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Interesting story here. US News and World Report rankings of 19,200 US high schools has no less than 5 out of the first 30 in AZ! That is 1/6 of the total. Not only that but the second best school in the country, according to them, is here. Basis charter in Scottsdale. Tolleson University High, a district school, is 29th out of the entire nation. 1/2 of the kids there are from "disadvantaged" economic circumstances.
Interesting story here. US News and World Report rankings of 19,200 US high schools has no less than 5 out of the first 30 in AZ! That is 1/6 of the total. Not only that but the second best school in the country, according to them, is here. Basis charter in Scottsdale. Tolleson University High, a district school, is 29th out of the entire nation. 1/2 of the kids there are from "disadvantaged" economic circumstances.
But before anyone jumps to any conclusions, for the point of our discussions here, I think one should drop all the corporate schools and the high tech/gifted schools out of the mix...and just look at regular public schools.
Make AZ much more attractive to companies with tax breaks and believe me they'll come. Nothing speaks louder than money. Cities like Chandler and Gilbert have a lot going for them.
Numerous tax breaks for businesses were passed during the Brewer administration. These corporate benefits have not helped one iota in attracting business to the state. That was one of the primary points made by the economists on the panel.
There seems considerable concern in the AZ realtor community that net migration to AZ has stopped and the reasoning is our extremist politics. I have no current data at hand (census data is always way behind) but I think they have more current data there particularly with a data junkie as head. A stop in net migration in a recovery would be unprecedented and it would take a massive change in perception of Arizona for this to come about. So either they are crying wolf there for nothing or our extremist politicians have wrought unprecedented damage to our state. Time will tell.
Plenty of data was provided at the economic conference that I posted about, which kicked off this C-D thread. Much of it is available on the W.P. Carey School of Business website (see link below). They now have a summary up of the 2014 Annual Economic Outlook luncheon. It includes the slides that were shown by the economists who spoke (see the links at the top of their article).
This newer article ASU provides includes a lot more detail than I was able to include in my summary of summary. The data are very instructive including information about job growth, population movement, and the public perception about Arizona.
The theme of the event seemed to be, "...we're recovering but not recovered, according to Lee McPheters, research professor and director of the J.P. Morgan Chase Economic Outlook Center. "The basic question is: 'Is Arizona out of the woods yet?' McPheters said. 'The answer is No. The wolf is not at the door, but Arizona is not out of the woods. The economy is not back to normal ...'"
On the subjects of interest to the real estate market, Mike Orr (director of the Center for Real Estate Theory and Practice) was downbeat. "Home sales in Maricopa County are at their second lowest levels since 1999...That’s second only to 2008, which 'was a pretty desperate year.' A lot of the gap, Orr said, is in new home sales. 'Sales of new homes are down from last year. Provisional estimates for April 2014 are down from March 2014. We see sustained low sales, which is quite different from what people — including me — were expecting this time last year...For existing home sales, the numbers are better, but not by much...resales should be far above where they’re at now.'"
Interesting story here. US News and World Report rankings of 19,200 US high schools has no less than 5 out of the first 30 in AZ! That is 1/6 of the total. Not only that but the second best school in the country, according to them, is here. Basis charter in Scottsdale. Tolleson University High, a district school, is 29th out of the entire nation. 1/2 of the kids there are from "disadvantaged" economic circumstances.
nope, can't be true....we need more money money money thrown at the problem to make such a thing happen....c'mon now!
I don't think the US News rankings proves your point. Though a few schools in AZ excel, many - too many - are near the bottom of these rankings. Our public schools are badly underfunded. Our textbooks are several editions behind current. They are held together with duct tape and missing pages. Teachers buy their own supplies in many cases because the school does not have the money. The buses are dilapidated and prone to breakdowns. The maintenance costs eat ever increasing shares of the budget. Music is cut or gone, elective courses have been slashed. Don't even think about art classes. At the university level, the cost in AZ has doubled in just the last few years as the state cut funding to provide more tax relief to the businesses that never came. Kids graduating from college are thousands of dollars in debt these days.
I am willing to bet that when you were coming up, your parents provided good schools for you and your community supported those schools. I grew up in Wisconsin and we had new schools, new books, science labs with the latest in scientific equipment. My parents paid for it, my grandparents paid for it. Why is paying it forward, investing in our future, so hard for the boomer generation?
I don't think the US News rankings proves your point. Though a few schools in AZ excel, many - too many - are near the bottom of these rankings. Our public schools are badly underfunded. Our textbooks are several editions behind current. They are held together with duct tape and missing pages. Teachers buy their own supplies in many cases because the school does not have the money. The buses are dilapidated and prone to breakdowns. The maintenance costs eat ever increasing shares of the budget. Music is cut or gone, elective courses have been slashed. Don't even think about art classes. At the university level, the cost in AZ has doubled in just the last few years as the state cut funding to provide more tax relief to the businesses that never came. Kids graduating from college are thousands of dollars in debt these days.
