MIKE BENGERT: Scottsdale Students Deserve Better Than Failed Education Experiments
By Mike Bengert |
I have opposed Scottsdale Unified School District (SUSD) Superintendent Dr. Menzel and his Governing Board allies since his arrival, and for good reason.
For decades, progressive education experts have promoted policies they said would raise achievement, often without any evidence. Whatever their intentions, the results have been disappointing and well documented.
After years of weak results, the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2002 brought accountability-focused reform. By raising standards, measuring results, and targeting low-performing schools, it helped improve outcomes. Over its first decade, nearly half the states gained in 4th-grade reading and almost all improved in 4th-grade math.
Despite that progress, the “experts” replaced NCLB with Common Core and the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). According to numbers from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), that experiment has failed.
For 50 years, the National Center for Education Statistics has tracked performance through the NAEP, the Nation’s Report Card. The 2024 results reinforce concerns about the last decade of education policy and echo warnings first raised in 1983.
Let’s take a look at some of the key findings:
- Student proficiency has stagnated or declined since the early 1990s.
- Public school performance improved under NCLB, then stagnated after Common Core and declined under ESSA.
- From 2013 to 2024, charter schools were more stable across achievement levels.
- States with educator bargaining laws saw steeper reading declines, suggesting less instructional flexibility.
- Even with record per-pupil spending in some states, achievement remains low, showing funding alone is not enough.
One article summarizes it this way:
“The declines reflect the failures of more than a decade of educational policy—specifically, a retreat from expectations that began under the Common Core Standards and continued under the Every Student Succeeds Act.”
The data show that the pedagogies favored by education experts, including Dr. Menzel and the majority of the SUSD Governing Board, and have failed for decades.
Whole language failed as a reading method in the 1980s and 1990s. In its place, the Science of Reading emphasizes systematic, explicit phonics.
Common Core deemphasized cursive, and instruction declined after 2010 as its authors argued keyboarding mattered more. Another failure.
Was prioritizing laptops and keyboarding over handwriting the right choice?
Studies cited in Psychology Today say no.
“These studies show that handwriting is an essential cognitive process and a valuable intellectual activity that supports learning from the first day of school through advanced levels of education.”
“…children should first learn handwriting. Only after they become fully proficient—especially in complex narrative writing—should typing be introduced.”
One of the most consequential failures in recent U.S. education policy was the COVID-era closure of public schools, supported by education experts and teachers’ unions, which resulted in widespread learning loss. The shutdowns were not only costly and unnecessary but also lacked scientific support.
These are only a few examples of the failures of expert-led public education. In my view, the most damaging and still spreading nationwide, including in SUSD, is the Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS).
In FY2020–2021, Dr. Menzel’s first year at SUSD, the Governing Board launched a future-focused strategic plan that made MTSS a key initiative.
In 2023, after a Scottsdale parent’s complaint, the Arizona Attorney General found that Menzel and the Governing Board’s strategic planning design team violated Open Meeting Law (OML). The AG did not punish the district or require rescission of the Strategic Plan, issuing only a warning, so the district still uses it today. Despite the OML training required by that finding, SUSD was hit with another OML complaint. Will Menzel ever learn?
MTSS began in the 1960s as a model for delivering mental health services in large urban areas. Schools later adapted it to identify students with special needs, and in the 2000s expanded it to all students.
MTSS requires schools to create support teams and policies that reshape how they handle behavior and learning. It has three tiers: tier one exposes all students to mental health awareness programs; tier two provides individual or group counseling for students identified by staff or self-referral; and tier three refers students needing more extensive services to outside professionals or clinics. In short, MTSS is designed to reshape school culture and organization around delivering mental health services.
Response to Intervention (RTI) focuses on academics, while Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) fits within MTSS on the premise that students cannot learn if social or emotional barriers block learning. Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) and RTI were originally developed for special education students but are now used schoolwide.
MTSS spread gradually through U.S. public schools over two decades, with wider adoption in the 2010s.
Under Dr. Menzel’s leadership, SUSD has implemented MTSS and integrated PBIS, RTI, and SEL across the district, describing them as research-based and effective. The district also describes itself as a national leader in RTI.
Despite SUSD’s claims that MTSS is research-based and improves academic and social outcomes, the objective data from multiple studies do not support the claims.
