How to Demolish Racism by Haas Michael;

Author:Haas, Michael;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lexington Books/Fortress Academic

Table 10.2 Educators Employed in Hawai‘i Public Schools by Ethnic Group, 1974 and 2013

Ethnic Group 1974 2013

African American 0.3% 0.7%

Chinese 8.9 3.7

Filipino 2.2 6.0

Hawaiian 7.0 9.2

Japanese 57.9 26.0

Korean 1.4 0.9

White 18.7 23.4

Other 3.6 29.3

Note: na = not available

Source: Hawai‛i Department of Education

Table 10.3 Students Enrolled in Hawai‘i Public Schools by Ethnic Group, 1974 and 2013

Ethnic Group 1974 2013

African American na 2.8%

Chinese 4.7% 3.3

Filipino 16.9 22.1

Hawaiian 18.1 27.0

Japanese 22.4 9.1

Korean 1.4 1.2

White 28.6 15.8

Other 7.9 18.7

Note: na = not available

Source: Hawai‛i Department of Education

Meanwhile, the public schools ignored community input (Haas and Resurrection 1976:ch5). In 1974, after a Filipino was bullied to death at a Honolulu high school, the O‘ahu Filipino Community Council quickly mobilized. Their study, which presented with twenty-five recommendations (OFCC 1975) was ignored. The following year, after a local-born Filipino killed a Filipino immigrant at another school, the organization identified twenty-two civil rights issues, some 750 signed a petition calling for a federal civil rights investigation (Honolulu Star-Bulletin 1975), and the petition was ignored. Their 1976 petition to hire more Filipino teachers was even condemned by the school superintendent (Haas 1992:125).

The FRESHA complaint of 1976 was focused entirely on the lack of control over school violence that adversely affected Filipinos, but federal officials instead looked at the sparsity of bilingual education (Wilcox 1974), a requirement that could end all federal funding to public schools (Verploegen 1976a). The federal decision to find the DOE in noncompliance with civil rights regulations was the spark that began to transform the department, which even went beyond affirmative action.

The DOE was one of the first state government departments to adopt affirmative action. One result has been a sharp drop in Japanese schoolteachers and a corresponding increase in the Other category (Table 10.2). Although the staff is still not representative of the student body, the disparity today is much less than earlier (Table 10.3). Hiring has been more diverse. Some 62 percent of the teachers have been at the same school for five years or more, providing stability to the atmosphere on campus, and only 14 percent of them cease employment each year.

After initial paper compliance with the requirement for bilingual education in public schools (Ong 1980), a Filipina was placed in charge of a Bilingual Education Coordination Project in 1978 to develop and test bilingual education programs in order to mainstream as quickly as possible those arriving in the Islands with limited English proficiency—Filipinos, Samoans, and Vietnamese (Verploegen 1976a). Federal funds supported some thirty-five projects to assist some 20,000 limited English proficient students, including a program to assist monolingual Creole speakers (Honolulu Advertiser 1997; Pablo, Ongteco, Koki 2002; cf. Nunes 1967). (Problems in the teaching of the Hawaiian language were not considered by the federal government, but progress occurred, as reported more fully in the following chapter.)

The bilingual program was monitored by the federal government from 1977 to 1990, until compliance reached 100 percent of those eligible. Federal officials provided technical assistance as each stage of testing, instruction, and mainstreaming was established. Currently,

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.