PHOENIX — Every year, Arizona schools can submit data to the Department of Education for a report card. The report cards are public, allowing families and anyone to see data about a certain school district or school. Some of that information includes state assessment scores, graduation rates, other demographics as well as special programs that are being offered.
However, this year, Republican State Superintendent Tom Horne added five new questions that some school leaders are questioning themselves.
The five questions are:
- School protects instructional time from excessive distractions labeled as social-emotional learning.
- The school/district appropriately respects all students as individuals, avoiding concepts like Critical Race Theory, that promote racial division
- The school/district fully supports teacher discipline recommendations
- Sexual content taught in school is developmentally appropriate
- Curriculum at school does not expose students to explicit or graphic content that is developmentally inappropriate.
Only 'yes' or 'no' questions could be given at first, then the Department of Education later added comment boxes for school leaders to put in extra explanations.
Paul Tighe, the executive director for the Arizona School Administrators Association, says district leaders reached out to them with concerns about these questions.
“The majority of the comments have been, number one, that they're not all worded very clearly and can be, you know, rather subjective or ambiguous, but also that they seem a little bit politically motivated,” Tighe said.
One example he gave was from the first question talking about social-emotional learning and that uses the word “excessive.”
“That's very subjective. So, when you say ‘excessive distractions,’ you know, there's no definition of excessive, so it's really hard because they're yes, no attestations,” Tighe said.
Superintendent Tom Horne said when he ran for office, he promised to move away from what he feels are distractions.
Watch ABC15's prior interview with Superintendent Horne in the video player below:
“This is a matter of academics, this is not a matter of politics,” Horne said.
Whether or not he has the authority to put these questions on the report card, Horne said the ADE has its own report compared to the Arizona State Board of Education, which is the school letter grades. He said he gets to determine what goes on the ADE’s report.
Horne said he decided to add those questions saying he wants parents to be aware of what schools are doing and saying.
However, education advocates in the past have accused Horne of bringing more politics and distractions into the classrooms, saying that they do not teach Critical Race Theory in schools.
As of Tuesday, of more than 2,400 schools, Horne’s office said more than 1,500 schools responded.
Some districts, like the Kyrene Elementary School District, declined to answer the questions.
That also reflects on the School Report Cards and is marked in red, clearly saying that the district or school declined to answer the question. Some schools also had small comments explaining their answers.
ABC15 reached out to the Kyrene Elementary School District about their decision to not answer. They sent a statement:
“Kyrene School District elected not to answer because the simple yes-no option for response could be misunderstood. Kyrene prides itself on transparency and would not want to create confusion with oversimplified answers to potentially misleading questions. Kyrene consistently follows all state laws and regulations regarding implementation of curriculum.”
Horne says the results of the questions don’t necessarily affect schools in their academic reports or letter grades but may in other ways.
“Because parents have choices. I think that parents don’t want their children going to a school that refused to answer these questions, which indicate they do have distractions and they don’t want to tell us about it,” Horne said.
While answers have been submitted, or the lack of answers for some districts, Horne says schools can go back and change them and it’ll be updated on the report card.
Last year, over two-thirds of all schools in the state received either an “A” or “B”.