The governing board of the Tucson Unified School District has an educational, and moral, obligation to officially acknowledge the importance of Judge Wallace Tashima’s ruling that ARS 15-122 was unconstitutional because it was the product of racial animus directed at the students, teachers and administrators involved in the district’s Mexican American Studies program, and it was a violation of their right to freedom of speech.
Instead, the board voted down a resolution which declared that teachers have been freed from the racist restrictions which forbade them from using elements of the dismantled MAS program. The three members who formed the majority made a wrongheaded, possibly even shameful, decision.
Let me give the board majority the benefit of the doubt and assume they misunderstood the meaning of Judge Tashima’s ruling. He didn’t rule on the value of the MAS program itself. His ruling said the state legislature and the Department of Education used unconstitutional means to suppress the educational rights of a minority group. It was part of a long, proud tradition of our country moving toward granting civil rights to individuals and groups regardless of their ethnicity, race, religion, gender or sexual orientation. In this case, the issue was racism. Thanks to the ruling, the racists lost. That’s what the victory is all about.
And that’s what the governing board needs to acknowledge, publicly and formally. It should state that the judge’s ruling is an affirmation that the education of Tucson Unified students should not be dictated by racists, that the district will decide what it believes is the best way to give its students the best possible education, and it will always strive to respect their civil rights and their right to freedom of speech.
I want to believe all board members agree with this, but two problems stop them from giving the judge’s ruling the full-throated, public affirmation it deserves.
Some members of the majority feel conflicted about the MAS program as it existed before it was dismantled (When the district was wrestling with the Department of Education’s decision that MAS was illegal, Mark Stegeman and Michael Hicks were clear that they had concerns about the program. Rachel Sedgwick wasn’t part of the board at the time, and her statements as a board member have been ambiguous enough, it’s hard to know where she stands). They seem wary of making a positive, formal affirmation of Judge Tashima’s decision out of concern it will mean a reinstatement of parts of MAS they disliked.
They need to find a way to separate the two issues. If they want to fight against the reinstatement of some textbooks or other parts of the MAS curriculum, that’s their right as board members, but that shouldn’t conflict with their understanding that the ruling was primarily against allowing a racist agenda to dictate what can be taught in schools. They owe it to the community — especially the Mexican American community — to applaud the judge’s ruling, which returns the district’s right to determine what it believes is best for its students.
Some members of the majority are afraid a public statement supporting the judge’s ruling will stir up the divisiveness and rancor we saw when the MAS controversy was at its height. Rachel Sedgwick made that point at some length during the board meeting, saying we should encourage peace, not partisanship.
Sedgwick may be right. A public statement by the board affirming Judge Tashima’s ruling will very likely upset a number of people. People who are prejudiced against Hispanics, people who are threatened by programs like Mexican American Studies which they fear will turn Hispanics who should “know their place” into “uppity brown people,” people who support the covertly and overtly racist statements made by the state superintendents Tom Horne and John Huppenthal and their supporters in the state legislature are undoubtedly unhappy with Judge Tashima’s ruling.
But the district is responsible for educating its students, 60 percent of whom are Hispanic, not placating racists. When Brown v. Board of Education outlawed school segregation in 1954, it stirred up the hatred of people who feared and hated the idea of racial integration, but that didn’t mean supporters of the Supreme Court ruling remained silent to keep segregationists from reacting. Though this ruling is far less momentous than Brown v. Board, the same standard should be applied. Conflict tends to accompany progress. Advances in our attempts to make this a more perfect union by granting equal rights to groups whose rights are suppressed always meet with resistance. To give into the those who resist this kind of progress is wrong, pure and simple.
If some members of the board decide their ambivalence about the Mexican American Studies program is enough to stop them from publicly recognizing the importance of Judge Tashima’s decision, they’re letting their judgement be clouded by concerns which should be dealt with at a different time. If some board members would rather give in to possible rancor from racists rather than advocating strongly and publicly for the rights of the district’s students and staff to use education to work toward a less racist society, they are displaying cowardice, and that is shameful.
This article appears in Feb 1-7, 2018.
Could you provide us with a link to a complete copy of the MAS curriculum so we can understand what the course content actually was?
