Arizona: David Safieri

by David Safier

I have to admit to being a bit amazed by this.

The Republic's Ronald Hansen and Pat Kossan have picked up the story of School Tuition Organizations (STOs) handling corporate tuition tax credit money not giving out the required 90% of the contributions they receive as scholarships. The reason they give is priceless.

Some organizations said the shortfall is in part because the state's scholarship-eligibility rules limit which students can get the aid based on income and the amount of aid each student can receive.

The tuition tax credit money individuals give isn't tied to income. It can be used as scholarships for millionaire's children.

by David Safier

I never pretend to be objective, but I try my best to be fair. I go after G.I. regularly -- fairly, I believe -- but when a suspicion turns out to be  wrong, I should say something. Which is what I'm doing here.

Matthew Ladner put together three policy briefs comparing public and private school students. I think the methodology used on the studies is bad, as I've written in earlier posts, but I suspected the surveys were inadequate to even reach the shaky conclusions Ladner reached. Ladner was good enough to send me the original surveys, and the raw data looks fine, even if the conclusions are still questionable.

by David Safier

I gather most of my information sitting here behind my MacBook. If Google Search, Google Alerts and the newspapers somehow disappeared from the web, I'd probably fold up my laptop and go home. Except that I'm already home. So I'd just fold up my laptop and do something else.

From this vantage point at my desk, I get to take unfair advantage of others' work. I cut and paste their copy, comment on it and carp at the reporters when I feel like carping. Fortunately, I'm self aware enough to know that's exactly what I'm doing. I never think, "What do we need those jerks for?" I know how much I need those reporters, both for myself as an informed citizen and for the writing I do on BfA.

by David Safier

I was going to let Matthew Ladner's Monday morning G.I. email slide. It looked pretty reasonable to me at first glance.

Then someone told me to take a closer look, and showed me where to look. Oops. Foolish me.

Ladner questions a Republic article's figure for the number of private school students in Arizona in an article which said the state loses money on tuition tax credit scholarships. Here's the passage where he questions the numbers.

For starters, there are varying estimates of private school attendance in Arizona. Republic reporter Robert Hansen's estimation technique is highly dependent on this. The Arizona Private School Directory lists more than 3,000 more private school students than the National Center for Education statistics Hansen used in his research.