Education in Arizona, from K-12 to the Universities
According to the U.S. Census, Arizona now has the lowest per capita spending of all 50 states on K-12 education.
How concerned should we be? Gov. Doug Ducey seems to have felt the heat; he is proposing tapping the state’s land trust fund to augment K-12 education funding in the state. Will this provide enough to make Arizona competitive? Or is this something about which we should be concerned?
At the university level, two controversies have swirled around Arizona State University. First, the university’s $500 payment to the Clinton Foundation. Clinton-haters smell a boondoggle or worse but ASU President Michael Crow said it was a worthwhile marketing expense and “money well spent.”
ASU is also under fire for accepting Koch Foundation funding to support a professorship in “economic freedom.” Many academics have complained that this violates a strong academic norm that donors should not be able to control the direction of academic research nor influence academic appointments even when their donations have funded the relevant positions. Crow defended accepting the money.
