The Social Justice Education Project (SJEP) and our Critically Compassionate Intellectualism model have and are showing profound effects on academic success, graduation rates, and participation in post-secondary education. Evaluation already in place determined the following information for the students who participated in the program.

Comparing the Arizona Instrument to Measure Standards (AIMS) pass rates over six academic years (2004 to 2009) for SJEP students and non-SJEP students who failed the AIMS their sophomore year, we have found significant differences among these same students and their junior year (SJEP year one) performance on the AIMS exam:

       ♦SJEP students passed at the rates of 68% (reading), 76% (writing), and 54% (math).

       ♦Non-SJEP students passed at the rates of 23% (reading), 17% (writing), and 21% (math).

The data reveals that SJEP students are:

♦3 x more likely to pass the reading portions than their non-SJEP peers.

♦4 x more likely to pass the writing portions than their non-SJEP peers.

♦2.5 x more likely to pass the math portions than their non-SJEP peers.

Student surveys indicate:

        Almost all SJEP students agree that the SJEP has better prepared them for college and that

        working on their projects has helped them believe that they have something worthwhile to

        contribute to society (97% and 98% respectively).

The SJEP shows great impact on the post-secondary participation of our graduates:

      ♦67% of SJEP students enroll in post-secondary education when they graduated high

        school. This is 179% greater than the national average of 24% for Mexican American

        students.

SJEP students explain how the program transformed their perceptions of themselves and the world:

      ♦”[SJEP] made me realize what everything is and who I am…It just gives

   you power to do better for yourself — to keep learning, want to keep doing things.”

      ♦“I love the project, it was great, and it helped me feel smarter … and the project gave the   

          idea that I could help my community; and that is what I am going to do with my life.”

Social Justice Education Project

Tucson Unified School District &

The University of Arizona

However, others seem to have new, emerging concerns about DREAM. Last week a stalwart of Houston’s community activism wrote a piece about the possibility of DREAM causing a split in the movement and dampening commitment to a comprehensive bill.  (No names on the author because I’m not sure if it was an open letter). 

Additionally, Stace Medellin of DosCentavos.net has also written that he is no longer as eager to see a stand alone DREAM Act, since it might give some Brown Cred to Republicans who don’t deserve it.

It will not be a novelty to see a movement who has fought for years and has garnered some significant victories to demand more than what it initially did. I hope that this is where we are headed.

I write this with no offense intended to my friends who are fighting for a stand-alone DREAM Act. They exemplify dedication and will. I just think that we should not sell ourselves short.

I am proposing a statewide conference call to respond to these changes starting in the Fall school year. If you would like to participate and have not registered, please e-mail me using the contact form on this blog, and provide a brief statement on your background and community work. If you have registered, please send me agenda items that you would like to see listed, along with any ground rules for the conference call that you would recommend.

The conference call is tentatively scheduled for Saturday, June 12 at 1:00 PM. Those who have registered will receive instructions for the call by e-mail later on this week.

Adelante y hasta la victoria!

Adelante

Their change in perception was unintentional, but it made me aware of the power and efficacy of propaganda.  Admittedly, the speed with which this propaganda took root caught me off guard, as jaded as I am about the machinations of politics, conspiracy and media manipulation.  The original rationale for invading Iraq is important, to be sure, but more shocking is how quickly national media outlets can skew the public’s perception of what happened only a few years ago.  I have not seen any polls, but I am more than certain that the vast, vast majority of United Statesians now believe the original cause of the Iraq invasion to be the War of Terror. 

It made me think a little bit about the great shift if public perception that the Texas State Board of Education might be responsible for by changing the curriculum standards in the text books.  History is replete with forgotten movements and unnoticed heroes, especially our history and our heroes.  These movements and heroes are intentionally forgotten by curriculum writers and boards.  It is a shame that these handful of people might have the power to completely erase the Civil Rights movement from scholastic discourse within few years.

I remember looking up Chicano Movement once in my high school history book’s index.  There was only a “Chicago Movement,” listed.  When I looked up this “Chicago Movement,” I actually found what I was looking for, or at least a portion of it:  two paragraphs on the Chicano Movement existed in the book after all.  The index was mislabeled.

It will be a sad day, indeed, when I will wish that at least the Chicago Movement would still exist in the book’s index.

UPDATE: Stace Medellin from DosCentavos.net did a post on the specifics of how the board’s mandates will take its toll on our history.

