Story updated on May 20 to reflect categories in which the district has fully satisfied the court's requirements.
TUSD continues to make progress toward possibly being removed from court oversight in its decades-old desegregation case.
A report filed May 12 by the court-appointed special master who is tasked with overseeing the Tucson Unified School District’s efforts said the district is more equitable and capable of enhancing the learning opportunities and outcomes of all its students than it was seven years ago.
Special Master Willis D. Hawley said TUSD has reached full compliance for various areas of its federal court order that include support for beginning teachers; dual-language programs; grow your own programs for school or district leadership positions; extracurricular activities; and administrator diversity at the school level.
He also said TUSD could achieve full compliance in the area of teacher diversity as long as the district agrees to implement certain strategies.
Hawley also found the district to have fully met the requirements for a number issues identified within overarching goals that have not yet been fully met. Those issues include:
- the identification of potential magnet schools and planning for transportation to foster integration;
- advanced learning experiences for all students;
- inclusive school environments and cultures of civility;
- culturally relevant courses and related professional development and curriculum;
- discipline;
- family and community engagement;
- and technology to improve instruction.
The special master said TUSD needs to identify who is responsible for monitoring or addressing problems in its dropout prevention plan for English Language Learners before the district is awarded even partial compliance in that area.
He also voiced concern that TUSD’s school improvement plans are problematic because they provide no direction or priorities.
At the elementary school level, for example, the improvement plans have no time line, assessment of feasibility and resources, or relation to any problem that needs to be solved, the report said. The district also hasn’t presented an analysis on how well students are learning the things they are expected to know.
Hawley recommends this work be overseen by the district and advised by an external consultant, appointed in consultation with the special master.
“There is a great deal of work yet to be done to develop actionable plans for school improvement throughout the district,” Hawley wrote, adding, “There is every reason to believe that the district has the will and the capability to revise these plans as suggested.”
The federal court has the ultimate say on whether to lift court monitoring completely or for certain categories only.
TUSD administrators said the filing represents the first time the special master has recommended the district be released from court supervision. Even though there are numerous portions where the court-appointed supervisor identifies work the district still needs to do, district officials said this is “advice” rather than a recommendation or condition, which need court supervision.
“Ready ... for release”
Superintendent Gabriel Trujillo said the district has “fully completed and complied,” to Hawley’s satisfaction, with all it has been court-ordered to do.
“And are therefore by his recommendation ready to be considered by the court for release from court supervision,” he said.
This assertion seems evident in some aspects of the recommendation, such as when it comes to advanced learning experiences for minority students. The report said the district is doing what is reasonable to increase enrollment among African American and Latino students and has increased enrollment markedly, pointing out that from 2012 to the last school year, the number of participating African American students has increased 41% and participating Latino students by 23%.
Nonetheless Hawley recommended the district be awarded partial compliance, although he had no further proposals or strategies.
Likewise, when it comes to creating inclusive and civil school environments, the special master recommended that the district be awarded partial compliance, although he said the district has met the intent of the court order in this area.
“Spin of all spins”
The idea that the recommendation said TUSD should be released from court oversight is the “spin of all spins,” said Rubin Salter Jr., lawyer for the African American plaintiffs in the case. He said if the special master indicates the district still has work to do, it’s just common sense that he’s not recommending they are absolved.
Salter said he had limited time to skim the 54-page report, but would file a response within the 30-day window once he’s had a chance to review it.
Salter said the achievement gap is not improving for African American students. The main issues he sees are poor AzMERIT test scores, discipline disparity and hiring enough black educators and administrators.
“The black kids started off 40 years ago behind, and they’re still behind,” Salter said. “Kids started out 40 years ago being kicked out of school more than whites, proportionately, and still nothing has changed. ... It looks to me like they wasted the taxpayers’ money. Certainly the black kids haven’t benefited from it.”
TUSD receives more than $60 million annually from a property tax levy under the desegregation order.
The special master also shared a concern on discipline disparity, and said in his recommendation that the district still needs to address the way some teachers mishandle potential discipline problems, which could be a major reason for the disparity regarding disciplinary actions toward students of different races.
On the other hand, the report also said the Department of Justice examined a sampling of student disciplinary measures among students of all races and found no evidence of discrimination in this arena.
The special master’s report said the achievement gap has decreased slightly over a five-year period and is relatively narrow once variations in student family income are factored in.
Halley Freitas, TUSD’s senior director of assessment and program evaluation, said African American and Latino students have shown incremental growth on AzMERIT scores, a measure of academic success, over the last five years, at pretty much the same rate as other ethnicities.
Echoing the special master’s assertion, Freitas said students come into the school system affected by socioeconomic gaps.
Sylvia Campoy, a representative for the Latino plaintiffs in the case, said the district has failed to comply with the court order’s overarching areas of academic achievement and student integration.
“Yet another sad day”
Campoy said the special master’s recommendations “benefit the institution but greatly adversely impact lower-socio-economic black and Latino students — seemingly allowing TUSD to remove them from the radar in dealing with academic achievement.”
“It is yet another sad day in the TUSD desegregation case — one of injustice,” she said.
Trujillo said racial disparities in achievement and discipline are a nationwide problem. TUSD has eradicated the disciplinary gap for Mexican American students when compare with white students, he said, adding that African American students in TUSD are 1.8 times more likely to be suspended than white students but nationwide they are three times more likely.
“Over time, we continue to get better,” Trujillo said. “We’re not perfect. We have a lot more work to do. But the notion that we are going backward, it’s just not an accurate statement. It’s not an accurate statement for African American students, and it’s not an accurate statement for Mexican American students.”
