The Tucson Unified School District has postponed the Governing Board’s review of the new multicultural curriculum which had been scheduled for June 11. The district’s superintendent John Pedicone advised the Board that the concern raised by the Arizona Department of Education with the curriculum “was not totally unexpected.”
Pedicone advised the Board that those concerns were “precisely why we did not want things released prematurely.” Pedicone was referring to the public’s demand to be a part of the curriculum development and approval process.
In late May, the AZDI had requested a copy of the curriculum the Board had been reviewing over the last week. Only after contacting the Governor’s Ombudsman did the District agree to turn the public documents over, but delayed until Wednesday. On Wednesday, the District turned over documents that were not the same as those reviewed by the Board.
The district released an explanation for the many versions currently in circulation: “Development of curriculum generates multiple versions through the refinement period. Several drafts of this curriculum have been developed, yet no version has yet been approved or adopted by the governing board.”
It wasn’t the difference in the version that education experts found most disturbing about the material developed by Augie Romero. It was the similarities.
A review of the 12th Grade curricula entitled , U.S. Government Culturally Relevant African American Viewpoint, U.S. Government Culturally Relevant Mexican American Viewpoint, and U.S. Government Multicultural Viewpoint shows that each class is identical. The author simply changed the group to which the materials were targeted. Leaving one educator to arrive at only one conclusion; “the classes were not intended to discuss different experiences and viewpoints by different groups but to separate students simply by the color of their skin.”
The classes were ordered by federal judge Bury in the District’s desegregation case.
In his constituent newsletter, Board member Mark Stegeman expressed concern for the possibility of segregating classes. He wrote:
“The USP (as excerpted above) requires the culturally relevant core courses but says little about the content of those courses. Staff thus had the option to propose courses that were culturally relevant simply because they emphasized the target ethnic group’s literature, historical experiences, role models etc. I was sorry to see the court require three separate sequences of core courses, but there is evidence that students get more interested and engaged in courses that seem more closely connected to their personal experiences. For some students, being in an ethnic minority forms an important part of that personal experience. So I have never claimed that the parallel courses have no value, merely that the costs and resulting self-segregation outweigh the advantages.
What the staff has proposed in the draft curriculum, however, goes far beyond such an emphasis. It is (like the old Mexican American Studies curriculum) very skewed politically. I think it is good to discuss alternative viewpoints in high school, including hard left and hard right viewpoints, because modern political discourse is full of them – but that discussion should not be so one-sided. The draft curriculum does not simply present an alternative viewpoint. It seems clearly to adopt the alternative (in this case left) viewpoint.
According to experts, it appeared as if the author had used state and core curriculum standards as “bookends, and placed political propaganda in between.” However Pedicone claims only that the “preliminary indications from a recent review by the Arizona Department of Education (ADE) define the need to strengthen alignment of the course curriculum with state standards and Common Core standards.
The District says that after ADE approval, the curriculum will be posted online for public review and comment.
It appears that the District is intending to continue to disregard the assurances they gave the ADE last year that they would include the community throughout the process.
In his newsletter, Board member Mark Stegeman notes that the timetable offered to the ADE in May 2012 provided for “final community review of the high school curriculum from December 2012 through January 2013.”
According to Stegeman, “Most of this never happened. Staff has indicated that the work on the desegregation case became more complex than expected after the letter was written. Not following through on the commitments to ADE is nonetheless a matter of concern, especially in light of past and potential future conflicts concerning compliance with A.R.S. 15-112 (the law created by HB2281).”
“I think that a taxpayer-funded public school district should be more circumspect in how it uses students’ time and public resources,” wrote Stegeman. “Dialectic is a valuable technique for teaching high school students, but it requires logical clash between two sides, not the relentless presentation of one side.”
Dr. Stegeman, a professor of Economics at the University of Arizona summed up the sentiments of both sides of the issue when he wrote, “The MAS controversy was one of the hottest in TUSD’s history, but after weathering that storm I felt that many parts of the community, both inside and outside TUSD, had reached a fragile tacit agreement on the path forward. Many conservatives have become reconciled to what the court order requires, and many liberals have acknowledged that the old MAS program had flaws. I am afraid that this fragile accommodation could be (unintentionally) shattered by the document that staff has produced, because of both the process and the content.”
According to sources close to desegregation representatives, Judge Bury will be asked to take heed of the ADE’s concerns and clarify for the District that the courses are not to serve ideologues, but offer a true multicultural educational experience.
View US Government – Multicultural Viewpoint_Grade 12 here
View US Government – Culturally Relevant Mexican American Viewpoint_Grade 12 here
View US Government – Culturally Relevant African American Viewpoint_Grade 12 here
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