My People's history of Genocide: Save Ethnic Studies.

The greatest crime of the ban on ethnic studies and Tucson's "book burning", I think, is that it attempts to deny the process of genocide that our government - at all levels - continues to employ today against people of color, especially Indigenous peoples. It is the perpetration of a massive lie.

I'm descended directly from Governor William Bradford of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and carry the genes of Brigham Young in my blood - I know my people's history very well, thanks partly to many of the the books now banned in Tucson schools. But how I derive my social privilege is also obvious - this effort to try to minimize or justify things like racism, mass incarceration, exploitation, patriarchy, war, poverty, and government repression, among other forms of violence, depends on keeping us all pretty stupid. In the end these White lies serve to perpetuate the continued desecration of sacred sites, the seizure of land for development and highways, and the subversion of cultural and religious rights to undermine the resistance of Indigenous communities and those of color. I don't know how people can really deny that a genocidal project is still underway - of which this ban on teaching the People's true history is a big part.

They may try to burn the books and bury the truth, but it doesn't take an expose to see that my ancestors raped and stole their way across this land and built our nation of laws on the institution of racism, and we continue to in so many ways today. Those who would lie to future generations about such transgressions are invested in the continued destruction of resistance to all that is wrong with White Supremacy, which is very much alive and well in our halls of Justice and Commerce. We cannot let it win. It is the truth of "my people's" history that is being questioned here, too, and the redemption or continued corruption of our collective soul is at stake...

 

NO HISTORY IS ILLEGAL!!!

check these folks out....

----------NETWORK of TEACHER ACTIVIST GROUPS------------

Our Mission

The Network of Teacher Activist Groups (TAG) is a national coalition of grassroots teacher organizing groups. Together, we engage in shared political education and relationship building in order to work for educational justice both nationally and in our local communities.
TAG believes that education is essential to the preservation of civil and human rights and is a tool of human liberation.

Every child has a right to a high quality, equitably funded, public education based on:

• Participatory democratic principles
• Community empowerment and self-determination
• A challenging, comprehensive and critical curriculum
• Respect for cultural diversity and a commitment to anti-racism
• Equipping all students to deeply understand the roots of inequality and oppression and preparing them to act to change the world

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1. Democratic School Governance:

TAG supports efforts to strengthen schools and communities by ensuring and protecting local parent, educator and student leadership of school governance at all levels. We believe in diverse, democratically elected local school boards and councils. We support the creation of structures that enable meaningful and informed inclusive participation.

2. School and Community-Based Solutions to School Transformation:

TAG believes that local communities and those affected by school reform should be looked to for the wisdom and knowledge to transform their local schools. This process should be bottom-up, participatory and highly democratic to engage schools and communities in school improvement and transformation. There should be mutual responsibility and accountability among educators, families, youth, and communities. This process must secure the voice, participation and self-determination of communities and individuals who have been historically marginalized.

3. Free, Public and Equitable Educational Opportunities for All Students:

TAG supports measures that ensure every student access to a fully funded, equitable public education that is not threatened by market-based reforms such as vouchers, charter schools, or turnarounds by entities that divert public funds to private enterprise. We demand increased funding to end inequities in the current segregated and unequal system that favors those with race or class privilege. We believe that resources should be distributed according to need, and particularly to those historically under-resourced by the impact of structural, racial and economic discrimination and disinvestment. Public schools should be responsive to the community, not the marketplace.

4. Curricula and Pedagogies that Promote Creative, Critical and Challenging Education:

TAG supports transformative curricula and pedagogies that promote critical thinking and creativity in our students. Curricular themes that are grounded in the lived experiences of students are built from and extend community cultural wealth and histories. We promote a pedagogy that leads to the development of people who can work collaboratively, solve problems creatively, and live as full participants in their communities. We promote a vision of education that counters the multiple forms of oppression, promotes democratic forms of participation (community activism) in our society and that generates spaces of love and hope.

5. Multiple, High-quality, Comprehensive Assessments:

TAG supports creation of assessments that identify school and student needs in order to strengthen, not punish, schools. We call for ending the reliance on standardized tests as the single measure of student and school progress and performance. Comprehensive assessment should include work sampling and performance-based assessment and should be an outgrowth of student-centered curriculum and instruction.

High stakes tests have historically perpetuated existing inequality; in contrast, fair assessments should be used to provide teachers with the information they need to meet the needs of all of their students. High-stakes tests should not be used to determine teacher and school performance. Instead, teacher evaluation should be an on-going, practice with the goal of improving teachers’ pedagogical, content, and cultural knowledge and should be based on authentic standards for the teaching profession, not student test scores.

6. Teacher Professional Development that Serves the Collective Interests of Teachers, Students, and Communities:

TAG believes that teacher professional development must support teachers to become effective partners with students and parents, and to be responsive to community needs. The form and content should be determined by teachers themselves with advice from parents and students and should work to develop social justice teaching practices.

7. Protect the Right to Organize:

TAG believes teachers have the right to organize to protect their rights as professionals and workers. Unions should be a place where teachers have a voice in creating and protecting an educational system that is set up in the best interests of students, families, and teachers. We support truly democratic governance of teacher unions and believe that they should champion policies that ultimately serve their communities.

