Tom Patterson, legislative sponsor of the Arizona charter law in 1994, relates that in his first debate as a legislative candidate in 1988 he opined that students should be able to transfer between district schools even if they lived outside the attendance boundary. His opponent countered that such a proposal was “crazy.” Almost three decades later, a majority of students in Maricopa County attend a school other than their zoned option. Arizona schools have become increasingly effective and reflective of the pluralism of our great state. Dr. Patterson may have been crazy – like a fox.
Arizonans take pride in being a diverse and disputatious people. Rather than agreeing on one way to educate students, we have granted families the ability to select a school that suits their preferences. While we may not agree on a single model of schooling, much less what schools should look like 50 or 100 years from now, we have, however, placed the right people in charge of making those decisions – educators and families. School choice, an experiment in liberty, has enabled Arizona’s educators the opportunity to create their own schools and families the power to select between them. Together, they will continue to shape the future of education.
In 2000 the Manhattan Institute ranked all 50 states according to the amount of education freedom available to families. Primarily on the strength of the state’s 1994 charter school law which allowed a robust system of charter schools and prohibited districts from charging tuition for open enrollment transfers, Arizona ranked first out of 50 states. Examining the percentage of students in each state with access to a charter school a decade and a half after the Manhattan report, Arizona ranked first again, with 84% of students having access to at least one charter school in their zip code. The Morrison Institute also noted that Arizona students alone made statistically significant progress on all six NAEP exams given between 2009 and 2015.
Much about our system of schooling has become increasingly antiquated over time and in need of modernization. While all Arizonans pay school transportation taxes, our system largely operates as if it were still 1988 instead of helping transport the majority of students to the schools in which they enroll. Zip codes no longer determine where a child can go to school, but they still determine how much money their school receives to provide their education. Arizona has both district and charter schools with long wait lists. Clearly, more work remains to be done.
As important as improved academic achievement is educational pluralism. and Arizona parents now have greater choice between schools that vary widely in mission and model. Arts schools, STEM schools, classical schools, “second chance” schools, equestrian schools, schools focused on helping children with disabilities, small schools, big schools – i you can name it, Arizona educators just may have put in the work to give you the opportunity to choose it.
Humorist, Bruce Fierstein, insightfully notes that the distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success. Crazy? Nope – try “brilliant.”
