Newsworthy   

Education advocates mulling tax increases.

by Jeremy Duda the Arizona Capital Times 6-13-2011

With a temporary sales tax increase set to expire in 2013, education advocates are looking to ask voters for another way to fund schools.

But though several organizations are considering ballot measures for the 2012 election, no one is quite sure what those proposals will look like or what taxes would be raised.

On June 8, about 100 education officials and advocates met at Arizona State University’s SkySong facility to discuss the problems facing Arizona schools and a possible ballot measure that would potentially restructure the state’s education system, from kindergarten through the university level, including its funding. Former state Superintendant of Public Instruction Lisa Graham Keegan, one of the meeting’s organizers, said Arizona needs to find new funding to replace the money that will dry up when Proposition 100 expires, as well as a new system of accountability that would hold schools responsible for student performance.

Another group called Arizona Campaign for Education 2012 has already filed a committee with the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office for an as-yet undetermined ballot measure to fund schools. Committee chair Ann-Eve Pedersen said she started the committee to support “any effort that might take place,” but said it may sponsor its own ballot initiative.

And there may be several more proposals on the way, which worries some supporters.

At the June 8 meeting, First Things First Chairman Steve Lynn said three or four organizations are looking at possible 2012 ballot measures for education.  The organizers of the SkySong meeting should reach out to them to make sure only one makes it onto the ballot, he said.

“If there are two, three or four (ballot measures), they’re likely not to be supported,” Lynn said, evoking memories of competing ballot measures on health care funding and the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday in past elections.

Collaboration, however, will depend on exactly what the proposals look like. Keegan said she wants to find enough common ground for a ballot measure that most of the attendees at SkySong could support.

The meeting included people from across the education spectrum — from pro-school-choice business groups to the Arizona Education Association, a teachers union that fights for public education. Keegan acknowledged that it will be difficult finding common ground among people with such starkly differing agendas. But the need for a restructuring of the education system is critical, she said, and she was optimistic that it could be done.

“We do have common cause here,” Keegan told the group. “We are committed — totally committed — to what would it take to do this together.”

Keegan said her unnamed group, which includes former Intel CEO Craig Barrett, state Superintendant of Public Instruction John Huppenthal, Arizona Stand for Children and Chicanos por la Causa, expects to have a proposal drafted by October. She anticipates the campaign will cost about $5 million.

Pedersen said she, too, would prefer that only one education measure goes to the ballot next year. But without seeing a proposal, she couldn’t say whether she’d support Keegan and Barrett or go her own way.

“We just have to see. I’d like to hear more about their thoughts, and I thought today we’d be hearing more about that,” she said. 

Pedersen’s Arizona Campaign for Education appears focused on funding, and the group’s website decried the hundreds of millions in funding cuts to the K-12 and university systems over the past several years, despite Gov. Jan Brewer’s insistence that Proposition 100 would protect education funding.

Keegan’s group, however, has broader goals: more funding for schools, equal opportunities for all students and a performance-based system that rewards successful teachers and schools.

She also said the state should equalize treatment of public and charter schools. Charter schools should get more funding, as the public schools do, while public schools should be freed from many of the burdensome regulations that charter schools don’t abide by.

Barrett, who made headlines in March when he denounced the state’s education system at an Arizona Commerce Authority board meeting, said the United States’ education system pales in comparison to many European and Asian countries, especially in the areas of math and science. He advocated the implementation of international education standards in Arizona.

“The U.S. doesn’t rank well, and in the U.S., Arizona doesn’t rank well,” he said. “We need to rank our educational institutions on the basis of output and reward those that are successful … and don’t keep funding those that are not.”

Barrett also suggested that Arizona adopt a multistate push for a system under which states would individually and voluntarily adopt many of the higher education standards used in highly educated foreign countries. 

The organizers of the SkySong group said more funding was important, and money for schools appeared to be primary focus of their proposed ballot measure. But they were careful to note that funding isn’t a silver bullet to the problems facing the state’s education system. 

Huppenthal pointed to several well-publicized education reforms in other states that saw low returns on massive investments, such as a $30 billion funding increase for New York City’s public schools and a $2.5 billion effort by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

“As we deconstruct that … we can see very little to show for it,” he said.

The difficulties in getting such a disparate group of people to find common ground was apparent at SkySong when talk turned to the differences between public and charter schools.  Balsz School District Superintendent Jeffrey Smith noted that students in his low-income district often lag behind their peers by the time they start school, and said charter schools improve their lot by selecting more desirable students.

His comments inspired grumbling across the room, with charter school advocates saying Smith was making inaccurate blanket statements about charters. Public school officials nodded their heads in agreement.

AEA President Andrew Morrill, whose organization has long opposed performance-based pay and evaluations for teachers, also exposed another division in the group when he questioned the “outcome-based” models that Barrett, Keegan and Huppenthal proposed.

But, like Keegan, Morrill said he was committed to finding common ground.

“The first thing we’ve got to do is we’ve got to stop knocking each other around when somebody’s got a different idea about how you get there,” he said.

Even if the attendees can reconcile their divergent views and put aside their differences, they still must turn their ideas into action. Lynn joked that it was the 651st “education is broken” meeting of the past decade, and none of the others had ever delivered any results.

Keegan was adamant that this time would be different. “The point (of the meeting) was to put the pressure on us,” she said.

Brewer, who championed Proposition 100 for more than a year, is noncommittal. Two of her education advisers attended the meeting and touted Brewer’s efforts at education reform, including a Florida-style data collection system. But a gubernatorial spokesman said they were only there to observe, and said the governor won’t commit to anything until she sees a concrete proposal.

“There’s nothing on the table yet, so we’re just watching to see how the conversation goes,” Karla Phillips, Brewer’s K-12 education policy adviser, said after the meeting.