by Staff Reporter | Dec 11, 2025 | Education, News
By Staff Reporter |
The Arizona Board of Education (ASBE) removed language relating to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) from state teaching standards and English language learning courses.
This follows a delay in their decision on the matter several months ago.
State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne published a press release approving ASBE’s decision to go forward with removing DEI language from Arizona education.
Arizona’s federal funding for 2026 amounts to about $870 million; should Arizona schools not purge DEI, that federal funding may be refused, per the Trump administration.
Horne said the DEI divestment not only counted as compliance with President Donald Trump’s executive order conditioning federal funding on the absence of DEI, but as a philosophical good for students.
“All people should be judged based on their character and ability, not their race or ethnicity. DEI language and programs promote the exact opposite, and they have no place in the classroom,” said Horne. “These terms do not belong in teaching standards, which are meant to direct educators on the most effective ways to teach students’ core academics. Every instructional minute is precious, and DEI efforts distract from that essential mission.”
Multiple federal courts issued nationwide preliminary injunctions against the DEI ban earlier this year. However, the proceedings of those cases were impacted by the Supreme Court ruling in June through Trump v. CASA that declared these and other nationwide injunctions improperly exceed the authority of federal courts. The Supreme Court determined that lower courts must offer specific relief to the involved parties, and generally can’t issue nationwide injunctions to non-plaintiffs.
Following this decision by ASBE, a dedicated working group launching in February will draft materials purging DEI from the Arizona Professional Teaching Standards and Structured English Immersion (SEI) Endorsement Course Frameworks.
These materials will define DEI-related language in order to determine which language to remove or revise.
All 15 counties will have representation in this working group. There will be special considerations to include teacher representatives from General Education, Special Education, and the various teacher subgroups such as English Language Learning, Gifted, and Talented programs.
Stakeholder input will be collected from the three public universities, county education superintendents, school administrators, Arizona Rural Education Association, Arizona Educators Association, and current Structured English Immersion course providers.
ASBE is scheduled to consider these materials next September.
While the state’s top education authority supports these modifications, other stakeholder groups oppose them.
The Arizona Education Association (AEA) submitted a letter to ASBE urging rejection of the proposed changes. AEA leadership claimed over 22,000 educators statewide signed onto the letter in their press release. That’s roughly one-third of the teacher workforce in the state. However, the letter clarified that AEA counted mere membership with their organization as equivalent to all members signing on to their letter.
AEA President Marisol Garcia said without DEI Arizona education would cause a “race to the bottom” — vulnerable to constant changes and little of the continuity required for imparting a strong education — as well as a purging of history.
The other major teachers unions at the national level — the American Federation of Teachers and National Education Association, as well as the civil rights organization, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People — sued the Trump administration to stop the DEI ban.
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by Staff Reporter | Nov 26, 2025 | Education, News
By Staff Reporter |
The nation’s biggest union overseeing educators is prioritizing trainings to advance LGBTQ+ justice and defeat white supremacy as student outcomes continue to decline.
The National Education Association (NEA) plans to train educators on these topics through the 2025-26 Focus Academy schedule. Affiliate staff and member teams attend these academies to develop and implement issue organizing campaigns, per the NEA.
The NEA will kick off the holiday season with a three-day training on “Advancing LGBTQ+ Justice and Transgender Advocacy” the week after Thanksgiving.
The training is exclusive to members and allies of the LGBTQ+ community. It seeks to harmonize the LGBTQ+ ideology and strategize to defeat other ideologies opposed to it:
“With partners from the Center for Racial Justice, members of the LGBTQ+ community, and other experts participants will learn how to: establish common understandings about the identities under the LGBTQ+ community umbrella; develop a shared understanding of the anti LGBTQ+ policy landscape and how to develop counter narratives of inclusion and equity; deepen skills and strategies to confront implicit bias, micro-aggressions and stereotypes in the LGBTQ+ community; [and] develop a toolset of tactics for dismantling systems of privilege and oppression as it relates to LGBTQ+ educators and students.”
