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4 Summer 2015 | AEA Advocate AEA Membership Builds Leaders The headlines are everywhere across the state and nationwide – Arizona is facing a massive teacher exodus. After dedicating years in college and in the classroom, too many of Arizona's dedicated public school teachers are leaving the job they love in debt, despair, and tears. Make no mistake, failure at the state level ushered most of these people out. The savage years of public education funding cuts – blamed hollowly on the recession and master-minded by a tea party legislature – have taken their terrible toll on one of the most generous professions in the country. The symptoms of our chronically underfunded public schools have been evident to those paying attention: growing class sizes, frozen salaries, benefit reductions, layoffs of education support professionals, and the loss of resources and academic programs. Bracing against this era of policy failure, educators did what they always do: absorbed the impact, deflecting it as much as possible away from students. Education Support Professionals lost their jobs. Teachers covered over the cuts with money out of their own pockets. As each legislature increased the drain on dollars and the empty rhetoric of school choice, district administrators sought to mask the impact of budget cuts from parents who were too often lured into seeking refuge in schools run by a business plan rather than a public mission. Governor Ducey, a more affable version of Wisconsin's ALEC-spawned Scott Walker, promised first as a candidate and then as the inaugurated Governor that he would raise no school revenue through taxes – and then was forced to confront and admit the staggering underfunding of Arizona's public schools. Ducey's proposal bypasses new revenue and instead proposes funding public schools with money dedicated to public schools, by draining money from the state land trust. While a version of this may come to pass, it is at best a temporary solution and a makeshift statewide budget override with the built-in funding cliff at its ten-year end. We need a serious solution, one centered on stability rather than on the rhetoric of reform. Funding cuts have left school districts impoverished, and that poverty has spread through salary freezes and roll backs to school employees. This is one reason for the teacher exodus, but there are others, such as our toxic testing culture. In a paradox shouldered by every public school employee, Arizona reduced funding as it increased the weight of standardized test scores, tying this failed, pseudo indicator to teacher retention, pay, and mobility, as well as, to school funding. While teachers willingly – eagerly – took on the added weight of increased academic standards for students, the legislature took aim at a profession once revered and honored with a modicum of good will, and fired repeatedly. Suddenly, the public and our policy makers have awakened from a fantasy of failed reforms to the reality of a teacher shortage – or more accurately, a staggering shortage of those willing to teach. If Arizona's leaders are finally serious about keeping good teachers in the classroom, then they need to cease the assaults, close the book on hollow rhetoric, and begin respecting educators and public school employees for the extraordinary work they do – work that fewer and fewer are willing to undertake. The AEA Advocate is published by the Arizona Education Association, 345 East Palm Lane, Phoenix, Arizona 85004-1532. Phone: 602-264-1774 or 800-352-5411 Fax: 602-240-6887 Email: sheenae.shannon@arizonaea.org. AEA's website may be found at www.arizonaea.org. Permission to reprint any material originating with this publication is granted provided that credit is given to the AEA Advocate. The AEA Advocate (ISSN 0194-8849) is published in Fall, Winter, Spring and Summer for $3.50 per year by the Arizona Education Association, 345 East Palm Lane, Phoenix, AZ 85004-1532. Periodicals postage paid at Phoenix, Arizona. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to the AEA Advocate, 345 East Palm Lane, Phoenix, AZ 85004-1532. POINT Of VIEw by Andrew f. Morrill AEA OfficErS Andrew F. Morrill President Joe Thomas Vice-President Nidia Lias Treasurer AEA StAff Mark Simons Executive Director Sheenae Shannon Editor Roxanne Rash Graphic Design Advertising Nancy Hall Editorial Associate Continues on p. 37.