Thread: Ariz schools' racist ethnic studies program ruled illegal

PHOENIX (AP) — An administrative law judge ruled Tuesday that a Tucson school district's ethnic studies program violates state law, agreeing with the findings of Arizona's public schools chief.

Judge Lewis Kowal's ruling marked a defeat for the Tucson Unified School District, which appealed the findings issued in June by Superintendent of Public Instruction John Huppenthal.

Kowal's ruling, first reported by The Arizona Daily Star, said the district's Mexican-American Studies program violated state law by having one or more classes designed primarily for one ethnic group, promoting racial resentment and advocating ethnic solidarity instead of treating students as individuals.

The judge, who found grounds to withhold 10 percent of the district's monthly state aid until it comes into compliance, said the law permits the objective instruction about the oppression of people that may result in racial resentment or ethnic solidarity.

"However, teaching oppression objectively is quite different than actively presenting material in a biased, political and emotionally charged manner, which is what occurred in (Mexican-American Studies) classes," Kowal wrote.

The judge said such teaching promotes activism against white people, promotes racial resentment and advocates ethnic solidarity.

Huppenthal has 30 days to accept, reject or modify the ruling. If he accepts the judge's decision, the district has about 30 days to appeal the ruling in Superior Court.

"In the end, I made a decision based on the totality of the information and facts gathered during my investigation — a decision that I felt was best for all students in the Tucson Unified School District." Huppenthal said in a written statement.

Messages left for a district spokeswoman Tuesday night weren't immediately returned. In the past, district officials have said they can't afford to the financial hit that Huppenthal's decision would bring.
The battle over the ethnic studies program escalated shortly after Arizona's heavily scrutinized immigration enforcement law was passed in April 2010.

The program's supporters have call challenges to the courses an attack on the state's Hispanic population, while critics say the program demonizes white people as oppressors of Hispanics.

Huppenthal ordered a review of the program when he took office in January after his predecessor, Tom Horne, said the Mexican-American Studies program violated state law and that Huppenthal would have to decide whether to withhold funding.

Huppenthal, a Republican, had voted in favor of the ethnic studies law as a state senator before becoming the state's schools chief.

http://news.yahoo.com/ariz-schools-e...021635252.html

firedoglake.com
By: Michelle Chen
Thursday December 29, 2011 11:55 am


Tucson students occupy a school board meeting (Image: thesoundstrike.info)


Cross-posted from CultureStrike, a new project that fuses art and activism in the struggle for immigrants’ rights.
While students were on their holiday break, Arizona issued a disturbing wake-up call to anyone who thought the education system had evolved to reflect America’s diversity. In a legal challenge to a controversial law passed in 2010, an administrative law judge pummeled a flagship educational initiative by supporting restrictions on programs based on Latino history and culture.


The judge decided that the curriculum used in Tucson’s Mexican American studies programs was biased against white people, apparently because it advocates critical historical perspectives and emphasizes struggles of indigenous and Latino communities, as well as the links between that legacy and contemporary politics. The ruling comes as no surprise, as the struggle between the school district and school superintendent John Huppenthal has been dragging on for months. The focus now is on a pending federal lawsuit aimed at halting the law.

CNN quotes from ruling:

In Tuesday’s ruling, administrative law judge Lewis Kowal said the auditors observed only a limited number of classes. He added, “Teaching oppression objectively is quite different than actively presenting material in a biased, political, and emotionally charged manner.”



“Teaching in such a manner promotes social or political activism against the white people, promotes racial resentment, and advocates ethnic solidarity, instead of treating pupils as individuals,” Kowal wrote. He cited a lesson that taught students that the historic treatment of Mexican-Americans was “marked by the use of force, fraud and exploitation,” and a parent’s complaint that one of her daughters, who was white, was shunned by Latino classmates after a government course was taught “in an extremely biased manner.”

So to sum up, it is “extremely biased” to teach critical viewpoints of the oppression, displacement and systematic discrimination that Mexicans and other groups have encountered throughout U.S. history. Because for students to learn about the many atrocities strewn along the path of Manifest Destiny would upset the national narrative of continual social progress, rugged individualism, and free enterprise. And once the veneer of triumphalism begins to crack, students might start to use their often-neglected critical intellect to unravel myths of “personal responsibility” and “equal opportunity” that have propped up neoliberal dreams for the past few generations.


The ruling’s ideological rationale encapsulates the political fictions fueling ethnocentrism in public schools. That’s precisely why many students yearn for education that pushes past negative media portrayals and stereotypes of people of color (and they’re willing to agitate for it). Tucson high school student Korina Lopez, whose father teachers in the district, told Democracy Now!, “It’s very important to me because I know that it teaches a deeper understanding of history and the things you learn. And it just gives you a whole new appreciation of your community and society.”


Ethnic studies in public schools has long been under siege. Though the programs have flourished, enrolling hundreds of elementary, middle and high school students, the law, HB 2281, aimed explicitly to penalize educators that have fought to introduce more critical pedagogy.


