Dolores Huerta argues for politics and voting

Dolores Huerta, Latina Civil Rights leader, co-founder of the United Farmworkers Union, and feminist leader spoke to over 800 students at CSU-Sacramento on Sept 18, on the topic of civic engagement, particularly of young people.

Her talk was lengthy, but she carefully and explicitly connected  the assigned themes of the Constitution and civic engagement to a long list of  issues important to young people. She explained the role of a two party government,  the paralysis of the current Congress, the obstruction of the U.S. Supreme Court, efforts on voter suppression and more.

She began by explaining that the effort at comprehensive immigration reform was blocked by Republicans in the House and predicted that if the Republicans were able to gain control of the Senate in November, the extreme anti immigrant legislation of Republicans would be advanced to an audience that was over 80% young and Latino.

Dolores used current issues to explain constitutional debates including Citizens United, voter suppression, restrictions on women’s  choice on reproduction, equal pay, and the importance of labor unions. 

Dolores Huerta Speaking at Sac State on Thursday

Dolores Huerta, DSA Honorary Chair and longtime friend of members of our work  will be speaking at Sac State on Sept.18.  Free. Dolores is a leader in Latino, Civil Rights, Feminist and Labor politics.

 Dolores Huerta is coming to campus on 9/18 at 7:30. http://calendar.csus.edu/MasterCalendar/EventDetails.aspx?data=hHr80o3M7J66DOhNoYgUl3vpcTSeThL6Y15oAC8nTBBu7P%2F38YIp7t6sa9Jm8Wno

See more here.    https://sites.google.com/site/chicanodigital/home/table-of-contents/dolores-huerta-inducted-into-hall-of-fame

The Sacramento Bee covers one side of the story; Misses drop in Mexican American/Chicano enrollment

The story of the Chinese graduates from an MBA program in Singapore that  appeared in the Friday on-line paper and on Page 1 of the Saturday print edition  of the Sacramento Bee was interesting and a bit problematic. 

I don't have a problem with this entrance into international education. It could well be a valued new program.

Unfortunately, at the same time, Mexican American/Latino students in teacher preparation at Sac State have been reduced from over 100 per semester  to less than 10. This at the same time as the student population in California  k-12 schools has reached over 50% Latino descendent students.

And, in the graduate programs in education the percentage of Mexican American/Latino students have declined from 35% of the total enrollment! to less than 10%.

While the economic crisis of the last four years contributed to an  overall decline in enrollment,   the percentage decline  in Mexican American enrollment is a consequence of  eliminating programs serving language minority students. Prior to 2010, Sac State had one of the few teacher preparation programs in Northern California  successfully preparing a  large number of diverse future teachers, including bilingual teachers for the state’s  growing population of  language minority students. Successful programs in Bilingual multicultural teacher preparation  were dismantled  and potential future teachers  went elsewhere.

Making Change in Education for Chicano Students

Over 80 graduates of the Mexican American Education Project  and community members came together on Oct. 11/12, 2013 at CSU Sacramento to begin the recording of the history of the Mexican American Education Project ( 1968-1973) in Sacramento. The event was recorded and a video transcript should be available by 2014. 

The fundamental purpose of the Mexican American Education Project was to prepare activists as change agents- usually working in schools. Follow up research will document the success and the problems of the effort.

Photos from the event are up on the Chicano Digital History Project .

These  are of participants in the event: Recuerdos del Moviemiento Chicano 1965-1980.

A preliminary  report  and photos are  at https://sites.google.com/site/chicanodigital/home/mexican-american-education-project/mexican-american-education-project-evaluation

Forum paper - Challenging the criminalization of immigrants

 Top-down Comprehensive Immigration Reform Proposals and Compromises Lack Intelligence, Justice, and Democracy (April 16 2013) Manuel Barajas The Gang of 8 in the Senate proposed a comprehensive immigration reform (CIR) that emphasized border security, guest worker program aligned with US economic interests, and an earned and restricted legalization path (Janurary 28, 2013). Soon after, President Obama in his State of the Union articulated a similar position, and asked congress to compromise on something he could sign (February 13, 2013). An illusion of hope was projected to the 11 million living in the shadows and their relatives/friends also living in fear of being separated from loved ones. Also exciting the public (March 29, 2013), the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the AFL-CIO/other conformists compromised on a lobbying platform that advances both of their interests. Their compromise also prioritized border security (e.g., e-verify) and permited another form of guestworkers—i.e., W visas—satisfying corporate interests and promising prevailing wages for labor. Past programs have made similar formal promises but failed in enforcing them. The Gang of 8, after listening to their powerful constituencies, now present a largely unchanged but more punitive CIR proposal that secures the border above all, permits guest workers, and lastly restricts and complicates legalization, where a great a majority will be disenfranchised and without guarantee to legalize even after 10 years of waiting.

Immigration Forum

photo. D. Bacon.

You are invited.

Campus/ Community Forum on Immigration. Friday, April 12^th.  5:30 – 8 :30 PM. Hind auditorium.  CSU Sacramento.

