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June 19, 2001

Host: Michael Grant
Topic: Education
In-Studio Guests:
Rhonda Perez, a Gilbert parent, local government affairs director for K.B. Homes and chair of Gilbert Citizens Action Network.
Armando Ruiz is CEO-Servant Leader of ESPIRITU Community Development Corporation in south Phoenix and superintendent for two charter schools.
Pam Whiffen teaches career development (in math and science at Palo Verde Middle School) in west Phoenix. Ms. Whiffen has worked extensively with the United Neighbors Association.

MICHAEL GRANT: "Good evening, and welcome to 'Horizon's' Community Roundtable. I'm Michael Grant. Is bumping up teacher's salaries enough to improve the quality of education in our state? How should standardized tests be used in education? And what roles should schools play in their communities? These are a few questions community leaders will answer tonight as the Community Roundtable focuses on education. Joining me is Rhonda Perez, a Gilbert parent. Ms. Perez is local government affairs director for K.B. Homes and chair of Gilbert Citizens Action Network. Armando Ruiz is CEO-Servant Leader of ESPIRITU Community Development Corporation in south Phoenix. Mr. Ruiz also serves as superintendent for two charter schools. And Pam Whiffen teaches career development (in math and science at Palo Verde Middle School) in west Phoenix. Ms. Whiffen has worked extensively with the United Neighbors Association. Many people agree education is one of the most pressing issues facing our state. but concerns about education issues vary. Here's a brief sample."

VIOLET BARRIER/North Phoenix Resident (on videotape) "They just emphasize on their creativity and stuff. I'm going, what's with that? What about real education? Reading, writing, arithmetic, like what we learned in grade school?"

KATHLEEN BACKUS/Gilbert Resident (on videotape) "The main concern I have right now is the AIMS test. As I see it right now, they are trying to get everyone to be able to pass a college entrance exam. Not everyone is going to be going to college."

CHARLENE REED/Mesa Resident (on videotape) "I don't like the fact that my daughter missed the cutoff for starting kindergarten by about two weeks, and she's ready to go to kindergarten now. and I know I could put her in pre-kindergarten, I've done that with other children, but I wish they could take a test and be tested to start kindergarten."

NICOLE WEST/Paradise Valley Resident (on videotape) "I think as soon as they took prayer out of schools, that's when a lot of the shootings and the kids started shooting teachers and students around the school. That's what I think. So prayer is very important, I think, in schools."

MICHAEL GRANT: "Rhonda, let's start with something noncontroversial, like the AIMS test. As a parent--parents' view-do you think the AIMS test is a good idea?"

RHONDA PEREZ: "I think it depends on the implementation and what you're looking for. I think the way it was implemented and the way it was tried originally, that it was a mistake, and it wasn't done correctly. I think that basically, what it becomes is an elitist test. It doesn't cater to everybody."

MICHAEL GRANT: "Let's say we could turn back the hands of time. I think a lot of people think AIMS was instituted badly, maybe too abruptly, you know, that kind of thing. Let's say we're back at the original concept. You spend a couple of years trying to develop standards that you want to test to, and then you develop an instrument that hopefully measures those, and then you put it in place early so students can build to it over an educational career of 10 or 12 years. Is that kind of AIMS test something you think is a good idea or not?"

RHONDA PEREZ: "I think that's something to consider. I think we certainly need to have something to be able to measure what our students are doing, but I think at the same time, you have to take a look at the gamut. You have to look at the whole picture, and, yes, you need to start early on. You need to build momentum. I know for us, at the time when AIMS was first discussed, I believe my son was a freshman or sophomore and quite frankly, it scared us to think that he might not be able to pass based off of a test that was coming up at that point in his life when he wasn't taught to that. And it wasn't fair. And that's the other side of that coin is, are we teaching our kids just to take tests and pass tests? Or are we going to try and teach them something to learn to?"

MICHAEL GRANT: "Armando, is this a political hurdle you'll never get over? And is the reality, that if you put together the right kind of test, and theoretically, you're going to fail some fairly substantial portion of the population, can you ever get the political will, really, to do that?"

