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In Part Three of his closing argument in behalf of Edgewood Intervenors in the 2004 Texas school funding trial, attorney David Hinojosa of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) argues that when it comes to the needs of economically disadvantaged students, Texas continues to discount students who deserve premium attention.

The general purpose and theory of comp ed in our nation and state is to compensate for low investments in low income children, low community investment, family advantages, low health investment, access to a history of success.

The evidence shows that parents of economically disadvantaged students often have low educational levels, poor housing, and they must overcome these obstacles created by poverty, including the lack of resources in their local public schools. And when the intensity of poverty increases, as the evidence shows, within a school or a school district, research has shown that the negative effects upon the economically disadvantaged are magnified.

Within the Edgewood intervenor districts, the intensity of poverty ranged from 70 percent economically disadvantaged to 96 percent economically disadvantaged. And while the West Orange-Cove plaintiff superintendent testified about the new struggle in dealing with an increasing number of economically disadvantaged children, our districts have been struggling at higher levels for a much longer period of time.

But as each witness testified, save for one, Dr. Armor, these children can succeed with appropriate resources. Even with the limited resources under TAAS our clients managed to pull up from below one year to reach recognized and exemplary status. Of course, it took about seven to eight years to get to that level because the resources were still insufficient at the time.

Now, as a whole, under TAAS the economically disadvantaged, the African-American and the Hispanic in the state were all the success that the State wanted to talk about those groups reaching. They never reached the 80 percent, all tests taken, standard under TAAS as a group, even after nine years of testing. They remained about 14 percentage points behind whites, which is further evidence that the comp ed weight is underestimated.

And as the testimony has shown, TAKS as a whole is a new ball game with low cut scores on each subject matter except in the initial year, and economically disadvantaged students still pass the TAKS test at least 10 percentage points behind the first test takers of the TAAS. And as Dr. Cloudt, for the State, agreed, the gap is back, even though it never went away. Looking at the comp ed test scores on TAKS, which we showed earlier, I’ll briefly go through this.

Well, before we look at the TAKS scores I want to show you where some of these economically disadvantaged children are coming from. And those photos are from Pharr-San Juan-Alamo that were offered. And in that region here’s a student community. They’re also known as colonias. Here’s another student home. This is the environment that our children leave and go to school. This is the environment providing them the in-house training that they need, or not providing that training.

And going to the fifth grade TAKS scores for the economically disadvantaged in 2003, you can still see the gap between fifth grade economically disadvantaged and all students, which actually also includes the economically disadvantaged, so it actually brings it down a little. The eighth graders trail as well. The eleventh graders trail as well.

Looking at the 2004, it’s no different. Only one-half of the fifth graders, one-half of the eighth graders and just over one-half of the eleventh graders of the economically disadvantaged total are passing the TAKS all-test standard.

And the eleventh graders need to pass it in order to graduate. 42 percent of the economically disadvantaged will either have to take it again and again and again, or else not get that high school diploma. And even with State aid, each superintendent for West Orange-Cove, the Alvarado, and the Edgewood intervenors all identified numerous critical-area needs which are special and immediate concerns, given the rising Texas standards imposed by our state and nation.

Harder tests have led to higher failure rates and the need for more intensive services for our at-risk and economically disadvantaged students. And the great need for additional necessary resources was identified through a sample of districts by Dr. Reyes.

Comparing the TAKS test scores for 2002-2003 — or comparing the on-time completion and potential for higher education graduation rates, the seven districts was a comparison of seven wealthy districts who averaged zero to 20 percent of economically disadvantaged, excluding Austin, and comparing it to a group of Edgewood intervenor districts which had economically disadvantaged students, 79 to 96 percent, economically disadvantaged. And the percentage difference shown is the percentage that it would take the economically disadvantaged in order to get up to the average of the non-economically disadvantaged districts.

The next slide shows potential for higher ed, SAT/ACT at or above criterion. The wealthiest districts had 54.4 percent of their kids pass. The poor districts had only 4 percent.

The next slide shows the achievement differences between the two sample districts, showing marked differences between the average of all students in one set of districts versus another set of districts.

The next slide shows that, even when you combine sample one and sample two — let’s lump them together. We’re not going to take them apart. When you look at the percentage difference of SED versus non-SED in the districts, you see the marked difference.

In the third grade see that it’s only 8.6 and 8.8 percent, and it grows all the way up to 72.8 percent by the tenth grade. And this next one shows when you look at within the district, the property poor districts, when you look at them and then you look at the percentage differences of at-risk versus non-at-risk students, you see that once again there is an incredible gap between the performance of the at-risk students.

The State would probably write them off and say “Well, they’re not supposed to pass. They’re at risk. That’s why they are at risk. The ones at-risk are moving out.” Well, the whole purpose of compensatory education is to eliminate the achievement differences, not to reduce it, not to put it aside.

