The Maricopa Superior Court dismissed a challenge to a school district’s dual language program, citing lack of standing.
The plaintiff, Patricia Pellett, is a Scottsdale Unified School District parent, and not part of the district she challenged, Creighton Elementary School District (CESD). Arizona Department of Education (ADE) Superintendent Tom Horne’s wife, Carmen Chenal Horne, represented Pellett in the case.
Back in August, Horne said that it was irrelevant that Pellett didn’t have a child in CESD schools.
“Under a provision in the initiative that said that a student of any parent in the state could bring an action against any school district in the state that violates this initiative,” said Horne.
The challenge to CESD arose from Horne’s crusade against dual language programs. Horne’s aim is to have all schools teach only through immersion programs. Dual language models teach students subjects in languages other than English for part of their education, whereas immersion has students taught their subject matter entirely in English.
State law enacted through a voter initiative (Proposition 203 passed in 2000) requires that public schools teach the English language through English-spoken courses and English language classrooms, unless parents are eligible to provide prior written informed consent for bilingual education techniques or those educational methodologies permitted by law.
“[A]ll children in Arizona public schools shall be taught English by being taught in English and all children shall be placed in English language classrooms,” states the law.
Eligible circumstances include parents with children who already know English, older children, and children with special needs.
The Arizona State Board of Education has determined that parental waivers for immersion aren’t required, a finding affirmed by Attorney General Kris Mayes last year. Mayes published that opinion in response to a request on legal clarity from state representatives as to whether the language models used by seven school districts — Glendale Elementary, Kyrene Elementary, Phoenix Elementary, Mesa Public Schools, Laveen Elementary, Creighton Elementary, and Mexicayotl Academy — warranted corrective action by ADE.
Horne dismissed Mayes’ opinion as “ideologically driven” and not based in law.
Horne turned to Pellett to challenge schools’ dual language programs after Maricopa County Superior Court ordered Horne to pay over $120,000 in legal fees earlier this year.
The judge, Katherine Cooper, ruled that state law didn’t authorize Horne to ask the courts to rule on school district compliance with Proposition 203. Cooper ruled that only the State Board of Education possessed authority over dual language programs, citing the board’s responsibility for developing and approving immersion models. Cooper further declared that Horne had no justiciable claim, either, and ruled that parents and guardians had the power to file lawsuits to enforce the proposition.
“The school districts, like all public and charter schools, are required to follow a model as approved by the State Board,” ruled Cooper.
Horne’s response was to accuse the ruling as avoidant of the merits of the case. He reiterated that the voter-approved initiative (Proposition 203) required children to be taught in English.
With Horne’s continued challenges to the existence of dual language programs and advocacy for immersion programs, the Arizona School Boards Association says it will advocate for greater reliance on 50-50 models.
I agree! That's why I learned other languages, but I learned English first since that is the language needed to join our society and our economy. We need to follow the law, and if parents want to sign a waiver for dual language, they can. I support parents knowing what is best! https://t.co/7g9znMlai0
A former middle school teacher out of Tucson will lose his Arizona teaching certificate several years after threatening to shoot a Trump merchandise store and kill a lawmaker.
As the Arizona Daily Independentreported, Donald Glenn Brown sent an email under the alias “Jessica James” to The Trumped Store in Show Low, Arizona on July 4, 2022 threatening to shoot up the store as well as murder State Senator Wendy Rogers. Brown was arrested in September of that year on the charge of attempting to commit terrorism, a class four felony.
Brown’s graphic email is replicated below from the Arizona State Board of Education (ASBE) meeting content regarding his case:
“Hello you Mother-F**king Disgusting Piece of Shit….this is Jim & Jessica James, we are friends of Ron Watkins, We are parked today July 4 at the Sonic Restaurant (Show Low), with a pair of AR-15s, We are going to walk in your f**king joke of a store, and start shooting, and put the barrell [sic] of a gun to Wendy Rogers face and pull the trigger and bow her f**king head off…and enjoy watching that f**king traitor grifting disgusting lying sick Bi*ch Wh*re C*nt Die, and her brains, head, blood sprayed all over your f**king store…and then we’re going to start shooting your f**king shit-hole up with a few AR15 rounds-some real patriots are going to Hit Back and F**king C*nt Rogers is going to die…..F**k You Traitor…..tRump Ass-licking C**k Sucker.”
