You literally can’t make this shit up. It’s bad enough that the chair of Arizona’s Senate Education Committee, Sen. Sylvia Allen, is a far-right religious goober who has at best a high school degree and not a thimble full of common sense; who became virally famous when she said during a Senate hearing that the earth is 6,000 years old; and who suggested that church attendance should be mandatory.
Sen. Allen is also the co-founder of George Washington Academy, a charter school in her town of Snowflake. An avid supporter of charter schools, vouchers and other Koch education measures, she brought the school to town because she and some of her Mormon neighbors did not want to send their children to schools that taught the Common Core curriculum—you know, critical thinking, science, history and all.
This being Arizona, as chair of the Senate Education Committee, Sen. Allen can set state policy governing schools, at the same time she runs and works at a school. That’s right, this dim fanatic directs a character building program at George Washington Academy. Presumably, she teaches kids the wonders of a 6,000-year-old planet where Jesus rode dinosaurs and the Founders modeled their Constitution on the Bible.
With ownership like that, it’s no wonder Sen. Allen’s school just received the lowest grade a school can get in Arizona, an F:
Josselyn Berry, co-director at ProgressNow Arizona, said in a press release this week that Allen "for years preached the benefits of charter schools and vouchers for students and parents, but ironically the school she co-founded has gotten the lowest rating a school can get."
Sen. Allen of course blames the grading system, but that very system is one that she sponsored, which then passed both chambers unanimously. She and other GOP pinheads obviously agreed with the standards outlined in the new grading format, they created them for criminy sake—that is until her school ended up at the bottom. Now it’s “unfair.”
I occasionally tried the same thing in school when I didn’t follow directions and received a failing grade. It didn’t work then either.