If Not Here, Where? Ask Hawkins Charter School Students
November 13, 2015 By
Remembering John Chubb
November 13, 2015 By
Washington, D.C.
November 13, 2015
The following statement was issued by Jeanne Allen, Founder and President-Emeritus of The Center for Education Reform:
We were devastated by the news of the passing of John E. Chubb, one of the truly most impactful people of the entire school choice movement and an intellectual giant. Scholar, executive, educator and friend, he will be sorely missed.
When I me
t John Chubb he was at Brookings and I was at Heritage. His path breaking book – with Terry Moe – Politics, Markets and America’s Schools transformed the way we think of school choice. His was a dispassionate, non-ideological conclusion, grounded in science and effective schools research. It would unite people from across the spectrum and influence the rise of common sense education reforms. Choice IS a panacea, he and Terry dared to say. They were – and are – right. I reached out to John when I founded the Center and for more than 10 years he was one of our most engaged board members. His contribution was enormous. John was also among the most generous and serious of scholars – and would share his time and his intellect to teach and mentor those who sought his help.
Beyond the sadness we all feel for John and his family, I am personally sad for the education reform movement. This individual, whose contributions are not as well-known today to the newer generations, wrote and spoke and worked on behalf of the conclusions his science first revealed were the right formula for improving schools. He implored us, as recently as the class he taught for our EdReformU students last winter, to consider that parental choice is the most effective and highest level of accountability for education.
Many who should know better no longer know this, or remember it, or even believe it. On behalf of and in tribute to John, The Center for Education Reform will provide ever-constant reminders, continually, until we as a nation get it right.
Our prayers go out to Angela, the kids and his entire family.
Hillary’s Charter Backflip
November 13, 2015 By
November 12, 2015
Wall Street Journal
The Center for Education Reform talks to Wall Street Journal Opinion Journal about Hillary Clinton’s comments on charter schools while on the campaign trail, and how backing from national teacher unions has likely swayed her opinion on these alternative public schools.
The Power of Education Innovation: A Cautionary Tale
November 11, 2015 By
by Jeanne Allen
Forbes
November 11, 2015
One of the most prevalent education reforms will soon turn 25. Started in 1991 to disrupt what was considered the traditional school districts’ exclusive franchise over education, charter schools broke philosophical ground by uniting people on both sides of the political aisle. The goal of charter schools was to make public education more responsive to the individual needs of its students, more nimble in facing ever-evolving issues, and more innovative in discovering solutions to complex problems.
Charter schools today serve more than 2.5 million students in almost 7,000 schools across 43 states. These schools have changed how education is delivered, measured and met, including playing a large role in creating the online education movement, state accountability systems and new career pathways for teachers. The fact that the public system itself has adopted many of the same reforms is cause to celebrate. When innovations become established, they can have a larger impact. However, when innovations become too established they can lose the very conditions that made them able to innovate; this is the precarious position in which the charter school sector currently finds itself. The operational flexibility and freedom once afforded to charter schools almost universally has caught a regulatory fervor that its own advocates have invited, slowly “morphing” them into organizations like those they sought to disrupt- they have become more bureaucratic, risk averse, and fixated on process over experimentation. This organizational behavior is, in academic parlance, called isomorphism– the behavior that allows once innovative organizations to resemble those they once disrupted.
Charter Innovation. As a response to decades of declining educational competitiveness and achievement, the idea behind charter schools was to empower parents and teachers to create and choose among diverse learning environments. Charters resonated quickly across states and political lines. Between 1991 and 1999, Democrats and Republicans enacted 36 charter school laws. The result was not only the mainstreaming of school choice, but it was the beginning of a competitive environment that shook the traditional public school establishment, leading to the first state-wide standards and assessments, and consequently, to improved academic performance nationwide. By introducing choice and diversification into public schooling, school districts lost their “exclusive franchise” on their customers, akin to what Clayton Christiansen has argued caused industry giants to lose their competitive edge to innovators able to compete with greater agility to meet consumer needs. While leading firms (in this analogy, traditional public schools) were focused on low-risk “sustaining” improvements that shored up their significant role in their established markets, smaller, cutting-edge firms (i.e., charters) worked to transform labor, capital, materials and information into new “disruptive technologies.”
