Yesterday Arizona's new Superintendent of Public Instruction announced that Tucson Unified School Districts's Mexican American Studies (MAS) violates state law, and if the program is not ended or modified it could cost the District up to $15 million in state funds.
Acting on a new state law, Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction John Huppenthal has condemned the Tucson Unified School District's controversial Mexican-American studies courses and warned the district could lose a portion of its state funding if it does not comply with the law within 60 days.
Gov. Jan Brewer signed the law last year. It bans classes in kindergarten to 12th grade that promote the overthrow of the U.S. government, promote resentment toward a race or class of people, are designed primarily for pupils of one ethnic group or advocate ethnic solidarity. Arizona Republic
Know what's odd? Huppenthal based his findings on a $170,000 report that his office commissioned, but the report doesn't square with what Huppenthal said yesterday. In fact the study found that
"... no observable evidence was present to suggest that any classroom within Tucson Unified School District is in direct violation of the law..." New Times
The 120-page study does offer some suggestions to improve the Tucson program, but many of these concern district communications and other administrivia, not classroom instruction or the curriculum. In the end the study recommends keeping MAS as a core course -- not doing away with it as Huppenthal had hoped. He didn't mention that at his press conference yesterday.
From the beginning this has been a case of Mexican haters like Senator Russell Pearce and then-Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne (now AG) wanting to get rid of MAS, because its courses don't regurgitate the Great White Man's Story. First, in 2010 they passed HB2281, an ethnic studies ban that would place the MAS curriculum in violation of state law, or so they believed. When former Republican State Senator John Huppenthal took over as education chief this year, he picked up where Horne left off: he just needed a curriculum audit to prove what he and other Mexican bashers already knew. But then the study, their study, didn't support their allegations. Whoops!
No matter. Lie.
Which is what Huppenthal did yesterday when he stood before the press and alleged:
Texts and other materials for the junior-level courses referenced White people as "oppressors" and "oppressing" Latino people.
Now why in the world would the indigenous people who lived in the Southwest before the 16th century think the Europeans who came here were "oppressors"? Might it have something to do with the missionization of the region, the constant wars, the enslavement, the outright genocide? Same with the Mexican people who settled the region long before Easterners started showing up in the 19th century -- stealing Mexican land, robbing their resources, killing their families, assuming political control. That's the "oppressive" history of the region, deal with it, but Huppenthal doesn't like that word or that depiction. He reminds me of Lynne Cheney when she was writing her diatribes about multicultural studies -- cherry-pick a line here, condemn a passage there because it says a bad thing about George Washington (or a good thing about MLK).
I've long argued that the provisions of the ethnic studies ban are so vague and broad that officials could use them to outlaw any multicultural course they don't like. Let's say I teach Native American literature, which is sorta more relevant here than reading Ibsen. Find me a recent novel by an indigenous writer that doesn't "promote resentment" toward the occupiers or mention "oppression." I guess the Arizona statute wants me to use texts that describe how Native people here welcomed the Europeans. Good luck finding that.
Huppenthal also complained that the program is "designed for pupils of a particular ethnic race" because more than 90 percent of MAS's enrolled students are Latino. Duh, over 90 percent of the students in some of the district's schools are Latino, so you'd find the same high percentage in math class. Rather than study their own heritage, the heritage that defines the Southwest, Huppenthal expects predominantly Hispanic classrooms to learn only about Betsy Ross. Doing otherwise might "promote ethnic solidarity," and we can't be having any of that! Shame, shame if we instill a sense of pride in our students.
But here's the kicker: It turns out that the "findings" Huppenthal has been spewing to the press don't jibe with the conclusions in the report. In fact, the curriculum audit commends MAS, writes Stephen Lemons today in New Times:
[T]he audit conducted by the Florida-based Cambium Learning, Inc (which was commissioned by Huppenthal himself) found that none of the four prongs of the law were violated by any of the various literature, history, government or art courses that MASD offers. In addition, the audit, which is overwhelmingly positive, depicts courses that are popular with students and the community, and, more importantly, effective.
"High school juniors taking a MASD course are more likely to pass the reading and writing portion of the AIMS subject tests if they had previously failed those subtests in their sophomore year. Consequently, high school seniors enrolled in a MASD course are more likely to graduate than their peers... [Student] achievement is due to the sense of pride that develops through their accomplishments with highly effective teachers..."
my emphasis
With those kind of results, I can certainly see why the dimwits in Phoenix want to put an end to the program: Higher test scores, better graduation rates, more likely to attend college, a sense of pride, committed and excellent teachers. Oddly, none of that showed up in Huppenthal's press conference yesterday.
There are more than 13,000 students in the Tucson Unified School District and fewer than 700 take this course. They like it so much that in April, when the School Board threatened to scuttle MAS, a handful of students, in a fantastic act of civil disobedience, literally took over the meeting and stopped the vote. Sheesh, I can't remember liking any class enough to risk jail time by protesting its inclusion in the curriculum!