According to the federal legal complaint filed by ethnic studies advocates and teachers this fall, the state’s then-school superintendent Tom Horne declared that the Mexican-American Studies Department of Tucson’s No. 1 unified school district “[p]romotes the overthrow of the United States Government.”


The witchhunt rhetoric surrounding the program reflects the overarching paradox of the state’s charge of “bias” in ethnic studies. A glance at the demographic structure of Tucson’s school system shows that individual opportunity doesn’t exactly thrive in communities riven by deeply rooted racial and economic segregation.


The Arizona government’s preference for “teaching oppression objectively” certainly plays out in ironic ways. Authorities have no qualms displaying their own biases when it comes to policing schools and communities. The most glaring example is SB 1070, the law that would encourage the profiling and detention of suspected undocumented immigrants. The state has also marginalized teachers who fell short of “fluency” standards–i.e. people with Spanish accents who teach kids with limited English. At one school in Phoenix, reported the Wall Street Journal last year, “State auditors have reported to the district that some teachers pronounce words such as violet as ‘biolet,’ think as ‘tink’ and swallow the ending sounds of words, as they sometimes do in Spanish.”


If only more Arizona officials had been schooled in the very programs that they seek to outlaw. According to the Save Ethnic Studies campaign, the programs have proven effective not only at supporting academic performance in the conventional sense–higher graduation rates and test scores–but helping close the profound “achievement gaps” that plague low-income communities of color. The campaign stresses that the ethnic studies model incubated in Tucson has become a national model:

98 percent of the students say they do homework at night to keep up with the next day’s class. 95 percent discuss what their learning with their parents. Students have given reports to the TUSD board, Pima County Board of Supervisors, the Arizona state legislature, the Black Congressional Caucus and the Hispanic Congressional Caucus.


“There’s a big myth up there that these classes are about immigration”, says Augustine Romero, Director of Student Equity at TUSD. “It’s actually about analyzing problems in the real world and addressing those problems by coming up with solutions.”

Analyzing problems in the real world and coming up with solutions. If officials think that’s anathema to a sound education, then they’ve given civil rights advocates the most principled argument yet for why ethnic studies is so vital for the next generation of community leaders.

http://my.firedoglake.com/meeshellch...ools-struggle/

January 4, 2011

TUSD shakeup: What could it mean for Ethnic Studies?

Reporter: Craig Smith

TUCSON (KGUN9-TV) - Tuesday night's leadership shakeup at TUSD could signal a real change in direction in the district's fight with the state over TUSD's controversial ethnic studies program....and may signal whether the district will stop fighting altogether.

At that board meeting, in just a few minutes, we saw a new member take over for Judy Burns, who died in office, and we saw him join an alliance that put a controversial board member back in the President's chair. The changes raise the prospect of a real change in the district's stance on ethnic studies.

In late December a judge backed state superintendent John Huppenthal's ruling that TUSD's Mexican American Studies program breaks state law because, he claims it promotes resentment toward whites and is designed for students of one race. As a penalty, he can cut millions in state funds to the district.

In May, Ethnic Studies supporters chained themselves in the board room when TUSD President Mark Stegeman suggested changing the program to comply with the law.

In August the board replaced Stegeman as President.

Longtime board member Judy Burns was a strong defender of the program, and behind bouncing Stegeman as President.

Tuesday, Alexandre Sugiyama took the seat vacant since Burns death in October. In roughly an hour he was the swing vote to put restore Stegeman as President. Soon after, he was asked if he supports leaving Mexican American Studies unchanged.
He said, "It is hard to support something that the State has considered is in violation of the law; and just having to swear an oath to support the State Law that's a very difficult position to be in."

County School Superintendent Linda Arzoumanian appointed Sugiyama based on committee recommendations.

KGUN9 reporter Craig Smith asked her: "How important was the whole Ethnic Studies controversy in your consideration?

Arzoumanian: "I don't believe it was part of the consideration. They had the one rule: no single issue candidates; and so we had no discussion. There was no question asked about it."

But Richard Martinez, the attorney representing Ethnic Studies teachers fighting to preserve Ethnic Studies, sees a power shift towards surrendering to the state over ethnic studies.

"It appears to be a three-two swing that one, there will be no appeal by TUSD and two, that there will be a three-two vote to end the Mexican American Studies program."

Doctor Sugiyama has said he hasn't made a firm decision on what he wants to do regarding Ethnic Studies though he did describe how much weight he gives to abiding by the law the program conflicts with.

Dr. Sugiyama and Dr. Stegeman both teach economics at the U of A. Stegeman says he did not urge Sugiyama to try for an appointment to the board.

He says Dr. Sugiyama had expressed an interest without any prompting from him. Dr. Sugiyama says he was interested even before Judy Burns' death created a vacancy.




http://www.kgun9.com/news/local/136706363.html

Looks like trouble may be a brewing judging by this comment left at the article:

"Enlighten TUSD" Night!
5:30pm-9:00pm
Tuesday, January 10th
TUSD Administration Building
1010 E. 10th Street, Tucson, AZ 85719
(2 Blocks East from the Northeast corner of Broadway/Euclid)
Don’t forget to bring signs, noise-makers, candles,