“Sweet are the uses of adversity,
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;
And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Find tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.”
— William Shakespeare, “As You Like It”
Arizona students led the nation in improvement on NAEP between 2009 and 2015. During this period, Arizona students uniquely made statistically significant improvements on all six NAEP exams (fourth and eighth grade reading, mathematics and science). When your author stumbled upon the Stanford Educational Opportunity Project data, it found that Arizona students had the fastest rate of academic growth between 2008 and 2018. This improvement did not last, but it may be coming back.
Fast forward from these happy times to the 2024 NAEP and the improvement era is looking like a lost golden age. While Arizona’s charter schools show clear signs of academic recovery, Arizona’s school districts are a hot mess. For example, in eighth grade math the average Arizona charter student was comfortably a grade level ahead of the national average for district students, whereas Arizona district students were embarrassingly a grade level behind the average for district students, and approximately two grade levels behind Arizona charter students:
Oooof. What happened?
Well one can never be certain about the relationships between policy and outcomes, but here is your humble author’s working theory. First off, Arizona’s top-down accountability system is a joke. We grade schools A-F, but the formula makes no sense and hands out approximately 120 “A” grades for every “F” grade. Our lawmakers also passed a third grade retention law years ago, but the Arizona State Board of Education has seen to it that effectively no one gets retained. “Accountability” of the testing sort is approximately as firm as a soft-serve ice cream cone that has been sitting out in the Phoenix heat.
It is not as though it used to make sense/have some firmness to it: these policies have sadly never been either firm and/or made much sense, best I can tell. It used to not matter, however, because choice served as the de-facto accountability system.
During the 2009-2015 period, Arizona charter school enrollment surged as high-demand operators were able to access inexpensive property during the Great Recession. Arizona lawmakers expanded the state’s scholarship tax credit programs, and then created the nation’s first ESA program, which started small but steadily grew.
All of this triggered a virtuous cycle during the housing bust aftermath. High demand districts, even fancy ones like Scottsdale Unified, became increasingly open to and aggressive about open enrollment. Open enrollment remains the largest form of choice in Arizona. The financial impact of students transferring between schools and districts mirrors that of other forms of choice, with the state funding following the child. The ready availability of seats in high demand districts spurred a positive feedback loop into the charter school sector whereby high demand charter schools replicated and expanded, but low demand charter schools closed. Not many district schools closed, but many felt the pinch of lowering enrollment. Statewide academic achievement, as noted above, surged; the uses of our Great Recession induced adversity proved to be sweet.
So, what went wrong during the COVID-19 adversity? Basically, the influx of federal COVID relief funding turned off competitive effects, which left us solely reliant on our top-down accountability system, which is ineffectual to say the least.
Why did competitive effects go away? Between the 2019-20 school year and the 2022-23 school year, Arizona school district enrollment dropped by 5%. Arizona school district total revenue, however, increased by 36 percent (see page 3). Arizona school districts received more money to (mis)educate fewer students — not exactly a recipe for competitive pressure. Quite the opposite, actually. Arizona charters meanwhile get less money per pupil, and unlike Arizona districts, show signs of recovery in the NAEP:
Can Arizona regain the lost mojo? Possibly. The federal funny money is washing out of the system, meaning that competitive pressure will return. The advent of the Baby Bust in 2008 means that there are fewer students to go around despite the state’s growing overall population. Arizona has some very talented and competitive people working in school districts, and the competition knob is about to get turned to “11.”
Stay tuned to this channel to see what happens next.