Be a witness to the powerful migration stories that will frame the discussion on immigration reform.

Testimony by high school students, community college, CSU and U.C. students and community members.

 Sponsors.  Immigration Working Group, Sacramento Central Labor Council, CFA,  Campus Progressive Alliance,  Sacramento Progressive Alliance Democratic Socialists of America, Sacramento Activist School, W.O.R.D.   and more.  No cost.

Information.  http://progressiveforum07.blogspot.com

Tens of thousands of immigrants and their allies marched Wednesday in a coordinated series of protest demanding that Congress approve new, comprehensive immigration reform for the 11 million immigrants currently living in the U.S.

Support rallies were held in cities and towns across the nation- including Sacramento. 
Hoy Marchamos.  Mañana Votamos!

The Demise of Multicultural Education at CSU-Sacramento

The Bilingual Multicultural Education Dept. at CSU Sacramento was established in 1994 as one of the first  major Bilingual Departments in the CSU system.  Since then it has graduated over 800 bilingual teachers, administrations, college professors, and educational leaders.  The department at one time had a faculty of 18 tenure track members.

In response to the severe crisis in teacher preparation in California, the department was  voted out of existence during the Fall of 2010 . During the last decades the BMED  department  prepared thousand of new teachers and educational leaders who made bilingualism and multiculturalism a priority.  The programs emphasized Spanish –English, Chinese and more recently Hmong bilingualism.

In place of the prior, successful Bilingual/Multicultural Department at CSU Sacramento,  with a strategy of change based upon the nature of culture and recognition of racial oppression in this society and its schools, the College has taken a business-functional approach.   It has subsumed the previous departments that had specific missions-- such as serving culturally and linguistically diverse students or students with disabilities--, and placed them in three general divisions, Undergraduate, Credentials, and Graduate.  In creating a new one size fits all  teacher preparation curriculum it has bowed to test driven mandates (PACT)  by eliminating required courses in multicultural education. It has become just another  College of Education with all of its merits and demerits.

BMED Graduate - Principal Turns School Around

dlambert@sacbee.com

PUBLISHED SUNDAY, DEC. 02, 2012

This is the third in an occasional series on principals who are turning around local schools.

Maria Lewis spends much of her day on bent knee. The 44-year-old principal bends down to give direction to bigger kids and to soothe the smallest. But mostly she bends down to listen.

It's clear that kids come first on the T.L. Whitehead Elementary campus in Woodland.

"Every child can learn," Lewis said. "They may be lacking some skills. So what? Let's try to build on prior knowledge."

She must be right. The school's Academic Performance Index has grown from 704 to 793 in the two years since she took the reins of the school. On a scale of 200 to 1,000, the statewide benchmark is 800 for each school.

The increase was enough to make Whitehead Elementary the only traditional school in the four-county region to come out of program improvement this year, a designation Title 1 schools receive if state officials don't think they are improving their scores quickly enough.

"We are really proud" of Whitehead Elementary, Debra Calvin, an associate superintendent at Woodland Unified, told The Bee in October. "It's an incredibly difficult thing to do to pull a school out of Program Improvement."

Mrs. Lewis is a graduate of the Sac State BMED program. Like hundreds of other graduates she has done a great job.  The program has now been terminated.  For details see, The Chicano / Mexican American Digital History project. https://sites.google.com/site/democracyandeducationorg/chicano-mexican-american-digital-history-project/history-of-bilingual-education-dept-at-sac-state

read the entire piece on Mrs. Lewis at the Bee. http://www.sacbee.com/2012/12/02/v-print/5024345/principal-put-struggling-school.html

Chicana/o Studies

 Mass Education

By  Rodolfo F. Acuña

Ed. note; all that is said below also applies directly to the elimination of Bilingual/Multicultural Education at Sac State in Spring 2012. 

A lot more thought has to be paid to the question, “why Chicana/o Studies?”  CHS are not the whim; they are not a fad. They are part of the historical reasons for the struggle of the Mexican American community to obtain equal protection.  If we forget these reasons, CHS will be minimized -- reduced to whims and fads, obfuscating why institutions of higher learning continue to exclude Latinos.

The failure to ask “why” perpetuates the myth that higher education is dedicated to a search for the Truth and open equally to all Americans. The truth be told, Chicana/o Studies is only tolerated because it is politically expedient. CHS are tolerated in many institutions because they placate Mexican American students.   

It follows a pattern: the administration concedes students one Chicana/o studies class in history – and call it Chicana/o Studies. If the academy feels generous, it gives the students an office, which they share with a faculty member. Often instructors are not specialists in Chicana/o Studies, and they are often not Mexican American – any name that ends in a vowel suffices.

Campuses have not taken CHS seriously; the academe is intellectually lazy, and has not questioned why the disparate departments have failed to integrate this important fund of knowledge.

Chicano students in California Schools

    California public schools are in crisis- and they are getting worse. This is a consequence  of massive budget cuts imposed on the schools by the legislature and the governor in the last four years.  Total per pupil expenditure is down over $1,000 per student. The result is significant  class size increases.   Students are in often classes too large for learning.  Supplementary services such as tutoring, art, and drop out prevention  classes have been eliminated.  Over 14,000 teachers have been dismissed due to the budget emergencies.

