Tom Horne delivers State of Education address to legislators

Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne asked legislators to increase teacher pay and punish schools that don’t support teacher recommendations for student discipline.

Horne detailed several Arizona Department of Education initiatives during his State of Education address before the House Education Committee on Tuesday. He highlighted ways that legislation could support those efforts.

Since taking office last year, Horne has made school safety a priority and committed himself to rooting out allegedly “inappropriate lessons” he says have infiltrated public schools and distracted from achievement.

Arizona remains at the bottom of public school rankings, placing 48th in the most recent U.S. News and World Report rankings. U.S. News gave the state low marks for its high school graduation rate, college readiness and preschool enrollment.

A recent report by education research firm Scholaroo meanwhile ranked Arizona last in student-to-teacher ratios.

“We have one overriding goal: to raise the academic performance of the students. Everything else is minor compared to that,” Horne said.

Raise salaries, punish schools to solve teacher shortage

Teacher retention and recruitment is “by far the biggest and most urgent problem,” Horne said. He estimated Arizona has 60,000 teachers today with an annual net loss of 3,300.

To reverse that downward trend, Horne asked the Legislature to increase teacher salaries. A department poll of teachers who left the profession found 67% listed salary as a reason. But, Horne added, 61% also indicated they left in part because they did not feel supported with respect to student behavior and discipline.

Horne urged legislators to support Senate Bill 1459, a proposal he backed that would require districts to keep records of when teachers ask principals for discipline and whether principals supported those teachers. Schools that do not support teachers at least 75% of the time “without a reasonable explanation in an appeal process” would receive a warning and could have their school letter grade negatively affected. A-F letter grades are administered by the State Board of Education as a measure of performance.

“We have a really serious problem with some school boards in this state, as conclusively demonstrated in the survey,” Horne said. “This is strong medicine, but it is needed to prevent the catastrophic hemorrhage of teachers continuing.”

Some representatives suggested that the department should first pursue encouraging options over punitive ones, saying they weren't sure how dropping a school's letter grade would improve student behavior.

A divided education committee nevertheless voted to move that bill forward.

Require the ACT to graduate

Horne’s second-highest legislative priority is a bill that would require high school students to achieve a minimum score on the ACT, a standardized test designed for college admissions, in order to graduate. Students could also pass a technical skills assessment test or obtain an industry certification to satisfy this requirement.

Students would have four chances to take the test. A minimum score is not determined in the bill.

“The score would be high enough to motivate students to study, but not so high that it prevents students who are willing to study from being able to graduate," Horne said. "But hopefully no one should be prevented from graduating."

Senate Bill 1466 has garnered the ire of many education leaders who say the bill could reduce graduation rates among some student populations and claim standardized tests aren’t good ways to measure students’ readiness to graduate.

Maricopa County School Superintendent Steve Watson and leaders with the Arizona Education Association, the statewide educators union; Save Our Schools Arizona, a public education advocacy group; and Arizona School Administrators, a nonprofit that provides training for school leaders, spoke out in opposition to the bill.

Address Arizona’s skilled labor shortage

Horne highlighted his administration’s work to expand career technical education programming in light of what he said is a skilled worker shortage.

“Raising academics will enable more students to go to college, but not everyone will go to college,” he said.

The department last year established the Arizona Education Economic Commission, which formed a partnership between 15 districts and a group of 20 major Arizona companies, such as Banner Health, Raytheon and the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Those businesses work directly with schools to develop the skills they need in future employees.

Horne said the department is now opening the commission to any interested companies “provided that they can have a group of companies in the same industry to form a committee.”

Economic commission: Arizona schools chief Tom Horne announces commission for workforce development

Support failing schools

During his earlier terms as superintendent, from 2003-11, Horne said the education department dispatched improvement teams to help struggling schools. That practice later ceased, he said, leaving those schools to pull themselves up by their bootstraps or continue to fail.

Horne last year revived that practice and said his department has already completed nearly 1,500 site visits. Improvement teams observe classrooms, meet with principals and staff and offer improvement planning sessions and other forms of coaching.

His administration also took over Project Momentum, an improvement framework once funded for a handful of schools by the Governor’s Office. Standardized testing data from the past two years shows Project Momentum schools increased student proficiency in English and math, on average, at a rate at least twice that of the state.

Participation in Project Momentum is expected to more than double, according to the education department. About 60 schools participated in early 2023, and the department projects more than 150 participants by the start of next school year.

Place police officers in schools

The School Safety Program, which places grant-funded officers and mental health professionals in schools, has failed to keep up with demand. Hundreds of positions granted funding remain vacant due to job applicant shortages.

In an attempt to circumvent that shortage, Horne is working through the Legislature to allow retired and off-duty officers to work in schools. The education department already authorized schools to hire off-duty officers last fall, though the law does not yet explicitly allow it.

House Bill 2400 passed the House in February and is now being considered in the Senate.

Horne has previously said he will prioritize filling officer positions first, with any remaining funds going toward mental health professionals. During his address, he said the department has increased the number of schools with grant-funded officer positions from 190 to 301.

Reach the reporter at nicholas.sullivan@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Tom Horne delivers State of Education address to legislators