K-12 Impact of the Trend and Challenge

The impact of shifting the role of teachers to student centered learning and the expectation of flipping classrooms is huge in the K-12 system. However, to understand, I would have to backtrack for a moment to provide a little background as to why Arizona in particular might have difficulty embracing this shift.

Arizona's educational system is known in the United States as having challenges. The state is According to Hart and Hager (2012), Latino student test scores are lower in all [emphasis added] subject areas which have not changed in the past decade. By the end of elementary school, Latino students are two years behind, by the end of middle school they are three years behind, and by high school they are four years behind their white counterparts (Green, 2008). The United States Census Bureau (2011), reports that 27% of Arizona’s population speaks a language other than English at home (Ryan, 2013). Within the four counties that share a border with Mexico; Yuma, Pima, Santa Cruz, and Cochise, the population that speaks Spanish increases dramatically with Yuma and Santa Cruz counties having a range of 47.5% or more and Pima and Cochise Counties having a range of 23.6-47.4%. The metropolitan area of Yuma and Tucson had 96.2% and 82.3% of their populations speaking Spanish respectively (Ryan, 2013). These statistics transfer to school children as nearly 90% of English Language Learners (ELLs) speak Spanish, according to Jiménez-Castellanos, Combs, Martinez, and Gomez (2013). 
ranked 50th (National Educator's Association, 2013) for funding per student at just under $7,000 per student compared to New Hampshire's nearly $20,000 per student. At the same time, Hart and Hager (2012) report that of the one million students in K-12 in Arizona, there were only 8,000 more Whites than Hispanics (which by now has evened or has a Hispanic majority).

This is significant as educational policies deem that principals that are unable to show Adequate Yearly Progress after three years are placed in Turnaround Status and have the following consequences: 1) turnaround-- they are fired as is half of their staff, 2) shutdown-- the school is closed, 3) restart--school reopens as a charter (they are still fired),  4) transformation--they are fired and a new principal and team comes in with an intensive program of professional development, extended learning for students, and the school is revamped.  

The reason that shifting to student centered learning and flipping classrooms is going to be very difficult is the very large amount of time that it takes to create the recorded lectures. K-12 teachers are overworked currently because of the current crisis within education without adding this. Furthermore, Arizona schools are lack critical funding necessary for daily services. I work with nearly 40 schools in Cochise County and I'm not sure that more than one would have the technology available to send home some type of technology with their students to watch the lectures prior to class.

However, the crushing blow to this type of instruction in the K-12 system is really the pressure that teachers have to get their students to do well on standardized tests. Those tests are in English and until the teachers can help Hispanic students speak enough English to do well on the tests, the focus at the early elementary grades is all about reading, writing, and math. Even in upper grades, as Hispanic student scores drop, the teachers are to focus on the lowest 25% of students to get their scores up as it helps the school avoid turnaround status. I support flipping classrooms and student centered learning, but as long as standardized testing is the measure of assessments and funding, there is a difficult road ahead for anything in schools but those areas that bring in money. Now that teacher pay is tied to student achievement on standardized tests, emphasis in schools is driven by testing.

References:

Green, P. (2008). The politics of (de)segregation. In Handbook of education politics and policy. Routledge.

Hart, B., and Hager, C. (2012). Dropped? Latino education and Arizona's economic future. In Morrison Institute for Public Policy (p. 17-37). Phoenix: Arizona State University.

Jiménez - Castellanos, O., Combs, M., Martinez, D., & Gomez, L. (2013, January 1). English language learners: What's at stake for Arizona? Retrieved April 20, 2015, from http://arizonaindicators.org/sites/default/files/content/publications/ELL_stake.pdf

Ryan, C. (2013, August 1). American Community Survey Briefs. Retrieved May 2, 2015, from: http://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/acs-22.pdf

U.S. Census, American Community Survey Results, 2011.