The Horne Ultimatum

95% is the new failing ... Border hawk is the new progressive ... And deep space is the new deep state.

Tom Horne wants teachers to flunk more than half of Arizona’s students.

Of course, that’s not how Arizona’s top school official would characterize his proposal to require teachers to fail any child who misses nine or more days of school in a year.

But it would be the effect of what even he calls “radical efforts” to get kids back in schools after the pandemic — unless parents and students radically change their behavior.

“You can’t teach a student who’s not there,” Horne explained at this week’s State Board of Education meeting. “So we need radical efforts to solve this problem. A lot of what I’ve seen in studies is what I would consider soft solutions, like talking to the parents… We should bring back the old system, which is nine absences and you flunk the course.”

Horne is right that Arizona is facing an absenteeism crisis.

But his half-baked idea of flunking any kid who misses nine days of school ignores the research about how to solve the problem.

And it’s indicative of his “punish first, ask questions later” approach to education.

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Since the Covid lockdowns and school closures in 2020, Arizona school kids have been struggling to regularly attend classes — at one point we were number one in the nation for chronic absenteeism, though we’ve since bounced back to number 15.

Missing school days — especially in early grades — can put a serious dent in a student’s lifetime learning potential. It hurts a student’s ability to read at grade level by third grade, which is a key indicator to basically all other academic success.

Chronically absent students are less likely to graduate on time, less likely to graduate at all and less likely to go to college.

And chronic absences can impact the entire class, straining teachers and setting an example for other kids, who are more likely to be absent if other students are absent, according to one study.

School administrators, researchers and education advocacy groups have spent a lot of time discussing the complex roots of the problem and coming up with evidence-based solutions to get kids back in class.

The Arizona State Board of Education recently adopted the results of a report detailing several tiers of evidence-based strategies to help ensure that Arizona students are actually attending schools, for example.

None of those evidence-based solutions included failing students who missed nine days.

Right now, each school district adopts its own policies on how many absences result in a failing grade. Horne wants schools to change their policies to automatically flunk kids with excessive absences. He also suggested at Monday’s Board of Education meeting that it could be done legislatively.

“That’s not really a route any district has seen as a success. It is taking a punitive path versus taking a partnership path,” as Mark Eley, the principal at Kyrene De Los Cerritos, told AZFamily’s Mickaela Castillo yesterday.

Roughly 30% of Arizona students were “chronically absent” in 2023, according to a recent report from the Helios Education Foundation. But the definition of chronically absent is missing 10% of school days, or 18 days.

Horne’s plan would be to punish any kid who misses just nine days, or halfway to chronically absent. (Not including excused absences. Also, every five days of tardiness would count as one absence.)

The Arizona Department of Education, which Horne oversees, said it didn’t know how many students missed nine or more days of school. The Arizona State Board of Education also didn’t know how many students are halfway to chronically absent, nor did the Helios Education Foundation, which authored the study that sparked Horne to action.

So when we say 50% of students would flunk under this policy, that’s just a conservative guess. Nobody actually knows how many students a policy like this would impact.

Horne didn’t bother to find out before proposing the idea.

But he’s sure it won’t come to that.

“I want the parents to be motivated to get their kids to school so the kids would get an education. It's not about flunking half the kids, for God's sake,” he told us. “The parents would change their behavior, I have no doubt about it.”

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The thing is, Horne’s probably right.

If there were severe consequences, many students and parents would take classroom time more seriously. Our trend toward a pajama-based society is not good for most students, and it’s going to require some discipline to break.

But tough love isn’t going to work in all cases. And flunking kids who are struggling, rather than working with them, is going to leave a lot of students behind.

And even if Arizona’s chronic absentee rates dropped to pre-pandemic levels, that’s still about 10% of students at every grade level every year “chronically absent.” And remember: Horne’s plan would flunk kids for only being halfway to chronically absent. Horne doesn’t know how many kids that is.

Why nine days instead of eight or a nice round 10?

“That’s my understanding of how they used to do it,” he told us, though he couldn’t specify who “they” were, other than to say he doesn’t think it was a statewide policy, when this policy existed or why it went away.

And while the policy is in line with Horne’s general nostalgic approach to school discipline, it isn’t popular among the academic crowd. It’s also counter to the research, evidence and science in the field.

Read On Arizona recently brought together a task force of more than 30 educators, administrators, policy wonks, researchers, tax hawks, teachers’ union representatives and others to examine the problem and provide “evidence-based strategies” to keep kids in classrooms.

The result was a detailed 77-page report, delivered to the Board of Education, that offered up three tiers of strategies to help reduce absenteeism by acknowledging the root cause, which is often a combination of problems at home like housing insecurity, lack of transportation or having to watch siblings while parents are at work. Or it can simply be illness, or illnesses in the family.

In fact, research suggests that punishing students for missing school can result in a negative feedback loop that actually causes them to miss more school days, as they fall further behind and feel even more discouraged.

One of the most effective tactics to keep students in classrooms is simply to build relationships with families before the problem starts, according to the report. In Window Rock USD, for example, teachers reach out to parents early on in the school year with some positive feedback — setting the stage for more buy-in from parents if absences become a problem later in the school year. That’s a tier 1 tactic.

Tier 2 tactics are more aggressive, like small group mentoring around attendance and engagement.

Tier 3 tactics can be like Litchfield Elementary School District’s C.U.T.S. Program, which cites students with excessive absences to the Maricopa County Juvenile Court, which works with families to ensure students attend school regularly.