The Innovator’s Dilemma. Igniting a revolution in teaching and learning, charters not only disrupted, but also in some cases displaced or reinvigorated established systems, such as those in New Orleans and Los Angeles. Sometimes, however, innovation in a field reaches a point of diminishing returns after the field is perceived either to need or to have attained legitimacy. As Powell and DiMaggio note, “once a field becomes well established there is an inexorable push toward homogenization.”
For charter schools, the push has come from philanthropists and even some advocacy groups, who have grown increasingly sensitive to critiques of their industry- criticisms that come largely from inaccurate studies as well as misinformation. Supporters demand a certain “look and feel” from charter schools as a condition of their ongoing support, causing the greater movement to begin to adopt constraining language and processes that aim at ensuring continued support. Those networks that are already established and have “proven” themselves are supported over organic “mom and pop” schools (often developed by minority leaders) or non-traditional service providers. What is generally forgotten is the fact that established organizations were once a single unproven school!
Court Victory for Louisiana School Voucher Program
November 11, 2015 By
The Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in a 2-1 decision rules that the U.S. Department of Justice does not have the right to intervene in Louisiana’s voucher program. This ruling reverses the April 2014 decision in favor of the DOJ for requests for data and oversight.
Judge Edith Jones writes in the Conclusion in Case No. 14-31010:
DOJ’s attempt to shoehorn its regulation of the voucher program into an entirely unrelated forty-year-old case represents more than ineffective lawyering. Despite the district court’s contrary conclusion, it seems plain that DOJ’s expressed concern — how the voucher program affects statewide public schools racially — has nothing to do with the narrow issues considered in the Brumfield
litigation. DOJ’s bold strategy, if upheld, would circumvent the ordinary litigation process in two ways. The reports it seeks do not fall under the auspices of discovery permitted by the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which authorize the compelled production of information only after a complaint alleges violations of law. Here, there was no complaint, hence no basis for DOJ to intrude into the affairs of Louisiana and its disadvantaged student population. American discovery follows the common law adversary process,
not the civil law’s inquisitorial process, yet DOJ seeks to be the inquisitor. Even more disturbing, DOJ’s motion, as explained in the November 2013 hearing, essentially foretells its attempt — through pre-award “back and forth” with the state on every single voucher — to regulate the program without any legal judgment against the state. This court may not speculate why DOJ chose to avoid the path of litigation to prove a violation and there after enforce a remedy against the state and its school children. What is clear is that DOJ chose an unauthorized means to accomplish the same result.
The district court did not have jurisdiction over the subject matter of the DOJ’s motion for further relief, which was outside the continuing jurisdiction of the 1975 order and the 1985 consent decree. Therefore, the April Order is void and the denial of the 60(b)(4) motion is reversed.For the foregoing reasons, the April 2014 order of the district court is REVERSED, the injunctive requirements for “further relief” are DISSOLVED, and the case is remanded with instructions to DISMISS the Motion for Further Relief.
[Click here for more on Louisiana’s voucher program]
BACKGROUND:
The Department of Justice first filed a motion against the Louisiana Scholarship Program on August 24, 2013, acting on a claim that the Program impeded desegregation efforts, which was later debunked by a state-commissioned report. Department of Justice efforts sought to block the further issuance of vouchers in school districts with standing desegregation orders until it could be proven that the approximately 600 voucher-receiving students from those districts were not compromising the desegregation process.
In April 2014, the initial injunction against the program was dropped, with a District Court Judge ruling the State of Louisiana could continue with the overwhelmingly popular School Choice Scholarship Program without unwarranted intervention, however federal requests for data and oversight were not dropped.
IN THE NEWS:
Jindal scores a win with appeals court voucher ruling (Politico)
Federal Court Rules in Favor of Louisiana School Children (American Federation for Children)
Hillary Clinton wades into the internal Democratic battle over public schools
November 11, 2015 By
By Lyndsey Layton
Washington Post
November 11, 2015
Hillary Clinton long skirted the internal Democratic Party conflict over the best way to improve public schools. She avoided the fight between teachers unions, which want heavier investment and less blame for educators, and those who believe non-unionized charter schools should be expanded and teachers held accountable for student achievement.
But Clinton’s neutrality has started to fray.