Not until he pled guilty earlier this year in April did Brown resign from the Tucson Unified School District (TUSD). The Navajo County Superior Court sentenced Brown to two-and-a-half years in prison.
Brown’s hearing before ASBE is scheduled for next Monday, where it is anticipated he will lose his teaching certification. Brown didn’t appear before the Professional Practices Advisory Committee (PPAC) for his July hearing, due to his imprisonment; PPAC voted unanimously to recommend revocation of Brown’s teaching certification.
Brown maintains a preK-12 music education certificate set to expire next September. Brown taught at the Pistor Middle School within TUSD.
In addition to engaging in violent political threats, Brown appeared to be addicted to pornography.
According to his ASBE case information, Brown had his teaching credentials suspended in another state, New Mexico, based on a 2016 complaint by a female teacher that she had seen a picture of a naked woman bent over on Brown’s school computer screen. Brown later admitted to viewing pornography during school hours on a classroom computer when no students were present.
Brown applied for a substitute certificate with the state of Arizona during his suspension for the pornography viewing, which was part of a settlement agreement with the New Mexico Public Education Department.
In addition to his “Jessica James” alias, ASBE reported that Brown created a separate alias email “Marina Aleximov” to serve as “an outlet for political rage and tool for sexual gratification.” Under this alias, Brown pretended to be a young, ex-Mormon woman from Russia attacking Republicans online, including Rogers, and curating content from male porn stars, fintess models, and celebrities.
“[Y]ou need to move to Mar-a-Lago so you can be one of ex-King tRump’s wh*res,” wrote Brown. “You want to f**k Donald J Trump sooo bad, right? You worship and adore him, you even pray to him, go to Florida and suck his little orange c*ck and f**k him.”
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A report shows that almost 40% of educators disciplined in 2023 were punished for sexual misconduct. One third of cases were associated with assaultive (non-sexual) behaviors.
“From only the cases adjudicated in 2023, 39% of cases were associated with sexual misconduct, followed by 28% associated with assaultive (non-sexual) behaviors,” the Arizona State Board of Education’s 2023 Enforcement Action Report says. “Substance-related cases decreased to 15% of all the 2023 cases, while breaches of contract decreased to 7%. Cases associated with fraud and theft remained constant at 11% in 2023.”
The report provides an overview of the type and frequency of discipline it has imposed on educators, certificated and uncertificated, who have participated in unprofessional or immoral conduct.
The number of cases processed by the State Board Investigative Unit has increased, but the board claims this is due to increased staffing and improved efficiency in processing cases, rather than an uptick in activity by teachers.
Still, some parents and parent advocates said their increasing awareness of predators in public school classrooms and lazy administrators desperate to fill classrooms played a significant role in complaints.
“There are few things worse in our society than the abuse of our precious children,” former Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction Diane Douglas told the Arizona Daily Independent. “Parents send their children to school assuming they will be safe from predators. Yet according to this report 67% of the enforcement cases in 2023 were sexual misconduct or non-sexual assault. This is just of the cases that have been reported and investigated. How many cases go unexposed, unreported and in some cases under-disciplined?”
Douglas wondered how many children may not realize they are being abused because of how they are being sexualized in their school’s sex-ed classes.
“How can people who have been trained as the teachers of our children abuse them in such horrific ways? Shame on our ‘Colleges’ of Education – 25% of the disciplinary actions from ASU. Where is our Board of Regents?”
Male educators represent more than half of enforcement actions, while 39% of actions involve women.
The largest disciplined group, representing 30% of all cases, are educators with secondary teaching certificates, which are usually used to teach middle and high school.
Educators with elementary teaching certificates and educators with substitute teaching certificates make up more than one third of all discipline cases.
Elizabeth Troutman is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send her news tips using this link.
“History isn’t just something that ought to be taught, read, or encouraged only because it will make us better citizens,” wrote historian David McCullough. “It will make us a better citizen and it will make us more thoughtful and understanding human beings.”
Arizonans deserve and need the best social studies education for their children. Their elected representatives already have done a good deal this year to improve their public schools’ social studies instruction. Their work includes increasing the passing score for the civics test from 60% to 70%, requiring a comparative discussion of political ideologies that conflict with the principles of freedom and democracy, and providing age-appropriate instruction on the 9-11 terrorist attacks.
But Arizona won’t have a firm basis for social studies instruction until the State Board of Education adopts better History and Social Science Standards.
