Diane Douglas and Doug Ducey are currently in a bit of a squabbling match. Douglas, the superintendent of public instruction, recently fired two staff administrators of the state Board of Education, of which Douglas herself is a member.
Ducey quickly challenged Douglas’s actions, arguing that the superintendent of public instruction does not have the authority to fire board staff.
In only a few brief days, the conflict between Douglas and Ducey has become fairly heated. Douglas has taken every opportunity to assert her supposed authority, releasing a widely circulated ad stating that Ducey was not on the ballot for superintendent and repeatedly attacked Common Core standards.
Douglas initially argued for the dismissal of board members because of their support for Common Core and has since gone so far as to say Ducey is supporting these standards by contesting her decision.
Since this controversy first came to light, the fired board members — Executive Director Christine Thompson and Assistant Executive Director Sabrina Vasquez — have been able to go back to work, and state Sen. Kelli Ward, R-Lake Havasu City, has drafted legislation that explicitly states who does and who does not have the authority to hire and fire board members. Ultimately, the debate over the authority to hire and fire state Board of Education members is distracting Arizonans from the far more significant issue in education today: the fate of Common Core standards.
Given how often it is referenced in public discourse, it is easy to lose track of what Common Core standards are. In short, Common Core standards are K-12 educational standards intended to be enforced on a national level. The standards are supposed to insure that students receive a uniformly high education regardless of which part of the country they come from. Additionally, Common Core standards are supposed to foster critical thinking at a younger age than the pre-existing standards.
These standards are particularly significant given the increasingly interconnected nature of the American economy. Moving across the nation, if not the world, is not uncommon in the highly interconnected world in which we live. Establishing uniformly high educational standards allows students from any part of the country to move to any other part of the country and be equally competitive in the job market or in applying to institutions of higher education. The National Governor’s Association supports the standards.
This is not to say that Common Core is not controversial. On the contrary, these standards are often the subject of fervent debate. A recent review by the New York Times has shown that elementary students in New York have struggled to pass the new higher standards brought about by Common Core; however, the same report also detailed that the student scores were expected to decrease following the implementation of harder standards and that the overall quality of student education and student retention is still expected to improve over a larger sample space.
Leaders of Arizona government, however, oppose Common Core as a matter of state’s rights. Douglas and Ducey both oppose the standards, insisting that the state ought to have the right to determine its own public school curriculum. Much as Douglas insists that she has the power to exert all the influence she wants over the state Board of Education, Arizona leaders who oppose Common Core oppose these standards because they claim they have the power to do so. However, both Douglas and opponents of Common Core are doing more damage than good in exerting their authority wantonly.
Even as Arizona continues to rank among the worst states for high school education, Douglas and Ducey both want to prevent the further adoption of tougher standards that would put our public schools on par with the rest of the nation. While our elected officials have often shirked from the responsibility of increasing educational standards, our public schools are doomed to be inadequate if we continually resist increasing standards.
By rejecting Common Core just so Arizonans have sole authority to determine our curriculum, our elected officials are holding back the students of our state and preventing Arizona from advancing on a national and global level.
Our state is currently in the midst of many drastic changes to its education system. AIMS testing is being phased out, more stringent civics courses are being integrated into public education, and the overall fate of Common Core remains in flux. The debate between Douglas and Ducey has come to dominate the local news cycle, but their spat is not nearly as meaningful to the future of our state as the intentions of both these leaders to eliminate Common Core.
Reach the columnist at clmurph5@asu.edu or follow @ConnorLMurphy on Twitter.
Editor’s note: The opinions presented in this column are the author’s and do not imply any endorsement from The State Press or its editors.
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