Superintendent candidates to debate Elections 2018
Seven candidates — two Democrats and five Republicans — are vying to lead Arizona’s public education system as state superintendent of public instruction.
The candidates, who will face off in Republican and Democratic primary elections Aug. 28, are each running on varying platforms.
The Arizona Republic and azcentral.com are hosting a series of debates to help voters determine which candidate they will support. The Republicans will debate at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday; the Democrats at 7 p.m. Thursday. All seven candidates — Republicans Diane Douglas, Bob Branch, Jonathan Gelbart, Tracy Livingston and Frank Riggs; and Democratic candidates Kathy Hoffman and David Schapira — will participate.
The debates, which will be moderated by
reporter Richard Ruelas, will be live streamed on azcentral.com and azcentral’s Facebook page.
Candidates agree on one thing
The candidates disagree on a lot.
But there is at least one thing that all the candidates seem to agree on: None of them speak highly of AzMERIT, the state’s standardized exam, or the school lettergrade system that is mostly reliant on the test’s scores.
AzMERIT scores have improved, albeit marginally, over the four years since the test came out. But a majority of students are still failing.
Schools this year received new letter grades for the first time since 2014, with nearly 200 school earning failing grades. Most of schools’ grades are determined by AzMERIT results.
Each of the candidates participated in
2018 voter guide in which they responded to multiple questions on Arizona’s education issues, from funding to school vouchers to testing.
The candidates were asked what, if anything, they would advocate be changed in Arizona’s standardized testing requirements or school letter-grade accountability system.
Here is how the candidates responded, in alphabetical order:
Bob Branch, Republican
Branch, a college professor and Maricopa County Parks and Recreation commissioner, railed against the AzMERIT test, though he did not offer any specifics about what he would lobby to change about the state’s testing requirements.
“We keep electing politicians to run education and the result is AzMERIT assessment test, a test that over half of our students fail on a yearly basis,” Branch said.
“The AzMERIT test was a failed test from the start because it was not designed to assess to multiple intelligence levels, yet in the classroom we do assess at multiple intelligence levels.”
Diane Douglas, incumbent and Republican
Douglas has frequently criticized AzMERIT and the school grading system throughout her term as state schools superintendent, saying the grading system is flawed and kids are tested too much.
Douglas said she would lobby for allowing “each district and charter to use the testing which they believe is most appropriate,” seemingly in reference to the state’s new “menu of assessments” law.
The new law, which goes in to effect this school year, allows high schools to administer other exams, such as the SAT and ACT, instead of AzMERIT.
Douglas also stumped for adopting a report card-style school grading system that factors in “a broad number of outcomes” such as a school’s graduation rates and program offerings.
“The current A-F system does not provide parents with enough information for them to make the important decision on where and how to educate their children,” Douglas said. “It does not provide our districts and charters with meaningful data in order to make important program decisions.”
Jonathan Gelbart, Republican
Gelbart, a former director of charter development at BASIS.ed, also supports the menu of assessments law and took it one step further:
“I would advocate eliminating the high school AzMERIT test and making either the SAT or ACT the default test,” Gelbart said.
Gelbart also supports a “dashboard” school grading system and said he would update a Department of Education data repository site, AZreportcards.com, that has been outdated for nearly four years.
“The school letter-grade accountability system should be improved by giving parents more than a single letter as the end result,” Gelbart said.
Kathy Hoffman, Democrat
Hoffman, a former speech therapist in the Peoria Unified School District, criticized the school grading system for its “strong correlation between test performance and socioeconomic status.”
She also criticized an initiative Gov. Doug Ducey championed that gives extra money to the highest-performing schools on AzMERIT, suggesting that additional funding instead go toward school with high rates of poverty.
Hoffman did not go into specifics about what changes she would advocate regarding standardized testing and school accountability. But she said, “Until our public schools are adequately funded, it is unjust to grade schools based on ‘proficiency.’
“Many ‘F’ schools are struggling to overcome obstacles of poverty and second-language acquisition,” Hoffman said. “It is demoralizing for the teachers, students, and families to receive this label.”
Tracy Livingston, Republican
Livingston, a former teacher and Maricopa Community Colleges board member, said “we need less testing and more freedom in the classroom.”
Livingston stumped for the menu of assessments law, which the Arizona State Board of Education — of which the state superintendent is a member of — is still figuring out how to implement.
“I want districts to decide what is right for their needs,” Livingston said, adding that she would ask for input from schools on which tests they’d want to be added to the menu of assessments.
Frank Riggs, Republican
Riggs, a former California U.S. congressman and 2014 Arizona gubernatorial candidate, also supported a dashboard accountability system that “should allow for parental feedback as well as self-evaluation by school personnel.”
Riggs also lobbied for the menu of assessments and said that districts and charters “should design their curriculum to fit their educational model and the unique needs and characteristics of their student population they serve.”
Riggs suggested he would advocate to do away with AzMERIT and instead use tests such as the SAT and ACT exams.
“Our K-12 standards and tests should correlate with the admission requirements of our fouryear state universities,” Riggs said.
David Schapira, Democrat
Schapira, a former teacher, education consultant and a Tempe councilman, said neither teacher evaluation nor school letter grades “should be rooted in the outcome of a single test.”
“Schools should not be assigned letter grades, especially since education metricians have not yet devised a way to evaluate schools that is more indicative of year-long or even course-long teacher and student effort and progress rather than indicative of socioeconomics,” Schapira said.
“As educators, our focus should be on student learning and the educational process over the longer term, not just outcomes of isolated tests.”