John Pedicone, the much-maligned Tucson Unified School District (TUSD) Superintendent, has extended an olive branch to the supporters of the Mexican American Studies Program.

On Monday, in nearly identical letters– one to UNIDOS (the young adult activists group who chained themselves to the school board dias and shut down the April 26 board meeting) and the Mexican American Studies Community Advisory Board– Pedicone said that “actions taken by the district have resulted in high levels of concern and, in many cases, frustration[understatement of the year].” He goes on to say that he has recommended that the TUSD board withdraw the proposal to reorganize Ethnic Studies, brought forth by Mark Stegeman, TUSD board president.

The intensity of the discussion has reached a point where it makes it difficult to consider any resolution at this time. [duh] The deep-seated feelings surrounding this program, either as a result of a strong affiliation to its purpose or, in other cases, a rejection of the premise for its inclusion has created a counter-productive atmosphere that must be changed.

This is a smart move by Pedicone, and I hope the board takes his suggestion. The hate speech fueled by a continuous blogging drumbeat and media blitz on radio and social media often distorted the intent of the proposal and blew the situation way out of proportion. On the day that Osama bin Laden– the world’s most wanted man was captured and killed– what was on the front page of the TucsonCitizen.com? Five stories related to Mexican American Studies.

Since the April 26 board room takeover, there have been several calls for civil discourse to bring out the facts surrounding the Mexican American Studies debate and allow for open discussion with respect from all sides (1, 2, 3, 4). Maybe the hate speech and spin will stop for a while, so this can be accomplished– before Attorney General Tom Horne and State Superintendent of Public Instruction John Huppenthal step in.

It’s time for radical love for humanity.

One of my lifelong inspirations has been my journalism professor, mentor, and advisor at Ohio State:  Martha Brian, a lifelong newspaperwoman and one seriously tough customer.

I knew how to write when I took her entry level reporting class, but Ms. Brian taught me to be a journalist. She taught me to dig for the truth, stick to the facts, check my sources, write concisely, meet the deadlines, think on my feet, never accept anything at face value, and always ask questions.

Ms. Brian suffered no fools, and she could spot a slacker a mile away. Her class was the flunk-out class. As the gate-keeper of the School of Journalism at The Ohio State University, you had to pass her class in order to progress. As budding journalist, she hammered four primary rules into us:

1. News stories should be 100% factual– no excuses. If a student journalist wrote a story with any factual error, she gave them a zero for that story– regardless of how exciting the story or how beautifully it was written.
2. Journalists meet their deadlines. To teach us this, she locked the door of the class room when the bell rang. It didn’t matter if you were sprinting down the hall toward the door, you didn’t get in, and you got a zero for the day’s work. No make-ups. No excuses.
3. Journalists investigate stories and seek out credible sources. We were taught to ask questions– lots of questions. We investigated and wrote one original news story during every class period.
4. The public has a right to know the truth. And it’s a journalists job to tell them. We were instilled with the ideal that journalists should be beholden to no one– not corporations, not politicians, not religious groups, not advertisers, not political parties, not activist movements– because it was our job to be unbiased in our reporting of the news to the American people. (Remember, these were the days of Woodward and Bernstein.)

Oh, Ms. Brian, how times have changed.

It’s a good thing Ms. Brian isn’t alive to see the degradation of  our profession. I can see her now in heaven in her neatly tailored suit, well-manicured hair, and little pillbox hat– a scotch on the rocks in one hand and a cigarette in the other– shouting “Error of fact! Error of fact!” at the blogosphere, sneering at FOX News’ “fair and balanced” slogan, and cursing the disappearance of news print  and paid journalists.

Ms. Brian’s Legacy and the Mexican American Studies debate

In the spirit of my mentor and the public’s right to know the truth about Mexican American Studies (MAS) debate, I’m calling on fellow bloggers and journalists to:

1. Stick to the facts and forget the spin.
2. Don’t take anything at face value.
3. Ask more questions.
4. Fight for transparency.
5. Check multiple sources and cite those sources. (We are the storytellers– not the authorities.)
6. Drop the editorializing– unless, of course, you’re writing an editorial.
7. Stop the name-calling, the bullying, and the put-downs.

