields such as math and science, but this new law opens the door across subject lines.
Teachers unions and the elected state superintendent of public instruction, Diane Douglas, oppose the law, with Douglas issuing a statement saying that “lowering the standards for new teachers is not the way to correct the problem.” A retired teacher named Mike McClellan wrote in the Arizona Republic:
Let’s call it the Warm Body Law. … One that allows folks without any teaching credentials to lead our kids in classrooms across Arizona, as long as those men and women have at least five years of experience in “relevant fields.” And those fields? “Any content area.”
Why teachers are fleeing Arizona in droves
In recent years, a growing number of teachers are being hired in various states with emergency or temporary credentials, according to the nonprofit Learning Policy Institute. The consequences are severe, according to September 2016 report by the institute:
Tens of thousands of teachers were hired in the fall of 2015 on emergency or temporary credentials to meet these needs, and the same pattern has emerged as schools opened in 2016. In addition to hiring individuals who are not prepared to teach, districts and schools facing shortages have a small number of undesirable options: They can increase class sizes, cancel classes, use short-term substitutes, or assign teachers from other fields to fill vacancies. All of these stopgap solutions undermine the quality of education, especially for the students who most need effective schools.
That same report has bad news for Arizona (with footnotes removed):
In Arizona, 62 percent of school districts had unfilled teaching positions three months into the school year in 2013-14. In the same school year, close to 1,000 teachers were on substitute credentials — a 29 percent increase from the previous year. With one of the highest turnover rates of any state and 24 percent of the teacher workforce eligible to retire by the end of 2018, the outlook for Arizona’s future points to continued shortages.
|
christopera
Stranger


Registered: 10/13/17
Posts: 14,471
Last seen: 1 hour, 18 minutes
|
Re: AZ begins demolishing public education, paving the way for right wing indoctrination [Re: Kryptos]
#27863263 - 07/15/22 03:21 AM (1 year, 9 months ago) |
|
|
The good news is that only old people want to live in Arizona.
The bad news is that certainly some young people get born into living in Arizona.
-------------------- Enjoy the process of your search without succumbing to the pressure of the result. A Dorito is pizza, change my mind. Bank and Union with The Shroomery at the Zuul on The internet - now with %'s and things I’m sorry it had to be me.
|
Brian Jones
Club 27



Registered: 12/18/12
Posts: 12,455
Loc: attending Snake Church
Last seen: 7 hours, 34 minutes
|
Re: AZ begins demolishing public education, paving the way for right wing indoctrination [Re: Kryptos] 2
#27863279 - 07/15/22 04:11 AM (1 year, 9 months ago) |
|
|
I am disturbed by the SCOTUS new decisions on public vs parochial education. Everyone should have the choice, but tax dollars are for public education. Nobody has a crystal ball but if the Court ever becomes rebalanced, let's hope separation of church and state returns, but not holding my breath.
I find this, not completely, but very similar to labor so called "right to work" laws where every worker gets the right to benefit from unions whether they join or not. Maybe I'm stretching, but there is a connection.
Illinois under Governor J.B. Pritzker is currently working to make the state permanently immune from any right to work laws.
-------------------- "The Rolling Stones will break up over Brian Jones' dead body" John Lennon I don't want no commies in my car. No Christians either. The worst thing about corruption is that it works so well,
|
chopstick
nobody



Registered: 07/26/08
Posts: 5,252
Loc: Chin's Wok
|
Re: AZ begins demolishing public education, paving the way for right wing indoctrination [Re: Kryptos]
#27863629 - 07/15/22 11:35 AM (1 year, 9 months ago) |
|
|
I'm pretty sure that the right wing indoctrinators would need decades to catch up with the left wing indoctrinators when it comes to public education at this point. This is like a drop in the bucket.
|
christopera
Stranger


Registered: 10/13/17
Posts: 14,471
Last seen: 1 hour, 18 minutes
|
Re: AZ begins demolishing public education, paving the way for right wing indoctrination [Re: chopstick]
#27863941 - 07/15/22 05:11 PM (1 year, 9 months ago) |
|
|
Yeah, we better stop the people that teach children things in fairly washed down and simple terms. God forbid those children go off and learn something at college too. They might realize how fucking retarded you have to be to push continuous stagnation on the population.
-------------------- Enjoy the process of your search without succumbing to the pressure of the result. A Dorito is pizza, change my mind. Bank and Union with The Shroomery at the Zuul on The internet - now with %'s and things I’m sorry it had to be me.
|
Kryptos
Stranger

Registered: 11/01/14
Posts: 12,848
Last seen: 14 minutes, 10 seconds
|
Re: AZ begins demolishing public education, paving the way for right wing indoctrination [Re: christopera] 1
#27863962 - 07/15/22 05:37 PM (1 year, 9 months ago) |
|
|
https://iowastartingline.com/2022/07/13/whats-happening-with-the-vinton-public-library/
Small town Iowans just bullied their only library into closing. Some people just really don't like education.
My favorite quotes:
Quote:
McMahon, who has been a library director since 1995, told the Gazette some patrons informally complained about the library displaying books written by First Lady Jill Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. ... Another complaint was that the library didn’t have enough books about former President Donald Trump on display. ... “I can’t buy what doesn’t exist, and there weren’t quality books about Trump,” she continued. “It’s a long process to choose materials typically. We pay attention to reviews and publishers and our collection needs as a whole. We don’t just say what looks good on Amazon.”
Quote:
According to Greenlee, the Vinton Public Library had nearly 5,800 materials in the children’s section. Of those, three books had a subject heading of “LGBT,” two had a heading of “gay,” two mentioned transgender, and none mentioned “binary,” “lesbian,” or “bisexual,” whereas there are 173 books with Christian themes.
Seems like 173 christian books is no match for 7 books talking about LGBT issues, I never realized that mentioning LGBT people was...173/7=~24.7 times more powerful than God. How am I not gay if they're almost 25 times as strong as an omnipotent deity?
|
|