From the Tucson Citizen:

...the University of Arizona was awarded a $10 million grant [from the National Science Foundation] to improve mathematics education among Latinos...

The grant will fund research, professional development of teachers and development of leaders in math education...

Among the goals of the new center are to create teaching materials and ways of teaching that bring in a cultural and linguistic context specific to Latinos, said Ron Marx, dean of the UA College of Education.

"Historically the dominant culture of the country has been western European and English. Curriculum materials reflect (those) cultural patterns, which isn't good or bad, it just means that kids from those kinds of backgrounds tend to have more advantages because the content and the way it is delivered matches the way their culture represents the world and what they learn at home," Marx said.

Educators can take advantage of the way Latinos express concepts of the world and the way they interact with parents and the community to build a better math program for them, Marx said.

"If you build on their home culture, then you are going to have more success," he said.

This is a relatively minor issue - after all, it's just $10 million - but the reason this is here is to offer yet another counterexample for those who insist that the current wave of immigration is just like previous waves. As far as I know, one hundred years ago there was no education establishment creating teaching materials specifically to meet the needs of Italians or Irish. Marx' comments point out that there are powerful forces attempting to prevent the assimilation of some groups to "American" culture.

And, having studied everything up into the lower reaches of "higher" mathematics, I can't recall mathematics texts involving too many things other than numbers and terms. Certainly, at the lower grade levels you might find something like "Jack has two mittens and Jill has two mittens...," but does that really require a culturally-sensitive translation? Aren't non-Hispanics who live in warm climates also disadvantaged?

This could also be viewed as an attempt to create yet another ethnic power center and as a make-work program for Ethnic Studies graduates.

More sinisterly, this could also be seen as an attempt by white elites to keep non-whites in their own neighborhoods, masquerading as an attempt to help those non-whites. See, for instance, John Derbyshire's 'Ditching Diversity'.

If this were a private grant it would be bad enough, but note that the National Science Foundation is a federal agency. The award is #0424983, and the description is here:

The Center for the Mathematics Education of Latinos/as (CEMELA) addresses the mathematics education needs of the largest and most rapidly growing minority group in the country, a diverse group that has one of the most disturbing patterns of academic achievement. Given the unique language, social and cultural factors associated with working-class/low-income Latino/as students and communities, a multidisciplinary approach is necessary to address their education. Although there are well-established scholars who focus on the education of Latinos, their research is in the areas of policy, language and culture, not primarily in mathematics education. Few mathematics education scholars have multidisciplinary expertise in the particular areas relevant to the learning of mathematics by Latinos/as...

You can write to your congressman here.

(Via redstate.org/story/2004/8/19/214648/395; more discussion here)