Texas dealt a big blow to it’s Latino students

The momentum in Texas regarding the implementation of culturally relevant courses for Hispanic students, which represent 51 percent of the state’s 5 million students, stopped abruptly this year.

SEE ALSO: ‘Daily Show’ uncovers ugly truth behind opposing Mexican-American studies

Less than three months after the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) passed the historic bi-partisan Proclamation 2016, which would lead to textbooks for Mexican-American, African-American, Asian-American and Native-American studies, the body voted on Wednesday to alter language and unravel any gains for underserved pupils.

 “It’s no mistake that this all transpired after the Texas Republican Convention,” Librotraficante Movement leader Tony Diaz told VOXXI. “Right now, you have this push against immigration. And just like in Arizona, where they muscled the Tucson Unified School District into caving in and dismantling Mexican-American studies by saying they’d lose 10 percent of their budget, the SBOE said 2016 proclamation was too expensive.”

He added this spring the Republicans who opposed Proclamation 2016 called Mexican-American Studies “reverse racism” and threatened to pull a “Cesar Chavez” during public testimony.

“Now it was the far right saying it’s just about the money, but if you look at 2014 Republican platform it says under educating youth; they want ethnic groups to assimilate,” Diaz said.

Despite the Republican controversy surrounding ethnic studies, Diaz pointed to the Cambium Report from Arizona, where data revealed Mexican-American studies led to a 98 percent graduation rate.

Earlier this week, the Republican leadership who proposed the amendments to change Proclamation 2016 focused on rigged budget figures, implying the policy would gut school districts of funding.

While Proclamation 2016 would have mandated ethnic studies programs statewide, school districts in Texas can individually decide to teach the curriculum. Diaz laughed at the notion of district’s going broke implementing an ethnic studies program.

“We were all blindsided by this,” he said. “They did a breakdown of how much it could cost. It’s basically like when you go to mechanic for an oil change, and you leave paying $7,000. They came up with numbers out of thin air.”

Specifically egregious is the fact that Diaz’s organization Mas Texas is in the process of creating a free curriculum for Mexican-American studies. In fact, he said later this month 50 pilot programs will begin in different districts throughout the Lone Star State, which boasts more than 2,100 school districts.

“We have a huge coalition linking community members to experts in each field to award-winning writers and politicians,” he said. “It’s a lot of hard work, but this is going to invigorate us to get more schools on board.”

As for Proclamation 2016, it’s basically now Proclamation 2017, which is the earliest year an ethnic studies program would be implemented statewide. Activists aren’t optimistic.

“This is eye-opening,” Diaz said. “We’re not going to forget. We’re going to be pushing this hard but now we know that we need to vote them all out. The only way we’re going to get change done is to change the SBOE members.”

SEE ALSO: Low teacher salaries might be affecting education in Texas