The Mexican American Political Association (MAPA) and the Hermandad Mexicana Latinoamericana make a call for full support for the students and youth who are demonstrating courage in the struggle for legislation that they interpret will provide them an option to obtain legal immigration status. The legislation is the Dream Act, which proposes to permit those students and youth who arrived to the U.S. at an early age without legal status, and have completed high school, the option to apply for legal status while attending college or serving some branch of the U.S. military.

Notwithstanding many concerns with the legislation raised by many organizations nationally, particularly those that oppose mandatory military service, obligatory military registration, the draft, and the use of the military, and war, to resolve international disputes, MAPA and HERMANDAD go on record in support of the youth who are defining their own options through courageous acts of political/civic action.

The Dream Act is not without controversy, however, and both MAPA and HERMANDAD have raised concerns about the legislation since the beginning. The original version of the Dream Act was actually the best in that it did not include military service as an option to obtain legal status, but instead listed the pursuit of higher education, which included vocational, and community service as the criteria to qualify for eligibility.

It is now no secret that the Pentagon had a hand in fashioning later versions of the legislation with the willing help of congressional legislators. Historically people of color have been easy prey for conscription, the draft, and even the “all-voluntary” military service considering the financial inducements on the one hand, and the dire poverty statistics of these communities on the other. The various branches of the U.S. military have experienced increasing difficulty in meeting their goals for recruitment, and in the face of multiple wars of a prolonged character, the military is hard-pressed to find sufficient willing adherents to its brassy and provocative slogans like “BE ALL YOU CAN BE.”

It should also be acknowledged that the vast majority of immigrant youth, particularly Latino, do not and will not attend college (less than 10 percent), nearly 30 percent do not complete high school, and less than 40 percent who enter college do not complete the instructional program with a degree. These are horrific statistics on the down-side of this social dynamic that cannot and should not be ignored when we are considering immigration-related legislation to address the issue of legal status of our youth and family members.

It is for these reasons that MAPA and HERMANDAD only conditionally support the Dream Act, and advocate for the cleansing of the bill of its military service clause, or minimally return the community service option as an integral part of the legislation. When people talk of choice in the Dream Act, but ignore the statistics indicated above, and leave out of the legislation other viable alternatives such as community service to permit a path to legalization, in reality they are opposed to real choice and real options.

For now, however, we are called upon to support our youth and students who are defining the struggle for options by their courageous actions while we continue the debate about the best form of the Dream Act that should be enacted by the U.S. Congress.

Nativo Vigil Lopez
National President

The immigration law was adopted around the same time as the enactment of a law prohibiting Arizona school programs that “are designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group” or that “advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals.”

The state superintendent of schools, the primary state official who promoted this legislation, has repeatedly stated that the law is aimed at eradicating particular existing ethnic studies programs that provide instruction featuring the history, social dynamics, and cultural patterns of Mexican-Americans in the United States.

The independent experts noted that “such law and attitude are at odds with the State’s responsibility to respect the right of everyone to have access to his or her own cultural and linguistic heritage and to participate in cultural life. Everyone has the right to seek and develop cultural knowledge and to know and understand his or her own culture and that of others through education and information.”

The Raza Studies ban boils down to disenfranchisement. One of the few, lasting, semi-independent institutions which came out of the Chicano Movement was Mexican American Studies. The ban is couched in cultural and curricular terms, but Mexican American Studies Departments play a real role in offering institutional empowerment to our community.

Most importantly, it is one of the few, if not the only, institutions which is not primarily beholden to corporate or Zionist interests.  Heretofore, these institutions have had great latitude with their choice of curriculum and points of views, as academic freedom has been falsely touted as a great North American value.

Apart from the controversy surrounding the curriculum, though, they have provided the mechanics, at times physical mechanics via bus rides, to promote upward mobility and education amongst Latinos.  They have often provided the means for both by offering scholarship opportunities.  Once in university, they have even provided retention services to a segment of the student population which often feels isolated.

Most people in the know would not seriously accuse Raza Studies Departments of fomenting revolution. In fact, Raza Studies have been meritoriously criticized by the far left, indigenistas and feministas among us for not going far enough in certain areas.   They have even been criticized for creating for and delivering to the gringo a co-opted class, a “power” which is now being threatened by the Arizona law.