Within this academy, educators are trained on defaulting to the pluralization of genders, using pronouns, transitioning genders, and implementing the Gender Unicorn.
Then, to kick off the New Year, the NEA will train educators on “address[ing] white supremacy culture.” The NEA emphasized a need for individuals “highly skilled” in handling “white fragility and interpersonal oppressions.” Leaked materials show a term that seems to have fallen out of the wayside in public commentary: Critical Race Theory (CRT).
“Recently, [Republicans] have paired these attacks with fear-mongering about Critical Race Theory, mobilizing their base with a potent mix of racist and transphobic tropes,” stated the training materials.
This focus academy training will have educators complete a campaign plan that details what racial justice looks like:
“Participants will learn how to help themselves and others: establish a common language for talking explicitly about white supremacy culture in a campaign cycle; deepen skills and strategies to confront implicit bias, microaggressions, and stereotypes; develop a shared understanding of the levels of racism with a focus on a power analysis required to make changes at various levels; [and] develop a toolset for dismantling systems of privilege and oppression.”
Defending Education published leaked materials from these academies. Per these materials, NEA leadership harmonizes and equates the issues facing the advancement of LGBTQ+ ideology and Critical Race Theory.
The materials show that the NEA blamed the lack of public support on transgenderism for minors on the political right having “exploited” general ignorance of LGBTQ+ ideology.
“Over the last ten years, Republicans in state legislatures have increasingly turned to anti-transgender rhetoric and legislation as a powerful complement to their arsenal of racist dog whistles used to whip up fear and consolidate power,” said the materials.
The latest Nation’s Report Card by the National Assessment of Educational Progress yielded additional declines in scores across the board for math, reading, and science.
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by AZ Free Enterprise Club | Oct 18, 2025 | Opinion
By the Arizona Free Enterprise Club |
Ever since Arizona passed universal school choice, the Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) program has been the target of the Red for Ed teachers’ union, Democrat lawmakers and their corporate media allies. They demand transparency and accountability for alleged abuse of ESA dollars—all while scandal after scandal continues to pop up in our state’s K-12 public schools.
We saw it at the beginning of the year when the Isaac Elementary School District (IESD) was placed under a state receivership after it was determined that it had a budget shortfall of over $12 million! And this wasn’t a surprise. The Auditor General had been sounding the alarm on IESD’s mismanagement of funds for five years!
But where was the corporate media? Where was the digging? Where was the series of articles and threads on X exposing the corruption?
We got none of it. Instead, we have certain Red For Ed reporters, like Craig Harris, attacking Arizona’s popular ESA program with liberal talking points about unspent funds and alleged waste and abuse.
But if the failures of IESD weren’t enough, now we have the sordid financial tale of Tolleson Union High School District, a story so scandalous that it should make every taxpayer’s blood boil…
>>> CONTINUE READING >>>
by AZ Free Enterprise Club | Mar 28, 2025 | Opinion
By the Arizona Free Enterprise Club |
Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs and the Radical Left have made it clear that they want to dismantle school choice in our state. Despite getting trounced in November’s election where teachers’ unions and other anti-school choice groups made it a referendum on educational freedom, Hobbs has doubled down on her same tired and out-of-touch efforts since the start of this year.
Once again, it hasn’t worked. Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) program continues to grow—with enrollment now over 87,000 students. So, Hobbs and her buddies in the teachers’ unions have resorted to employing one of their favorite tricks: relying on activist reporters in the corporate media to give their anti-school choice messaging an extra boost.
In early March, a coordinated attack was launched against Primavera, an online charter school serving thousands of K-12 students across the state. It began with a story from Craig Harris, a Red4ED activist that calls himself a reporter, who claimed that Primavera received a ‘D’ letter grade from the Arizona Department of Education for the past three years. According to the report, the school failed to meet the minimum academic requirements for a traditional charter school. Harris’ column then went on to complain about the owner of Primavera and how much money he has made while operating the school.
After the story was published, the Arizona Charter School Board convened a hearing to review the allegations against Primavera. In a span of just a few hours, the board imposed the most severe punishment at their disposal, revoking the schools’ charter and setting them up for eventual closure. In effect, Primavera was given the charter school death penalty after one meeting.
