According to ArizonaCentral.com, the saga began Arizona's ethnic studies law took effect on January 1, 2011. The law bans courses that promote the overthrow of the U.S. government, encourage resentment toward a race or class of people, are designed solely for students of a certain ethnic background, and advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of students as individuals.
State senator John Huppenthal wrote the law with the help of Arizona's then-Superintendent of Schools, Tom Horne. Now Arizona's Superintendent of Schools, Huppenthal cut the TUSD budget by 10% each month until it modified or ended its Mexican-American studies classes. An administrative law judge had affirmed Huppenthal's finding that the program was ethnically divisive and violated the law restricting ethnic-studies courses.
Confronted with this reality, the TUSD Board voted 4-to-1 to suspend its controversial "Mexican-American studies program." In its place, TSUD will develop a curriculum that is to be integrated into a more general social studies program.
Had the TUSD Board failed to comply, TUSD would have lost $4.9M beginning in January 2012 and as much as $14M by the end of the fiscal year. The Board had previously determined that it would be too costly to appeal the decision by the Arizona administrative-law judge.
According to Huppenthal, "The problems are so deep and so wide, it would be almost impossible to cure the program."
The Motley Monk thinks that ethnic studies programs are an excellent way to preserve and explore its culture and heritage, especially in a culturally diverse society. There are many foundations and programs dedicated to this endeavor, for example, The Kosciuskzo Foundation, which is dedicated to promoting educational and cultural exchanges between the United States and Poland and to increasing American understanding of Polish culture and history.
The problem with many of the ethnic studies programs that have proliferated in the nation's public schools is that they don't belong there. Imagine a public school teaching a "Catholic ethnic studies course"! Instead, ethnic studies courses should be provided by the ethnic group that wishes to preserve and explore its culture and heritage and and those courses should be paid for by those parents who wish their children to learn about diverse cultures.
Let the discussion begin...
To read the ArizonaCentral.com article, click on the following link:
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2012/01/10/20120110tucson-ethnic-studies-fate-weighed.html
To learn about The Kosciuskzo Foundation, click on the following link:
http://www.thekf.org/
Perhaps the most effect evidence portrayed in Judge Kowal’s 37-page decision (also available online) was his deconstruction of an audit that Arizona School Superindent Huppenthal commissioned from Texas-based Cambium Learning, Inc. In its preparation of its report, the Cambium auditors did little more than visit a fraction of the Mexican-American Studies classes.
ReplyDeleteThe auditors reviewed almost no course materials or texts; reviewed virtually no student work (testimony at the Kowal hearings revealed the Mexican-American Studies department lied to the auditors, claiming student work always went home with the students and, so, was unavailable for review); made no ‘surprise’ visits (the department director, Sean Arce, had been tipped off to their schedule). As for the Cambium auditors’ contention that the program caused student achievement to improve, they conducted no independent research to arrive at that conclusion, but rather relied entirely on the very suspect ‘studies’ performed by the Mexican-American Studies faculty itself.
The Cambium auditors did learn that the Mexican-American Studies educators kept almost no curricula or lesson plans on file, a fundamental violation of education protocol. In short, the teachers appear to be just winging it in most of the classes. Of the handful of curriculum units the Cambium auditors found, a third of them included material and subject matter that even these demonstrably supportive auditors concluded were highly political and inappropriate for high school students.
The issue of student achievement long has been at the heart of the debate over the Tucson United School District’s program. Suffice to say, there never has been anything like a peer-reviewed study of student achievement. Never. Ever. For many years, the department (and, indeed, the district) regularly cited a handful of charts cobbled together by the program’s founder, Augustine Romero, that made all manner of fanciful claims about the program’s academics-improving magic. None of Romero’s data have ever been reviewed by an honest, independent panel of peers.