UT Austin Educational Policy and Planning Program

***Free and open to the public. Please circulate widely.***

Please join us at a Freedom School panel discussion on Tuesday, February 15th, 6:00pm to discuss Seguín High School (pseudonym) featured in Subtractive Schooling: U.S. - Mexican Youth and the Politics of Caring

and Molina High School (pseudonym) featured in Dr. Marnie Curry's recently published book, Authentic Cariño: Transformative Schooling for Latinx Youth that I encourage you to buy. To prepare for this conversation, you can also download and read this summary of Subtractive Schooling [pdf] from researchgate.net.

Dr. Curry's ethnography of a school in a northern California school provides a rich counter-narrative to the subtractive schooling experiences observed at Seguín High School in Houston, Texas. She also provides an elegant framework that she terms, "authentic cariño" that provides conceptual, theoretical, and empirical depth to the concept of authentic caring.

Click the link to register for the panel discussion: https://rutgers.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_fd1JYPnDSmCWSX_jDKOxCA

Thanks to Rutgers University Professor Dr. Charles Payne, Jamelia Harris, and Ahmad Watson for organizing this.

-Angela Valenzuela

A Fresh Look at Authentic Caring: Transformative Schooling of Latinx Youth, by Drs. Marnie Curry and Angela Valenzuela ***Free and open to the public. Please circulate widely.*** Please join us at a Freedom School panel discussion on Tuesday, February 15 th...

It was beyond interesting having a front-row seat on the brouhaha that took place at our university just before Thanksgiving last month involving UT College of Education researchers regarding an American Enterprise Institute (AEI)-inspired attempt to pause legitimate, well-designed research because its exclusive focus was on white children and caregivers.

Elaborated more fully in the Texas Tribune piece authored by Kate McGee appearing below, this attempt exposes an ultra-conservative agenda that involves AEI fellow and University of Michigan-Flint professor, Dr. Mark Perry, "who has filed hundreds of complaints with the OCR against universities that he believes are violating federal policies."

Not only would this attempt to thwart sound research violate Academic Freedom in higher education, but had the AEI succeeded, it would have set a terrible precedent at our university on anti-racist research.

On the heels of anti-CRT Senate Bill 3 that focuses exclusively on K-12 education, I see this as an opening volley against our social justice work in higher education about which we should all not only be vigilant, but vigorously oppose. The university ultimately did the right thing in lifting the "pause" to credible research that the university itself is funding by people who have nothing better to do than intimidate researchers asking important questions that help fill much-needed gaps in scholarship.

May this be a lesson to other scholars getting similarly targeted. Do not give in to these white supremacist obstructionists. I'm proud of our swift response and trust that we will continue to address such baseless complaints as they surface. Stated differently, not responding means caving in to our freedom of expression and Academic Freedom that should never be compromised. Never.

-Angela Valenzuela

UT-Austin professors criticize university for halting antiracism study with preschoolers It was beyond interesting having a front-row seat on the brouhaha that took place at our university just before Thanksgiving last month inv...