The Arizona Commerce Authority, Jan Brewer's replacement for the AZ Department of Commerce, met with business leaders on Tuesday. Apparently, the talk about education went poorly, as these businessmen and women criticized the state of our K-12 education.
In spite of the harsh critiques from their constituency, the governor, and sidekick Russell Pearce, will continue on course to defund our education system further. I guess it doesn't matter if businesses in the state can't find qualified workers thanks to the education system Republicans seek to demolish. It is more important, apparently, to look for excuses to blame native Spanish speakers.
Here is Russell Pearce, offering his quality counter-argument to criticism of the quality of education offered in AZ.
He did take issue, though, with Barrett's contention that Arizona is in the bottom quarter of all states in the quality of its K-12 education.
"We're probably running in the middle, in the average," Pearce said. And he said part of that is due to "demographics," specifically the large percentage of students in school for whom English is not their first language.
"I think we probably have a very good educational system that just has challenges that many other states don't have," he said.
'Demographics.' Oleaginous prattle.
Of course, Pearce also thinks there is 'enough' money going into education, and it merely needs to be spent properly. I was curious about this, since neither side depicted in the article backed up their argument with any data. So I went and found some.
Here, I found a state education data profile courtesy of the National Center for Education Statistics, run by the U.S. Dept. of Education. Data from 2008-2009 compares AZ statistics to national averages.
Total Students: 1,087,817 (U.S. average: 965,991)
Total Teachers: 54,696 (U.S. average: 63,179)
Pupil/Teacher Ratio: 19.9 (U.S. average: 15.3)
Total Current Expend- Public El-Sec: $8,403,220,614 (U.S. average: $9,937,789,135)
Somehow we have more students than average, but spend less on them; and we have less teachers to teach them. How's that square with 'we're probably running in the middle'? Well, it doesn't.
I should also note that with every statistic cited for the National Assessment of Educational Progess, AZ runs below the average.
I also found some slightly more current data from 2009-2010. This cites an average per-pupil expenditure of $9,683; Arizona's was listed at $8,010. We beat a whopping four states on per-pupil spending, with Utah bringing up the rear at $6,228 (ouch).
So, in the middle? Or the bottom quarter? Kinda looks like the latter to me. But then, I'm no expert...or business leader...or blinkered state senator.