Building a New

Global Audience

By Greg Moses
Texas Civil Rights

Review
http://texascivilrightsreview.org/phpnuke
Published at

Counterpunch

Take nothing away from the talent at Sunday night’s Oscars, white

folks can act. And Sean Penn shows no small courage when he travels to Baghdad to re-center our

experience of war. So please read carefully.
Because you’d think from watching it all on

Sunday night that a century of Hollywood has produced a remarkable global alliance of white audiences,

from Billy Crystal’s Long Island, to Peter Jackson’s New Zealand, not to mention Charlize Theron’s

South Africa, Nicole Kidman’s Australia, or Sir Ian Mckellan’s England.

In fact the

geography of this audience sounds remarkably like Bush’s coalition of the willing, doesn’t it?

Don’t get me wrong. The players who were honored Sunday night are my entertainment

heroes and all of them have been reliable witnesses against the late imperial wars. But didn’t

anybody else notice how white it all looked?

Once upon a time, as we saw Sunday evening,

the late, great Gregory Peck starred in the terrific movie, “To Kill a Mockingbird.” And not long

after that, as we also saw, the late and legendary Katherine Hepburn played a courageous part in

“Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.”

But forty and fifty years later, after these

noteworthy achievements in the art of civil rights, guess who’s not coming to the Oscars? Does Oscar

have a last name? Oscar White?

There is no reason at this point to fawn over important

exceptions. I would rather point out that on Oscar night, some “losers” must be braver than others.

When I saw the first movie in the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy a few years ago, I

watched it back-to-back with “Ali.” And since that long afternoon turned into evening, all the

excellencies of the trilogy have been speaking to me also of the fact that Tolkien’s mythology is

mightily white. After all he was born in South Africa, and he taught at Oxford.

But I

don’t begrudge Tolkien for writing a white mythology, especially when the theme begs its characters to

give up their obsession with total power. Tolkien itches the problem of white mythology from

within.

Nevertheless, I do worry about the images of conflict that are perpetuated in

this colossal epic, where ethereal whiteness meets an enemy made of dark mud.

And I

worry about collective structures of taste that are reinforced when these white-centered narratives

have no visible, say visual, counter-challenges in the nearby image mix. What happens when there is

nothing but other white-centered narratives to jostle up against on a night that celebrates excellence

to audiences around the world?

On this reading, the movie “Monster” could be viewed as

a cautionary exploration of white womanhood, artistically daring for a blonde, South African star.

Penn and his co-star Tim Robbins have been courageous in their outspoken warnings

against the ring of power in the real world, and I was not unmindful that Clint Eastwood made a choice

to put the two together this year, and then sat squarely behind them, as they took top honors from the

academy. Please don’t tell me that I overlooked all this.

But we do have a problem

here, and we need to talk about it without succumbing to cheap accusations.

For example,

today, when conservatives appeal to “merit and excellence” as “race neutral”; we cannot forget that

there was nothing race-neutral about “merit or excellence” on Sunday night. Nor is there any simple

way to evade the welded relationship between “merit” and “whiteness” that helps support our

mainstream sensibilities of what counts for truth and beauty.

It is a complex problem,

fitted exactly to the kind of cultural leadership exemplified by Penn and Robbins. Against this

problem, they are more active than most.

The difficulty of solving the problem demands

a reform of Oscar beyond the notable uplifting of our most disgruntled, white genius.

A

process of affirmative action, if you will, should be considered by the academy. Not because “lesser

excellences” of Black, Latino, Asian, or American Indian talents need “assistance”. No, that is not

the argument. The genius is there already, quite solid, and quite strong.

Reform is

needed, because presumptions of white-centered excellence need systematic counter-considerations and

persistent challenges. On Oscar night, when image is everything, let there be no more Oscar White!

In the first week of a nonviolent campaign that organizers say will last until all the children are freed from prison, five demonstrators Tuesday will stage a quiet protest outside the District Office of Dallas Congressman Pete Sessions.

. . .

“We all made a commitment to drawing a line between the two Americas,” said an upbeat Johnson-Castro by phone, speaking about Vigil VI at the T. Don Hutto immigration jail.

The vigil drew about 50 folks, along with news cameras from ABC and NBC affiliates.

“People are angry,” said Johnson-Castro. “Even the media are angry because they can’t even talk with the children on the inside.

“What do you think about a government that holds itself up as a great protector of free speech, bu then denies free speech to children in prison?”

President Rosa Rosales from the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) pledged her organization to the cause of closing down Hutto and all the children’s prisons.

The Palestine Solidarity Committee from the University of Texas, Democrats from Williamson County, and local LULAC members joined a few “caravan people,” which is Jay Johnson-Castro’s term for folks who have been traveling with him since Feb. 2, when the Marcha Migrante II Border Caravan left San Diego.

“It’s criminal what’s happening at Hutto. The people doing this ought to be on the inside with the children on the outside,” said Johnson-Castro.–gm