State standards are the single most influential documents in America’s education system. State education departments use them to provide guidance to each public K-12 school district and charter school as they create their own courses. Arizona’s History and Social Science Standards could be much better. The Standards are a tangle of anchor standards and inquiry arcs. The subject items themselves emphasize disciplinary skills and processes far more than actual content knowledge. Students need to “Demonstrate historical empathy when examining individuals or groups in the past whose perspectives might be very different from those held today,” but the standards never mention Benjamin Franklin or George Washington. Some of the subject items cue modern progressive dogma. In the sixth grade, students learn to “Describe how different group identities such as racial, ethnic, class, gender, regional, and immigrant/migration status emerged and contributed to societal and regional development, characteristics, and interactions over time.” Other subject items promote civic engagement, otherwise known as protest civics. Civic engagement uses taxpayer money to pay radical teachers to community-organize the classroom with vocational training in progressive activism—and call it “civics education.” Arizona’s standards prompt students through much of their civics education to “Apply a range of deliberative and democratic procedures to make decisions and act in local, regional, and global communities.” The entire eighth grade is devoted to “Citizenship and Civic Engagement in Today’s Society.” Arizona’s Standards substitute protest civics for real civics education.
Finally, Arizona has abandoned teaching Western Civilization and substituted a vague World History course. Arizona students no longer learn the coherent narrative of the ideals and institutions of liberty embedded in the history of Western Civilization. Neither do they learn the history of Judaism and Christianity, which bequeathed to America the ideals of spiritual freedom and the equal dignity before God of every man and woman—as well as Bartolomé de las Casas’s and William Wilberforce’s anti-slavery ideals. Nor do Arizona students learn the histories of Spain and England, which are the essential background for the history of Arizona’s settlers. The Department of Education should restore a year-long high school course in Western Civilization to the Arizona social studies curriculum. Arizona lawmakers were right to require the State Board of Education to adopt new civic education standards focused upon our nation’s founding principles this past legislative session. As the Board does so, and as it redevelops the state’s social studies standards more broadly, it should use the Civics Alliance’s American Birthright: The Civic Alliance’s Model K-12 Social Studies Standards as a guide to revise its social studies standards and provide its students a proper civics education. American Birthright draws on varied sources, including the 2003 Massachusetts History and Social Science Framework and Florida’s Next Generation Sunshine State Standards for Social Studies (2021).
American Birthright provides the comprehensive content knowledge in history, geography, civics, and economics that schools should teach in each grade from pre-kindergarten through high school, and teaches students to identify the ideals, institutions, and individual examples of human liberty, individualism, religious freedom, and republican self-government; assess the extent to which civilizations have fulfilled these ideals; and describe how the evolution of these ideals in different times and places has contributed to the formation of modern American ideals.
Above all, American Birthright teaches about the expansion of American liberty to include all Americans, as well as about heroes of liberty such as Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Ronald Reagan.
Every American student should be educated to be another Harry Truman—a high-school graduate who, without ever graduating from college, has a solid grasp of history and is capable of serving as an officer, a judge, a senator, and president.
If Arizona’s State Board of Education draws on American Birthright to revise its social studies standards, it will provide Arizona’s students that education.
David Randall is the the Executive Director of Research at the National Association of Scholars and Executive Director of the NAS Civics Alliance.
At its June 28 meeting, the Arizona State Board of Education did not approve the SAT for the Menu of Assessments for the 2021-2022 school year. The decision requires all schools to only administer the ACT Aspire and ACT in high school as the statewide assessment.
In June 2020, the Board awarded ACT, in partnership with NCS Pearson, the contract for the statewide assessment beginning in the 2021-2022 school year. As part of the 5-Year Assessment Plan, the Board intended for the nationally recognized college exam that failed to win the bid for the statewide assessment, in this case SAT, to be on the Menu of Assessments.
This would have allowed schools to administer either the ACT or the SAT to high school students.
However, in January 2021 the College Board decided to remove the essay portion from the SAT. In order to be federally compliant, the state needs to assess writing. The Board determined that it was better to not approve the SAT for the Menu rather than risk federal funds again.
The State Board indicated it would consider approving the SAT for the Menu should the College Board offer an essay portion in the future.
In 2019, the U.S. Department of Education placed Arizona on “high-risk status” due to its assessment system and threatened to withhold hundreds of millions of dollars of federal funds.