It is true that Raza Studies generally have provided access and has even required the reading of material which point to revolutionary and nationalists movements which deny the legitimacy of the US, and which have even risen violently against the US.  These movements include, the Cortina and Murrieta uprisings, El Plan De San Diego, the Tijerina Reactions, and La Raza Unida Party.  The reading and analysis of this “material” is usually known as “history” and “political science.”

In the context of the Arizona law, however, this course of study is considered an ethnic solidarity class and a course of study which stirs up resentment. It may very well be true that finding a common strain of oppression among our people stirs up solidarity and resentment. Truth is funny like that. It does things and moves people.

The truth is that some people DO believe that Latinos are oppressed by the gringo. Many scholars believe this in many different shades of gray, even though many people standing up for Raza Studies tend to deny this when they get on camera. Raza studies DOES give these voices an audience, as it should. Academia is about considering different viewpoints, and I know I sure learned the gringo’s viewpoint in my Texas history class.  So we should be allowed the opportunity to learn that some scholars refer to this land as “Occupied America,” as Rudy Acuna’s book calls the Southwest.

The greatest irony about the whole situation is that the gringo’s fear of the resentment that his history might cause is threatening the institutional mechanics that Raza studies offers regardless of one’s ideology. In essence, he is scared of his own shadow. 

Raza-studies departments help all people that come through its doors. They don’t do an ideology check before admitting someone to its library or helping to enroll someone at college day. These mechanics are ideologically neutral, which even many conservative Hispanics would recognize as beneficial to all. 

Despite all of the teaching of “Occupied America” by Raza Studies, I believe that the mechanics provided by Raza Studies DO produce the co-opted class that I mentioned earlier, not by design, but by default.  I do not mean to disparage the excellent, progressive work of Raza Studies in the least bit.  I only mean to comment on the overwhelming odds that all progressives face.  The social forces in the greater society does not permit one university department to undo all of the brainwashing to which people are subject in this system.  Generally, Raza Studies helps a great deal of people arrive and stay in university, and only a miniscule fraction of these people are re-socialized into a revolutionary, indigenist, leftist or nationalist.  Even a smaller fraction become so due to their dealings with the Raza Studies department. 

And this is where I find irony and folly in the gringo’s ethnic studies ban in Arizona.  If Arizona removes the mechanism for creating a co-opted class of people, what outlet will the upwardly aspiring have other than to listen to ideas like mine: nationalist, leftist and separatist-inspired rantings otherwise known as the truth? ;) After living through the Black Power and Chicano Movements, when 100 cities went up in flames after MLK was shot, and when Tijerina arrested some federal officials for violating land grants, the gringo generally learned that it was better for him to co-opt than to segregate.  If the gringo is unsure to where the upwardly-aspiring class might turn, perhaps he should consult with Flugencio Batista, who was forced from office by a frustrated attorney-turned-repressed-electoral candidate (Fidel) and a doctor (Che).

This is not an endorsement of the Raza Studies ban by any means.  It is only an attempt to find any small advantage in a grim situation.  If the gringo seals off the pressure-release valve, he is setting himself up for an explosion.

The New York Times posted a cheat sheet on the Healthcare Reform Bill. There is not much analysis, but it gives you a quickie analysis on the main bill and it’s tag along side bill, which were essentially part of the same package.

It is projected that roughly 31 million people who were not covered will now be covered and that 23 million will remain without coverage. Starting in 2014 most United Statesians will be required to have coverage or to pay a penalty.

Last year, I predicted that there would be an employer mandate, after Wal-Mart and SEIU, joined forces to advocate for such. (What a soothsayer, right?). In fact, there is an employer mandate portion, which would require employers with more than fifty people to cover employees, offer vouchers or face a penalty.

The Black Agenda Report characterized the fight between Obama and the right as a charade.

The fifteen month running battle between Obama Democrats and tea party Republicans was never much more real than televised professional wrestling. Like the opposing wrestlers, both sides work for the same bosses, for Big Pharma, Big Insurance, and the biggest medical providers. The real health care fight waged by the Obama administration has not been against Republicans, who never had the votes to stop, let alone dictate or pass anything.

The report goes through a laudry list of the needed reforms which went untouched and outlines the disgusting techniques the Democratic leadership used to force the most well-known elected progressive, Dennis Kucinch, to submit.

As far as the undocumented among us, they are banned from purchasing insurance from the insurance exchange, even if they pay the full price without subsidies. This means that the undocumented will be unable to take advantage of the “group rates” offered by putting people together in pools, even if they could afford the whole cost of the insurance. Mind you, undocumented people pay their fair share of income taxes, whether the right wants to acknowledge it or not. In fact the IRS designated years ago TIN numbers for just that purposes.

