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Tucson Schools Must Teach Culturally Relevant Courses

By Michel Marizco / Senior Field Correspondent
Published February 7, 2013 at 5:51 PM PST
This story was published more than 11 years ago.
Tucson Schools Must Teach Culturally Relevant Courses
A federal judge ruled Wednesday the Tucson Unified School District must begin teaching culturally relevant courses in its schools.

A federal judge ruled Wednesday the Tucson Unified School District must begin teaching culturally relevant courses in its schools.

The court order comes from a case now more than 30 years old. In it, Judge David Bury ruled that TUSD must offer courses in the history and experiences of blacks and Latinos.

The school district must also reduce the racial disparities in the disciplining of black and Latino youth versus their white counterparts.

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Supporters of the district’s Mexican-American Studies program that the state of Arizona outlawed in 2010 had hoped that the judge’s decision would force the state to allow the courses to be offered again.

But the judge ruled that while he mandates culturally relevant courses, they should still comply with state law.

Michel Marizco
Senior Field Correspondent Michel Marizco (Tucson) has reported along the Southwest border for the past decade, most of that in Arizona and Sonora. Before joining the Fronteras Desk, he produced stories in the field for CNN Madrid, the BBC, 60 Minutes Australia, and the CBC. His work now focuses on transnational trafficking syndicates, immigration, federal law enforcement and those weird, wild stories that make the U.S.-Mexico border such an inherently fascinating region. He is a contributing author on Shared Responsibility: U.S.-Mexico Policy Options for Confronting Organized Crime and an occasional writer at High Country News. In his spare time, he works with Investigative Reporters and Editors and the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma, assisting in the ongoing investigations of journalist killings in Mexico.
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