Principles of Principals

Arne Duncan now promotes local control . As a professional educator, this comes as a terrible surprise to me. During his service as Secretary of Education, he used the national government to force feed common core down the throats of wh*#e suburban mom's who didn't know how to make informed choices about their children's education. Common Core, much like its similarly legislated predecessors (ESSA, NCLB), has grossly failed to address; Marginalized populations. Globally competitive high school graduates. Globally competitive competencies in public school attendees. Now those Moms know best? Why now? Didn't Arne participate in the federal funding of public education from the national level, even threatening to withhold school funding from those who didn't meet federal mandates? Yeah. He did. I was there, in the room, when as a local leader , felt the incomparable weight of the tentacles tightening around my waning lack of control, as I fought migh...

On November 3, 2014, behind the distractions of the mid-term elections; the Arizona State Board of Education approved the RFP from SAGE Testing Company for full implementation of the AzMERIT for Spring 2015. If you're a parent, student, or employed in education you need to know some things about this test. In it's entirety, the test is computer based.  Instead of asking your child to select the correct graph from a menu of choices, they will be asked to create a graphic representation on their own. Admittedly, it's a much DEEPER look into applied knowledge.   Utah took the test last school year with startling results .  Less than half tested proficient. Less than half . Either it's a distilled look at UT children's abilities, or the results are skewed by rapid implementation of new standards, new measures of accountability, and new testing protocols. Is Arizona ready? District's who were preparing, have had a minor shift in preparation towards th...