Attorneys for the Educational Opportunities Section of the Civil Rights Division, of the DOJ (U.S. Department of Justice) advised the federal court overseeing the TUSD desegregation case in a filing last week that it is challenging the State’s “belief that it has a “right to administer its laws,” and “as a sovereign state, it retains the authority to set educational policy for its citizens.”
In an interview on the James T. Harris radio show on 104.1FM, TUSD Governing Board member Michael Hicks told Harris that the DOJ intervened in the case at the request of “a congressman.” According to plaintiffs, progressive Raul Grijalva requested the intervention last year to ensure that the Mexican American Studies classes will return to the district.
In its filing, the DOJ clearly stated its primary reason for intervening; “Curricular Provisions (ethnic studies) are key components of the Joint Proposed Plan before this court, and once adopted, state law cannot impede the District’s efforts to implement those provisions.”
In the past, ordering curriculum occurred only to force a district to remove as a “remedy content that contains racial bias.” They did not order curriculum that had a racial bias.
According to legal experts, there is no other desegregation plan in the country that prescribes curriculum. It has been long held by the courts that curriculum is a matter of local control. In the case of TUSD, the issue has been only which local entity has control and how much; the State of the School Board. In the matter of Hawley’s proposal, the State and District joined in their opposition to federal control.
In its filing Arizona joined TUSD in their objection because ordering the classes is “unprecedented, particularly where there has been no finding that the curriculum violated any person’s civil rights, and because the requirements will violate Arizona law, promote segregation, and prompt the return of the discredited Mexican-American Studies (“MAS”) Program.”
Arizona law requires that curriculum
The DOJ goes further and according to district insiders, either falsely or mistakenly, claims that the district’s Mexican American Studies classes were first ordered to be core classes by federal Judge Bury three years ago. According to previous filings and district sources the the courses were “slipped” into the last court Order as electives. Without going to the court, or even going before the school board, the district changed those classes into “core” classes.
When those classes were going to be changed back into electives, the students took over the school board meeting in which a vote to do so was to take place.
When that change from being “core” to “elective” classes occurred enrollment dropped from over 1000 to about 250. When kids could not take the “easy A” Mexican American Studies classes, they stopped taking the classes. One student reported that you could get an “A’ simply by showing up to protests. Also, after the takeover, when parents saw what they were doing to kids, parents overwhelmingly rejected them.
The DOJ offered another debatable claim by asserting, that “the Mexican-American Studies (“MAS”) courses offered by
the District until their suspension on January 10, 2012, were demonstrably effective at engaging the interest of District students and supporting their continued attendance in school, thereby bolstering their academic success and graduation rates.”
However, in their filing the State contends that that “the MAS courses were academically deficient and reached so few students that they “had no appreciable effect on the low average achievement of [Mexican-American students].”
The DOJ cites a “comprehensive empirical analysis of the impact of student participation in the MAS” and claims that controlling for numerous demographic factors and other variables, the MAS classes provided significant educational benefits to students, substantially improving their state test (“AIMS”) scores and their graduation rates.”
The study the DOJ cites was conducted by University of Arizona professors who have a vested interest in the classes. Jay P. Greene, Ph.D., Department Head and 21st Century Chair in Education Reform at the University of Arkansas who advised Doug MacEachren of the Arizona Republic that the “study still suffers from selection bias. That is, students who choose to take this elective course are different from students who do not. Any difference in outcomes may be caused by the characteristics of students who would choose to take a course, not necessarily the course itself.
The desegregation is before Judge Bury. Board member Hicks asked for the public to become involved and let the court know that they support the state’s right to administer its laws.
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