Shorts

Items in the News

Navajos Nix 'English-Only'

The Navajo Nation Council has unanimously passed a resolution opposing the "English only" initiative in Arizona, scheduled for the November 2000 elections.

"These ideological attacks on bilingual education are understood as attacks on the rights of Navajo children and Navajo parents, and on the future of the Navajo language and way of life," the Council stated.

The "English-only" initiative, backed by Californian Ron Unzand "English for the Children of Arizona," would put all children with limited English together in an "intensive one-year [only] English program." It would also prohibit teaching in a language other than English.

"The Navajo Nation experienced almost a hundred years of 'English Only' education between the late 1860s and the late 1960s," the Navajo Nation Council resolution, passed in July, noted. "Only with the inclusion of some Navajo language and culture in the schools did more Navajo students begin to succeed. Good Navajo-and-English bilingual education programs can and do work."

The Navajo Nation, the largest Native-American tribe in the United States, is based in the Arizona-New Mexico-Utah region.

For the complete resolution: http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/JCRAWFORD/Navres.htm.

'Zero Tolerance' Discriminates

"Zero tolerance" discipline policies in Michigan have led to expulsion rates for African-American students in some districts that are twice as high as those for other students, according to a recent study.

Zero tolerance policies, which require specific, immediate consequences for all students who commit infractions at school, have become increasingly popular across the country.

A study of Michigan's zero tolerance law reports that, in the school districts surveyed, African Americans make up about 40% of the student population, yet account for 64% of expulsions. Many school districts are expelling African-American students at twice the rate of non-African Americans. In Lansing, for example, African Americans accounted for about 32% of the student body, but almost 70% of the expulsions.

The study, by the Student Advocacy Center of Michigan, also reveals that most of the expelled students are between the ages of 12 and 15. Although they are legally required to attend school until they turn 16, few of these students are reinstated.

"This law is hurting children, particularly young African-American males, by abandoning them at a vulnerable age when they need attention and support most of all," says Ruth Zweifler, executive director of the Student Advocacy Center.

Creating Crisis

A number of studies have shown that students of color stay in school longer and achieve more when they have teachers who share some of their racial and cultural experiences. Yet students of color in California suffer from a critical shortage of non-white teachers, according to a new report, Creating Crisis: How California's Teaching Policies Aggravate Racial Inequalities in Public Schools.

In 1997-98, California public schools had 16 white students per white teacher, 38 African-American students per African-American teacher, and, most alarmingly, 103 Latino students per Latino teacher, according to the report, which was issued by the Oakland-based Applied Research Center.

The report argues that several specific policies have helped create the problem, in particular the requirement that prospective teachers pass a battery of inflexible standardized tests before they can be certified. People of color pass these tests at one-half to three-fourths the rate of white test-takers. One test-taker experienced the essay portion of one required test this way: "I feel constrained by, and resentful of, the framing of the essay questions. ... I am required to speak from personal experience, yet the experience they want doesn't feel like my experience."

If California were to strive to develop a teaching force representative of its students, nearly all of the 300,000 teachers hired in the next ten years would be people of color. Unless California develops a new approach to certifying, recruiting, and retaining teachers, the racial gap will only worsen.

For more information: www.arc.org.

Fall 1999