On the surface, this might make sense. After all, if a school is failing its students, it deserves proper accountability. But as so often happens with today’s corporate media, an important fact was omitted from this manufactured takedown…
>>> CONTINUE READING >>>
by Dr. Thomas Patterson | Jan 6, 2025 | Opinion
By Dr. Thomas Patterson |
What accounts for the differences in academic achievement between inner-city poverty area schools and high-income public schools? We‘ve all heard of the dreadful schools in cities like Chicago and Baltimore with no children in the entire school able to achieve even baseline levels of competence in math or verbal skills and many other schools with a third at most achieving at grade level.
Many would assume funding is the major determinant, but the facts don’t back that up. American public schools have traditionally been funded by local property taxes, which provide a clear advantage to the wealthy. But that was then. Today, education funding is complex, with federal funding for special programs, equalization formulas, and other inputs making it difficult for even experts to determine the bottom line.
A recent study from the Urban Institute confirmed other research showing that “when considering federal, state and local funding,” all states but three “allocate more per student funding to poor kids than to non-poor kids.” Moreover, researchers from Harvard and Stanford found that each extra $1,000 per pupil spending is associated with an annual gain in achievement of 1/10 of one percent of a standard deviation. In other words, more spending and more learning are essentially unrelated.
If more spending did produce more achievement, we would be morally obligated to provide it. As it is, we must look for other reasons to explain the achievement gap, examining how well the allocated funds are used. Education researcher Jay Greene observes that “wasteful schools tend to hire more non-instructional staff while raising the pay and benefits for all staff regardless of their contribution to student outcomes.”
Effective schools, whenever possible, prioritize the learning interests of students, eschewing the fads and misconceptions that plague the public school establishment. When a Stanford education professor helpfully developed an “equity-based” curriculum proposal, gullible California educators issued guidance against students taking algebra courses before high school.
After decades of the promotion of “context-based” reading instruction, it became obvious that the old-fashioned phonics instruction produced better readers. The Columbia University center that pushed context-based instruction was finally closed in 2023.
The devastating COVID closures demanded by the teachers’ unions disproportionately affected low-income public school students. The closures lasted longer and caused more learning loss for poor students than for those in private schools and more upscale districts.
The different, more “lenient” treatment afforded to low-income kids is evident also in the cellphone bans proliferating in the schools. Educators are suddenly realizing, after 20 years or so, that daily staring at a small screen bearing social media messages is not healthy for the developing brain.
According to advisories from the Surgeon General, UNESCO, and others, adolescent cell phone usage impairs academic achievement by distracting students’ attention from classroom instruction. Chronic cell phone overuse is also isolating and interferes with normal social development. Widespread cell phone use is associated with higher rates of teenage depression and suicide.
Eight states and many school districts have imposed cell phone bans, and others, including Arizona, are considering legislation. But there are objections. Parents feel the need to “keep in touch” with their children. Phones are also needed to locate friends in the lunchroom (yes, really). More seriously, parents worry about not having contact in a school shooting, even though the chances of any student encountering even one during their entire school life is vanishingly small.
The bigger problem is that legislative cell phone bans are typically so loose and riddled with exceptions that they are practically useless. California, with great fanfare from Governor Gavin Newsom, passed a bill that only required schools to “adopt a policy limiting or prohibiting smart phones by July 2026.” Any school with even an insignificant modification in cell phone usage would be legally in compliance, and enforcement would be a snap. Helicopter parents would still be in business. Florida’s ban is limited to classroom time only.
Private schools and high-end public schools pushed ahead with their own rules, which typically are more comprehensive and tightly written. Strict, uniform restrictions are easier for both teachers and students to understand. Meanwhile, poor students once again are saddled with misdirected compassion and low expectations.
Dr. Thomas Patterson, former Chairman of the Goldwater Institute, is a retired emergency physician. He served as an Arizona State senator for 10 years in the 1990s, and as Majority Leader from 93-96. He is the author of Arizona’s original charter schools bill.