The most disappointing thing for those who ever believed in Obama (I don’t count myself as one of them) is the fact that single payer was never really considered and that Obama sold out early on to the pharmaceuticals. Here he is years ago saying that he was in support of a single-payer system. It is not so much that Obama did not get single payer. It’s that he decided early on not to even pursue it.

I realize that an entire essay can be devoted to proving that Obama never pursued it, but I would rather focus on what that means to those of us in the CIR battle.

Follow the logic: Obama said he would push for CIR in his first year. He didn’t. He said he wanted single payer, but he didn’t push for it. His position seems to be, “do what is possible in a bi-partisan manner, rather than pushing the people to believe in new concepts”. He pretty much let the tone of the policy be set entirely by Congress, and this healthcare bill is what we got out of it.

Now, when it comes to CIR, the debate will undoubtedly be over what legal status should be granted to our undocumented compas: guest workers or path to legalization. One advantage that CIR proponents have erroneously touted is support from big business. We all know that they have no stake in whether our people have guest worker status or a path to full citizenship. It is easy to predict that big business will easily fold on this issue. They only have an interest in whether employers will have to deal with ICE, and could not care less about the choices that our people should have the right to make.

The moderate to conservative crowd will be split between a very loud and organized deport-them-all minority and those who are ok with granting a temporary worker status.

Considering that the moderate to conservative bloc along with big business will average out to a push for a guest worker program, the powers that be will only have one opponent left—us, those of us who marched one million strong in LA, a quarter million strong in Dallas and fifty-thousand strong in Houston.

They will make the appearance of trying to entice us, but in reality all they will need to do is split us in order to dilute our power. They will need to dangle something in order for half of us to go along.

That thing that they dangle will be the DREAM provisions of CIR. The DREAM Act is a proposal which offers easier pathways to people who migrated as children and who had no choice to come with or without papers, being that they were minors when they came. This “act” has been lumped together with comprehensive reform in the Gutierrez bill.

They will do what they always do in order to pacify us: dangle our children in front of us to see if we will break. The offer will be: we won’t grant your masses the civil rights accorded to citizens(we just need your hands to work pay taxes), but we will legalize some of your children (perhaps soldiers and college grads, maybe workers too, maybe not). They will call it a compromise and a good deal, and seeing the way that Obama worked out healthcare, this is a deal that he will be willing to strike, without lifting a finger to push for so-called legalization for all working people.

Those of us fighting for CIR must be prepared to deal with this on a personal level. We, as organizers, activists and leaders must know on an individual level whether we will accept this compromise or not. We must also be prepared for the disagreements this is likely to cause within our orgs and coalitions.

I am proposing that those who are unwilling to trade full legalization for the DREAM provisions create a strong coalition across state lines and that we draw a line in the sand.  At a minimum, we should have a conference call on the subject.  Please contact me at hectorchavanajr at aol.com if interested.  You can see my blog at OurNewAnahuac.net for other ways to contact me.

For a full vision of what I believe the reform should accomplish, listen to my talk, posted at:

http://www.ournewanahuac.net/la-reforma-migratoria-discurso-en-espanol/2010/03/26/

Can be downloaded here or heard @ my online speech page

Download here or listen to the file by clicking below.

Traditionally, liberals don’t support similar plans for fear of offending the teacher’s unions.  To be fair, the unions have somewhat of a point in opposing such plans.  They argue that minority school districts are pretty messed up (?de veras?).  Low funding, low parental participation, problems at home. So the unions say it is fundamentally unfair to hold teachers responsible for larger social problems which they don’t control. 

Even so, I have personally seen my brother and my mother go in to schools that the union would have written off and over-perform, with test results to prove it.  My mother’s English as a Second Language Students have very often out-performed their native-Engish counterparts on standardized tests.  The same is true of my sister-in-laws performance in a barrio school in Bryan.  This, among other things, has lead me to believe that there are some teachers whose title should be check-collector instead of teacher.  I think everybody knows that this is HISD’s dirty secret, but nobody will say it

These proposed measures will help get those sorry teachers out and will reward teachers who really have their hearts in it.  I understand that some skilled, hard-working teachers will be unduly punished, but if it’s a decision between fighting for our kids and protecting some degreed, middle-class teachers, the decision has never been hard for me.  Teachers have other options.  Kids don’t.

