Arizona charter school linked to top education lawmaker gets an 'F'

Preliminary Arizona school letter grades were publicly released this week. And one left-leaning group wasted little time pointing out that a charter school associated with state Sen. Sylvia Allen, R-Snowflake, was among the 35 schools that received the lowest grade: an "F."

Allen is also the chairwoman of the Senate Education Committee.

The school in question is George Washington Academy, a charter school Allen said she helped bring to Snowflake "because parents did not want the Common Core curriculum." 

Josselyn Berry, co-director at ProgressNow Arizona, said in a press release this week that Allen "for years preached the benefits of charter schools and vouchers for students and parents, but ironically the school she co-founded has gotten the lowest rating a school can get."

Allen said in an email that "it is unfair to use this new system as political propaganda to attack any school."

MORE:Why hundreds of Arizona school letter grades remain 'under review'

Allen also shifted blame to the new grading system, which the State Board of Education spent more than a year creating because state law requires schools be graded.

"I have grandchildren who go to this school and I have personally seen the help it has given to children. It is not an F school," Allen said of George Washington Academy. Allen said she only works part-time for Edkey, George Washington Academy's charter holder, leading a character program at the school.

"I have visited many schools in my district and if you had asked me to give them a grade I would have said they are all A’s but when I looked at what this new system gave them it was not a true reflection of what they do and how successful they are."

"The new A-F system is not ready for prime time and needs readjustment."

MORE:Will schools be graded fairly using AzMERIT?

Gov. Doug Ducey in 2016 signed into law legislation that passed through the Arizona Legislature's House and Senate education committees that made school letter grades a state requirement.

There is no federal mandate requiring states to label schools on an A-F scale. But that legislation — which Allen sponsored and passed unanimously through both chambers — required that Arizona public schools be graded again starting with the 2016-17 school year.

Senate Bill 1430 also gave the State Board of Education more freedom to decide how schools would be graded.

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