January 5, 2007
Arizona Daily Star (Tucson)
Guest Commentary by Dr. Lattie Coor
Chairman & CEO, Center for the Future of Arizona

For our state, the new year brings not only the return to classroom studies after the holiday break and the start of a new legislative session, but the annual release of the “Quality Counts” report produced by Education Week magazine and the Pew Center on the States. As in previous years, the report has ranked Arizona below the national average in terms of K-12 education achievement.
 
I would like to suggest that we use this fresh, new year to cast off some self-limiting thoughts that contribute to our lackluster performance and commit to improving those things we can control to improve the education of Arizona’s students.
 
Out With: Arizona is unfairly handicapped by its border location

Admittedly, the state faces significant challenges due to a mobile population of immigrant students and families, and a high proportion of economically disadvantaged students who have limited English language proficiency.
 
But so does Texas. In fact, Texas has a higher minority student population than Arizona. Yet Texas graduates more students across all ethnic groups, including Latinos.
 
Racial/ethnic minorities comprised 58% of Texas’ class of 2004, compared with 45% in Arizona. Research recently completed by the Center for the Future of Arizona found that the high school graduation rate for class of 2004 Hispanic Texans was 78.4% compared with 66.6% for class of 2004 Hispanic Arizonans.

Out With: Demography is destiny

“High performing, mostly Latino school” is not an oxymoron.
 
A study issued by the Center for the Future of Arizona last spring (“Why Some Schools with Latino Children Beat the Odds…and Others Don’t”) identified 12 mostly Latino, mostly low income Arizona elementary and middle schools whose students had consistently high or steadily rising math and reading scores.
 
The keys to success among the high-achieving schools suggest that there is well-founded hope that the means to significantly increase K-12 student achievement already exists within schools and school districts, and they are within their control.

In With: Our rapidly growing Latino student population is a valuable resource to be cultivated

It’s time for us to view our expanding Latino student population—which includes primarily American citizens—as a valuable resource to be cultivated.
 
Arizona is in great need of a highly trained workforce if we are to achieve economic sustainability and across-the-board quality of life for our citizens. Let’s learn from the high-performing, mostly Latino and low income schools how best to teach these children and then replicate these practices and principles in schools throughout the state.
 
In the new year let’s transfer the energy that we put into making excuses about the things that we can’t control into finding ways to leverage the things that we can control. We owe it to our children and ourselves.
 
The Center for the Future of Arizona is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the quality of life for all Arizonans. Dr. Lattie Coor is chairman and CEO of the Phoenix-based nonprofit. Coor is past president of Arizona State University. For more information about the center or the Beat the Odds research, visit www.ArizonaFuture.org.