While Arizona public schools showed slight improvement in their annual letter grades from the state, the number of students passing the math and reading tests increased by only one percentage point over last year. Only 61 percent of students passed math, and about 78 percent passed reading.
Only 57 percent of students passed the science section of the AIMS and 56 percent passed the writing portion.
Statewide, almost 63 percent of schools earned an A or a B grade, and almost 63 percent of schools maintained the grade they earned last year. According to the Department of Education, 21 percent increased the grade and 16 percent decreased their grade.
Benson Unified School District displaced Vail Unified School District as the top district in the state.
In accordance with ARS 15-241 the Arizona Department of Education (ADE) is charged with attributing letter grades to every district and charter school in the state. Every school and district receives a report card with an A-F grade that reflects their annual academic profile.
The A-F letter grades are based on the weighting of student performance on the AIMS tests and student academic growth from year to year, along with additional points awarded for high English Language Learner reclassifications, and significant reductions in dropout rates.
In order to further comply with Arizona’s law, ADE added three more models to the letter grading system, which provides even greater value to parents as they choose appropriate placement for their students. The A-F grades are applied to a traditional school model that included those schools with student populations over 100 and an A-F model for small schools with student populations under 100, alternative schools, and k-2 schools.
At the time he announced the grades, Superintendent Huppenthal called for increased funding for education.
However, a comparison between the state’s two largest school districts provides insight to the value of education dollars in terms of district performance. The two largest school districts in the state are the Mesa Unified School District and the Tucson Unified School District.
Because the grades awarded allow for differences in district demographics, a comparison is possible. In the Arizona accountability system half of a school’s grade depends upon student growth and half on whether they are meeting standards. This is radically different than the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) system where schools are judged solely by whether students meet standards regardless of how far behind they were when they began the school year. So a student who begins the year 2 years behind grade level and ends the year only half a year behind will still be judged as failing under the federal system while such a student, and the student’s school, would get credit for the huge gain in achievement made that year under the Arizona accountability system.
An administrative cost comparison shows that while MUSD spends $606 per student on administration, TUSD spends $854 per student.
The number of students per administrator in MUSD is 74, the number of students per administrator in TUSD is 59.
TUSD receives $8757 per student, MUSD receives $7682 per student. Of those dollars, TUSD spends $4,420 or 50.4% in the classrooms, while MUSD spends $4,498 or 57.3% in the classroom.
The average teacher salary in MUSD is $54,398, and the average in TUSD is $48,148.
Of the top 20 highest-scoring individual schools in the state, 18 are charter schools. However, when virtually every student with behavior or learning problems is actively discouraged from attending…as is the case with many of the best known charter schools… the performance of those selective schools ought to be much better than the performance of neighborhood schools. It is the same as allowing schools to lop off the test scores of the bottom quartile or quintile of students from their rolls. It is akin to comparing the performance of students in Tucson’s University High with the performance of students in TUSD schools that simply accept all students in the neighborhood.
The Mesa Unified School District received a “B” grade and the Tucson Unified School District received a “C” grade.
That comparison shows that it is not the amount of money a district receives, but how a district spends that money.
While TUSD’s new superintendent, H.T. Sanchez was busy picking out new furnishings for his office, the students in his district, the 6th poorest metropolitan area of the country, were starting school without adequate school supplies.
Few educators would argue that education dollars do not need to be increased, but most would argue that the money needs to go into the classroom. Smaller class sizes, and highly skilled teachers occupying those classrooms have been the key to better learning.
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