By early October, she had pocketed presidential endorsements from both major teachers unions. Before she got the nod from the National Education Association, Clinton told a private gathering of NEA leaders she wanted the country’s largest union to be “at the table, literally and figuratively” as she formulates policy, according to excerpts published in an NEA publication.
At a town hall meeting in South Carolina on Sunday, Clinton was critical of public charter schools, saying “most” intentionally exclude or expel children who are difficult to educate.
“Most charter schools — I don’t want to say every one — but most charter schools, they don’t take the hardest-to-teach kids, or, if they do, they don’t keep them,” Clinton said in response to questions at an event hosted by the South Carolina Legislative Black Caucus.
By contrast, she said, traditional public schools do “thankfully, take everybody, and then they don’t get the resources or the help and support that they need to be able to take care of every child’s education.”
The remarks lit up the world of K-12 education policy, prompting outrage from organizations that have been fighting to expand charter schools as an alternative to traditional schools. Some alleged that the presidential hopeful is out of touch.
“That is absolutely false,” Jeanne Allen, the founder of the Center for Education Reform, said of Clinton’s claims about charters. “She sounds like an aloof, elite candidate from a bygone era, before ed reform was a reality.”
Hillary Clinton gets pushback for anti-charter schools comment
November 10, 2015 By
by Jason Russell
Washington Examiner
November 10, 2015
Most public charter schools don’t take hard-to-teach students, or at least that’s what Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said in an interview.
“Most charter schools — I don’t want to say every one — but most charter schools, they don’t take the hardest-to-teach kids, or, if they do, they don’t keep them,” Clinton told TV One host Roland Martin this weekend.
First of all, charter schools have to take every applicant that comes their way. When space runs out, they are required to use a random lottery system to admit students. Charter schools don’t have admissions officers saying, “This student looks like they’ll be difficult,” before giving them the rejection stamp.
Second, charter schools serve hard-to-teach kids at higher rates than traditional public schools. We can’t know exactly what Clinton meant when she said “hardest-to-teach kids,” but the implication is children from low-income families or racial minorities. Charter schools serve both of those groups at higher rates than traditional public schools. There’s also no difference between public and charter schools in the portion of students learning English as a second language.
Charter schools are publicly-funded and do not charge tuition. Compared to traditional public schools, charter schools have more independence in their operations and curricula, which is why so many families find charter schools desirable.
Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush was quick to respond to Clinton. “Distorting the role charter schools play in transforming lives in order to placate the teachers unions is beyond the pale, @HillaryClinton,” Bush tweeted.
Clinton is endorsed by the two largest teachers unions in the country: The National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers.
The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools also responded to Clinton, in a statement from its president and CEO Nina Rees. “We do take issue with Secretary Clinton’s overgeneralizing of charter schools not serving these so-called ‘hardest-to-teach’ students, particularly when the facts are so strong to the contrary,” Rees said. “There is no difference in the percentage of English Language Learner students served between charter and non-charter public schools.” Rees also pointed out that charter schools in New York City retain students with disabilities better than traditional public schools, and that proficiency in Los Angeles’ charter schools is triple the rate of the traditional public schools there. She also noted that Clinton has supported public charter schools for decades.
The Center for Education Reform also responded with a statement from its founder, Jeanne Allen. “The vast majority of charter schools in the United States serve children who were not succeeding in their traditional public schools,” Allen said. “The vast majority of charter schools serve children who live in poverty, or close to poverty. The vast majority of charter schools transform the lives of the kids they serve at a fraction of the cost of traditional public schools. And the vast majority of charter schools not only have to fight to educate children, they have to fight the daily attacks from bureaucrats and special interests who place paychecks and adult jobs over the futures of disadvantaged kids.”
NEWSWIRE: November 10, 2015
November 10, 2015 By
Vol. 17, No. 34
IF NOT HERE, WHERE? That was the slogan on CICS Larry Hawkins charter school students’ shirts yesterday at a press conference called by the s
chool to protest its slated closure by Chicago Public Schools (CPS). The school improved from a Level 3 to a Level 2 in just one year, but in an obviously political move, CPS changed its closure rules so Hawkins landed on the list. “Just as I’m going up, why are you taking me down?” read one of the signs of a concerned student, many of whom have approached their principal promising they’ll do better and try even harder so their school can stay open. In an area where violence and crime is a major concern, it’s clear this school is a safe haven and community pride for kids where they can focus on learning without having to fear for their lives. Stay tuned…
HIL’S BIG OOPS. It’s a sad day for America when a former top diplomat uses her national media platform and political campaign to inaccurately criticize the thousands of charter school teachers and community leaders who have sacrificed so much to help improve the lives of kids. Edreform.com has the scoop on Hillary Clinton’s comments on charter schools.
