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NEWS
AHWATUKEE FOOTHILLS NEWS | MAY 17, 2017
Ahwatukee high schools ready to bid 1,300 seniors adieu AFN News Staff
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ore than 1,300 seniors will receive their high school diplomas at Mountain Pointe and Desert Vista high schools on Thursday, May 18. And some will prepare for college with at least some financial help, thanks to scholarships totaling nearly $40 million. Ceremonies at both schools will be held on their football fields beginning at 7 p.m. Because parking will likely be a challenge, spectators may want to plan an early arrival. Mountain Pointe High School will graduate 600 seniors. Its Class of 2017 earned a total $6.6 million in scholarships. Logan Kenny is valedictorian and Sara Ding is salutatorian. Logan is heading to Arizona State University’s Barrett, the Honors College as a Presidents Scholar while Sara is bound for the University of California’s Berkeley campus About 745 seniors are graduating at Desert Vista High with scholarships totaling a whopping $33.3 million.
(Special to AFN)
Logan Kenny is the valedictorian for this year’s Mountain View High School graduating class.
(Special to AFN)
Ross Wilson is the 2017 Horizon Honors Secondary School valedictorian.
Four valedictorians have been selected at Desert Vista. They include: Bobae Johnson, who is bound for Harvard University; Aditya Bollam, who is heading to Berkeley; Dewey Johnson, who will be studying at the Colorado School of Mines; and Rice University-bound Alice Wong. The district declined an AFN request made last month for detailed information about scholarship winners from the two schools. However, two of the district’s five
(Special to AFN)
Sara Ding is salutatorian for Mountain View High School’s Class of 2017.
(Special to AFN)
Desert Vista High School Class of 2017 valedictorians are, from left: Aditya Bollan, Dewey Johnson, Alice Wong and Bobae Johnson.
National Merit Scholarship winners are from Desert Vista. Both Bobae and Neha Parvathala won the $2,500 awards. Bobae, an accomplished violinist, plans to study law at Harvard while Neha plans to study bioengineering. Ahwatukee’s other high school, Horizon Honors Secondary, is holding its graduation May 30 at Sun Valley Church in Tempe for 96 seniors. Valedictorian Ross Wilson plans to attend Butler University in Indianapolis
and double-major in recording industry studies and digital media production. He probably reflected the feelings of many members of Ahwatukee’s Class of 2017 about their upcoming graduation when he said: “My favorite part of high school was senior year since all of the hard work I had put in to high school was finally paying off in the form of college.” Horizon spokeswoman Melissa Hartley said a one-minute video on each senior will be aired at the graduation.
Arizona high school seniors appear to be acing first-ever civics requirement BY DUSTIN QUIROZ Cronkite News
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he civics test that will be required of all graduating high school seniors this spring does not appear to have been that much of a test for members of the Class of 2017. The Arizona Department of Education does not keep statewide statistics, but calls to individual school districts found pass rates nearing 100 percent, with the number who have yet to pass getting smaller every day. Gov. Doug Ducey, an advocate of civics education, signed legislation in 2015 requiring that seniors pass a basic civics test before they can get a diploma, beginning with the Class of 2017. Details of how and when to give the test were left to school districts, but the apparently high success rate has left supporters of civics education pleased. For critics, the success rate is evidence that the test resembles little more than “barroom trivia.” “It eats up another instructional day, it gives another silly high-stakes test to our students and it’s completely
unnecessary,” said Joe Thomas, president of the Arizona Education Association. “This information is already covered, taught and assessed in a multitude of other courses that the students take.” A spokesman for state Education Superintendent Diane Douglas told AFN last fall that no guidelines were given to school districts in terms of how many times a senior could take the test – allowing for the possibility students could keep taking it until they passed. Katie Hansen, the social studies content specialist for the Phoenix Union School District, said she has “mixed emotions” about the test. While the current test may not be “aligned with our current standards and our content,” she said, the mere fact that a civics test is required demonstrates the importance of the topic to state officials. “When legislators decided that civics is an important part of our society that valued our content, it showed that what we teach is very much important,” she said. The experience of PUSD with the test seems to be similar to other districts contacted.
Questions are drawn from the same naturalization test given to people applying for U.S. citizenship. It covers everything from branches of government to presidential history to identifying Native American tribes. But while the naturalization test consists of 10 questions chosen from a list of 100 and given as an oral exam, the state test requires students to answer all 100 questions on a written multiplechoice form. A passing grade for both is 60 percent correct. Thomas called the legislation that backed the test a “dog-and-pony show” based on “shoddy” research that resulted in a “ridiculous” test. “We’re investing thousands of dollars a year,” Thomas said. “I think we need to go deeper than, you know, name the president.” But the chief academic officer for the Joe Foss Institute, which pushed for the tests, disagreed. Lucian Spataro said students are doing more than learning simple facts and echoed Hansen’s feeling that civics has been moved to the front burner alongside math, science and English.
“Kids are doing well on these tests because teachers are teaching in a way that rewards understanding and not memorization,” he said. Spataro said educators opposed to the test are downplaying the important work of teachers who do more than just enforce memorization but incorporate civics into the curriculum. “They need to give their colleagues more credit because they know full well that kids don’t learn long-term, through rote memorization, they learn long term through higher discussion,” Spataro said. Thomas disagreed. “If this test was necessary, some districts in the state would already be doing it,” he said. “If teachers really felt that it was necessary for kids to take a test like this, we would already have this assessment.” Before the test, however, civics was “a subject area that wasn’t being emphasized,” Spataro said. He compared it to English, where you need to “learn the alphabet before you write a sentence.” “Before you can have higher level discussion about subjects and disciplines, you have to know the facts,” he said.