And, again in the spirit of Ms. Brian, here are a some of my unanswered questions about the MAS debate:

1. What is the real budget for the MAS program and the other programs under Ethnic Studies? I have seen three budget figures published– one provided by TUSD School Board President Mark Stegeman and two others published by the Three Sonorans. I want full transparency in the funding for this and other TUSD programs supported by the desegregation monies.
2. What does the evaluation data reveal? MAS supporters claim that the program has been evaluated and proven effective multiple times. The Arizona Daily Star reported that a TUSD statistician found no statistical difference in graduation rates when he compared MAS graduates with others in TUSD. Dr. Stegeman’s statement said it resulted in 10 more graduations per year over the three years studies. Where is the truth here? How many studies have been conducted? How were they conducted? Who conducted them? Was quantitative or descriptive (ie, more casual) data collected?  Where is the data published?
3. What text books are being used in the MAS classes? I think the MAS program should provide a complete list of text books– since the course content is coming under fire from the right wing. (They’re teaching communism! They’re teaching Chicano Nationalism!) MAS supporters claim that the right is “cherry-picking” inflammatory passages from the texts (watch the attached video for some doozies). OK, I wouldn’t put it past them to be using that tactic, but how does the public know what they are teaching when no book list has been provided?
4. What are the course descriptions for the MAS classes? The curriculum link on the MAS website is very vague. Surely, course descriptions exist. Why not make them public?
5. Why has the MAS Community Advisory Board backed away from TUSD’s public forum? After the takeover of the TUSD meeting on April 26, MAS supporters chided the TUSD board for not holding the following meeting at a larger location. Now that the TUSD board is willing to hold a public forum– so all voices can be heard– they’re backing away from a meeting that the University of Arizona MAS faculty (many of whom also serve on the MAS Community Advisory Board) called for. (I guess that link has now disappeared from the TucsonCitizen.com.)
6. While we’re on the subject of the MAS Community Advisory Board: Are their meetings open to the public? If so, how are they publicized? How are people appointed to this board? How long are their terms of service? Are board members compensated monetarily for their time? How often do they meet? Why is there no diversity on the board? What is their relationship to the MAS programs at the UA and TUSD and to the TUSD Board? What is their authority over a taxpayer-funded public school program? Mark Evans’ article from the Tucson Citizen morgue explained the origins of the MAS program and the advisory board, but I still have questions.
7. How do the multiple familial and collegial relationships through the past four decades and across the multiple MAS support groups impact what is unfolding? Reading the Tucson Weekly’s article about MAS program and Chicano Nationalism movement of the 1970s connected many dots for me. There is a lot of cross pollination out there.
8. And the bottomline: Has the MAS program improved graduation rates among Latino youth? The 1998 article said the Latino dropout rate was 8.33%. What is it today?

And, finally, what is being done to help the tens of thousands of TUSD students who are not in MAS succeed? What is TUSD doing for those Mexican American, African American, Native American, refugee, mixed race, and poor non-minority students who need our help? Focusing so intensely on this one small program is clouding the bigger picture: Education in Arizona is in trouble, and public education nationwide is under attack. As long as were fighting and drawing lines in the sand, nothing will progress. We need full transparency, and we need a public forum where everyone’s voices can be heard– not just those who shout the loudest. We need to come together to fix this– or Tom Horne will fix it for us.

UPDATE: And while we’re on the accuracy in reporting theme, check out this story. MAS smear campaigns have resulted in a defamation of character lawsuit.
TUSD’s Ethnic Studies Saga Continues: John Ward files lawsuit against TUSD

You know how Internet surfing goes. You click here, click there and all of a sudden, you’re not in Kansas anymore. Well, that happened to me today.

I followed a few links and stumbled upon two blog posts related to John Munger’s interpretation of what is being taught in Tucson Unified School District’s Mexican American Studies (MAS) Programs. (In case you don’t know who Munger is, he’s a bigwig lawyer, former Republican candidate for governor in 2010, and former head of the Arizona GOP.)

Basically, Munger requested copies of MAS text books and wrote a critique of the curriculum based upon the text books. In his original blog post from January 2011 and in the abbreviated recent post on The Cholla Jumps blog, Munger makes a strong case that MAS courses are teaching communism. Earlier this week, I ran across this video claiming the same thing: MAS courses are teaching communism. (The Three Sonorans also stumbled upon this video and linked it here.) Now, I’m not much of a conspiracy theorist, but without even trying, I stumbled upon 3 conservative blog posts pushing the same communist indoctrination story.

Here is an excerpt from Munger’s analysis…

What they [MAS text books] did provide was a showpiece of classical Marxist oriented indoctrination of cultural and political oppression, incessant deprecation of anything not “Chicano,” including the US Constitution, capitalism, and European culture. Students are taught that they are part of an oppressed minority of “indigenous” people (how those who are principally Mexican in background are “indigenous to the Southwestern US is not explained), whose lands (California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas) have been stolen by the Europeans and should be taken back as a separate “Chicano” nation they call “Atzlan.”

