Some key components of the MAS program include student support, curriculum content, teacher professional development, and parent and community involvement.
[6] The program was designed to motivate students to engage and participate more effectively in school in order to raise the statistically low graduation rates of the Hispanic community.
The newly integrated programs are promoting original goals while providing all students with new perspectives about Mexican American history and culture.
[10]: 36–37 The department "uses Chicano to refer to the Mexican American experience within the United States and raza, a more inclusive term that represents the entire human race".
[10]: 38 Acosta states that the senior year high school classes follow the same paradigm and expand on it to incorporate more of a social justice aspect that relate specifically to “challenging mainstream assumptions and stereotypes” by teaching students the counter-narrative.
[9] These classes involved analyzing government, researching problems that students face in school and coming up with solutions that were then presented to policy makers.
[12] The bill came into effect on January 1, 2011, with the original intention to completely get rid of the Mexican American Studies Department programs, threatening that the teachings were not in accordance with the new law which would consequently result in the loss of ten percent of a certain school districts funding.
[13] Consequently, in a court hearing with the Tucson Unified School District on December 27, 2011, the decision was made that the MAS Program did not abide by the new law.
[18] Students who had participated in the Mexican American Studies Department classes brought a lawsuit against the officials who had shut down the program.
[19] Oral arguments were heard on January 12, 2015, and a ruling on the case by the United States Court of Appeal for the Ninth Circuit was made on July 7, 2015.
[20] This ruling stated that the law banning ethnic studies classes in Arizona is not broad and vague as plaintiffs argued.
[20] However, the ongoing case was also sent to the lower Arizona district court in Tucson because there was enough evidence suggesting the law was “motivated at least in part by a discriminatory intent”.
[4] The judge further ruled that former superintendent Tom Horne, who initiated the campaign to remove the program, along with other school officials, were motivated by racial bias and thereby violated the students' Fourteenth Amendment right.
[22] The following books were ordered to be boxed and carried off from MAS classes, in some cases in front of students, by the Tucson Unified School District following HB 2281:[23] While TUSD claimed that only the seven titles on the above list were ordered to be confiscated and, effectively, banned, other books were also removed from MAS classrooms, such as Mexican WhiteBoy by Matt de la Peña.
"[25] Readings of an excerpt of Luis Valdez's poem Pensamiento Serpentino, which references the Mayan philosophical concept of In Lak'ech ("you are the other me"), were also banned.