EDLECTION WINS. Kentucky and Mississippi voters have elected Governors who have either proven themselves to be champions of real #edreform, or have run on platforms that don’t shy away from being vocal about putting students and families first. For analysis of the winners, head to Education50.
TEACHER CHOOSES CHARTER. Guess what? Despite what unions want you to think, not all teachers are against school choice. In fact, they would like choices too. Why one teacher left a North Carolina district school for a charter school here.
#TEACHSTRONG. A whole lot of interesting groups have signed on to a nine-point plan to “modernize and elevate” the teaching profession. Goals like performance pay and better PD and teacher prep are certainly worthy, and needed. But with so many cooks in the kitchen, is implementation bound to be a recipe for disaster with lackluster reforms that don’t move the needle?
CONNECTING POWERFUL INNOVATORS. iNACOL’s Blended and Online Learning Symposium is happening now through tomorrow, so be sure to follow @nacol and @GettingSmart on social media, and follow the conversation with the hash tag #inacol15.
VOTE FOR CER’s PANEL. We need your help! Tomorrow is the LAST DAY to vote for CER’s panel to be part of the 2016 National Charter Schools Conference. To vote for the panel, visit the session selector http://bit.ly/sessionselector and search: Apples, Oranges? Reconciling Accountability and Innovation in Charter Schools.
Hillary Clinton’s Comments on Charter Schools
November 10, 2015 By
Washington, D.C.
November 10, 2015
The following statement was issued by Jeanne Allen, Founder & President-Emeritus, The Center for Education Reform, concerning Hillary Clinton’s misstatements about charter schools:
When a promising presidential candidate violates the basics of truth telling, it’s time for a reset. For 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, it’s time to tell the truth about charter schools. Myths perpetrated by teachers unions and big bureaucracies seem to have trumped her reality.
On Sunday, November 8, while she campaigned in South Carolina, Secretary Clinton said that while she has supported charter schools for “many years now,” they “don’t take the hardest-to-teach kids, or, if they do, they don’t keep them.” This statement is not only inaccurate; it libels and defames a movement that has worked tirelessly to educate children who need the greatest help.
Here are the facts: The vast majority of charter schools in the United States serve children who were not succeeding in their traditional public schools. The vast majority of charter schools serve children who live in poverty, or close to poverty. The vast majority of charter schools transform the lives of the kids they serve at a fraction of the cost of traditional public schools. And the vast majority of charter schools not only have to fight to educate children, they have to fight the daily attacks from bureaucrats and special interests who place paychecks and adult jobs over the futures of disadvantaged kids.
There was a time when Mrs. Clinton spoke well of charters. In 1996, she wrote in her book It Takes A Village that she “[found] their argument persuasive,” at least— and was in favor, and would have purportedly been in favor of pro-charter policies her husband, the former President Clinton put forward, including legislation he said would put the nation “well on [Its] way to creating 3,000 charter schools by the year 2000.” More recently, Bill Clinton keynoted the National Charter Schools Conference, applauding and recognizing the innovation that came of age while he was president. He has also spoken eloquently of public charter schools as the keynote speaker at a conference planned by KIPP, one of America’s most respected networks of charter schools.
But just this weekend, out of one side of her mouth she ridiculed these innovative reforms, and then out of the other, she told “News One Now” host Roland Martin that she likes the “idea of charter schools.” The National Education Association, the 3-million member teachers union whose endorsement she recently secured, also supports the “idea,” as long as charters remain part of traditional school district bureaucracies and abide union rules and regulations which stifle freedom and flexibility for teachers and parents, thus neutering the entire concept of charter schools.
I wonder whether or not Mrs. Clinton no longer believes in charter schools because as a candidate in 2008, she lost NEA backing for the Democratic nomination to Barack Obama and along with it the union’s immense PAC and activism engine.