Whatever it was, it was not approved by the democratically elected school board in the district in a proper public process before it was used in the districts classrooms. To my knowledge, while controversies over it have been ongoing in the district and in the courts, a copy of it has never been available for public review.
Please correct that deficiency so we can understand this important topic better. The court decided that there were discriminatory motives in the way state level officials acted and the law the legislature passed was unconstitutional, but that does not necessarily affirm the validity of the curriculum as a course of instruction for TUSD (something only the school board can properly do, right?), nor does it reverse the failures in public process within the district before the state acted against the program, nor does it give the public a way to understand what was being taught, which is necessary with curricula taught in public schools.
Why do people keep asking us to take sides and pressure public officials to take certain actions on this without giving us the information we need to understand fully the curriculum that caused the controversy?
The racist addressing this subject is you David. You support an education system which has its boot on the throat of both Hispanics and Blacks holding them far below their potential as human beings.
The recent Stanford study makes this vividly clear. It calculates the highest possible gains for Blacks and Hispanics under the district system of education by ranking and identifying the best of the best.
Those gains are woefully short of the human potential of these students.
And, Tucson Unified is well short of even those gains.
As an unrelenting supporter of the district approach to education- opposed to the competitive environment necessary to evolve to a system which frees these students, you are a racist.
Now, you want Tucson Unified to plunge into that turmoil again. To go back to a system where you define Hispanic culture to be socialist/communist culture. Saluting Che Guevara as its hero. The evil monster who had 14,000 Hispanics shot in the back of their heads in Cuba. We can see how well that has worked in North Korea and Venezuela, two countries where they are both eating rats to survive.
Huppenthal calling Safier a racist.
Classic.
I find it quite timely as we learn that Clinton and Obama officials colluded with Russia to overthrow the election.
Ah John. John, John, John, John.
The TUSD Board Should Publicly Affirm that TUSD has suffered terminal moral degradation, and can not recover.
Finally someone with the cojones to call this what it is. Thank you.
That is a disgraceful response for a public official to have John. Nothing positive, all just personal attack and subjective opinion. 🙁
“…will very likely upset a number of people. People who are prejudiced against Hispanics, people who are threatened by programs like Mexican American Studies which they fear will turn Hispanics who should “know their place” into “uppity brown people,” “
This is just a straw man argument. And the quotes make it look like you’re quoting someone even though you’re putting words in people’s mouths. Words no one is actually saying.
The MAS program was a disaster, we should let it die and learn from it.
I wonder if French schools have the same issue when Spanish families move to France, or English schools when Scots move to England, or Chinese schools when N. Koreans move to China. Is the Mexican culture so different than the Tucson culture that the Mexican American students have a difficult time adjusting? I know a couple Mexican-Americans who didn’t have the MAS experience. One, at 28, has written and published three books, all written in English, I have not doubt he could have written them in Spanish. The other person is fluent in four languages, is a gifted musician, and is on the faulty at the University of Wisconsin. Just think what they would have accomplished had they had the MAS experience.
Then there is the racist thing. The bad guys in this scenario may or may not be racists, but it has nothing to with Mexicans; Mexican is not a race. I have the DNA results for a couple of Mexican American acquaintances: A1: Native American – 30%, Europe – 55%, Africa – 9%, ; A2: Native American – 46%, Europe – 38%, Africa – 10%. If these two are typical of Mexicans or Mexican Americans, class could be may be an issue, but not race. There is no Mexican race.
A modern education program should not be grouping students by race or ethnicity, but rather as individuals, i.e., no grouping. Basically, we are all different.
I would like to be able to understand what the MAS program was from looking at the curriculum myself, not from second hand judgments made by partisans on one side or the other or from drawing conclusions from excerpts taken out of context of the curriculum as a whole, which is all I’ve ever had the opportunity to see in the court proceedings, TUSD Board proceedings, and media reports I’ve consulted.
The history of NW New Spain / NW Mexico / SW United States is complicated, with many different actors — different Native American groups, different factions and distinct groups within the Spanish empire (representatives of the military, the administrative bureaucracy, parties within the Roman Catholic Church — the hierarchy, secular priests, various religious orders), and, later, after Mexico separated from Spain, Mexican settlers, the Mexican government and its military, U.S. government and its military and groups of settlers from the east.
