Arizona spends less on K-12 education than almost any other state (see rankings here).
That’s bad enough, but now their teachers aren’t required to graduate from college (see story here).
This legislation was motivated by “a severe teacher shortage for the last six years, which, by this winter, left 26% of teacher vacancies unfilled and nearly 2,000 classrooms without an official teacher of record.” Well, duh, maybe because Arizona’s teacher salaries are the lowest of the 50 states? (See story here.)
The solution favored by the Republicans who run Arizona is not to attract more, or better qualified, teachers by raising salaries; it’s to raid what little public school funding there is to give vouchers to parents who can afford to pay for private schooling of their kids.
This isn’t surprising, either. Republicans are elitists who only care about the well-off, and care for them by cutting their taxes.,
Moreover, Republicans don’t like science, professors, or smart people (i.e., people too smart to vote for them). In some states, they’re even threatening to jail teachers and school librarians who describe slaves as “slaves” or gays as “gay,” and ban student lunchboxes with pictures of rainbows on them.
Arizona may be an okay place to retire if you can’t afford taxes for public services because you’re playing golf on a fixed income, but it’s no place for kids.
So if you move there, and are raising grandchildren because your children are Capitol rioters serving prison time, don’t take your grandkids with you.
Farm them out to relatives in New York, California, or Washington. Never mind if their cousins are “woke” liberals. It’s more important they learn the three R’s, so they can get into real colleges and get decent jobs, so they won’t end up like your kids.
Photo: Arizona public school, circa 2022; the teacher is on the right.
