Ethnic Studies and the Struggle in Tucson

By Christine Sleeter

In January, the board of the Tucson Unified School District in Arizona voted to dismantle Tucson’s Mexican-American studies program to avoid losing much-needed state funding. Following that, books that had been used in the program were declared in violation of the state’s law banning ethnic studies and were removed from classrooms, in effect censoring Mexican-American knowledge. On Feb. 1, the Network of Teacher Activist Groups launched a national...