stupidity in arizona's new education policy

Teachers with "heavy" or "ungrammatical" accents are no longer allowed to teach in Arizona schools? Ethnic studies are no longer allowed??

I read this post from angryasianman.com this morning about a new education policy, sent to Arizona governor Jan Brewer this week that takes stupidity to the next level.

Regarding ethnic studies, the policy says that schools will lose state funding if they offer classes that "promote the overthrow of the U.S. government, promote resentment of a particular race or class of people, are designed primarily for students of a particular ethnic group or advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals."

There are so many things wrong with that statement. First of all, there are some major events in history that might "promote resentment of a particular race or class of people." Are they not going to teach about the Holocaust? Slavery? Japanese internment? And as for ethnic solidarity, I don't understand how that's a bad thing!

Thankfully, this part of the education policy hasn't passed yet.

But the part about teachers with accents - the damage has already been done. The state made a huge push to hire bilingual teachers, particularly teachers whose native language is Spanish, so that they can include bilingual education programs, which research has found can be extremely effective in teaching English language learners English.

But now, the Arizona Department of Education is implementing "arbitrary fluency standards" and removing teachers who don't speak flawless English from classes with English language learners. Read this article from the Wall Street Journal to see exactly how far this is going to effect teachers in Arizona.

It's ridiculous. Don't they know what the research says? We must've talked about NEST (native English speaking teachers) and non-NEST teachers in every single class in grad school, and how there are very few disadvantages - and actually many advantages - to having a non-NEST teacher in an ESL classroom.

How can this be allowed? I just can't comprehend how stupidity like this is going to ruin so many people's lives and be a disservice to so many students.