They want political separation from the US based almost entirely on race and based on a Marxist economic model. Students are taught (sometimes subtly and sometimes expressly) that their “indigenous” culture has been corrupted by the predominant European culture of the US, that “Chicanos” should refuse to assimilate and instead should come together in “colonies” to exercise maximum political power until they are able to retake “Atzlan” as a separate nation— an explicitly “bronze” nation, incidentally, based almost entirely on racial profiling.

In the meantime they should recognize that capitalism is corrupt and they should work towards complete redistribution of wealth; that everyone is entitled to a home, healthcare, reasonably equal income, etc. Presumably Atzlan would be a place where Communism would finally, and happily, flourish.

Having read the books the students must read, as well as the Principles and philosophies of MEChA, I found many interesting quotes and facts.

First, there is NO book presenting American History generally, nor even the standard view of Southwestern American History—ALL the books speak solely from the point of view of the oppressed “Chicano,” with no effort to teach alternative thought or facts.

Second, the concepts and language in the materials is, frankly, classic Marxist indoctrination based on oppression and inculcation of hatred of anyone European or who might identify themselves as an American…

The results of this indoctrination are astounding. I have a photograph of one student of this program carrying a sign and protesting recently. The sign held by this student shouts in bold letters: “Dumb F*** Gringos. You Are Standing in Mexico Right Now!” Anyone who does not believe that racism, hatred, apartheid, and Marxism are being actively promulgated in these programs should think again. Every Arizonan should take the time to evaluate exactly what is being taught our children, with taxpayer money, in these Ethnic Studies programs and MecHa. [Emphasis added.]

This communism charge is significant because Arizona has laws on the books specifically prohibiting teaching communism– Arizona Revised Statute (ARS) 16-805. Arizona law has a lot to say about keeping us safe from communist indoctrination, but 16-805D is the real kicker. Basically, Arizona recognizes academic freedom– except when it comes to teaching communism.

D. It is the public policy of this state to protect the safety of the constitutional government of the state of Arizona by constitutional means and at the same time protect the rights of the members of our free society to speak, to assemble and to inquire, including the principle of academic freedom which by fostering healthy self-criticism is especially vital in the progress of man’s moral values and in man’s exploration of the secrets of the atom on this planet and in outer space. To protect the safety of this state and the right of free citizens in a free society to inquire and to understand totalitarianism, it is essential that the schools, colleges and universities teach objectively and critically the governmental and social forms of past and present totalitarian slave states, including the foreign languages spoken therein. The rights set forth in this subsection do not include the right to embrace Communism or to attempt to persuade others to embrace Communism. [Emphasis added.]

What makes all of this so dangerous for MAS is that to bring down the program the enemies don’t need HB2281 (the racist bill specifically targeting MAS and signed into law in 2010). You’ll remember that HB2281 is being challenged in court by a group of MAS teachers from TUSD. The teachers could win the battle– their discrimination suit– but lose the war if the right wingers make these communist indoctrination charges stick– either legally or in the public psyche.

These are the true enemies of MAS– not people who want to make some courses into electives. All of the wrangling about School Board President Mark Stegeman’s proposal to reorganize MAS could be irrelevant in the coming months.

Here are the three links if you want to read the full text of the stories or the law.
TUSD Mexican-American Studies curriculum examined by John Munger is a new post on the Cholla Jumps blog. (You remember him. He used to be on the Citizen.)

TUSD Ethnic Studies: A Report of My Review of Textbooks and Program is the original post by Munger.

16-805. Findings of fact and statement of public policy by the legislature of the state of Arizona concerning steps which must be taken to protect the fundamental rights of the citizens of this state and the safety of this state from international Communistic conspiracy is the link to the Arizona Revised Statute.

Hey– the Arizona Daily Star’s editorial writers followed my lead…

All sides have a lot to answer for after the TUSD Governing Board meeting Tuesday night. The board mishandled the meeting and the pro-ethnic-studies protesters resorted to vindictive personal attacks.

To read their entire editorial, click here.

I totally agree with the Star. The next time the TUSD Board hears testimony regarding Ethnic Studies, everyone’s opinion should be heard– not just those who shout the loudest.

Following the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, little Christina-Taylor Green and others at a Tucson Safeway in January, there was a nationwide call for civil discourse. President Obama, the First Lady, and others came to Tucson to help us heal.

Ron Barber, one of Giffords’ aides, spearheaded local efforts to promote civility and humane medical treatment for the mentally ill. Memorials and civil discourse projects began popping up. The Fund for Civility, Respect, and Understanding was established in Tucson. The National Center for Civil Discourse was established in Tucson. A star-studded concert for “Civility, Respect & Understanding” brought many Tucsonans together to celebrate life and mutual understanding.