Now, instead of pulling the social inequality card, the union might see that it is in the teachers’ interest to fight for social equity.  We’ll see.  Anyway, here are Mary’s comments

As many of you know, I have spent years (more than 30) advocating for better education for our city’s children, particularly Latino children who still fall victim to a disastrous dropout rate and are still not going to and through colleges at the levels in which they must for our community to really pull itself up and take full advantage of the many opportunities we have in this nation.

For decades, I have observed a public education system that has year after year put the interests of adults before the interests of children.  The public education bureaucracy has become a way to secure jobs for many and secure dollars for others.  When so many adults get satisfied, it’s hard to find people who are ready to focus on whether or not this bureaucracy is actually serving those it was built to serve: our students

With great pleasure, I read the articles (I’ve cut and pasted the links below) from the Chronicle regarding how the HISD Board and Superintendent are proposing tying student achievement to teacher evaluations.  There are many, many wonderful teachers in HISD and I am proud to call many of them my friends who are proving every day that our children can learn at high levels.  However, there are other teachers who are not giving our kids the education they deserve.  And for decades, their lack of effectiveness has been protected.  Our system has protected these teachers and done so at the risk of not protecting our kids.  As you will see, there are efforts in Houston to oppose this new HISD policy.  What is particularly interesting to me is that the national head of the American Federation of Teachers, to which our local Houston Federation of Teachers is affiliated, spoke out today in support of efforts to incorporate student test scores into teacher evaluations (I am cutting and pasting a copy of today’s Washington Post article below). 

With the majority of HISD made up of low-income Latinos the detriment to our children of having one or more years with ineffective teachers helps drive the lack of results.

I praise the School Board and Superintendent for putting the interests of children before adults.  I thank them for their leadership, their courage and I thank them for their service!  You are invited, encouraged and requested to do so as well

Your servant, in the name of high quality education for our city’s children,

Mary Almendarez
Community Volunteer

“HISD May Fire Teachers Over Test Scores”

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/metro/6808536.html

“HISD leaders likely to OK teacher-evaluation plan”

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/6810465.html

Union head to propose tying test scores, teacher evaluations

 

By Nick Anderson

Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 12, 2010  

The president of the nation’s second-largest teachers union is proposing a new way to incorporate student test scores into teacher evaluations and has asked a well-known mediator to develop methods of expediting disciplinary cases against teachers, according to the text of a speech made public Monday night.

Randi Weingarten of the 1.4 million-member American Federation of Teachers plans to deliver the speech Tuesday. Union officials describe it as a major effort to address flash points in labor-management relations.

The AFT, Weingarten said, wants “a fair, transparent and expedient process to identify and deal with ineffective teachers. But [we] know we won’t have that if we don’t have an evaluation system that is comprehensive and robust and really tells us who is or is not an effective teacher.”

Weingarten, also a key player in the District’s drawn-out teacher contract talks, outlined a four-step approach to teacher evaluations: States should adopt standards for what teachers should know and be able to do; teachers should be assessed through multiple measures, including student test scores that gauge individual academic progress; administrators should be held accountable for putting the standards into motion; and teachers should receive help through mentoring and professional development.

On discipline, Weingarten said mediator Kenneth R. Feinberg has agreed to help the AFT develop protocols for handling allegations of teacher misconduct. Feinberg was special master of the Sept. 11, 2001, victim compensation fund and is special master for executive compensation for the Troubled Assets Relief Program.

“Too often, due process can become glacial process,” Weingarten said. “We intend to change that.”

 

Michael Casserly, executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools, which represents several urban systems where the AFT has affiliates, said Weingarten “should be applauded” for being open to the use of student test data in teacher evaluations. “It is a difficult step for them,” he said..

Education Secretary Arne Duncan said in a statement: “Randi is really showing courage by raising these issues.” A spokeswoman for the 3.2 million-member National Education Association, the largest teachers union, had no immediate comment on the AFT proposals.

Daniel A. Domenech, executive director of the American Association of School Administrators, said Weingarten’s stance on teacher quality seems realistic because the Obama administration is pushing in the same direction. “When a Democratic administration, which obviously is the only horse the union has to ride, is pushing these kind of reforms, you have to go with the flow,” Domenech said.

Please read Jay Mathews’ blogpost on Weingarten’s speech on Class Struggle.