         Over 48% of the children in California public schools are Chicano/Latino or descendents of  Mexican/Latino parents.  ( See link, Demographics).  The Chicano drop out rate has not significantly changed in 30 years.   ( See Choosing Democracy: a practical guide to multicultural education, and Chicana/o Educational Pipeline https://sites.google.com/site/democracyandeducationorg/Home/chicana-o-educational-pipeline ) All children need a good education to participate in our democracy and prepare for  life in the rapidly changing economy.

     We need to invest in urban schools, provide equal educational opportunities in these schools, and recruit a well prepared  teaching force that begins to reflect the student populations in these schools. At the same time the largest, most succesful teacher preparation program for Chicano/Latino children has been closed down at Sacramento State- https://sites.google.com/site/democracyandeducationorg/chicano-mexican-american-digital-history-project/history-of-bilingual-education-dept-at-sac-state)  We must insist on equal opportunity to learn, without  compromise.  When we do these things, we will begin to protect the freedom to learn for our children and our grandchildren, and to build a more just and  democratic society.

       California schools are now 47^th. in the nation in per pupil expenditure and 49^th in class size. Low achievement scores on national tests  in reading and math reflect this severe underfunding. California teachers have been subject to demoralizing  budget cuts that often prevent good teaching. 

     Instead of working with teachers to restore budgets, or to limit budget cuts, a group that claims to be school “reformers” argue that the important issue is teacher accountability.

      This group of “reformers” includes so called   Democrats for Education Reform  led by former State Senator  Gloria Romero and  by Michelle Rhee, former Chancellor of the Washington, D.C. schools. See. https://sites.google.com/site/democracyandeducationorg/

The termination of the Bilingual Education Department at CSU-Sacarmento

 The long march through the institutions has ended for the Bilingual /Multicultural faculty and students at CSU Sacramento.  On Sat, May 19, the Bilingual/Multicultural Education Department at CSU-Sacramento graduated its final class.  A movement that began in the  Mexican American Education Project of 1969-1974 came to a close.  See history here:

https://sites.google.com/site/democracyandeducationorg/chicano-mexican-american-digital-history-project/mexican-american-education-project

 I retired in 2008 and had little role to play in the decision to abandon this  civil rights project.  In the 15 year history of the department we graduated thousands of new bilingual teachers and educational leaders who, under the prior hegemonic system, would have been sorted out.  These graduates have gone into teaching and schools and influenced thousands of students.   Under the new system, they will again often be discarded. The drop out rate for Chicano students in California  remains near 50%. We know how to reverse this, but politicians and institutions are unwilling to dedicated the resources to this end. 

The students are still there.  The students of California still need bilingual and multicultural teachers.   Students who are descendents of Mexican and Chicano families now make up almost 48% of public school students.

There were budget cuts, but a united faculty could have retained the department if they so chose.  Instead, a new generation of faculty chose to abandon this institutional base that had been created by their predecessors.

For more history see; https://sites.google.com/site/democracyandeducationorg/chicano-mexican-american-digital-history-project/history-of-bilingual-education-dept-at-sac-state

"An injury to one is an injury to all."

This post dedicated to the memory of Hugo Chacon and Dr. Tom Carter. 

Labor Solidarity Tour

Biliterate Against the Odds,

 Becoming BILITERATE AGAINST THE ODDS : A Cause for Celebration:

                  La comunidad entera de Sacramento está invitada a la 18a Conferencia Anual sobre Educación Multicultural en Sacramento State University, el sábado, 5 de noviembre de 8:30 am – 1:00 de la tarde en la University Union, Sacramento State .  La entrada y el estacionamiento de carros (en Parking Structure II) son totalmente gratis.  

                  La invitada de honor es la Doctora María de la Luz Reyes, autora de of Words Were All We Had: Becoming Biliterate Against the Odds.  En su presentación de las 9:00 am la Dra. Reyes nos explicará por qué  el crecer bilingue en los Estados Unidos debería  de ser una causa de celebración.  El éxito de los profesionistas latinos de educación rechaza el mito de “en riesgo” sobre los que crecen con idiomas nativas, indicando que el saber el Espanol apoya el aprendizaje del  Inglés y refuerza la lucha contra la hegemonía de “English Only.”

                  El Departamento de Educación Bilingue  Multilingue (BMED) de Sacramento State patronina esta conferencia anual para unir la facultad y estudiantes con miembros de la comuniadad de Sacramento para apoyar a la educación bilingue y multilingue en nuestra escuelas publicas K-16.  Invitamos cordialmente a todos los estudiantes, alumna de CSUS, maestros, padres de familia , profesionistas y toda persona interesada a que acuda a esta manana con la Dra. Reyes.  Después de la presentación, habrá grupos mas chicos para discutur temas relacionadas, dirigidos por facultad, maestros y estudiantes.