If the curriculum was helping students understand the way certain groups have been economically marginalized or exploited, that is commendable. It is a part of our history that needs discussing. But whether the curriculum as a whole was representing the complexity of the history of this region in a dispassionate and unbiased way that can be considered fair to all parties and valid within the discipline of history is still an open question to those who have not had the opportunity to review the curriculum as a whole.
Republicans had concerns about the curriculum which Judge Tashima’s verdict seems to indicate they did not handle appropriately. The consequence of that is the law that was used to ban the curriculum is no longer a law. Well and good.
There is no need for the TUSD Board to “second” the judge’s verdict. That is not their proper role and not an area where they have authority. Their role is to ensure that a proposed curriculum in the public schools they govern is available for public review IN ITS ENTIRETY and, if it is to be approved for use in the future, that that is done in an open public meeting, with opportunity for public comment.
Since MAS existed, is there any data on how it affected student outcomes ? We ( tax payers) fund public education to prepare the next generation to become productive contributors to society. Did Mexican American Studies accomplish this better than the next best alternative ? Did more students get into more/better post HS grad education programs because of MAS ? Did those who went directly into the work force get better pay and positions because of MAS ? What about the opportunity cost ? Would students have benefitted more if the money had gone to Calculus, Coding, English, business math etc ? Why just Mexican American Studies ? How about other large hyphenated American groups like those of German, Irish, British, Asian , African, Canadian, Italian etc. decent ?
It feels like this is a special interest crusade with little regard to the value of the outcome to the student. “Winning”may mean that the students lose. It may be more valuable to analyze this program versus the next best alternative rather than wasting money on lawsuits and throwing around the ubiquitous racist tag.
BSINN:
Part of the evidence presented in the MAS trial was a study that indicated that the MAS program did improve graduation rates and academic performance across the board for the students who enrolled in it, versus a control group that did not enroll. There were some methodological objections raised and not everyone agreed about the studys validity, but the issue of whether or not MAS boosted academic achievement seems beside the point when you consider the problems with public process and TUSD curricula.
We live in a pluralistic society where all groups using publicly funded schools have to agree that curricula are fair and unbiased. That includes Republicans and Independents as well as Democrats or Aztlanians; Anglos as well as Mexican Americans and every other ethnic identity; Protestants as well as Catholics and Muslims and Jews and members of other religions and atheists; it also includes political progressives and socialists as well as libertarians worthy of note vis a vis another (Freedom Center created) curriculum that was recently found to have slipped into TUSD schools without Board approval. Managing a public education system that serves all of these groups well and fairly is a difficult and delicate business that requires competence, professionalism, and rigorous adherence to proper public process in governance.
The sad fact of the matter is that TUSD has mismanaged and continues to mismanage many of the governance processes that enable parents to entrust their childrens educations to a school system with confidence that professional hiring processes, transparent curricular adoptions, and appropriate application of funds will be handled competently and in a way that properly considers the best interests of ALL students enrolled and puts the best interests of students above the interests of political factions associated with whatever board majority happens to hold sway and above the interests of cronies in the network.
Reviewing both the COMPLETE MAS curriculum and the COMPLETE Freedom Center curriculum should absolutely be on the public agenda as approval of ESAs is about to be on the ballot. Lets take a good hard look at the full range of things never presented for public review and Board approval parents who elect not to remove their students from TUSD have good reason to assume their students may be taught in TUSD classrooms. Let the Board give a complete explanation of how exactly these two curricula began to be taught in the schools without Board approval and who was responsible. The retrospective report on what went wrong should be presented together with a prospective plan for preventing these kinds of curricular fiascos in the future.
Or, we could just admit that parents should not be locked into a massive public district system with this kind of an ongoing and deeply entrenched history of mismanagement, approve ESAs, and move on.
The judge ruled the Arizona law was racist, So much is getting lost in Mr. Safier’s column , Ms. Foster’s agenda item, and the various comments. Everything except the judge’s ruling appears to be political game playing and not about educating kids.
