Arizona's Attack on Kids

Melanie Stetson Freeman, The
Christian Science Monitor / Getty Images
The state’s immigration battle is now putting
children in the hot seat. Dana Goldstein on the Arizona ethnic studies
ban and a new bill that could require schools to tattle on illegal
immigrant families.

In the wake of the passage of two bills aimed at Arizona’s immigrant
community—one allowing police to randomly check for citizenship status
and another outlawing public school ethnic studies courses—the state’s
schools are bracing for another potential incursion into how they do
business. A third bill would require them to record and report to the
state the number of illegal immigrant children in their student
population, along with an estimation of the costs associated with
educating those children.

If passed, SB 1097 would compel teachers and administrators to
determine the legal status of students and their families, almost
certainly discouraging enrollment and parental participation at school.
The bill’s sponsor is state Senator Russell Pearce, a longtime leader of
Arizona’s anti-immigration right wing and the legislator who crafted
the recent immigration enforcement law.

“The impact is
damaging,” said state Representative  Kyrsten Sinema. “These kids made
no choice to come to this country.”

The state Senate passed the schools bill on March 31, but it was
tabled in the House of Representatives. Meanwhile, the national
anti-immigration movement, which has cheered Arizona’s new crackdown, is
embracing SB 1097 as a cause célèbre.

In an op-ed
for WorldNetDaily, Tom Tancredo, the former Colorado congressman
who ran for president in 2008 on an anti-immigration platform, predicted
SB 1097 would pass in 2011, after Republicans gain midterm seats in the
Arizona Legislature. “The public will then know the true cost of
providing public education to the children of illegal aliens,” he wrote.

For the bill to be signed into law, however, Republican Governor Jan
Brewer also has to win her November election against Democratic Attorney
General Terry Goddard. Recent polls show a tight
race in a state with strong libertarian leanings—historically
veering back and forth between conservative and moderate government and
home to disparate political figures like Barry Goldwater and Janet
Napolitano.

• Tunku
Varadarajan: Say ‘Hell No’ to ArizonaJose Gonzalez, who
teaches a 12th-grade Tucscon public school American government course
through a Mexican-American framework—one of the classes that inspired
the anti-ethnic studies law—told The Daily Beast he expects that Brewer
would sign SB 1097, as she has the other anti-immigrant measures.

“I just think it’s a reflection of the times,” he said.
“Unfortunately, since the election of Obama, there’s been an
undercurrent of xenophobic racism. People vote accordingly.”

The schools bill is not the first time Pearce, the state senator, has
sought to target illegal immigrant children. In 2008, he introduced
legislation challenging the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, with the
goal of denying citizenship status to children born in the United
States to illegal immigrant parents. In 2006, he crafted a successful
ballot initiative, Proposition 300, which denies students the right to
in-state college tuition or scholarships if they were brought to the
U.S. illegally as children.

“The impact is damaging,” state Representative Kyrsten Sinema, a
Democrat, told The Daily Beast. “These kids made no choice to come to
this country.”

Pearce and staff members in his office did not respond to a phone
call and an email asking them to comment for this story.

Gonzalez and other educators say politicians who oppose programs that
serve immigrant kids are ignorant of day-to-day life in the classroom.
Proponents of the ethnic studies ban such as State Superintendent Tom
Horne argue
such classes are divisive. "We should be teaching kids that this is
a land of opportunity, and not teaching kids the downer: that they're
oppressed and can't get anywhere, they should be angry against the
government, they should be angry against their country," Horne said
on CNN.

The lightning-rod Tucson
Mexican-American Studies program enrolls about 3 percent of the
district’s 55,000 students, and includes stand-alone lessons for
elementary school children as well as full-semester and full-year
history and government courses in middle school and high school.
Gonzalez, the 12th-grade government teacher, says Mexican-American
studies students cover all the basics required in the state history
curriculum and use the same American history textbook other Tucson
students. But they supplement those lessons with specific readings and
discussions about the Chicano-American experience.

One recent lesson, Gonzalez said, was on Supreme Court nominee Elena
Kagan and whether her appointment could tilt the court’s balance between
liberals and conservatives. Another was about Mexican-Americans who
served in the Vietnam War and how their casualties were difficult to
count because of birth certificates and other government documents that
classified Hispanic Americans as “white.”

“To say we are teaching hate is utterly ridiculous. It’s utterly
untrue,” Gonzalez said, adding that he hoped CNN and The Rachel
Maddow Show would film segments inside his classroom and others like
it. “If a student is comfortable with their identity they will do well
in school. There is a plethora of research that states that. And in our
classes, our students manifest that outcome. The students who take our
classes and go to college are outperforming other Mexican-American kids
and also European-American kids.”

According to Dan Willingham, a University of Virginia cognitive
psychologist who focuses on K-12 education, there is no overwhelming
research evidence that ethnic studies courses raise achievement for
minority students. But Willingham said any program that gets kids
engaged in and excited about school is a good idea.

“Kids from disadvantaged homes don’t have the family ethos that
school is what we do, school is a place that we belong,” he said. “If
this program is doing that, I absolutely feel like that could be
valuable.”

Dana Goldstein is an associate editor and writer at The Daily
Beast. Her work on politics, women's issues, and education has appeared
in The American Prospect, Slate, BusinessWeek, The New Republic, and The
Nation.

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