Since 2010, SUSD enrollment has fallen by more than 6,000 students. Nearly 29% of that decline occurred during Dr. Menzel’s tenure from 2021 to 2025, including more than 1,200 students in the 2024–2025 school year alone.
Arizona Department of Education data show that since 2021, SUSD students have averaged 60% proficiency in English Language Arts, 56% in math, and 40% in science, with little improvement.
These numbers do not support the SUSD claims of better academics, improved discipline, or a more positive school culture at SUSD. If the claims were true, why have proficiencies remained stagnant during Menzel’s tenure?
While MTSS is simply a means of organizing and providing mental health services in schools, programs like PBIS address behavior through encouragement rather than disciplinary policies. Revising disciplinary policies was one of Menzel’s early priorities after coming into office.
Follow this link to SUSD’s policies, and you’ll notice that the policies JK Student Discipline, JKD Student Suspension, and JKE Expulsion of Students and their related regulations and exhibits were all updated December 12, 2023, within Menzel’s first couple of years at SUSD.
In May 2024, the SUSD Code of Conduct Committee made a presentation to the Board. Two points stand out: the committee appears to classify bringing a loaded gun to school as “a minor aggressive act” (slide 5 and item #2 on this list of 24 Shocking Moments of 2024)
Slides 6 and 7 emphasize MTSS, SUSD’s core discipline framework.
While the entire 24 Shocking Moments of 2024 list is worth reading, pay particular attention to #3, #5, #9, #10, #13, #16, #20, and #21. They illustrate what Menzel calls better academics, improved discipline, and a more positive school culture at SUSD.
Consistent with that list, exit interviews show parents most often leave SUSD over weak academics, excessive technology use, poor discipline and policy enforcement, bullying and safety concerns, and dissatisfaction with leadership.
MTSS also carries costs: it requires more master’s-level non-teaching staff and uses class time for mental health programming. Along with PBIS, RTI, and SEL, it has shifted resources from classroom instruction to non-academic support services.
According to the AZ Auditor General’s SUSD spending report, SUSD academic instructional spending fell from nearly 64% of the operating budget in 2004 to 54% in 2025. In the five years since Menzel was hired, non-academic support spending rose 1.9% while instructional spending fell 2.3%—a swing of more than 4 points. In 2025, SUSD spent $1,449 per pupil on support services, about 21% of its instructional spending ($6,959), up from $871 and 16% in 2020.
For years, education experts have promoted school-based mental health programs and SEL as ways to improve academics. But multiple studies—including a 2024 long-term study of nearly 500,000 Minnesota students—found no meaningful gains in test scores, attendance, or other academic outcomes. Research from Europe, Canada, Australia, and Latin America reaches the same conclusion: SEL may help behavior or social-emotional skills in some cases, but it does not reliably raise academic performance. (For more, see here.)
Schools often use universal mental health screenings to identify students for intervention. But without adequate safeguards and expertise, these screenings can produce false-positive rates as high as 90%, with potentially lasting consequences.
SUSD says it uses universal screening. Arizona Revised Statutes 15-104 and 36-2272 require written parental consent before school mental health screening. If your child was screened without your consent, you should contact the Arizona Attorney General’s Office and file a complaint.
Since March 2024, there has been no statutory exemption allowing school-based behavioral workers to practice behavioral health without a license. If you believe your child was subjected to behavioral health services at SUSD through MTSS or otherwise, you can file a complaint with the Arizona Board of Behavioral Health Examiners here.
Dr. Menzel is on a mission to disrupt and destroy SUSD, and he should be stopped.
If you think things can’t get much worse in SUSD, or in public education more broadly, just wait until the experts implement AI in the curriculum. We should build real intelligence in students before turning to artificial intelligence.
Unfortunately, the SUSD staff recently attended a 2-day event to “level up” and attend 66 engaging learning sessions focused on innovative instructional practices, student support, technology integration, and more. I can’t wait!
After researching and writing this piece, I am more convinced than ever that focusing on and supporting truly evidence-based academics and fiscal responsibility in our schools, puts me on the right side of the issues.
Wherever you live and whatever school your children attend, if you care about your child’s education, please visit Restore Parental Rights in Education and support its mission to “awaken and empower everyday citizens who advocate for excellence in K-12 education.”
Reversing the decline of public education in America will require people to unite and act together.
Mike Bengert is a husband, father, grandfather, and Scottsdale resident advocating for quality education in SUSD for over 30 years.