Regardless of the reason, it is a sad day for our great nation when America’s former top diplomat— rather than championing, as an example of American exceptionalism, the thousands of charter school teachers and the community leaders who have sacrificed so much to help improve the lives of kids — uses her national media platform and political campaign to denigrate these heroes, all under the literal banner of ‘fighting for us’.
In short: Hillary Clinton is wrong and she has embarrassed herself by making these outrageous statements. As a partisan, she might want to consider that countless, courageous Democrats have helped enact charter school laws. Democrats are also represented heavily in the ranks of those who have founded charters, who started them, who run them and who teach in them day in and day out. The charter movement is more ideologically and socioeconomically diverse than the traditional public system, by choice, not by zip code.
I encourage Mrs. Clinton to visit a charter school this week, and next, and the week after that. I encourage her to meet with the parents of charter students, who view these schools as saviors for their children. I encourage her to meet with charter school leaders the next time she is South Carolina or New Hampshire and learn about their success in ensuring that their students learn, rather than allowing them to graduate lacking basic skills.
One would think Mrs. Clinton would understand the power of charter schools having allegedly been a citizen (and a Senator) of New York. Indeed evidence of success in charter schools serving the least advantaged among us can be found right down the block from her New York City campaign headquarters. These schools and the more than 6,000 others serving more than 2.8 million children nationwide have demonstrated to America that not only can poor children learn, they can outperform rich kids in tony suburbs if they are given the right tools and attention. What’s more is that charter schools have reinvigorated cities where once the advantaged fled, and which are now, like Washington, DC, economic and gentrified engines of community engagement.
Perhaps it’s our fault as advocates. Many of us may have just assumed that all influential and intellectually rigorous political leaders would read and understand the facts rather than rely on bad data or bad advice. Clearly it is time to re-inform the national education reform conversation and not take for granted, in a crucial political year, that our candidates know the real story. The recent fad of discussing the tiny sliver of charters in America with lagging performance is not even close to being the whole story of school choice in America today.
Instead, let’s talk about the work that the vast majority of charter schools — great, entrepreneurial centers of learning and innovation — do every single day. We can start that transition by encouraging candidates for America’s highest office to tell the truth.
20 years of school choice: How Arizona has evolved
November 4, 2015 By
by Anne Ryman
The Republic
November 1, 2015
Valley Academy’s first year was a scary time for the parents and teachers who founded one of the state’s first public charter schools.
Financial problems threatened to shutter the north Phoenix school just a few months after opening in fall 1995. A parent stepped in and arranged a loan for about $100,000. School board members scrubbed toilets. Parents cleaned classrooms. The school’s dirt parking lot turned into a river of mud when it rained.
Fast forward 20 years.
The K-8 school has nearly 800 students with a few hundred more on a waiting list and an “A” rating from the state. A sister school with another 700 students operates six miles to the south. Parents no longer have to clean the school, and the loan has long been repaid.
Best of all: Last year, Valley Academy was named a National Blue Ribbon School by the U.S. Department of Education.
Valley Academy is a premier example of how school choice has evolved over the past two decades.
In 1994, Arizona passed sweeping legislation that allowed charter schools and made it easier for students to attend schools outside their neighborhood boundaries. The first schools opened in 1995.
The changes were aimed at improving student achievement and giving parents more choices. The early choices were sometimes questionable or unproven. But enough of choice schools have matured to the point where more and more families are seeking options, whether those are neighborhood district schools, charter schools or private schools. And the changes have also altered how district schools — which still educate the majority of Arizona students — approach education as well, adding innovations as the competitive landscape continues to evolve.
Consider these trends:
- Arizona is ranked No. 3 on the “Parent Power Index” by the Center for Education Reform in Washington, D.C., based on the school choices that are available. Only Florida and Indiana are rated higher.
- Enrollment in tuition-free charter schools has doubled in the past decade to 170,755. Charters serve 16 percent of students who attend Arizona public schools this fall, up from 9 percent a decade ago.
- Enrollment in online programs offered by school districts and charter schools more than doubled in four years to about 76,500.
- Scholarships funded through state tax credits make private schools more affordable for families who want a private or parochial education. These tax credits topped $121 million in fiscal 2014, up from $32 million a decade ago.
