District Administration - July/August 2011 - (Page 50)

After YeArs, ethnic studies still controversiAl performing urban school district on the NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) exams. “The exploration of [multicultural students’] heritage excites and entices our kids, so it’s as important as language arts and science,” Carvalho says. “We treat the African-American curriculum as a moral imperative.” Teaching ethnic studies in Miami is generally accepted, but Carvalho has run into another roadblock: budgets. Rather than cut instruction in African-American and Latino history, he notes, “We’ve cut our administrative budget by 52 percent and changed our health insurance plan.” ized TEKS as a “heavily politicized” document in which “slavery and segregation are all but ignored” and “native peoples are missing until brief references to nineteenth-century events.” Julio Noboa of the Multicultural Alliance for Social Studies goes even further, accusing TEKS of glossing over “the Klan, sharecropping, Jim Crow laws and the Mexican-American civil rights movement.” And the NAACP and League of United Latin American Citizens have filed a lawsuit against the state board of education. Gail Lowe, chair of the state board, counters, “Most critics haven’t really names and dates is too long.) Indeed, the Houston district petitioned the state board in the spring of 2010 to postpone its approval of TEKS. But now that TEKS has been approved, says Miller, “this is our curriculum, and by law, we must teach it.” She adds, “I believe it’s critical that we emphasize the role of minorities, and how they’ve thrived and suffered and contributed,” but she admits that Houston can’t do that by offering ethnic studies electives because instructional time is so limited. “We are a state that focuses on the test, and the emphasis now is on math and science,” she says. “I’m not sure that the few ethnic studies classes Houston schools do offer will even be around next year.” Miller urges administrators to “sit down, study the new objectives, and help our teachers interpret them. … Not all curriculum objectives are created equal, so some names and dates, like William Blackstone, who appears three times in the new curriculum, may require just a mention.” Miller’s office continues to provide resources to help teachers enrich the curriculum. Above all, this new TEKS curriculum has strengthened Miller’s resolve “to teach kids how to examine historical evidence and then make their own decisions.” Tucson’s Tug of War The clash over ethnic studies has come to a head in Arizona. Since the Tucson Unified School District created the MexicanAmerican Studies Department, or MASD, in the late 1990s, high school students have been able to take two years of La Raza/Mexican-American studies classes in lieu of mainstream courses. For example, they could take a social justice class instead of one on American government. A few years ago, Tom Horne, then superintendent of the Arizona State Department of Education, accused MASD of disseminating “propaganda and an ideology that teaches [students] to resent the United States. …” Speaking to Tucson’s ABC affiliate, he continued: “The La Raza studies convey a revolutionary mesDistrict Administration 50 “We are a state that focuses on the test, and the emphasis now is on math and science. I’m not sure that the few ethnic studies classes Houston schools do offer will even be around next year.” —Angela Miller, secondary school social studies curriculum manager, Houston Independent School District Dennis Holt, supervisor of secondary school social studies at Hillsborough County (Fla.) Public Schools, says that electives in his district are actually growing. The district emphasizes teaching reading skills through social studies so middle and high school students’ reading scores increase on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test. Also, he says, teachers who take on an elective ethnic studies course are people who are passionate about the subject, and the kids pick up on that and apply themselves to their studies. Texas Politics It gets more contentious in Texas, where the arguments aren’t about stand-alone ethnic studies courses, but the way various issues, including the histories of minority groups, are covered in the new core curriculum. When the Texas Education Agency revised its TEKS (Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills) standards for K12 core social studies in May 2010, the normally conservative Fordham Institute character50 July/August 2011 looked at the new standards. We wanted to emphasize some of the patriotic elements of our state and country, to beef up instruction on important events, dates, constitutional rights and the founding fathers.” Longtime board member and former social studies teacher Pat Hardy declares, “Anyone who is critical needs to go back and read the darned standards. We wanted everyone to feel comfortable, so the new TEKS has more minorities than the old curriculum. George Washington Carver was not in the old standards—for that matter, neither was John Adams—but he’s there now.” Where does this battle of words (and lawyers) leave someone like Angela Miller, secondary school social studies curriculum manager for the Houston Independent School District? On the one hand, she says that “most of the people involved in revising the standards had no background in history or social studies,” resulting in “a curriculum that is biased” and “weighted down with testable names and dates.” (Hardy agrees that the list of required

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of District Administration - July/August 2011

District Administration - July/August 2011
Contents
From the Editor
News Update
Facilities News
Inside the Law
District Profile
Administrator Profile
The Social Media Dilemma
Is Year-Round Schooling on Track?
After 50 Years, Ethnic Studies Still Controversial
Finding the Right Purchasing Solution
Look, Listen, Learn
Research Center
Supervisor’s Opinion
Going Mobile
Superintendent’s Insight
Books
Product Focus
New Products
Online Edge

District Administration - July/August 2011