While there is great debate among the major party presidential candidates about the rising costs of higher education, the state of Arizona rests at the bottom of the barrel in terms of educational funding per student.  The legislature has repeatedly refused to meet its constitutional obligations as passed by Arizona voters in order to properly fund K-12 education, and has instead turned to workarounds such as the disastrous Proposition 123.  This state constitutional amendment will raid money from our state's land trust, which is there to provide for education in the future in order to make up the shortfalls today that resulted from the legislature's unwillingness and lack of political will.

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If elected, I will rescind the recently-passed cut in corporate tax rates lobbied for by developers and other large corporations to restore our funding to K-12 education, including working to make sure that all teachers within the state are properly compensated for the invaluable work that they do to provide for our future generations.  I will also be working with local school districts and communities in order to find ways to expand Kindergarten and Pre-K programs, especially among underprivileged communities.  Developmental and Child Psychologists are virtually unanimous - the first four years of a child's life are absolutely imperative to ensuring that the child develops to the best of their potential, something that is all too often stunted by a lack of educational opportunities.  When parents are either forced to work two and three jobs to provide financially for themselves and their family, or are trapped in the criminal justice system, often for low-level drug offenses, their children all too often pay the price, being left to be raised by televisions, older siblings, or by foster parents.  It is also critical to ensure that we are providing adequate nutrition for public school children.  For many children, free or reduced-price student lunches are the only hot meal that students get each day, and it is imperative to make sure that said lunches provide adequate nutrition - kids without access to a well-balanced diet do worse in school, have higher rates of illness, more disciplinary issues, and many other problems.

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Another point of major contention in political discourse nationally concerns the so-called Common Core standards for math and reading for schools and teachers within the United States.  While I support the concept of pushing forward efforts to raise the quality of education within Arizona and within the United States, I am vehemently opposed to the implementation of these goals under current proposals.  There are two main objections that I have to the currently-proposed implementation of Common Core.

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First, I object to the overuse of standardized testing protocols in order to measure student performance and track learning from year to year.  I believe that we spend too much time in school devoted to testing and preparing students to take standardized tests, time that would be better spent with actual instructional time.  By testing students in this manner, we encourage instruction geared toward rote memorization, and testing only to a set of compartmentalized instruction.  In order to confront the challenges of the 21st century, we must shift away from a curriculum based solely on rote memorization and regurgitation of information, and toward a system which emphasizes careful analysis and creative thinking.  And we should foster a love of learning in our youngest minds, rather than teaching them to hate school by associating it with a slew of largely unnecessary tests.

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The second reason why I oppose the Common Core under its proposed implementation is because of the way tests are being used to measure 'teacher accountability'.  This is a nice goal in practice and makes for a good political talking point, but in practice, it means holding teachers responsible for school conditions that are largely out of the teachers' control.  I refer to conditions such as lack of parental involvement, lack of access to food and nutrition and stable housing, and other conditions associated with poverty and lack of opportunity.  Holding teachers solely responsible without respecting these important factors and their influence on educational outcomes leads to incentives for our best and brightest teachers to select into teaching at schools where there is less poverty and more institutional support, exacerbating the divide between the haves and have nots in in our state.  As a result, even when or if these students graduate, students at underfunded schools find themselves intellectually underprepared for the rigors of a college curriculum, which reinforces the cycle of intergenerational poverty present in Arizona and throughout the country.

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Because of the above. I have some level of disapproval for charter schools.  I recognize that charter schools can be a useful and, in some cases in parts of the state, nearly necessary alternative to a failing public educational system.  However, I think that a large part of why charter schools have proven effective is because families are able to self-select into the schools, and there is a substantial selection bias at play - families who apply for charter schools generally have more resources and education, and they have more time and effort to devote to their children's education.  We know that teacher training and school facilities matter, but that parental involvement, a stable home life, access to healthcare, and good nutrition all matter at least as much.  I also believe that we need to fulfill our civic obligations to pressure our local school boards and demand accountability from them.  Rather than continuing the process of privatization of our educational system, I instead advocate for additional resources to be spent in our dramatically underfunded public school system, to target the most disadvantaged students and work to provide the resources - both in school and out - that are necessary for these young minds to grow and to thrive.  Similarly, I largely oppose the current implementation of our Empowerment Scholarship Accounts.  Unfortunately, these are often being used as a way for taxpayers to partially fund education at private institutions for people with the means to afford them.  I do believe that ESA's have a purpose to help provide alternative education for children with special needs that cannot be accommodated in our district education system, but do not support their current implementation.

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Finally, we must reform school disciplinary procedures.  All too often, especially with respect to students of ethnic minorities, the discipline system is often heavy-handed and out-of-school suspensions provide students with the opportunity to get involved with unsavory elements and deny students access to valuable instructional time.  I believe that it is time to invest in our underserved communities, and work to end the school-to-prison pipeline that leaves high-school students with an inadequate education and limited opportunity to find a decent-paying job to provide for themselves and their family.  I believe that part of this entails making sure school counselors and support staff are well-paid and treated with respect by the legislature and by school boards in order to continue their important role in addressing outside-the-classroom factors that may hurt a child's performance in school.

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I am also in support of restoring curriculum for Multicultural and Minority Studies to Tucson Schools and other districts who wish to provide these curriculum options for their students.  We know that cultural awareness and acceptance of multiculturalism are important for a well-rounded education, and that we benefit from taking a critical approach toward our teaching of U.S. and World History, rather than only teaching a whitewashed version.  It is important for our students to take a critical eye to the nation's history and to be prepared to talk about both where the United States has been exceptional, as well as where the United States has not lived up to its creed of being a nation conceived in multiculturalism and acceptance of diversity.  I hold the belief that those who do not learn from their history are doomed to repeat it.

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