- District schools have launched more specialty programs to keep students and attract new ones. The focuses range from science and technology to arts or Mandarin immersion.
- A school-voucher-type program for children with special needs has been expanded since 2011 to include other categories of students, including children of active-duty military and children who live on Indian reservations.
“I don’t know of any other state that has a better system in place than we do,” said Greg Miller, president of the Arizona State Board of Education and founder of Challenge Charter School in Glendale.
Miller said Arizona doesn’t get everything right. But state leaders have set the stage for parents to select the right kind of educational opportunity for their children, he said.
The influx of choices has come with plenty of controversy.
Critics say a multitude of choices doesn’t guarantee quality at every school.
They also say choice has meant a battle for already-scarce resources.
The amount of money the state puts toward K-12 education is among the lowest of any state in the nation, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Charter and district K-12 schools each receive state funds based on enrollment, forcing schools to compete for students and the dollars that go with them.
Districts that lose students, either to charters or for other reasons, receive less per-pupil money from the state the following year. That can mean having to make cuts.
Arizona Education Association President Andrew Morrill worries that “we’ll see fewer and fewer district public schools that are getting the funding and resources they need to educate the students who most need them.”
The road to school choice
Arizona pushed its way to the front of school choice in a big way when then-Gov. Fife Symington signed a sweeping education-reform law in 1994 that began allowing charter schools. Charter schools are independent schools that get public funding and don’t charge tuition.
The goal behind charters was to improve student achievement and provide additional academic choices. In Arizona, they can be operated by non-profit organizations or for-profit companies.
The first charters began opening in 1995.
Cuyler Reid, a high school English teacher with a preschooler, was among the first in the state to be granted a charter. She and a group of other parents and teachers founded Valley Academy to provide a back-to-basics education with a focus on reading, writing and math. The school also offered special-area subjects such as art, music and Spanish. At the time, there were only a couple of schools in the Valley offering a back-to-basics focus, she said. One was in central Phoenix, the other in Mesa.
“We were filling a niche that was really needed,” she said.
Reid recalled that before the school even opened at 15th Avenue and Rose Garden Lane, a telephone call from a parent touched her deeply.
The parent told her, “We’re finally going to be able to buy a house because now we don’t have to pay tuition.”
Reid recalls what the conversation meant — and still means — for Arizona families.
“That’s the difference that charters make,” she said. “They give you a choice. Because not everybody fits every mold.”
The 1994 legislation also benefited parents who wanted their children to attend district schools outside their neighborhoods. The law allowed families to go to a school outside district attendance boundaries for free — as long as that school had space. The process is known as open enrollment. Before the law changed, districts could charge tuition to out-of-district families.
The state doesn’t track how many families participate in open enrollment. But in large districts, several hundred students can come from outside the district boundaries. The 23,612-student Scottsdale Unified School District, for instance, draws 3,842 students from other districts. Another 5,578 students who live in the Scottsdale district open enroll at schools within the district that are outside of their designated neighborhood schools.
Districts also began offering specialized academic programs to keep students and attract new ones. These are sometimes referred to as “magnet programs” or “magnet schools.”
The Phoenix Union High School District opened Bioscience High School in downtown Phoenix in 2007 where students choose either an engineering or biomedical pathway while still in high school.
The four-year school accepts 350 students, who school officials said come mostly from the 220-square-mile Phoenix Union district.
Sara Calderon, a 16-year-old junior, was planning to go to her neighborhood school, Alhambra High. Then a science teacher at her middle school suggested she check out Bioscience High.
She applied and got in.
She’s glad she did. She said the idea of school choice is becoming more well known. But many students still may not realize they have choices when it comes to school, she said.
“It’s really great because originally that was my mindset. I was like ‘Oh, it’s my home school. Of course I’m going to the closest one.’ And then I realized, no, I don’t (have to) actually. It’s in my hands.”
Calderon’s parents drive her about eight miles to school each day and pick her up. Or they drop her off at a Phoenix light-rail station and she takes the train. After high school, she wants to go to college and major in biomedical engineering.
If the school’s history is any indication, she has an excellent chance of going on to college. Last year, 85 percent of the school’s 2013-14 graduates enrolled in college immediately after graduation. Bioscience High is A-rated and ranked No. 13 in the state for sending students to college, according to a study by the Arizona Board of Regents.