Raza Studies
Raza Studies

Author: Julio Cammarota

Publisher: University of Arizona Press

Published: 2014-02-27

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 0816598835

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The well-known and controversial Mexican American studies (MAS) program in Arizona’s Tucson Unified School District set out to create an equitable and excellent educational experience for Latino students. Raza Studies: The Public Option for Educational Revolution offers the first comprehensive account of this progressive—indeed revolutionary—program by those who created it, implemented it, and have struggled to protect it. Inspired by Paulo Freire’s vision for critical pedagogy and Chicano activists of the 1960s, the designers of the program believed their program would encourage academic achievement and engagement by Mexican American students. With chapters by leading scholars, this volume explains how the program used “critically compassionate intellectualism” to help students become “transformative intellectuals” who successfully worked to improve their level of academic achievement, as well as create social change in their schools and communities. Despite its popularity and success inverting the achievement gap, in 2010 Arizona state legislators introduced and passed legislation with the intent of banning MAS or any similar curriculum in public schools. Raza Studies is a passionate defense of the program in the face of heated local and national attention. It recounts how one program dared to venture to a world of possibility, hope, and struggle, and offers compelling evidence of success for social justice education programs.

Local Governments and Rural Development
Local Governments and Rural Development

Author: Krister Andersson

Publisher: University of Arizona Press

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13: 9780816527014

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Despite the recent economic upswing in many Latin American countries, rural poverty rates in the region have actually increased during the past two decades. Experts blame excessively centralized public administrations for the lackluster performance of public policy initiatives. In response, decentralization reformshave become a common government strategy for improving public sector performance in rural areas. The effect of these reforms is a topic of considerable debate among government officials, policy scholars, and citizensÕ groups. This book offers a systematic analysis of how local governments and farmer groups in Latin America are actually faring today. Based on interviews with more than 1,200 mayors, local officials, and farmers in 390 municipal territories in four Latin American nations, the authors analyze the ways in which different forms of decentralization affect the governance arrangements for rural development Òon the ground.Ó Their comparative analysis suggests that rural development outcomes are systemically linked to locally negotiated institutional arrangementsÑformal and informalÑbetween government officials, NGOs, and farmer groups that operate in the local sphere. They find that local-government actors contribute to public services that better assist the rural poor when local actors cooperate to develop their own institutional arrangements for participatory planning, horizontal learning, and the joint production of services. This study brings substantive data and empirical analysis to a discussion that has, until now, more often depended on qualitative research in isolated cases. With more than 60 percent of Latin AmericaÕs rural population living in poverty, the results are both timely and crucial.