The USP, TUSD’s desegregation plan, requires cultural and multicultural classes. Under court supervision and the supervision of the Special Master, TUSD has cultural and multicultural classes that were developed after TUSD was prevented from offering MAS.
If this isn’t just political game playing in the run up to the next Board election, Ms. Foster & Mr. Safier should have been able to say precisely what TUSD’s current cultural and multicultural classes don’t provide.
Of course it’s political game playing in the run up to the next Board election, Lillian.
Political game playing is a large part of what goes on in TUSD, is it not?
One more reason among many that so many have chosen and will continue to choose to remove their children from the district. There are educational institutions in town where children are better served and parents’ energy does not get sucked into tracking and documenting malfeasance and conspicuous and recurrent failures of public process. Access to those kinds of institutions should be broadened. All the advocacy and Board watching in the world will not solve the problems in TUSD.
Foster’s resolution is not solely for political reasons. It is a necessary statement from the TUSD Board that was COMPLICIT with the State in shutting down MAS. Hicks and Stegeman did not merely vote to shutter the program when backed into a corner. They TESTIFIED on behalf of the State and against TUSD in the administrative hearing after Horne and Huppenthal declared MAS in violation of the discriminatory law. They carried Huppenthal’s water, as did former Superintendent John Pedicone.
Contrary to earlier posts here, this is not just a matter of learning about Mexican American heritage. As evidenced by the emotional statements of MAS students to the Board, MAS is about changing lives. Anyone who heard them and cares about the fate of disaffected, at-risk young people must look beyond the rhetoric spewed by those with discriminatory motives, which unfortunately resonated with so many.
As a practical and legal matter, the resolution is not necessary to reintegrate components of MAS. However, it is a means by which Hicks, Stegeman and now, unfortunately, Sedgewick (I had hoped she had a spine) can signal to TUSD staff who have been through the wringer that they are free to use their best professional judgment in designing curriculum. The legal victory put the power back with the board. Now they should redeem themselves by letting the professionals do their job.
John Huppenthal, you have no shame. You say Safier is a racist because he supports and wants to improve traditional public schools? You are dissembling. You were judged to have racist motives when you campaigned state-wide, with NO REFERENCE to MAS or to any particular educational program, that you would “Stop La Raza.” We remember the dog-whistle that promise sent to voters in Maricopa County and the far corners of the state in the aftermath of SB 1070. By appealing to racist sentiments to get votes, you became a racist yourself, no matter how many brown people you grew up around. Sedgewick and Hicks should contemplate that.
What is necessary to “reintegrate components of MAS” is a proper public review and public approval process in an open, public meeting.
Is TUSD a district where individual faculty members or groups of faculty members can use their “professional judgment” to introduce whatever curricular elements they choose, without elements of that curriculum having been approved by the democratically elected Board? If so, the public should be aware of that when making decisions about where to enroll their students.
It is possible to have a publicly approved curriculum that allows some latitude and faculty discretion. That would be done by specifying the scope and sequence and learning objectives for each unit, with a list of activities and materials that could be used to meet those learning goals. Faculty could choose from that list and tailor their instruction as they chose, as long as they met the learning objectives and a minimum level of content covered.
But the public needs to know what the learning objectives and potential materials to be used are, and stakeholders and constituents should agree that what is being taught is balanced and fair.
Honestly, I would love to have solid evidence to examine that would help me understand that this was indeed a valid curriculum. The devotion it inspired in many is impressive, but as month after month goes by and no one who takes an interest in MAS ponies up a complete curriculum to look at, I find myself doubting more and more that the program is something that would stand up to public examination by all stakeholders.
Why else would those who support it so strongly not just answer the question of what exactly the curriculum was and where anyone who is interested in learning more can review a complete copy of it?
Reminder – TUSD is anti-white, and parents of white students should send their children elsewhere.
It does seem like a lot of adults have some sort of PC axe to grind. Not much discussion about whether the kids are more qualified to excell in todays job market because they took MAS courses. Will Apple, Google, Boeing, Microsoft, Goldman-Sachs etc ( you gotta think big) be more impressed with TUSD students than the ones from India and China if they have taken MAS ? Tucsons DMA average income is below the US average. Not sure if more MAS will help fix it.