6 Jan 9th-Jan 15th, 2025 phoenixnewtimes.com PHOENIX NEW TIMES | NEWS | FEATURE | FOOD & DRINK | ARTS & CULTURE | MUSIC | CONCERTS | CANNABIS | Can Your Kid Read This? Many Arizona students struggle to read. What’s going wrong? BY SAHARA SAJJADI S amantha Hounihan is a biology teacher at Cactus High School in Peoria. With her freshmen students, she routinely runs into an instruc- tional problem that has nothing to do with cells, mitosis or photosynthesis. Too few of them read well enough to learn the material, with some struggling to read basic case studies. The teenagers are supposed to be preparing for adulthood, and yet too many are already behind. “It’s bad as they walk in the door,” Hounihan said. “For them to not know basic vocabulary words as I’m trying to teach them new scientific vocabulary, it becomes a whole vocab lesson.” Hounihan’s experience is hardly an anomaly in Arizona. The state’s students need help reading, and they’re not getting it from policymakers. Currently, just 41% of Arizona’s third- grade public school and charter students are reading at their grade level, compared with 67% nationally. That means more than half are lagging at reaching a crucial milestone, as third grade is when many students no longer learn to read but instead read to learn. A student’s literacy rates at this age can predict their future success in their academic and professional life. Students with lower literacy levels have fewer chances of long-term success and are more likely to drop out of high school. When they reach advanced classes such as the one taught by Hounihan, whose job is not to help with nouns and adverbs, the teachers of those courses are left to pick up the pieces as best they can. Curtailing this phenomenon is critical to ensuring academic success and a successful adult life, but like so many of the state’s students, Arizona has a lot of catching up to do. Since 2013, Arizona offi- cials have attempted to improve literacy levels with the Read On Arizona initiative, a statewide objective to boost literacy rates to 72% by 2030. Instead, third-grade profi- ciency hasn’t improved at all since 2016. So why can’t enough Arizona students read? The reasons are multifaceted, but most of them come down to one thing: a lack of resources. Teachers blame bloated class sizes and a chronic absenteeism problem that Arizona has struggled to correct since the COVID-19 pandemic. They especially blame school vouchers, which have sapped funds from the public school system. “When you habitually divest from a system and continue to take money away, especially in lower socioeconomic areas, we see these low literacy rates,” said Raquel Mamani, an elementary school teacher and a board member of the advo- cacy group Save Our Schools Arizona. “If there’s no money for literacy, there’s no money for the school.” She added, “Arizona’s in a really, really devastating point.”’ Overcrowded classrooms Terri Clark doesn’t deny the numbers. Arizona’s literacy rate is far below where it should be. Clark is the state’s literacy director, and she agrees that a lack of resources is a problem. “We’ve got research that continues to tell us how to teach reading well and how kids learn to read,” she said. “We just need to support schools and be able to deliver that high-quality literacy instruction that every child should have access to.” Arizona’s teachers would love that support. Many say they’re not getting it. Kathleen Heyman lays some of the blame at the foot of class sizes. As a fifth- grade teacher in Peoria public schools for nearly 26 years, she was constantly chal- lenged by overcrowded classrooms. At one point, she said, she had more than 30 students in a class. “It’s very difficult; it slows things down for the whole class,” Heyman said. “There’s just not enough time in the day to deal with students with behavior prob- lems. Those things really affect literacy for the whole group.” Heyman is now retired from teaching, but her daughter has continued in her foot- steps, building a teaching career of her own. Heyman says the class size problem is only getting worse. In the 2020-21 school year, the most recent year for which data is available, Arizona’s average class size was 22.6 students, slightly higher than the national average of 20.7. That school year encompassed much of the pandemic, so the average class size is likely larger now. “(The students) need more time, smaller class sizes,” Heyman said. “I can’t tell you the fabulous effect that would have.” One thing is keeping class sizes down — but it’s not helping literacy. Thanks to Arizona’s “school choice” regime, which has allowed charter schools to proliferate and has allowed taxpayer money to be spent on private school education, some public school districts are facing enroll- ment issues. With lower enrollment comes fewer funds. Heyman attributes part of the blame to Arizona’s voucher program, formally known as Empowerment Scholarship Accounts. “The money is going somewhere else,” she said. The role of ESAs The rise of ESAs led to a $332 million deficit in the Arizona state budget for fiscal year 2024. That number is projected to grow in the coming years, according to a study by the Grand Canyon Institute. It’s costing Arizona public schools — Arizona ranks last in the nation for public education, per a study by Consumer Affairs. ProPublica found that these vouchers are hardly used by lower-income families. Instead, affluent families are taking advan- tage of them, depriving public schools of funding while benefiting private schools. The program also has been rife with fraud. Last month, Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes announced charges against a couple who allegedly bilked the state of $110,000 in ESA funds for fake children. “It’s off the rails, it’s out of control, and it’s costing Arizona,” Mamani said. “It’s budget-busting, and without any oversight, it’s just right for fraud.” Even when used legally, ESAs hurt public schools. Recently, the Roosevelt School District Governing Board voted to shutter five schools to close the district’s $5 million budget deficit. An investigation by 12News found that the voucher program played a significant role in this deficit, with parents using the vouchers to move their children into private schools. A 2023 report from Save Our Schools said that if only six students in a school leave to use an ESA voucher at a private school, the burden on the public school or district is equivalent to a full-time teacher’s salary. “Over $900 million drained from public education means every one of Arizona’s public schools loses out on $300,000 in desperately needed dollars that will likely result in teacher layoffs and suddenly unaf- fordable fixed costs such as repairing broken-down A/C and buses,” the report said. Less money for schools means less money for teacher bonuses, increased sala- ries and even the additional materials students need to succeed. Notably, Arizona ranks 32nd in the nation for teacher pay, and a recent study said that more than half of Arizona teachers have considered leaving the profession. It’s hard to teach kids to read if you don’t have teachers. Teacher retention down, absenteeism up When Hounihan encounters a ninth- grader who isn’t reading like one, her mind goes to teacher retention. While it’s hard to blame teachers for moving to new districts, given the sorry state of teacher pay in Arizona, high rates of teacher turnover can hurt students. A study by researchers at Vanderbilt University and the University of Florida found that losing a teacher in the midst of the school year is linked with a loss of between 32 and 72 instructional days. Arizona has largely struggled with retaining high-quality teachers. A quarter of teacher vacancies across the state for the 2024-25 school year remain unfilled, while 52.2% of the vacancies are filled by teachers who do not meet the state’s stan- dard certification requirements, according to the Arizona School Personnel Administrators Association. Staffing up would certainly help, but it’s not the only solution. Education advocates point to preschool access as a key factor when it comes to literacy rates, and studies show that students who attend high- quality preschool programs often do better in the long term. But for many Arizona families, preschool is not an option. Arizona currently ranks 43rd in Teachers complain that class sizes are too large, and as such, they cannot give all students the attention they need. (Courtesy of wavebreakmedia / Shutterstock) >> p 8 | NEWS | | NEWS |