ARMANDO RUIZ: "I don't think so. You know, I -- same issue here. I have a son who is getting ready to take the AIMS and, you know, our big concern, is he going to pass, is he not going to pass? That's incredible pressure for a 17, 18-year-old child. How do you determine the life of a child at that age? And I don't think we should have an instrument that portends to do that. Now, we do have to have some sort of accountability. I don't think the AIMS test does that, nor should it be."

MICHAEL GRANT: "What if you take away the graduation aspect of it. What if you use it simply as an accountability tool to say to a school or a school district 'you're not performing up to par.' We're not going to punish the students up to that, but we can tell by these reports that you are getting the job done?"

ARMANDO RUIZ: "There has to be some sort of account ability measure, otherwise, how do you ensure -- I'll give you an example. I served 10 years in the legislature. I support all of the causes for public education, everything, but year after year after year, I just saw thousands of children underperform. Thousands of children who are never going to get to college who are destined to work for minimum wage positions, and how in good conscience can you support that? How can you not, then, say we've got to try something different? Some things are good, but some things are terribly wrong and we need -- we need to try something dramatically different."

MICHAEL GRANT: "Pam, there is a tremendous amount of frustration out there. I think Armando just articulated it pretty darn well, which is, a lot of people are saying, I just don't think I'm getting out of the public school system what I ought to be getting."

PAM WHIFFEN: "Well, I will be one of the very few people that will tell you I like the AIMS test in comparison to what we had before. If you talk to teachers that are administering it, it is a process based test. It is not a rote memorization test. The writing section asks students to do a rough draft, to do editing, rethink their thoughts. It is not a timed test. They can take as long as they need. The problem with the AIMS test, yeah, you have growing pains any time you put something in. What they've done that's good about the aims, is you take it in 3rd, 5th, 8th and 10th. You take it over and over. It is not all of a sudden there is one test in high school that you must pass. I know it is painful, and yes, it's worrisome, but I agree, we have to have some accountability. There needs to be something that says whether or not you've achieved and can go on."

MICHAEL GRANT: "Should it be the ticket to the game? Should it be a graduation requirement?"

PAM WHIFFEN: "Well, the reality is all 50 states now have a high school exit exam. We're not alone and many states have had it for years. And in large part that has come from the business community saying 'I cannot take your graduates any longer who have no skills.' And so as a reaction, education has said, 'Ok, we need to do something that ensures that your graduation means something, ok? We can't simply keep sending people out saying you sat there long enough.' Therefore, you know... now what some states have done, they have a certificate of attendance and a certificate of graduation, two quite simple ways of distinguishing. I'm not saying it is the best system. My complaint with the AIMS test is that we don't get the results back as teachers. We can't do anything with the results because they are tested at the end of the year, 8th graders are gone when the results come in, they are in high school. There is no way to learn from the test. So I think people feel kind of adrift. Like 'Oh, no, there is this big test I've got to pass.' "

MICHAEL GRANT: It does occur to me, I was reading the story last week when the senate, United States senate passed some portion of the Bush education program and it called for annual testing from 3rd to 8th grade. And it did occur to me, we are testing kids an awful lot. Are we testing them too much, Rhonda, what do you think?"

RHONDA PEREZ: "Again, I go back to, there's not a balance. There is not a balance of what's going on. Yes, I believe we are testing the kids too much. I believe that it also becomes an issue for the schools. It becomes a driver to the schools that they have to get the kids to perform to those tests. In fact, I have a perfect example. I had a child that I was doing some work with as a -- I was doing some gang intervention. He was actually -- we were looking to foster him and to bring him into our house. When I went to the elementary school to talk to them about placing him and told them that, you know, he was really behind in his school. The principal specifically told me, this couldn't be a worse time for you to bring him in, because it will lower the standards of our scores. And so it becomes a part of the Nimbys--not in my back yard. That's my biggest fear is that tests become all about these performance-based measurements for the teachers to earn their income and it doesn't become about the child anymore."

PAM WHIFFEN: "Then why aren't people upset about the Stanford?"

RHONDA PEREZ: "Oh, I agree…"

PAM WHIFFEN: "That has been so unfair for so many years. And kids have been slammed with that every year.

