The Sad State of Education in Arizona

I could make commentary about how Arizona lacks in it's educational funding, but that wouldn't be half of the scope I would want to speak about. I want to rant on about the ridiculousness of the standards for teachers. The Grand Canyon State's criteria isn't so grand. The "professional" knowledge portion of the AEPA exam was laughable. As long as you chose answers which involved heterogenously grouping students, using multiple modalities for instruction, and fostered good self esteem you had a great chance of answering correctly. While I admit there are many culturally diverse students in our classrooms, it was insane how many questions referred to it, and out of 100 multiple choise questions there were only 3 that addressed students with special needs. Unbeleivable. Now the special education test I took was not even considered professional knowledge, but content area. I beleive I need more professional knowledge and training to address the needs of children with different social, emotional, educational and physical needs. My expertise in law and the ability to ensure every student is able to live up to their potential would be a more specific and arduous task. The state of Arizona feels otherwise. Maybe that is why we are consistently ranked low in our quality and commitment to educating our young and vulnerable.