Keep an eye on Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction Diane Douglas. She’s about to float off into space. Douglas does not believe in gravity, so there’s nothing to keep her tethered to terra firma. Since there is no gravity on planet Douglas, several well-meaning bystanders – by which I mean people in Phoenix with nothing better to do – need to step in with tent stakes and twine and give her the Gulliver treatment. Pin her to the ground before she collides with the moon.
In fairness, Douglas has not specifically stated that she does not believe in gravity, but that’s the logical conclusion from statements she has made while defending her proposal to eliminate references to the scientific theory of evolution from the Arizona Science Standards. As Howard Fischer reports in Arizona Capitol Times, Douglas “is trying to downplay – and in some cases remove entirely – references to evolution in the standards of what students are supposed to be taught in Arizona high schools.” Her proposal is in a draft of proposed new standards for teaching science in Arizona’s public schools. For example, in the current standards, 8th graders are expected to “develop the understanding of (how) adaptations contribute to the process of biological evolution.” The proposed standards change this to “develop the understanding of how traits within populations change over time.” Apparently, students will be expected to figure out how population traits change over time without the benefit of information about evolution – the one scientific theory that explains it.
When Douglas hears the phrase “scientific theory,” her anti-gravity mechanism blots out the first word, leaving the easily attacked term “theory.” “Evolution is a theory in many ways,” Fischer quotes her as saying. “That’s what our children should understand.” That’s probably why the proposed standards change how they apply the term as follows:
CURRENT STANDARD: The unity and diversity of organisms, living and extinct, is the result of evolution.
PROPOSED STANDARD: The theory of evolution seeks to make clear the unity and diversity of living and extinct organisms.
The current standard reflects the well-established theory of evolution. The proposed standard is pedagogical gibberish and unworthy of our schools. But it’s Douglas’ way of dismissing evolution as “just a theory.”
There is no need to redefine the scientific theory of evolution, but there is a need to introduce Douglas to the 21st century. She might consider this comment from the American Association for the Advancement of Science:
“A scientific theory is a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world, based on a body of facts that have been repeatedly confirmed through observation and experiment. Such fact-supported theories are not ‘guesses’ but reliable accounts of the real world. The theory of biological evolution is more than ‘just a theory.’ It is as factual an explanation of the universe as the atomic theory of matter or the germ theory of disease. Our understanding of gravity is still a work in progress. But the phenomenon of gravity, like evolution, is an accepted fact.”
“Part of the problem is that the word ‘theory’ means something very different in lay language than it does in science,” writes Tia Ghose in Scientific American. “A scientific theory is an explanation of some aspect of the natural world that has been substantiated through repeated experiments or testing. But to the average Jane or Joe, a theory is just an idea that lives in someone’s head, rather than an explanation rooted in experiment and testing.”
Douglas’ issue with the scientific theory of evolution might not be confined to a misunderstanding of the term, but religious-based opposition. She declared her support for teaching intelligent design during a Republican party event last November. When asked if the theory of intelligent design should be taught along with the theory of evolution, she responded, “Absolutely.” Intelligent design “holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection.” An “intelligent cause” is another term for “supreme being,” which means that teaching intelligent design in public schools would violate the First Amendment. That’s undoubtedly why Douglas denies the proposed changes in the teaching standards have anything to do with intelligent design. However, once you downgrade evolution to “just a theory” that does not explain the “unity and diversity of organisms,” you open the door for pseudoscience – like intelligent design. Douglas shoved the door open a bit when she was asked if there is a scientific basis behind intelligent design, answering, “Maybe there will be someday.”
When Douglas insists students should be cautioned that a theory is only a theory, she should be directed to these comments by the National Academy of Sciences: “The formal scientific definition of theory is quite different from the everyday meaning of the word. It refers to a comprehensive explanation of some aspect of nature that is supported by a vast body of evidence. Many scientific theories are so well established that no new evidence is likely to alter them substantially.” The Academy cites examples: heliocentric theory (the Earth orbits the sun), cell theory (living things are composed of cells), atomic theory, and plate tectonics (continents drift). And, of course, there is gravity.
But Douglas does not really believe in scientific theories like these, so why should she be bound by them? If she wants to live on a flat planet, so be it. If she wants to float off into space, then let Diane be untethered and warn the moon. That would create an opening for a new incumbent. Could there be a Superintendent of Public Instruction in Arizona who actually believes in teaching legitimate science to our kids? Maybe there will be someday.