RHONDA PEREZ: "I agree."

PAM WHIFFEN: "The problem is, we've put the AIMS, we've left the Stanford in place and the district testings. We've got three weeks a year we're testing. When you talk to classroom teachers, we're sitting we have a week here, week here, week here. And this past year we had the Stanford for a week, week off and then we had the AIMS test for the following week. So the Stanford, I think, is inherently much more unfair than the Aims."

RHONDA PEREZ: "That's exactly the test I was talking about--was the Stanford. And that's exactly what that principal was talking to, too. She did not want to deal with it. Could I hold off a week to put that child into that school?"

MICHAEL GRANT: "Let me ask about another certainly classroom issue, Proposition 301, Arizona voters pretty substantially approved a good chunk of money in November. It's now starting to come in. How should it be spent, Armando, in your opinion?"

ARMANDO RUIZ: "Teachers. Teacher salaries. You get what you pay for, and to get good teachers, you've got to pay well. You've got to be competitive, and the market that is out there right now, if you are not willing to pay, you're not going to get good teachers. To get a good school, part of that formula is you need good teachers."

MICHAEL GRANT: "Pam, I assume you are not going to violently disagree with that?"

PAM WHIFFEN: "I'm not, but I'm going to add another portion of it is not only getting good teachers. I know a large number of very well trained excellent teachers that have stayed in the profession. It is also providing opportunities for growth of those teachers, providing professional development opportunities for us to do what we're passionate about so teachers who are teaching your child science can go to science conferences and learn brand new things and come back energized and excited and transfer that knowledge to the classroom. We keep talking about -- one of the issues have been technology. Teachers have done this on their own, they spent their summers, they have sat at night, gone to district, and haven't been paid for all of this extra knowledge. So, yeah, pay is very important, but I think you also need to provide recognition, and an opportunity for teachers to attend professional conferences.

MICHAEL GRANT: "But Pam, in the past month, six weeks or so, I've heard some teachers, I'm not saying -- well, saying, yeah, give me more money, but don't require more days. "

PAM WHIFFEN: "Well, I'm not saying more days, what I'm saying is, for example -

MICHAEL GRANT: "Why not?"

PAM WHIFFEN: "A typical reward system for a teacher. 'Gee, you're our lead science teacher, you better get all of your lesson plans done and work very, very late and when you come back, you are he going to read all of the books that we've just given you. We're not going to pay you for the prep time or weekends you've given up, nothing. that's considered a reward system. In business, if you were to reward an employee, that would include release time. It doesn't in education. When a teacher goes to a conference and is there from 8:00 in the morning until 10:00 at night and reads the materials and then prepares, they've take it that ongoing in addition.

MICHAEL GRANT: "Rhonda, in addition to let's say, increased teacher pay, better teacher pay, classroom focused, what are some of the other things you would like to see proposition 301 money spent on? For example, one of the concepts is lengthening the school year. Is that a good thing?"

RHONDA PEREZ: "I agree with lengthening the school year. I'm 100% behind that. the other thing I also ok, here we go -

PAM WHIFFEN: "You're going to -- you are going to give me a raise and lengthen my school year."

ARMANDO RUIZ: "But that's going to happen already."

RHONDA PEREZ: "Ok"

PAM WHIFFEN: "I'm feeling a little stressed at this point."

ARMANDO RUIZ: "It's going to happen. Voters are going to expect -- we gave more money to teachers, now there is a greater expectation…"

PAM WHIFFEN: "Right, right."

ARMANDO RUIZ: "A year from now you're going to see a backlash with people having higher expectations."

PAM WHIFFEN: "Oy"

RHONDA PEREZ: "I'm not even add---so much for the teachers, as for the kids. I think we need to increase the amount of time for the kids."

PAM WHIFFEN: "Then I would lengthen the amount of time parents are spending with their kids as well.

RHONDA PEREZ: "Oh, absolutely."

PAM WHIFFEN: "Okay? Other than lengthening the school year."

RHONDA PEREZ: "I agree, I agree."

