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Tucson Schools Overhaul a Program to Help Struggling Hispanic Students
New York Times ^ | September 15, 2012 | FERNANDA SANTOS

Posted on 09/16/2012 4:04:08 PM PDT by reaganaut1

TUCSON — The forecast for the year ahead is dire, so officials in the public school district here, the oldest in the state, summoned parents to an urgent meeting one evening to lay out the options: close schools and increase class sizes or impose across-the-board pay cuts, making it harder for the district to recruit quality teachers.

In the auditorium at Cholla High Magnet School, Bryant Nodine, the planning program manager for the Tucson Unified School District, peered into the audience and pleaded for suggestions. “We need your help,” he said. The district needs to find at least $17 million in savings, about 7 percent of the money in its general fund, he said, to balance its budget for 2013-14 school year.

Meanwhile, at the district’s central offices, Maria Figueroa was busy sifting through résumés and rearranging her calendar to squeeze in one more interview. As the director of a new program intended to help the district’s perennially struggling Hispanic students, by far the majority of the enrollment, Ms. Figueroa enjoys a rare distinction: she has jobs to fill and money to hire.

She also has a big task — mending the fences broken by the dismantling of the Mexican-American studies department last school year after an acrimonious debate over the politics of its curriculum and the type of activism it had promoted. A 2010 law banning lessons that fostered racial resentment and solidarity among members of a single ethnic group, drafted as legislators worked to frame the state’s controversial immigration bill, eventually killed the program. Facing persistent financial problems, the school district buckled under the threat of millions of dollars in fines.

Instead of classes about historical realities and the everyday experiences of Mexican-Americans, once a hallmark of the department, Ms. Figueroa’s program will offer tutoring to Hispanic students

(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; US: Arizona
KEYWORDS: aliens; education; tuscon
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To: reaganaut1

Years ago, when the Vietnamese refugees were coming into the Houston school district, teachers were aghast at how they would manage their education. They arrived not knowing a word of English. Many were orphaned by the war or pirates that attacked them at sea and killed their parents in front of them.

But the teachers needn’t have worried. These students joyfully tackled the language and moved on to excel in their studies. In spite of working many hours to help their families or to support themselves, many graduated at the top of their high school graduating classes.

The lazy and the coddled will never succeed because they’ve been given excuses to fail all their lives.


21 posted on 09/16/2012 6:25:56 PM PDT by txrefugee
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To: reaganaut1; All

Tucson schools can’t seem to get over pushing that Hispanic Ku Klux Klan La Raza Astlan/Reconquista nonsense.

They would serve their Hispanic students much better by teaching them the subjects that would make them successful in America....not by teaching them the Hispanic/Mestizo version of “Lebensraum”


22 posted on 09/16/2012 6:27:20 PM PDT by SeminoleCounty (Blaming Terry Jones for the recent Muslim riots is like blaming the St Louis Rams for football)
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To: txrefugee

What an uplifting story. Thank-you!


23 posted on 09/16/2012 6:29:26 PM PDT by lulu16 (May the Good Lord take a liking to you!)
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To: SeminoleCounty
This year, I was kind of “writer/artist in residence” at a Tucson elementary school in one of the poorest areas. The kids were so open to learning, and so willing to try and do well. The principal was educated by nuns, hunted javelina with a bow and arrow as a teenager, and had a son that served and died for his country, she was not having all that socialistic nonsense in her school. I hope she has given them a firm foundation to resist the recruitment that will come in middle and high school. W hat the heck, I met a U of AZ teacher who used his kids for Atzlan activism and justified it because he felt they needed practical application.
24 posted on 09/16/2012 6:34:58 PM PDT by lulu16 (May the Good Lord take a liking to you!)
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To: O6ret

Get government out of education. Privatize! That is the only thing that will cure education’s woes.


25 posted on 09/16/2012 9:25:20 PM PDT by Pining_4_TX ( The state is the great fiction by which everybody seeks to live at the expense of everybody else. ~)
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To: reaganaut1
"But it has seen limited success at great cost — $1 billion, based on its estimates. "

But...But...how are they supposed to know that it's Whitey's fault that they're stupid, lazy and violent if they cancel the "Hate Whitey" classes that Whitey is paying for?

26 posted on 09/16/2012 11:07:34 PM PDT by Eagles6 (DNC 2012 Convention: Celebrating infanticide and sodomy. Denying God.What could possibly go wrong?)
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To: La Lydia

We have to pressure Republicans to stop birthright citizenship.


27 posted on 09/19/2012 9:26:01 AM PDT by cradle of freedom (Long live the Republic !)
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To: Travis McGee

Where do they get those spiffy uniforms?


28 posted on 09/19/2012 9:31:13 AM PDT by cradle of freedom (Long live the Republic !)
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To: cradle of freedom

No idea...


29 posted on 09/19/2012 9:33:14 AM PDT by Travis McGee (www.EnemiesForeignAndDomestic.com)
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To: reaganaut1
Somehow Chinese-American students manage without Chinese-American studies programs.

And without the expensive programs needed to make them successful students.

30 posted on 09/19/2012 9:40:55 AM PDT by Delhi Rebels (There was a row in Silver Street - the regiments was out.)
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