Source: http://www.pressreader.com/usa/yuma-sun/20160203/281612419435223/TextView
More than 2,000 parents, students, teachers, policymakers and school choice supporters this morning gathered at the state Capitol to celebrate the opportunities and excellent educational options available to Arizona families. Our state’s leaders, from Sen. John McCain to Gov. Doug Ducey, are talking about the role school choice has played in moving Arizona’s education system forward.
According to the U.S. Chamber Foundation’s Leaders and Laggards report, Arizona has one of the most robust school choice environments in the country. Not only do we have strong public charter laws, but our district schools are open to all students thanks to Arizona’s open enrollment policy. Arizona is a national leader for public district school choice, earning the bragging right of being the first in the country to include a school boards association as a National School Choice Week partner. Gov. Ducey in his comments today rightly had high praise for our friend Janice Palmer for her excellent work at the Arizona School Boards Association.
As a parent, I’ve taken full advantage of these policies, shopping both district and charter schools to find the best fit for each of our three girls.
As a result, our state is currently home to three of the top 10 high schools in the country: BASIS Scottsdale and BASIS Oro Valley, which are public charters, and University High School in Tucson, which is a magnet school. While scores on the National Assessment of Education Progress (“NAEP,” known also as the “Nation’s Report Card”) sunk or remained stagnant, Arizona’s improved, and we were among the top states in the nation in closing the achievement gap. And the icing on the cake? If Arizona’s charter school students were their own state, they would have performed on par with the top-scoring Massachusetts. Kudos to Dr. Matt Ladner for digging into the data to uncover this critical nugget.
And our robust charter sector doesn’t deliver high quality results in just the high-income zip codes. Kim Chayka’s Academies of Math and Science is proving each day that we can earn great results regardless of neighborhood demographics. AMS is our state’s answer to KIPP.
While a combination of robust choice and innovative options means that an excellent education is a reality for many Arizona families, it is still not the case for enough of Arizona’s families. Too many students are stuck on long waiting lists. I consider students who are currently enrolled at a D or F-level school to also be on a “waiting list,” too.
Through our work with A for Arizona, led by former state superintendent Lisa Graham Keegan, who Gov. Ducey called one of “the most hard-working and influential school choice champions on the planet,” and Dr. Matt Ladner, whom I rank as the top architect in the country when it comes to school choice design, we have a set of proposals that will provide even more choice and more quality to our system.
Here’s what we need now at the ballot and legislatively to expand quality choice:
While we will continue to push for policies to guarantee every Arizona family access to a high-quality choice, today is a day to celebrate the extraordinary gains we’ve made. So, throw on your yellow scarves and break out your National School Choice Week dance moves, here comes Arizona
By Corbin Carson | January 7, 2016 @ 7:00 pm
PHOENIX — A recent poll found that the topic of education ranks among one of the highest priorities with Arizona Voters, according to the non-profit organization Expect More Arizona.
Expect More Arizona President and CEO Pearl Chang Esau said education ranked higher among the 600 surveyed state voters than the economy or immigration.
“In the past, when we have polled Arizona’s likely voters, education has typically been either No. 2 or No. 3 on the list, ranking below other things like the economy and immigration,” she said.
Education came in at 41 percent with immigration/border security at 12 percent and the economy at 10 percent. Chang Esau said the survey also asked voters about the most important issues within the topic of education.
“We also asked them what they thought were the top two issues within education, and the No. 1 issue was the need for increasing education funding,” she said. “The No. 2 issue, which ranked high across all political parties, was increasing teacher pay.”
Chang Esau said 87 percent of Arizonans strongly believe funding for Career and Technical Education programs is an important priority, she said. Those programs help students receive real-world training while preparing them for the future.
“If you just look at the data for Career and Technical Education programs, they’re graduating students at far greater rates than our state average,” she said. “In fact, in the mid-90 (percent).”
“So what we’re seeing is that voters in Arizona believe that education is important for everybody’s quality of life,” Esau said.
The survey also found 85 percent of voters support efforts to close the achievement gap, 92 percent want to focus on ensuring students have access to “great” education officials and 81 percent thing schools should have additional funding to serve low-income students.
http://ktar.com/story/841773/poll-finds-education-ranks-among-highest-priority-with-arizona-voters/