Forward or back? That's the key question to ask in Arizona's school superintendent race

About 1.1 million public school children in Arizona are at a crossroads, facing teacher shortages, cheapskate lawmakers and learning losses brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The race for superintendent of public instruction leaves Arizona voters with a stark choice of who best to navigate it all: Democrat Kathy Hoffman, the incumbent with a background in education, or Republican Tom Horne, a political lifer with a divisive record on diversity.

Media coverage and political ads have framed this race as a culture war over critical race theory, social-emotional learning and so-called “Q-chats.”

That’s powerful campaign talk designed to sow fear, anger and division deep enough to overshadow what the job of a superintendent really is and the impact the person has in shaping the lives of Arizona's youngsters.

The actual job is largely administrative with responsibilities that include enforcing Arizona Board of Education policy, distributing state and federal funds to public schools, and communicating and advising lawmakers, educators and the public.

The schools chief doesn't set policy, but the position does confer vast influence and a tall bully pulpit.

How that bully pulpit is used matters. These two candidates are proof of that.

Hoffman comes from the education world

Hoffman took office in 2019. She’s a former preschool teacher who understands the challenges educators face in modern classrooms.

The pandemic dominated her first term, and she chose to navigate the crisis by focusing on student mental health and expanding broadband access in rural areas and underserved sections of Tucson and Phoenix. She also brought in subject-matter experts to run key parts of her administration, quickly doled out federal COVID-19 funding and made it a priority to track programs for progress.

Hoffman, Horne spar:5 takeaways from Arizona schools chief debate

Her reputation on diversity took a hit when she fired the state’s first associate superintendent for diversity, equity and inclusion. But her positions supporting free preschool and education in Indian Country largely offset that decision.

She’s endorsed by the Arizona Education Association, the hugely influential teachers’ union behind the #RedforEd movement of 2018.

Horne comes from the political world

Horne is a former two-term superintendent of public instruction, having first taken office in 2003. His tenure was marked by a fight over ethnic studies in Tucson that made national headlines.

Horne, in 2010, successfully lobbied state lawmakers to ban ethnic studies, saying the coursework radicalized Latino students.

Horne believes that people should be treated as individuals, a noble position on the face of it. But he doesn't believe longstanding problems faced by marginalized groups need special intervention. His detractors consider his stance Pollyannish and insufficient to turn back the realities of systemic and institutional racism that face a majority-minority student population in the state.

Horne argued that ethnic studies segregated students by race to teach them to hate America.

He also opposed bilingual education, saying English-only immersion classes were better for ensuring language proficiency. Diversity advocates say this approach separates students from English-speaking peers, making it harder to learn a new language. They also say that STEM instruction benefits greatly from a bilingual approach, especially in the earliest stages.

Horne also has served as attorney general, where he faced ethics investigations from the FBI and special attorney generals; neither probe resulted in criminal charges.

One looks ahead, the other looks back

Whether Hoffman or Horne, the candidate who becomes superintendent will face plenty of issues.

There is the ongoing fight over critical race theory: What is it? Is it being taught? Should it be taught? And if so, how?

Horne strictly opposes CRT, taking a pedantic approach of debating the originally intended academic vision and definition, rather than focusing on how the phrase has come to represent the ways diversity advocates hope the classroom can be a place to reduce the underpinnings of racist thought before they can metastasize into discriminatory actions.

The debate over social-emotional learning will morph into one of the most pressing issues our society faces: What’s wrong with boys? Young males are dropping out of college at a much higher rate than their female counterparts. They’re leaving the workforce in droves, and all too often, they’re the culprits behind mass shootings.

Public schools will have to be a vital component if we’re going to solve these problems.

Hoffman recognizes this and embraces new research and techniques meant to engage young males who might find themselves at risk and overlooked.

Horne, meantime, calls for a return to a bygone era where kids were expected to sit still or else, and he believes the best way to move the achievement needle is to simply demand more and better of students. He says the solution to boys and post-secondary success lies in expanded technical and vocational education.

Who would best lead us out of the pandemic?

On the social front, “Q-chats” have become the latest educational culture war entry. Hoffman sides with diversity advocates who paint the anonymous computer chats as safe spaces for LGBTQ youngsters to find support.

Horne sides with those who consider them oversteps of parental authority and potential breeding grounds for sexual predators. But Horne has zero credibility on this issue. He destroyed it when he defended disgraced former state Rep. David Stringer, who was once accused of child sex crimes.

No other issue, however, is as significant and pressing as finding our way back from the pandemic. We’ve reopened society and ditched our masks, but a generation of kids is behind in countless ways after trying to learn from home.

Among other things, Arizona needs to find and retain more STEM teachers, and to attract more quality teachers into the classroom and have them stay. But it could be time to reimagine the system from the ground up.

Voters will need to decide whether they want to look ahead for new ideas with Hoffman or to the past with solutions from Horne.

This is an opinion of The Arizona Republic's editorial board.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Kathy Hoffman or Tom Horne? The key question to help you decide