© 2018 by Mike Tully
The Tender Larceny of Fisher-Mendoza
TUSD had determined that a certain percentage of District expenditures covered maintenance, so it made sense to dedicate a portion of the deseg budget to it. But there was no pro-rating the locksmiths’ hiring. Every locksmith was paid with deseg dollars. That requisition is an example of the creativity and absurdity that has characterized the Fisher-Mendoza lawsuit for decades.
The lawsuit began in 1974 as school desegregation actions by Hispanic and African-American plaintiffs that were consolidated into a single case. I was in court when Federal Judge Alfredo Marquez, the Fisher-Mendoza presiding judge, complained about the case’s age. “It’s been twenty-five years,” he told the courtroom in 1999. Marquez was the third federal judge assigned to the case. When he retired a few years later, Fisher-Mendoza was still very much alive and showed no signs of wrapping up. Ironically, it was Marquez’ decision that expanded the case from a limited remedy to a judicial juggernaut that left the Superintendent and Governing Board subservient to the federal court, the litigants, and a Court-appointed Special Master who became the all-powerful Man Behind the Curtain.
The Fisher-Mendoza lawsuit was tried before the late Judge William Frye in 1977. His ruling was so close that nobody was sure which side had won. The Arizona Daily Star said the plaintiffs had prevailed and the District had engaged in unlawful discrimination. The Tucson Citizen, the afternoon daily, reported the District had won. The confusion spawned post-judgment proceedings that culminated in a Stipulation and Order of Settlement (“the Order”) in 1978. The Order was limited to 17 elementary and middle schools and anticipated the case could be dismissed by July of 1983.
How did a limited order morph into a District-wide action that endured more than four decades and cost more than a billion dollars? The answer lies in two aspects of Arizona law that provided a strong incentive to keep the case going. First of all, the Legislature decided to leave deseg matters to local school districts and allowed local governing boards to increase property taxes as often as necessary to cover deseg expenses. Then, in 1980, Arizona voters passed a Constitutional amendment that capped local primary property taxes to one percent of the property’s full cash value. Since any amount exceeding the one percent limit was covered by the state’s general fund, TUSD’s Governing Board was empowered to raise deseg taxes as much as it wanted without blowback from local taxpayers. With taxpayers from other districts throughout Arizona basically underwriting TUSD’s desegregation efforts, there was no motivation to close the case. The deseg budget grew as the Fisher-Mendoza case dragged on.
Then, in 1993, the Board voted to close Catalina High school. Earlier that year, the District decided it couldn’t afford to build a proposed new southwest side high school while keeping Catalina open. To comply with the Order, the District petitioned Judge Marquez to approve the closing, which was vigorously opposed. Judge Marquez relied on Paragraph 20 of the Order, which reads in part:
Defendants will not undertake the construction of new schools or of permanent additions at existing schools without specific authorization of the Court. Nothing in this stipulation shall preclude the construction of new schools in the future if the construction of such schools is deemed to be in the best interest of the community and not inconsistent with on-going efforts to reduce segregation…
The District argued the Order didn’t matter because high schools were never part of the Fisher-Mendoza lawsuit. Judge Marquez disagreed and ruled: “The Court finds that the District has failed to meet its burden” as specified by Paragraph 20. The ruling so expanded Fisher-Mendoza beyond the original Order that William Brammer, TUSD’s lead deseg counsel at the time, observed that “the entire district” was subject to the deseg Order. The deseg budget and taxes to pay for it increased exponentially.
Not only has the Fisher-Mendoza case changed, so has the local educational environment. TUSD was a white majority district when the Fisher and Mendoza cases were filed in 1974. That is no longer the case. There were no charter schools siphoning off students and state funding in 1974 and TUSD was in a growth mode. More importantly, the Legislature recently voted to make TUSD taxpayers cover all deseg expenses. The one percent protection is gone, although the Legislature’s action may be challenged in court. Absent a successful court challenge the gravy train has left the station.
I don’t fault TUSD Board members and administrators for taking advantage of a statutory and constitutional environment that brought in additional resources when the Legislature failed to adequately fund Arizona public schools. It would have amounted to educational malpractice to decline the opportunity. But that does not change the fact that the Fisher-Mendoza lawsuit has metamorphized into a litigation monster that encumbers TUSD decision-making, inflames ethnic tensions, and vested far too much authority in a Court-appointed Special Master with veto power over deseg-related Board decisions. One of the ugly realities of school politics is that student welfare is frequently subjugated to adult agendas. That seems to be the situation with Fisher-Mendoza and its insatiable litigants.
© 2018 by Mike Tully
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