TOM HORNE                              TERRY GODDARD

   A letter to the editor in today’s Tribune from the Goldwater Institute probably serves as the denouement for an odd public fight between state schools superintendent Tom Horne and folks who should be his natural allies – champions of the school voucher movement.
   The feud was rooted in an early June decision by Horne to suspend funding for two year-old voucher programs for disabled students and children in state foster care. That action came after the Arizona Court of Appeals ruled the two programs violate the state constitution by benefiting private schools.
   Goldwater released a statement saying Horne was wrong to suspend the two programs because the case already had been appealed to the state Supreme Court. Horne responded rather harshly, calling the people at Goldwater “liars” and urging the public to ignore anything they say.
   Goldwater and the Institute for Justice, the public-interest law firm defending the voucher program, countered by saying Horne misread the appellate court decision and he took a needless step that threatened to disrupt the education of hundreds of kids.
   In reality, Horne received bad legal advice from state Attorney General Terry Goddard. First, please note what the Court of Appeals actually said:
   “For the foregoing reasons, we vacate the trial court’s judgment and remand with direction to enter judgment for (the plaintiffs), enjoining Horne from expending public funds pursuant to the school voucher statutes.”
   That seems pretty straightforward; the voucher programs had to come an sudden stop.
   But under Arizona appellate rules, the Institute for Justice said, that order was immediately suspended when the case was taken to the Supreme Court. The higher court confirmed the suspension in a special ruling earlier this month. So, in theory, there was no need to halt the voucher programs before the Supreme Court reaches an opinion on the underlying lawsuit.
   Some have suggested that Horne should know that, since he’s a Harvard-educated lawyer. But if Horne had ignored the legal advice of Goddard’s office, Horne could have been personally liable for any money that was spent illegally. Extremely few elected officials are wealthy enough to take that gamble.
   Besides, the attorney general really should be the expert on how appellate rules work, since he has an entire office devoted to handling such cases.
   Unfortunately, Goddard’s bad advice had serious consequences. With the voucher funding already suspended, Gov. Janet Napolitano was able to justify stripping the $5 million from the new state budget.
   So the Supreme Court said the vouchers could continue for now, but there’s no money to do it.
   House Speaker Jim Weiers offered to replace that lost funding from $9 million in cash in his budget. But Goddard ruled just Wednesday that move would be illegal without a regular appropriation from the Legislature.
   Goddard had better be right about that, or he’s going to start developing a reputation of incompetence in a fundamental aspect of his job.

REP. RICH CRANDALL

   Education testing in Arizona could be headed for yet another transformational reform – this time with a focus on standardized tests for reading and writing in early grades instead of as a requirement for graduation.
   As The Associated Press reported this afternoon, Rep. Rich Crandall, R-Mesa, is leading a revolt at the state Capitol to dump the high-stakes AIMS test that has applied to prospective high school graduates since 2006. AIMS has been heavily criticized because it has been rewritten several times, the passing grades have been lowered and some students receive extra credit from their regular school work. All of this was done with the intent of boosting graduation rates, when the AIMS test was supposed to tell us who had really earned a high school diploma and who had not.
   AIMS also has come under attack because some test questions are designed by the state Department of Education as the means to compare Arizona students with students in other states. The AIMS results generally show Arizona students do well, but that doesn’t match other measures such as the National Assessment of Educational Progress.
   Crandall’s suggestion that Arizona focus on testing in lower grade levels seems to be heavily influenced by a new set of education reforms set out by the Goldwater Institute’s Matthew Ladner and Arywynn Mattix, associate director of BASIS schools. Goldwater is a Phoenix-based libertarian think tank while BASIS is a hugely successful charter school operation.
   Coincidentally, Tribune education reporter Michelle Reese and I sat down today with Ladner to discuss the proposals summarized in a July 2 report, Fortune Favors the Bold.
Ladner said the NEAP test clearly shows Arizona has made almost no progress in raising the education levels, particularly in reading, for Arizona students. In 2007, only 56 percent of fourth graders could read at that grade level, he said.
   Different experts and research groups have tried to justify Arizona’s overall lack of progress, Ladner said, as they point to Arizona’s large Hispanic population and large number of poor families. Both demographic groups have traditional lagged behind everyone else in education.
   Ladner said it’s fair to say Arizona’s education system has done remarkably well given the challenges it must deal with. But the reality is, without dramatic changes, tens of thousands of students will continue to go uneducated each year, they will drop out of school before high school graduation, and they will become a net drain on society because they can’t find good-paying jobs.
   “You’ve spent a pile of money and half of these kids can’t read,” Ladner said. “There’s no way that can ever be acceptable.”
   Reforms should focus on standarized testing in lower grade levels instead of high school (Ladner suggests the third grade) because that’s the easiest and most cost-efficient time to help students address reading and other learning deficiencies. The older they get, the harder it becomes.
   Starlee Rhodes, Goldwater’s vice president of communications, also pointed out it’s easier for parents to accept a child being held back in the third grade than it will ever be to deny diplomas to high school students.
   A legislative commission has been charged with developing an approach to replace AIMS by next year. Hopefully, the group will give serious consideration to Goldwater’s proposed reforms.

Scottsdale resident Andrea Weck and daughter Lexie have been advocates for state-funded private school scholarships (from www.ij.org). 

   Libertarians and school choice advocates aren’t going to like it, but I have to admit it’s hard to argue with today’s ruling from the Arizona Court of Appeals that private school vouchers violate the state constitution.
   This case dealt with a couple of new scholarship programs created by Legislature in 2006 to provide private tuition scholarships for disabled children and those in foster care who might find better education if their options weren’t limited to only public schools.
   School choice advocates, including the Tribune Editorial Board, had thought these vouchers would be safe because of a previous Supreme Court ruling that said state tax credits which encourage people to donate to student tuition organizations didn’t run afoul of the Arizona Constitution.
   But the appeals court said that previous ruling dealt only with the issue of whether the tax credits violated the state constitution’s equivalent of the First Amendment religion establishment clause. In creating the tax credits, the state said the STOs can pay for private tuitions at any school, church-affiliated or not, so there’s no attempt to support a specific religion, the appeals court said.
   But in the new case, the critics of school vouchers pointed to a different section of the state constitution, Art. IX, Sect. 10, which says, “No tax shall be laid or appropriation of public money made in aid of any church, or private or sectarian school …”
   The appeals court said that section makes it pretty clear the state can’t hand out scholarships or vouchers that wind up in the hands of private schools.
   “Only by ignoring the plain text of the Arizona Constitution prohibiting state aid to private schools could we find the aid represented by the payment of tuition fees to such schools in this case constitutional,” the court wrote.
  This dispute isn’t over, as defenders of the tuition scholarships have promised to appeal to the state Supreme Court. But in the meantime, school choice advocates need to start thinking about possible constitutional amendments to clear this hurdle. The Legislature puts such amendments before the voters every two years.