Phoenix-area district faces elimination of its ethnic studies curriculum

The Arizona Daily Star reports:

A Tucson lawmaker and the state’s schools chief are moving to make ethnic studies in the Tucson Unified School District illegal.

If a bill set for a hearing in the state Legislature next week is approved, the city’s largest school district would have to get rid of the ethnic-based programs in four of its high schools or risk losing 10 percent of their state funding each month.

If the classes were eliminated, the money would be returned.

“Ethnic studies programs … are designed to promote ethnic chauvinism,” state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne said in a news release Friday. “I have tried for two years, using publicity and persuasion, to attempt to convince the Tucson Unified School District to put a stop to this dysfunctional program. They have refuse

Arizona bilingual education lawsuit may have national implications

Education Week reports:

Seventeen years ago, Miriam Flores sent her 5-year-old namesake off to school in this small city on the U.S.-Mexican border. Come fall, she’ll send 5-year-old Isabella, her youngest, and this time around, the 42-year-old Mexican-born homemaker hopes her daughter will get a better education.

The U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments later this month from a class action Ms. Flores joined on behalf of her first child in 1996. The lawsuit, Flores v. State of Arizona, contends that programs for English-language learners in Nogales are deficient and receive inadequate funding from the state…

Its outcome before the Supreme Court could have further ramifications, not only for Arizona but also for districts and ELLs nationwide.

Educating immigrants: challenges and opportunities

The NY Times reports:

In the last decade, record numbers of immigrants, both legal and illegal, have fueled the greatest growth in public schools since the baby boom. The influx has strained many districts’ budgets and resources and put classrooms on the front lines of America’s battles over whether and how to assimilate the newcomers and their children.

Inside schools, which are required to enroll students regardless of their immigration status and are prohibited from even asking about it, the debate has turned to how best to educate them.

States, educators watching Texas bilingual ed case closely

The Houston Chronicle reports on litigation that has captured the attention of bilingual education advocates across the nation:

A federal judge’s ruling that Texas is not living up to its obligation to properly educate students who struggle with the English language gives hope to many of those children with dismal academic achievement, a civil rights lawyer said Monday.

The state of Texas is not complying with the federal Equal Education Opportunity Act, in that public schools are failing their obligation to overcome language barriers, Senior U.S. District Judge William Wayne Justice said in a 95-page ruling on Friday.

“The failure of secondary (limited English proficient) students under every metric clearly and convincingly demonstrates student failure, and accordingly, the failure of the (English as a Second Language) secondary program in Texas,” Justice wrote in the opinion, which reversed his 2007 ruling in the case.