I am willing to bet that when you were coming up, your parents provided good schools for you and your community supported those schools. I grew up in Wisconsin and we had new schools, new books, science labs with the latest in scientific equipment. My parents paid for it, my grandparents paid for it. Why is paying it forward, investing in our future, so hard for the boomer generation?
We need to copy what works, Catholic schools produce a very high quality education and the teachers do not get paid very much and often the schools lack the latest equipment, books and fancy classrooms.
What they do have is discipline and parental involvement and the ability to kick problem kids out of the school when they hurt the teachers ability to teach. There are many lessons to learn from these high performing schools which have produced some of the best and brightest over many years.
My brother just left a high paying school job at a public school and went to a lower paying job at a private Catholic High School because minority school students would mock him in the classroom and the Principal was unable to stop it because of fear of retribution and political correctness. My brother raves about how much happier he is now, how involved the parents are and how he has no discipline problems that are not corrected immediately.
We need to copy what works, Catholic schools produce a very high quality education and the teachers do not get paid very much and often the schools lack the latest equipment, books and fancy classrooms.
What they do have is discipline and parental involvement and the ability to kick problem kids out of the school when they hurt the teachers ability to teach. There are many lessons to learn from these high performing schools which have produced some of the best and brightest over many years.
My brother just left a high paying school job at a public school and went to a lower paying job at a private Catholic High School because minority school students would mock him in the classroom and the Principal was unable to stop it because of fear of retribution and political correctness. My brother raves about how much happier he is now, how involved the parents are and how he has no discipline problems that are not corrected immediately.
Perhaps you ought to be reminded that many Catholic schools have closed over the last several decades. They don't have a presence in most communities. Some of their teachers are not able to be certified at the state level (its pretty questionable having a teacher in a Catholic school teaching chemistry who can't get a teaching license). They are often the opposite of creative. And yes, they don't have to take anyone they don't want to take. They can leave out all the children who aren't relatively easy to teach. They don't have to do special education. They don't have to teach the autistic.
In my school, some of the best and brightest also got suspended or recommended for short-term expulsion. What a shame it would have been had their education been ended.
We had a huge gifted/talented program...with a fair percentage of Black and Latino students in it.
I don't think the US News rankings proves your point. Though a few schools in AZ excel, many - too many - are near the bottom of these rankings. Our public schools are badly underfunded. Our textbooks are several editions behind current. They are held together with duct tape and missing pages. Teachers buy their own supplies in many cases because the school does not have the money. The buses are dilapidated and prone to breakdowns. The maintenance costs eat ever increasing shares of the budget. Music is cut or gone, elective courses have been slashed. Don't even think about art classes. At the university level, the cost in AZ has doubled in just the last few years as the state cut funding to provide more tax relief to the businesses that never came. Kids graduating from college are thousands of dollars in debt these days.
I am willing to bet that when you were coming up, your parents provided good schools for you and your community supported those schools. I grew up in Wisconsin and we had new schools, new books, science labs with the latest in scientific equipment. My parents paid for it, my grandparents paid for it. Why is paying it forward, investing in our future, so hard for the boomer generation?
This is where so many people get confused (or like to confuse) in this discussion...the problem isn't that we need to throw more money at the problem (the US is already at the top of the list on how much we spend per student). We need to hold administrators and school boards accountable for results with the money they are given. The difference from the time that you're describing and now is that today we have created an environment where school districts are places for people with little skill and ability to hang out and collect a paycheck and don't have to show results to keep their jobs. Administrators have little motivation to improve education results but have much motivation to bring in more dollars (to line their pockets) and secure their jobs.
The school could have new books, science labs, etc. but administrators think it is more important that the maintenance director get another new pickup truck, all the iphones for the staff get swapped for new ones, the staffs Mac computers all get replaced with the newest model and we invest in some technology that is far beyond the level of education we're currently providing so it will never get used and will be outdated by the time the students would be able to use it. Purchase 10 years of printer toner to spend "use it or lose it funds" where the printers will get replaced in a year or two making the excess toner useless to the new models and need to be thrown away. Teachers not given pay raises in 7 years (senior administrators got raises during this time frame) because of this waste which forces the good teachers to quit and find jobs elsewhere leaving the district with teachers that are not competitive elsewhere (bottom of the barrel) or brand new teachers with no experience. This is happening all over the state...it is not a funding problem, it is a mismanagement problem.
Go to a school board meeting sometime...you'll find that 99% of the meeting is discussing stuff that has nothing to do with educating children and 1% of the time may brush over the subject with promises to look into it further (normally the results of this further discussion is never discussed at a school board meeting). Better yet, go watch your child in class...most are given a "packet" and sit at their desk and work on the packet while the teacher sits at their desk and surfs the internet.
Of course there are some good teachers and administrators in the mix but the bad ones far outnumber the good ones. The list of teachers to avoid your child getting put with is MUCH longer than the short list of good teachers that everyone wants their child put with.
Last edited by LBTRS; 05-15-2014 at 11:18 AM..
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