Higher Education

Agricultural pesticide use is the highest of any industry, yet there is little research evaluating farmworkers’ understandings of the health risks chemical exposure poses. This study examines pesticide education, risk perception, and self-protective behaviors among farmworkers in California’s Salinas
Valley. Fifty current and former farmworkers were interviewed for this research. Despite several potential barriers to risk communication (e.g., language differences and nonuniform methods of pesticide safety training), the respondents understood many of the potential health consequences of exposure while holding elevated levels of risk perception relative to the general public. They received information on the health effects of pesticide exposure from both grower-based training and personal social networks; however, the respondents continued to participate in unnecessarily risky behaviors.

This longitudinal study assesses the impact of the University of Arizona’s New Start Summer Program (NSSP) on participants’ first year GPA and retention, controlling for incoming student characteristics. While programmatic participation significantly predicted first-year GPA and retention, this relationship became insignificant when controlling for first-year college experiences and student development. Programmatic efficacy is largely
determined not only by how practitioners develop participants’ cognitive abilities, but also how effectively they connect them to social and academic support networks during their first year of college. Within this context, programmatic impact is likely indirect which poses a number of methodological and resource allocation issues for student affairs administrators and professionals. In addition, it highlights the need to assess the impact of summer bridge programs longitudinally while also having a demographically similar group of students who did not participate for comparison: Two areas generally absent from
research on summer bridge program literature. Finally, the study was made possible because of a strong collaboration between the NSSP administrators and the research team,
where the goals and needs of each group were supported by the other.

In the wake of the Tucson Unified School District dismantling its highly successful Mexican American Studies (MAS) program, students staged walkouts across the district to demonstrate their opposition. Student-led walkouts were portrayed as merely ‘‘ditching,’’ and students were described as not really understanding why they were protesting. After these events, a group of student activists called UNIDOS organized and led the School of Ethnic Studies. This was a community school dedicated to teaching the forbidden MAS curriculum. In this article we present counternarratives from organizers, presenters, and participants in the School of Ethnic Studies. These narratives demonstrate the transformative resistance
of students who created their own form of liberatory education. Our analysis highlights how student organizers led the creation of an autonomous, community-based educational space to allowed young people to engage in political analysis,
self-reflection, and strategic organizing. We conclude with the implications for Ethnic Studies, urban education, and counternarrative.

The Arizona legislature passed HB 2281, which eliminated Tucson Unified
School District’s (TUSD’s) Mexican American Studies (MAS) program, arguing
the curriculum was too political. This program has been at the center of
contentious debates, but a central question has not been thoroughly examined:
Do the classes raise student achievement? The current analyses use
administrative data from TUSD (2008–2011), running logistic regression
models to assess the relationship between taking MAS classes and passing
AIMS (Arizona state standardized tests) and high school graduation.
Results indicate that MAS participation was significantly related to an increased likelihood of both outcomes occurring. The authors discuss these
results in terms of educational policy and critical pedagogy as well as the
role academics can play in policy formation.