ARMANDO RUIZ: "Yea, but parents don't get paid for staying with their kids. I mean, you go to work, you get paid. If we're going to pay people well, we've got to perform better. I think that's -- that's a trade-off. That's what everybody does in a professional field. I get paid because I do a good job. If I don't do a good job, I don't get paid or I lose my job. I think that's what you are going to see."

PAM WHIFFEN: "It depends on what a good job is though. It depends on how you are going to assess teacher performance. To set a standard that's higher than your pay scale -- to say we want you all to be (motions up to certain level in the air)."

ARMANDO RUIZ: "It's how student's do. Assessment is ultimately how well did student's perform."

PAM WHIFFEN: "Right, you have to pay employees that are well trained for that. And the adding onto the school year, I'm always puzzled by this because people say public schools aren't working, let's give the teachers even more time. And I'm thinking, you know, something is wrong here. We want to give teachers a raise, we want higher qualified, but we're going to make them work longer?"

RHONDA PEREZ: "Maybe there's a happy medium that you look at. Maybe it's not that you work longer. Maybe it's that my student goes to different options. They have different electives-opportunities..."

PAM WHIFFEN: "Right, more targeted opportunities for them."

RHONDA PEREZ: "Right. So that they have more exposure and they have more opportunities to get into that. I don't necessarily mean that you need to be there longer."

PAM WHIFFEN: "Right, not the general school year."

RHONDA PEREZ: "But in answering your question, not only would I look at that, the other thing that I'm a huge advocate for would be reduction of classroom size. And I'm probably not the only one."

MICHAEL GRANT: "Good point."

RHONDA PEREZ: "I think that's one of the things that the monies really need to be targeted at. And the other thing is to provide more resources and not just for teaching. My goodness, what about the safety of our schools? What about spending some of this money to go towards the safety of the schools and the teachers?

PAM WHIFFEN: "We're still not safer than the neighborhoods."

RHONDA PEREZ: "Because quite honestly, if I were a teacher, I'd be wanting to wear a bulletproof vest to school every day. "

MICHAEL GRANT: "When Jaime Molera took over as Superintendent of Public Instruction last month he expressed his concern about low expectations for students.

JAIME MOLERA/Superintendent of Public Instruction (on videotape) "I will not countenance those who say poor kids just can't cut it. We should expect all students to achieve high academic standards, not just a select few..."

MICHAEL GRANT: "What about the expectations issue, Armando?"

ARMANDO RUIZ: "You know, I grew up in an area where--lots of poor kids, my parents had an expectation that we would go to college. And my father went up to the 6th grade, and his father died, and he had to work. So he had very, very high expectations of us. My mother, when we were in high school, went back to work, went back, got her degree, got a master's degree, and we grew up with lots of kids who were in the same situation. My family, out of all of my brothers and sisters, I think there's only two that don't have degrees. It's the same today in our neighborhood. If we don't have high expectations of our children and the other kids that come to our schools, then, children will only rise to the level of expectations that you have."

MICHAEL GRANT: "Cycles back, a little bit, though, Rhonda, to what we were just talking about, and that is, well, maybe you do need a little pressure. Maybe you do -- and I'm not suggesting necessarily it's the AIMS test, but have we lowered expectations?"

RHONDA PEREZ: "A lot of this to me goes back to character education, too. Which I know that's the real 'in' thing to say right now, but it's teaching the respect, the responsibility, the fairness, the citizenship to everybody and it is emulating that from parent to teacher, to superintendent to…"

ARMANDO RUIZ: "Don't call me superintendent."

PAM WHIFFEN: "Even the superintendent?"

ARMANDO RUIZ: "Servant leader, not superintendent."

MICHAEL GRANT: "I understand what's being said. But didn't we used to look to families and churches?"

PAM WHIFFEN: "Yeah, and I'm caught up as a classroom teacher, it is a horrendous tug and pull between character education and content and knowledge. I mean, you're on the border all the time thinking "Ok, I'm supposed to be reflecting the community," that's why we have public schools, we reflect the desires of the community. And am I really the character educator? Should I be the one that does that or should it be the community that does that?"

ARMANDO RUIZ: "It should be the parent."