8. School Climate that Empowers and Liberates Students:

TAG believes in working for school discipline policies and a school climate where students and teachers can thrive. Schools must be institutions that support the holistic social and emotional needs of all students, help equip young people with empathy and conflict resolution skills, and work to interrupt and transform oppressive dynamics that threaten the safety of the whole school community.

We support ending the practice of and reliance on punitive discipline strategies that push students out of school and into the military or prisons. Schools should remove zero tolerance policies, institute restorative practices and restorative justice models, and create time in the curriculum for community-building practices and social/emotional supports.

The Rope that Lynches: More on the AZ Ethnic Studies ban.

This update on the fight in Tuscon's school district over the Ethnic Studies ban comes from the Democrats' Blog for Arizona. It serves as a reminder that the mainstream media doesn't always have their "facts" right.

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More on the Star's up-is-down reporting on Ethnic Studies

by David Safier

I posted yesterday about a truly terrible, misleading article in the Star written by Alexis Huicochea about the achievement of students in the Mexican American Studies program. Read the first half, and you would think the MAS people are liars claiming their students achieve and graduate at a higher rates than other students. Read the second half -- the part few people get to -- and you'll find that the TUSD statistician and the Supe, John Pedicone, agree the program raises students achievement scores and graduation rates.

I'm going to go into a longer analysis after the jump, but I want to keep it short here. Here is a summary of the findings put together by the TUSD statistician David Scott.

In February, Scott analyzed the graduation rate of all Hispanic students in TUSD in the 2010 cohort and those in Mexican American Studies. The Mexican American Studies students graduated at an 11% higher rate: 89% compared to 78% for all Hispanics. The AIMS passing rate of Hispanics in Mexican American Studies was 3 to 5% higher than among Hispanics in general.

In March, Scott created a different comparison: every TUSD student who did not participate in Mexican American Studies (took no classes or less than one credit) compared to students who took one credit or more of Mexican American Studies. In 2010, Mexican American Studies students had a 93.6% graduation rate compared to an 82.7% rate for everyone else. Remember, the "everyone else" includes Hispanic and non-Hispanic students, including those at University High and other high performing schools.

Also in March, Scott looked at the percentage of students in and out of the Mexican American Studies program who did not pass AIMS their sophomore year, then passed it their junior year. The junior year passing rate for Mexican American Studies students tended to average more than 10% higher than those not in the program. To understand how significant this is, you have to realize that Mexican American Studies begins at the junior year, so more students passing as juniors can most likely be attributed to their participation in Mexican American Studies.

By any standard I can think of, those are incredibly impressive results.

Read more about the problems with Alexis Huicochea's article after the jump.

Here is the misleading opening paragraph of Alexis Huicochea's article:

TUSD officials have long claimed that Mexican American Studies students graduate at higher rates and achieve better AIMS scores than students not in the program. But an analysis by the district's statistician shows outcomes are roughly the same whether students enroll in those classes or not.

That's an incredibly deceptive opening. First, it contradicts the information I presented above. Second, any program for underperforming students would be delighted to say it has raised those students to the level of other students. If that's all the Mexican Studies program accomplished, it would be more successful that most programs nationwide. But according to the data, in terms of graduation, the program actually raises students higher than the TUSD average.

This is from the third paragraph:

The district's graduation rate of nearly 83 percent holds true for students who took a Mexican American Studies course and for those who did not, Scott found.

Scott's data from February has the Mexican American Studies students graduating at an 89% level, contradicting Huicochea's statement. But once again, even if the Mexican American Studies students simply matched the general graduation rates, that would be a cause for celebration, since it is substantially higher than the rates for the rest of the Hispanic population at TUSD.

Here is a statement so ridiculous on its face, it's hard to believe it made it through the article's first rewrite:

[Scott] also analyzed the program's impact on the AIMS passing rate and found that students who take Mexican American Studies classes are unlikely to pass the high-stakes class the first time.

That sounds like the program is a failure at getting its students to pass the test the first time they take it, doesn't it? The problem is, students originally take the AIMS test their sophomore year, and Mexican American Studies begins their junior year. Short of time travel, there is no way a program can affect the achievement of students a year earlier.

I'm adding the sentence following the one above for the sake of completeness, so it doesn't look like I'm cherry-picking, but for the life of me, I have no idea what it means.

They are likely to pass it after taking it five times, about the same rate as students who didn't take those courses.

The Star has a terrible track record when it comes to reporting on TUSD and the City Council. When it can slant the data to make either look bad . . . well, I guess that sells newspapers. Huicochea's article sounds like she was coached by Rob O'Dell, the king of the slanted City Council article.

It's important to get this stuff right. If Mexican American Studies is successful academically -- and now it looks like there is hard data saying it is successful -- that should override any frivolous, borderline-racist assertions by conservatives about how horribly un-American it is. When the Star clearly distorts the record, that is bad reporting which can have real world consequences.

Sometimes a Star editorial will gently take a "news" article to task for its assertions. I think this is an instance when that would be called for. Get the data, talk to the statistician and the Supe and write a more accurate representation of the study.