Here are a couple of things to keep in mind while searching for what new Tucson Unified School District superintendent: an inadequate bilingual education system and a four-year-old high school magnet program struggling to reach it's goals.
A new superintendent will have to find the balance between calls to limit bilingual education and calls to dramatically increase funding. At any rate, the achievement levels of non-English speakers are dismal. Turning around that trend will require a strength of conviction coupled with bold education restructuring.
It is especially important in Tucson where studies show that students enrolled in bilingual education do not fare as well as their counterparts academically. Worse, fewer than 30 percent of bilingual ed students were found proficient after four years. In the state, 75 percent of students were found proficient after four years in bilingual education. Clearly, bilingual Ed in TUSD needs a top-to-bottom reassessment. Another must-fix for the new superintendent will be the expensive and largely ineffective high-school magnet program. Stories in Sunday's Star found two of the magnets, Pueblo and Cholla High Schools on the south and west sides of town, don't attract even their own students to the programs.
Only one program in one school for one year, fine arts at Tucson High, met its goal. In fact, in 1996, it drew three more students than slots available. But that was the anomaly.
Today, only two of 100 Anglos slots are filled in the communications program at Pueblo High. The same is true of the college preparatory program at the same school. Over at Cholla High, the numbers are similar. Only two Anglo slots are filled for its international studies and law-related education programs.
To be fair, the district is under a court order to provide the programs. But taxpayers shell out an extra $ii.6 million per year for the high-school magnets. They have a right to expect some measure of success for that amount of money.
