Now that Diane Douglas has really won the superintendent of public instruction race, it’s worth asking what she can actually do with the office.
The answer: not that much.
Certainly not much on the issue she made the centerpiece of her campaign — her opposition to the Common Core educational standards Arizona is implementing. And not much on many other issues either, with the exception of one that is important to Tucson Unified School District: ethnic studies.
Her broader impact may well depend on her willingness to use the bully pulpit of the office, not something she showed an inclination to do during her campaign.
When I asked former Superintendent of Public Instruction Jaime Molera what that office’s powers are, he said, “Not a lot.”
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“You’re managing an agency,” he said of the Arizona Department of Education. “It’s a regulatory agency.”
Molera, a Republican like Douglas, remains involved with that department as a member of the state Board of Education. When it comes to Common Core and other issues of educational standards, that’s where the power resides — not with the superintendent, even though Douglas declared her victory a “mandate” to end Common Core in a press release Monday.
It’s an 11-member board, appointed by the governor, of which the superintendent is just one member. When Douglas joins the board in January, she may be the only member opposed to the implementation of the new Arizona College and Career Ready Standards, our state’s version of the Common Core standards.
And she’ll face fellow board members who have reason to be unhappy with her for basing her entire campaign on what amounts to a critique of their work. They’re the ones who began putting the standards in place in 2010. They’re the ones who just last week approved a contract with a new vendor to create the assessments to measure whether students are meeting Arizona’s new standards.
Greg Miller, the vice president of the state Board of Education, said he was among a group of charter-school operators who met with Douglas a few weeks ago, during the campaign. She apparently didn’t realize he was a board member as she reeled off critiques of their actions.
“What people wanted to know is what’s the alternative and what’s the plan. We never got an answer,” he said.
Miller, who runs Challenge Charter School in Glendale, said he and the other “moss-backed Republicans” in that group were not convinced. “From what I can gather, most of the concern about Common Core is the perceived federal overreach into a state process. It’s hard to see from the position I’ve been in in the last four years,” he said, referring to his term on the board.
Douglas will undoubtedly have some sway with the conservative legislators who agree with her that the new standards are a sort of federal-government conspiracy. They tried to kill the standards last year and failed.
But Molera said the Legislature, even as made up in the next session, is unlikely to do away with the new standards.
The more practical damage that could be done is not having good people to run the research and assessment unit of the Department of Education, he said.
Coincidentally, Douglas’ opponent, Democrat David Garcia, ran that area of the Education Department when Molera was superintendent. Such qualifications apparently meant little to Arizona voters, who gave Douglas the victory by 50.5 percent to 49.4 percent.
Possible staff changes at the department also concern Tucson Unified School District board member Kristel Foster. That’s because TUSD has been implementing a federal court order, part of the district’s desegregation case, that re-starts the district’s ethnic-studies program.
TUSD’s assistant superintendent for curriculum, Steve Holmes, has been working with the state Education Department to be sure that the new “culturally relevant curriculum” does not violate the state law aimed at stopping TUSD’s earlier Mexican American Studies programs.
That law makes it illegal for public schools to teach courses that: promote the overthrow of the U.S. government; promote resentment toward a race or class of people; advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals; and are designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group. The law is under review by a federal appeals court.
“We’ve been working with them this whole time because we don’t want to cross the line,” Foster said.
As superintendent, Douglas will have sole authority to determine if TUSD is violating that law. She could impose a $15 million fine if she determines it is and if it refuses to change.
“If she finds it’s politically beneficial to find us out of compliance, I’m scared to death that will happen,” Foster said.
She also worries that Douglas will use her position to unfairly blast public education, further undermining public confidence in Arizona’s schools. But Douglas showed little willingness to speak out on anything but her single issue during the campaign.
She avoided most debates, forums and invitations from people involved in education, preferring to speak with people she agreed with on Common Core. That tendency could combine with the inherent weaknesses of her new position to limit Douglas’ impact.