That’s a pretty intensive intervention.

But one thing the tactics all attempt to avoid is taking students out of school as a punishment for missing school.

Suspending students for excessive absences is still legal in Arizona, but it’s a tactic that has fallen out of favor with academic researchers and even Republican politicians for a lot of reasons, including that it’s disproportionately applied to Black, Latino and Indigenous students, according to an investigation by the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting.

But also, it just kind of defies logic — what is achieved by suspending a kid for missing school?

The same logical questions apply to Horne’s proposal to flunk absentee students.

If a student misses the first nine days of school and flunks the class or grade, why would they bother showing up for the other 171 days of school?

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A few weeks ago, we started breaking down next month's Proposition 414 into bite-sized chunks in our “Prop 414 incoming” section.

We featured vignettes on lesser-known aspects of the measure, and added some very unscientific polls for subscribers to let us know what they thought.

But we didn’t run polls for all of them. So to get better results, we’re revisiting the three times that Joe forgot to add a poll. Take a moment and let the powers-that-be know what you think!

Let’s dive in.

City officials want to buy a new plane for the Tucson Police Department to replace one of its three helicopters. They also want to replace another helicopter and buy parts for the remaining helicopter. Read more about the planned upgrades for the TPD fleet here.

City officials want to build a new fire station on the northwest side of town and add another on the southeast side, possibly near Rita Ranch. Read more here about the city’s plans to build new infill stations with Prop 414.

City officials would use the Prop 414 funding to pay for a program manager for the ¡Somos Uno! initiative, as well as maintenance for important cultural and artistic assets in the community. Read more about ¡Somos Uno! here.

Our polls aren’t scientific in any way, but they’re pretty much the only polling you’re going to see about Prop 414.

We’ll publish the results in a few days.

Want to weigh in on Prop 414? It isn’t too late. Become a paid subscriber today.

Veterans unite: Serving in the U.S. military doesn’t necessarily protect you from deportation, and dozens of people gathered at Veinte de Agosto Park in Tucson over the weekend to shine a light on deported veterans, the Tucson Sentinel’s Paul Ingram reports. The event brought out veterans and their loved ones who’ve been affected by the Trump administration and previous administrations, as well as local elected officials and political candidates.

"Just because I don't look like the president does not mean you have the right to make me feel less than. And that's what they're doing," Pima County Supervisor Adelita Grijalva said. "They're making people feel like animals. People feel like they don't deserve just a common courtesy."

Tower talk: In the wake of a deadly mid-air crash at the Marana Regional Airport last week, the airport’s lack of a control tower is coming under more scrutiny, the Associated Press reports. Only about 10% of public airports in the United States have control towers, and as investigators try to figure out what’s behind the recent spate of crashes across the country, the need for those towers is getting another look. The Marana airport was all set up to get federal funding to build a control tower, but the COVID-19 pandemic stalled those plans.

Making the grade: The state isn’t the only one that gives out letter grades to schools. The Arizona Educational Foundation announced 12 schools in southern Arizona earned an “A+” in their system, Arizona Public Media’s Zachary Ziegler reports. They include three schools in the Amphitheater Public Schools district, two in Nogales, and one each in Vail, Sahuarita, Marana, and Sierra Vista.

Shake it out: While the country loses its mind over immigration and cultures mixing, Tucson is doing its own thing. Community radio station KXCI is organizing the first ever “Baila el Pueblo” Desert Music Festival on March 22, the Arizona Luminaria’s Beatriz Limón reports. The festival brings together the Tohono O’odham Nation’s Waila, a musician who specializes in the fusion of Congolese, Peruvian, and Colombian musical styles, and many more.

Screen time: A bill that would cut down on how much students can use cell phones during the school day is making its way through the Legislature, KVOA’s Kevin Reagan reports. HB2484 got bipartisan support and passed the House on Monday. Students could still use phones and social media platforms for educational purposes or in emergencies.

"Teachers shouldn’t have to compete with TikTok, and parents shouldn’t have to wonder if their kids are learning or just scrolling," said state Rep. Beverly Pingerelli, R-District 28, who is sponsoring the bill.

Finding a better path: Street takeovers remain a problem in Tucson, including several last weekend that resulted in arrests. Two racers, Michelle Beel and her husband Randy Beel, are trying to pull young people in a more positive direction, KGUN’s Reyna Preciado reports. They founded Immortal Racing and now host events at the Tucson Dragway to offer a legal way for racers to get their kicks.

On Sunday, hundreds of unhoused residents living on Tucson’s west side will take to the streets for a few hours. And the whole thing will be televised on both FOX11 and CW18.

This isn’t a protest, despite the political climate. And many of the unhoused in the parade will have fluffy tails and furry little paws.

The 4th Annual Subaru Pets of Pima Parade will empty the Pima Animal Care Center as dogs, cats, birds, reptiles, pocket pets, and farm pets take a trip down 6th Avenue between Speedway and 7th Avenue.

No word on exactly how cats will be wrangled.

The event organized by PACC also includes an optional VIP ticket package, which gets you preferred seating at Corbett’s on 6th Avenue.

The $65 ticket includes complimentary (human) treats, elbowing with dignitaries and you’ll be able to listen to the color commentary from the parade hosts Erin Christiansen and Jose Ocano.

A portion of the proceeds from the ticket sales will be donated to PACC.