What It Means For Arizona – Part 2

Below is part 2 on the GOP promises for education in the 2024 RNC Platform. The first part dealt with promises one through three. This one reviews promises four through six.

“4. Safe, Secure, and Drug-Free Schools: Republicans will support overhauling standards on school discipline, advocate for immediate suspension of violent students, and support hardening schools to help keep violence away from our places of learning.“

Arizona has been losing a net of 3,300 teachers per year according to Superintendent Horne and although 67% of them left the profession last year due to low pay, 61% said a lack of support in dealing with student behavior and discipline was also to blame. His predecessor, Kathy Hoffman, tapped into Federal Recovery Act dollars to add hundreds of school counselors. But in the 2022-2023 school year, we still had only one counselor for every 667 students, almost double the national average. 

Now, federal funding is running out and lawmakers are looking for less expensive solutions. HB 2460, passed in the Legislature and signed by the governor in 2023, retracted previous legislation allowing kindergarten through fourth-grade students to be suspended. This year, Horne proposed Senate Bill 1459 which would have reduced a school’s letter grade if disciplinary action was not taken in at least 75% of teacher referrals. It had significant opposition and was eventually held in the House.

There is plenty of evidence though, that punitive discipline is not the best solution. As reported in ChalkBeat.org, “Students who get suspended tend to have lower test scores and higher dropout rates, and students who attend schools with high suspension rates are more likely to be arrested and incarcerated as adults — what advocates call the school-to-prison pipeline.” Morgan Craven, national policy director at education civil rights group IDRA says, “if lawmakers want to make schools safer, they should ensure that students have access to mental health services and programs that teach positive behaviors. “Our response should not be”, she added: “OK, let’s just find faster, easier ways to simply kick them out.” As reported on KAWC.org, Rep. Jennifer Pawlik, D-Chandler, a former school teacher, said “A lot of people are leaving right now because classroom behaviors have accelerated,” Pawlik said. “And it’s really hard to be a teacher right now.” The answer though she added, is not to put in “punitive measures”, but rather, to consider class size, mentors for new teachers, and “appropriate staffing of our schools that includes mental health providers and paraprofessionals” (trained aides that support teachers).

I’d like to see the GOP deal with the cause for the need to harden our schools, but I’m not holding my breath. I’m also not holding my breath for the funding to harden our campuses. The reality is that not only do Arizona’s schools not have funding to “harden” their campuses, they don’t even have sufficient funding to ensure basic maintenance. A trial finally began in June of this year, on a lawsuit filed in 2017 on behalf of several school districts and the Arizona School Boards Association, which claims “Arizona’s funding model puts low-income schools at a disadvantage and violates the state’s constitution”. An Arizona Supreme Court ruling in 1994 prompted the state legislature to pass the Students FIRST law funded at $1.3 billion to provide emergency funding for capital projects. However, the Legislature has cut at least $4.56 billion from education funding since 2009, and according to 12News.com, “rural districts are at a greater disadvantage because they can’t raise enough money from bonds and overrides and their property tax wealth is limited.” 

“5. Restore Parental Rights: Republicans will restore Parental Rights in Education, and enforce our Civil Rights Laws to stop schools from discriminating on the basis of Race. We trust Parents!“

I am SO tired of this parental empowerment and parental rights language. First of all, parents are not the only stakeholders in the education of their children. In a well-functioning civil society, we all have a stake in ensuring children are taught a full curriculum that enables them to think for themselves and become productive citizens. And oh by the way, if you take my tax dollars to educate your child in a private school setting, I should have a say in what that education consists of. 

Just try to think of another publicly funded service where the public has no say in how that good or service is provided. Why do we tolerate it in education? As previously pointed out, Arizona vouchers require very little accountability from parents using them. And, there is no reporting of educational outcomes required by the schools. Therefore, we the voters, have no idea how it is going and can’t then, hold our lawmakers responsible for their decisions to support them.

Sorry if I don’t believe the GOP’s desire to “enforce our Civil Rights Laws”, is genuine, at least not for any person other than a white male. After all, Project 2025 wants to scale back the federal government’s ability to enforce civil rights laws like Title IX, which prohibits sex-based discrimination, and Title VI, which prohibits race-based discrimination, by any entity accepting Federal monies.

“6. Knowledge and Skills, Not CRT and Gender Indoctrination: Republicans will ensure children are taught fundamentals like Reading, History, Science, and Math, not Leftwing propaganda. We will defund schools that engage in inappropriate political indoctrination of our children using Federal Taxpayer Dollars.“

Arizona’s public district schools teach what is required by law, and there is very little time in the schedule or funding to do otherwise. School curriculum is dictated by law via the Arizona Academic Standards spelled out by the Department of Education. School success in teaching these standards is reported via the annual Arizona Academic Standards Assessment. However, students who take vouchers and Student Tuition Scholarships to attend homeschools, micro-schools, religious schools, or other private schools, as provided by the AZ GOP-led Legislature, do not participate in these assessments and the schools are not required to report any assessment data.

The hypocrisy behind “we will defund schools that engage in inappropriate political indoctrination” is staggering. The Arizona Legislature hasn’t yet followed Oklahoma in requiring the Bible to be taught in our public schools or Louisiana in requiring the Ten Commandments to be posted in the classroom, but the Arizona Department of Education and multiple AZ GOP lawmakers have been working with the controversial conservative group PragerU to offer new lesson plans on what they call “American Values”.  State Superintendent Horne wants this curriculum offered in Arizona classrooms as an alternative to the “extreme left side [that] has been presented”. Save our Schools Arizona Director Beth Lewis disagrees and calls PragerU content “dangerous. I’m in classrooms all over the state. I see what educators are teaching,” Lewis said. “The things they’re being accused of are not happening. They’re teaching accurate, truthful science and history.”

So, in fulfilling these three promises, the GOP would deliver more punitive discipline measures which will likely reduce protections for girls and children of color, and continue to feed the school-to-prison pipeline. Oh, by the way, six of Arizona’s 10 prisons are already privately owned. Just sayin’…