On a recent weeknight, high-school junior Breanna Angulo sat beside her parents jotting notes. The three are taking a class together, learning — in Spanish — how to get to college.
“The basic GPA has to be 3.0, unweighted, or more, but not less,” said Salvador De La Torre, a tax preparer who moonlights once a week as a college-preparation instructor at Westview High School. “If they get a 2.0, unweighted, there are still colleges that accept them, but they won’t receive scholarships or help. They’ll struggle more in the acceptance process.”

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer is putting her weight behind a bill that would give more money to schools where students perform well or improve on state tests, but opponents fear the proposal could take money from struggling schools.
Senate Bill 1444, proposed by Brewer and sponsored by Senate Education Chairwoman Kimberly Yee, would base a portion of school funding on the state’s A-F system, which grades schools and districts primarily on how students perform on state tests.

Arizona schools, already squeezed by massive recession-era funding cuts, could see fewer federal dollars for poor and special-needs students if Congress fails to reach a compromise this week to avoid automatic cuts.
The so-called sequester would slice federal funding for Arizona’s schools by about 5 percent.