PAM WHIFFEN: "It should be. And the whole community-not just the parents but the whole community."

RHONDA PEREZ: "Why should it stop at the parent?"

PAM WHIFFEN: "I'm not saying it should stop. What I'm saying it is very difficult for the classroom teacher to know where am I going to draw this line. Ok? I mean, I've got character education, I've got content area. I've got to prepare them for tests. I've got to get their organizational skills, I've got to make them so they are nonviolent and I've got to do all of this at the same time. The general public is saying, why are my test scores lower. Possibly because math teachers spent two weeks working on character education because we had a school-wide character education program."

ARMANDO RUIZ: "Well why would your math teacher do that?"

PAM WHIFFEN: "It is a tug and pull. Because there isn't enough time in the day to cover as much of the information as we should…"

ARMANDO RUIZ: "The math teacher should be teaching math."

PAM WHIFFEN: "So who teaches character education? You have a special teacher the kids go to…"

ARMANDO RUIZ: "Parents, parents. You know, you have other people that work with parents-we're also responsible though."

RHONDA PEREZ: "That's the problem right there. That's a big problem, because what happens is, you've got different values in each home, right? You have single parents - you have teenage moms, you know, raising these kids. You have broken families, you have a whole different - you need to promote values somewhere. And isn't…"

PAM WHIFFEN: "But that's part of the American public. We have tolerance for differing views. If you take a group of teachers and we express what our views are going to be, that's not reflecting the community. That isn't reflecting the home the child is coming from. When a child says something about their home, I do not say 'that wouldn't be the way my house is,' even though it is not. I have to respect the fact that they are being raised as a reflection of their own community. "

RHONDA PEREZ: "And I understand that. I understand that they are part of that environment. But shouldn't part of your environment also be to emulate somebody of character, not necessarily that you have to teach it and shove it down their throats, so to speak, but that you are emulating it, and that you have those awards out there and kids are seeing that there is some respect and there is some responsibility going on. You know, in Yuma, there was a study done where they had--once they had implemented it after a year, their staff actually had less tardiness and less absenteeism after implementing it."

PAM WHIFFEN: "Well that's a different issue, though, than character education for the children."

MICHAEL GRANT: "Let me shift, Armando, the issue slightly, because I think it plays on a bigger stage. That is, there is a constant debate on whether or not we make the role of the school too diffused. We require too much of the school. And that runs the gamut from teaching subject matters, character education, the free enterprise system, whatever happens to be the subject, all the way to should we have the schools signing up kids for 'Kidscare.' Or should we have a branch DES office. all of that, many times, will well serve the community, but one of the concerns is, are we tasking too much to the schools? What do you think?"

ARMANDO RUIZ: "Yeah, I think -- yes. Our primary responsibility at the charter schools that we operate is, kids -- parents want their children to learn. That's our primary task. They need to know how to read. They need to know how to perform at grade level or above grade level mathematically. They need it -- first of all, that's it. We also create an ambience at the school. And that ambience is that your child comes here and they are loved. We don't -- we don't remove that part of a human being. We believe that that adds to the intellectual growth of the child. Now, beyond that, parents are responsible! They have to be in there participating! And if they are not, then they should find something else. Because parents do have responsibility. Expectations also for parents-it's just not for kids." If we don't expect them to be involved. They are not going to be involved."

PAM WHIFFEN: "I would agree. We do need respectful environments in our schools. But, are you as a parent willing to turn over the character education of your child to me? That's the big…"

ARMANDO RUIZ: "What does that mean, though?"

PAM WHIFFEN: "Well, let me tell you what it means. Some of my students, and I teach in the west valley, some of my students have fathers who are in prison. Some of my students have parents who are drug users. Now, if I were to teach character education, I would be standing in front them saying, 'this is not right, this is not a valid lifestyle.' What I'm saying is-now you're getting into lifestyle."

ARMANDO RUIZ: "But we don't know what right and wrong is?"

PAM WHIFFEN: "Isn't it my role to guide students to making their own decisions and to give them the best information and choices-and the parents' role and the communities role to come together and form -- I don't understand when you start handing everything to the teacher where the community is."