It seemed as if as a community we were taking President Obama’s words to heart when he invoked the memory of little Christina and said, “I want our democracy to be as good as Christina imagined it to be.”

That memorial event in January and the civility concert in March seem so long ago. Our community which was pulling together just a few short weeks ago is now being torn apart by violent hate speech, bullying, and mob action by the supporters of the Mexican American Studies (MAS) program in Tucson Unified School District (TUSD). These are dark days for our community when people with moderate voices are not allowed to speak or are afraid to attend public meetings– forcing increased security.

With the mob takeover of last week’s TUSD board meeting; the takeover of a University of Arizona economics class taught by School Board President Dr. Mark Stegeman; threats from Unidos that protests at yesterday’s TUSD board meeting would surpass the previous week’s protest; the public and online bullying of anyone who dares to have a different opinion from the MAS supporters; and the relentless smear campaign against Dr. Stegeman and TUSD Superintendent Dr. John Pedicone on the the pages of the Tucson Citizen, on facebook,  and in a e-mail blasts– our community has sunk to a new low.

This spring civil rights activist and Princeton professor Dr. Cornel West gave a lecture to a packed house on the UA campus. Dr. West challenged the audience in the epicenter of hate (AKA Arizona– thanks to the Arizona Legislature) to practice radical love. He challenged us to look beyond race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and gender and work together against the real enemy of the people– the corporatists who control the wealth of our country and who want to control our government.

The vote on the reorganization of Ethnic Studies didn’t happen at yesterday’s TUSD board meeting, although public comment was heard. The school board will hold a public forum on the proposed plan and vote after that.

In the meantime, I challenge everyone– MAS supporters, MAS detractors, and questioning moderates who support ethnic studies but want transparency and true civil discourse on this important issue– to practice radical love and respect for each other. This is the way to protect democracy and free speech. All voices should be heard at the public forum– not just those who shout the loudest.

The Arizona Daily Star was conspicuously absent last week when the TucsonCitizen.com was all afire with news and opinion and the Tucson Weekly included a background article about Tucson Unified School District (TUSD) Board President Mark Stegeman’s proposal to reorganize the district’s Ethnic Studies Program– post notably the Mexican American Studies section.

In Monday’s Star, they made up for their absence by publishing a front page story and an editorial. Here are the links.

New ethnic-studies plan causes TUSD board split

Proposal before TUSD board makes good sense

Dozens– if not hundreds– of articles about Tucson Unified School District’s Ethnic Studies Program have been posted on the Tucson Citizen website. The vast majority of these posts have been based upon conjecture, hyperbole, and name-calling. This article will be based upon facts.

Ethnic Studies is a group of programs in TUSD. That umbrella name covers Mexican American Studies,  African American Studies, Native American Studies, and Pan Asian Studies. If you follow these links, you will find that each of these programs under Ethnic Studies is organized and staffed differently. Arizona’s discriminatory legislation which targeted TUSD was primarily aimed at the Mexican American Studies Program (MAS)– alternatively dubbed Raza Studies– because former Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne believes MAS instructors are teaching revolution and hatred for the majority population. (Summarizing here.)

You know the history. The bill passed. There were protests. A lawsuit with 11 MAS teachers as defendants was filed. Horne became Arizona attorney general. Immediately upon taking office he found TUSD out of compliance with the law and threatened TUSD with the loss of 10% of its funding if it didn’t shut down MAS. Editorials, blog posts, angry meetings, charges of racism and vendettas followed. John Huppenthal, the current Superintendent of Public Instruction, launched his own evaluation of MAS to see if they are in compliance with the law (which TUSD claims it is); that decision is still pending and may be revealed after the end of the school year.

The latest round of hype is swirling around the TUSD’s last board meeting and the next one on April 26, 2011– next Tuesday.

The latest charges of racism have been leveled because the TUSD board has called for transparency and a review of all desegregation funding– $68 million. This review would include but by no means be limited to a review of MAS funding. At next week’s board meeting the TUSD board will hear and presumably vote on a proposal to reorganize MAS.

Included below– whole cloth– is the resolution to be heard by the TUSD board. I have added some italic type to improve readability, but otherwise there have been no modifications to this document. I provide this to my readers to help you make an informed opinion.

Resolution (draft) concerning the scope and structure of TUSD’s Ethnic Studies programs and maintaining political balance in classrooms.

Whereas:

The traditional high school core curriculum substantially ignores the experience and contributions of many ethnic minorities.

