Today at 3:30 p.m., the Mexican American Studies Community Advisory Committee will hold an emergency press conference in front of TUSD headquarters, 1010 E. 10th St.
According to an announcement regarding the press conference, its purpose is “to protest the recent and arbitrary administrative moves by TUSD that will have the effect of endangering the program further when it is support that is needed at this very critical time.”
“The MAS board feels that these changes are counter productive and are direct attacks on the Mexican American Studies Program and its internal advocates. The board objects to these changes and strongly feels that it will produce a hostile environment to those who are directly responsible for the programs and who have been largely vested in its success,” said the announcement.
We talked to Raul Aguirre, a community representative on the Mexican American Studies Advisory Board, who said that the board and other supporters of TUSD’s ethnic-studies program are concerned that new TUSD Superintendent John Pedicone is beginning to make changes to Mexican American Studies that are the first step in dismantling the program, as five weeks remain before the state Public Instruction office makes a final decision on TUSD and the ethnic-studies classes.
Aguirre said the advisory board has been meeting with Pedicone and learned that he has begun steps that could lead to a full restructuring of the department, first making the classes service classes and not academic, which would make the classes electives and not classes that can be used for literature and history requirements.
The other change is bringing the department under the leadership of Lupita Cavazos-Garcia, assistant superintendent of government programs and community outreach, who moved here from Texas after being hired by former Superintendent Elizabeth Celania-Fagan.
Aguirre said when his board met with Celania-Fagan and and Garcia before Celania-Fagan left Tucson for Colorado, they were told by Garcia that she’s not a proponent of the program being academic, which statistics show that have the program as an academic model has helped in increasing test scores and graduation rates, particularly with Latino students.
“To turn back and make it a service program, an elective, is something we strongly disagree with,” Aguirre said.
“And to put someone in charge of those programs, well, some of the members of the board feel again, that this is part of a set up to begin to dismantle Mexican American Studies in TUSD.”
The Range has calls and e-mails out to Garcia and Pedicone seeking comment, and will follow-up with an update with their responses.
By e-mail Pedicone confirmed that organizational changes are underway, but that the classes will continue to be offered as academic offerings not electives.
Pedicone’s response:
It is critical that we organize the District with some sense of reason and academic order. In the past, the Ethnic Studies programs (I know you know there are four of them – African American, Pan-Asian American, Mexican American and Native American) have been moved around where, either it was convenient, or where, when people complained about who was in charge of them, they put them under whoever seemed to cause they least concern, real or otherwise, to groups or individuals. Finally, under the last two superintendents who tired of dealing with the concerns, they were placed directly under the Superintendent. The result is that there has been no real
supervision of the programs and very little articulation with the Assistant Superintendent who deals with many of the same issues that they do and needs to serve as the connection between the district initiatives and their work.
This makes no logical, organizational or academic sense. So, I have simply organized the function in order to have the person under which their purpose “fits” supervise them. The other three ethnic studies programs are very
happy with this organizational structure. They understand it and support it. The Mexican American Ethnic Studies Program is not. That concern is also being framed with an untrue argument that there is an attempt to harm the program and that is the farthest thing from the truth. It is simply organizing the Ethnic Studies Programs where they belong to eliminate the prior arbitrary placement of them.
In a follow-up e-mail, we asked Pedicone to clarify if this restructuring will change the classes from academic offerings to electives. Our question: “So the restructuring does not change the way the classes are offered – they remain academic offerings and not electives or service offerings?”
Pedicone’s response:
That is correct. My hope is that we will expand our reach for all of our students, not reduce the opportunities.
This article appears in Mar 10-16, 2011.
This is a great example of the law of karma. The staff of the Raza Studies program has harassed and intimidated any TUSD employees who did not agree with the ideology of the program. Now they are upset at the remote possibility of someone they cannot intimidate having oversight of the program.
All this is happening now because the lies and distortions about the Raza Studies program’s supposed success have been exposed by TUSD’s own statistician, David Scott. At the request of a school board member, Scott prepared spreadsheets that show the supporters of Raza Studies have been fabricating the stories of its academic success. In reality, the students in the program are no more successful on AIMS tests than students not in the program…exactly the same result that was shown in the Department of Education’s study that was conducted a year and a half ago. Raza Studies supporters have claimed that students in the program graduate at a 97% rate. That was also exposed as being untrue. Students in the program do not graduate at higher rates than students not in the program.
Now that the Emperor has been proven to be walking naked down the middle of the street, Pedicone has no choice but to do something to reign in this embarrassment to his district before it costs them 10% of their state funding.
The unbiased reporters here won’t report all the information availble to the public if only someone would make it availble. Just last week, the district’s own statisticians examined the claims made by Mexican American Studies proponents are found them to be mostly false.
The district ran empirical data in February on some of the central tenets about academic performance by ethnic-studies students.
They found:
Students who “take one or more Mexican American Studies classes are far less likely than other students to pass the (Arizona Instrument to Measure Standards) the first time.” They found that, “after all five test opportunities,” MAS students “achieve roughly the same passing rate” as their peers who took no ethnic-studies courses. This is in profound contravention of the claims that ethnic-studies students are superior to their peers at passing AIMS.
Claims are made about superior graduation rates, but considering the entire 2010 cohort of seniors, 83 percent of TUSD students graduated in four years.” This is true for students who did and did not take MAS classes.”
But even their graduation figure, 79 percent, is dramatically lower than the 97 percent graduation rate that ethnic-studies directors repeatedly claim. And it might also be the result of students replacing tough, traditional history and English courses with undemanding, virtually failure-free ethnic-studies classes.
Based on the district’s survey of graduating seniors, found “roughly the same proportion of MAS and non-MAS students intend to enroll in college after high-school graduation.”
“No one in the district ever cross-checked the data presented by program director Augustine Romero in the so-called “nine cohort studies” he produced several years ago because no one has ever seen the data!”(AZ Republic)
There are thousands of schools across the nation who do not have these “ETHNIC” classes and do very well without them. La Raza and MEChA should just tuck their tails between their legs and go back to Mexico or whatever Latin country South of the border. “We don’t need no stinkin’ ethnics classes.” Good old World History and American History will do just fine.
In a perfect world “good old world history and American history” would do just fine. Unfortunately, there are those who tend to omit large parts of our history because they find it uncomfortable. This defeats the purpose of teaching history at all. We look at our past to celebrate the triumphs, and learn from the mistakes. Telling only one side of the story is a disservice to students, teachers, and Americans as a whole. It’s also cowardly and un-American. Why stop with ethnic studies? Why not just chuck it all and make it up as you go along? We can do it with history, science, math, and every other course taught. That way, our students can graduate, secure in the knowledge that 2 + 2 = 15.
The ignorant and misinformed make great slaves. But then, you knew that, didn’t you?
If the proponents of the program keep crying wolf, no one will believe them or even want to come to their aid when they really do need help. Their lawyer is really giving them bad advice.
Who is the former Mes Am Studies Supporter? Why don’t you come out and state who you are, coward!