ARMANDO RUIZ: "No, you're right."

PAM WHIFFEN: "Where's the community?"

RHONDA PEREZ: "And all I've got to say is that's a really nice dream that the parents are going to be there doing everything on the sidelines, too. Because unfortunately that's not what's happening. I've been to schools and I've seen how many parents are not participating in these kids' lives. In all honesty -- and you guys have a huge load on your shoulders. You are carrying a lot of it. You are the ones that are with our children more than the rest of us and probably seeing more things than we could ever imagine. And because of that, it does become your responsibility to become a role model."

PAM WHIFFEN: "But it's a sad role model if that happens."

RHONDA PEREZ: "Well, weather it's too sad--it is the reality."

PAM WHIFFEN: "I received an e-mail today from a student. And I thought it was going to be a very nice e-mail. But it was all about 'oh, you made such an impact, and I didn't have anybody to talk to.' And I just thought how sad that I have to read this. This student has parents. How sad. To me it is -- it is not oh, I've done a great job. It's…"

RHONDA PEREZ: "How fantastic that you were there."

PAM WHIFFEN: "Well, the long term run is how sad. I'm a teacher that she had for a limited period of time. She has a family. She doesn't have a family support system. Now, we're debating how much more teachers should do. Perhaps we need to say, 'parents, you know what, your kids are so desperate and so in love, so many of them, that they are going to teachers."

MICHAEL GRANT: "Pam, let me shift gears. I know you have personal experience with this. Big debate on bilingual education, English immersion programs, enough money for it, what do you think?

PAM WHIFFEN: "It's a really tough thing to say, but I do believe in the American public education system. And that means that the classroom should be as diverse as possible. We have a rule called the least restrictive environment for our special ed kids. We try and incorporate them in the regular classrooms as much as we can."

MICHAEL GRANT: "English Immersion?"

PAM WHIFFEN: "English Immersion, immersion, when you have someone who is completely monolingual, has no English what's so ever, yes, we need a very brief immersion program, but I do not think we should be pulling kids out because of language. If they are incorporated in with other kids, they learn, very, very quickly, the language.

ARMANDO RUIZ: "And it depends on age. How on earth do you get a child who is 16 years of age who's barely learning to speak English and put them in a classroom and ignore their math and…"

PAM WHIFFEN: "I have them."

ARMANDO RUIZ: "But you're not going to find--in two years, you're going to teach them to learn English and you are going to maintain them on their math and reading levels."

PAM WHIFFEN: "They're in my regular classroom. They are in cooperative learning groups. They are in my classroom, they're communicating. I think the funest thing I saw at one school I taught at, two girls from Togo with tattoos all over their faces and they could speak Spanish. And I thought-this is what bilingual has turned into. I have two girls from Togo. The could speak Spanish, they couldn't speak English. We've swung so far."

RHONDA PEREZ: "But again -- you're not -- you're taking one context. You're not -- everybody has different learning capabilities. So now instead of trying to work with the bilingual education -

ARMANDO RUIZ: "Right, its one rule fits all."

RHONDA PEREZ: "No, you throw the baby out with the bath water. You just say 'forget it-we're not going to do it this way, we're going to do it that way. You know the implementation isn't there yet. They don't know how to do it. It is going to be more costly to administer it the way it has been. Quite frankly the way it came in and came through with Ron Unz's funding was very prejudiced. It was very racially motivated. Now they're trying to do it in Colorado and New York City.

PAM WHIFFEN: "Well, our bilingual programs were not doing a good job."

ARMANDO RUIZ: "The motivation for it mean-spirited."

MICHAEL GRANT: "Armando Ruiz, we're out of time.

ARMANDO RUIZ: "We didn't even talk about charter schools"

MICHAEL GRANT: "I know, you guys were way too calm."

PAM WHIFFEN: "I want to do charters."

MICHAEL GRANT: "Pam Whiffen, thank you very much for joining us.

PAM WHIFFEN: "Thank you."

MICHAEL GRANT: "And Rhonda Perez, our thanks to you as well."

RHONDA PEREZ: "Thank you."