The Mexican-American Studies (MAS) courses are meant to fill at least the part of this gap which pertains to Mexican-Americans, but in any given year fewer than 5% of TUSD’s high school students take any of the MAS classes. The MAS classes typically attract enrollment far below their capacity and are about half the size of theregular core classes.

According to certain measures, among certain sample populations, staff analysis dated 3/11/11 shows that students who take MAS classes out perform those who do not. If this relationship is causal, then, averaging over the past three years, the MAS courseshave helped about 10 more TUSD juniors per year to pass the AIMS reading test (with smaller gains for the writing and math tests) and have similarly helped about 10 more seniors to graduate.

The MAS teachers and curriculum have increased many students’ motivation to succeed, by the students’ own convincing testimony.

The annual cost of the MAS program is slightly over $1 million, several times the costof educating the MAS students in standard core classes. The combined annual cost ofthe other three Ethnic Studies programs is about $1.6 million.

TUSD has not systematically evaluated how the four Ethnic Studies programs affect student achievement. Collectively, those programs have had no apparent success inclosing the achievement gaps.

Students who are Latino but not Mexican-American fall outside the purview of TUSD’s current Ethnic Studies programs.

The state’s requirements for the high school Social Sciences core are long and specificand will be augmented in academic year 2011-12 by a new Economics requirement.There is flexibility in how to cover the required topics but also an inherent limit on how much time can be spent covering particular events and themes. Whether the MAS Social Studies courses have maintained adequate coverage of the core topics is questionable.

The state’s requirements for the high school English core emphasize skills but also include familiarity with American, British, and world literature, classic works of literature, and major literary periods and traditions.

The MAS courses are deliberately founded upon a specific political and educational philosophy. A central component is “a counter-hegemonic curriculum.” Students who rely on these courses to satisfy core requirements may thus hear, like those who rely on traditional core courses, a relatively narrow range of viewpoints.

Many persons have expressed concern that some MAS instructors display and promote a strong political bias while teaching or otherwise representing the district; these concerns include strongly encouraging students in the MAS classes to participate in political activities which have a consistent partisan orientation.

Therefore, the TUSD Governing Board resolves that staff should recommendpolicies and undertake actions to achieve the following goals, in TUSD’s highschools:

The traditional core sequences in Social Sciences and English should be strengthened by adding a significant component which focuses on the contributions and view points of Mexican-Americans and other ethnic minorities, especially in this region, to create a multi-cultural perspective. The staff of the current Ethnic Studies departments should help to develop this component. The new core material cannot come at the expense of adequate treatment of the topics required by the state.

The MAS courses should continue to be offered, in accordance with student demand.

Commencing with the 2011-12 academic year, the MAS courses cannot be used tosatisfy the state’s core Social Science requirements. The courses used to satisfy those requirements should be taught by regular high school faculty and expose all students to a common set of diverse viewpoints. This change shall not affect the Social Science core credit earned by students who took the MAS courses in previous semesters.

Staff should develop a recommendation concerning whether a student should be able to use MAS literature courses to satisfy part of the state’s core English requirement and whether this would require any changes in those courses. The MAS literature courses shall continue to be an option for satisfying the state’s core Englishrequirement, for academic year 2011-12.

The Ethnic Studies departments (however titled) [referring here to all of the Ethnic Studies programs, not just MAS] should adopt academic support for individual students as a primary mission, using proven models. Staff should develop instruments and methods to evaluate these support programs and to determine whetherthey are actually improving students’ academic results and providing satisfactoryreturn on the resources invested.

These support programs should extend their scope to serve students of Latino, African American, Native American, Asian and Pan-Asian background, students who are refugees, and other minority populations.

Total funding for the Ethnic Studies programs should be increased, to reflect these expanded roles, as finances allow. The relative funding of the programs should be adjusted to reduce the disparity between these funding levels and the composition of the district’s student population.

Staff should study ways to reduce administrative overhead in the Ethnic Studies departments, potentially including consolidation of functions.

Staff should consider the appropriate role of the internal and external compliance officers in monitoring the achievement of these goals and, if appropriate, make recommendations to the Board.

Staff, working with the Board’s policy subcommittee, should recommend new policy,regulations, or procedures to reinforce Board policy IMB on teaching sensitive issues, in particular to ensure that classroom treatment of political topics is reasonably balanced. It is impractical to require absolute objectivity, but students should be exposed to and encouraged to express, evaluate, and compare a wide range of viewpoints, without being steered toward one side of current policy debates orcontroversial issues.

Staff should require teachers to keep copies of their course examinations on file for a set number of years, for the purpose of examination and analysis.

Staff should make a progress report to the Board in January 2012.