The Latino Education Crisis:
The Consequences of Failed Social Policies
A Forum - Friday, February 27, 2009
Overview
At this forum, Dr. Patricia Gándara, presented findings from the newly released book The Latino Education Crisis: The Consequences of Failed Social Policies, which she co-authored. In this book she argues that the education of Latino youth constitutes a critical policy imperative bearing economic and social implications. The Latino Education Crisis outlines educational gaps between Latinos and other students, , refutes myths about the Latino population, provides specific examples of effective program models, and makes policy recommendations. A panel of respondents presented their suggestions and discussed the policy implications of the book’s key findings.
Patricia Gándara, Professor of Education, University of California, Los Angeles Graduate School of Education & Information Studies; Co-Director, The Civil Rights Project began by telling the audience that the publication The Latino Education Crisis: The Consequences of Failed Social Policies, which she co-authored, was not intended for the writers' academic colleagues as much as for policymakers, as a call to action. She emphasized that the state of Latino education in the United States is dismal, with little improvement over the last thirty years, and that policymakers cannot afford to ignore this phenomenon, especially given the projected population growth.
Gándara first emphasized the alarming lack of progress in college degree completion rates for Latino students. Over the last three decades most groups have seen a steady increase in college degrees. For example, the percentage of Whites completing college increased from 24% to 34% from 1975 to 2005. During the same time period, the African-American college completion rate increased from 11% to 18%. However, Latino college completion rates only increased from 9% to11% during the same time period. The gap between Latino and White educational achievement measures is widening. From 1979 to 2006, the percentage of parents with a bachelor’s degree or more increased from 22 to 44% for Whites and only 7-15% for Latinos. Gándara emphasized that in today’s unforgiving economy, lack of educational success holds important consequences, as education is the only avenue to social mobility.
Providing an overview of the Latino population in the US, Gándara explained that 90% of Latinos live in just 16 states and that the largest growth in Latino population is in the South and Midwest. Latinos represent 20% of all students in the United States and make up nearly 50% of students in Texas and California. By 2025, one in four students across the nation will be Latino. Between states with a large or growing population of Latinos, most or every state has a stake in Latino educational outcomes in order to ensure economic viability and a skilled workforce for the future.
Throughout her book, Gándara uses stories to illustrate her key points. For example, Andrés, a young man featured in the book who Gándara met on his first day of 9th grade who indicated school was “going ok” and “he found things really difficult to understand, but he was working hard.” As it turns out, he was doing more than ok. He had a 4.0 and chose challenging courses, such as Advanced Placement (AP) classes and German as his foreign language when his family spoke Spanish. He had a vision for his future and that of others in his class. He never made it to college, however. He felt he needed to provide financial support for his family, as his mother was raising five kids as a newspaper carrier. He enlisted in the military and Gándara has not heard from him since the Iraq war began.
Some people ask, “Isn’t the crisis just about immigration?” To the extent that people feel that the issue is largely about immigration, they assume that Latinos will eventually assimilate and the problems will go away. However, data show that subsequent generations of Latinos do not make the anticipated gains in education or the labor market.
The Latino education crisis is not just an issue of language, either. More than half of Latinos in the US are not English Language Learners, yet are still faring poorly. Additionally, many English Language Learners—particularly those from middle-class backgrounds who have had consistent schooling in their home country--often outperform U.S.-born Latino students who do speak English. An over-emphasis on language has obscured the deeper problems of inadequate schools and harsh social conditions. Gándara argues that we have adopted counter-productive policies such as teaching “English as quickly as possible” that cloudy the policy challenges faced by the Latino population. . Studies have shown that such policies are not the most effective way to raise students’ academic achievement.
Latino students are also the least likely of all groups to attend preschool. Studies indicate that a lack of affordable preschools in Latino neighborhoods and language barriers may discourage parents from enrolling children in preschool. Latinos enter Kindergarten significantly behind Asian and White kids, and they are more likely to have inexperienced and under-prepared teachers. Furthermore, only 5% of the nation’s teaching force is bilingual certified. They have unequal access to gifted programs and only a small percentage participate in college access programs.
According to the Luxembourg Studies, cross-national income and wealth comparisons, 37% of Latino youth in the United States live in poverty. US measures of poverty indicate that 1/3 of Latinos less than six years old live in poverty. One third of Latino students are without health insurance. For those who are covered, there is limited access to physicians and few physicians who accept the very low reimbursement rates provided by the health insurance. The mother’s education is the greatest predictor of academic success, yet 40% of Latino parents have not completed high school.
Gándara’s policy recommendations include: offering high quality preschool that is sensitive to language and culture; providing highly trained teachers who know the language and culture of students; offering access to high quality curriculum; providing dropout and college access programs; and expanding dual language models and other programs that build on the linguistic and cultural assets of the students rather than using a deficit model.
Gándara also recognized that schools cannot do it all. Latino students also need full access to health care and social services like those provided in other developed nations, housing integration, a break down in the isolation of communities, access to peers with social capital, full financial aid for higher education, including incentives for Latinos to enter the teaching profession, and passage of the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, which would provide certain undocumented immigrant students who graduate from US high schools the opportunity to earn conditional permanent residency.
Alejandra Ceja, Senior Budget/Appropriations Analyst, House Education and Labor Committee, responded to Gándara’s presentation by agreeing that these are alarming statistics. She shared her own personal experience of growing up in an immigrant household and attending a highly segregated and overcrowded high school in Los Angeles. Now that she works on national policy and has a broad understanding of appropriations and the budget process, she goes home to keep herself grounded. She thinks that her nieces and nephews attending the same schools are in more dire straits than ever, especially with the economic downturn.
Ceja then provided an update on the economic crisis facing state education agencies, the stimulus package and related federal funding streams. She said there is a $91 billion shortfall in state budgets for education, at a time when targeted educational investments are sorely needed to help students gain jobs in a globally competitive market during an economic downturn. Historic investments may be possible under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, especially with a President and key staff members in federal agencies who understand the importance of these issues. She also stated that Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller is also supportive of building improvements into the reauthorizations of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB)/Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).
ESEA and IDEA are the sources of large amounts of federal funds for the disadvantaged and children with disabilities. Ceja indicated that these pieces of legislation can be modernized during the reauthorization process and the monies can be used to achieve many goals, including doubling the funding for Title I and IDEA, improving the English Language Learner provisions, expanding technology in schools, providing money for teacher education, investing in early education, increasing parental involvement and encouraging best practices. Addressing teacher shortages and recruiting bilingual teachers could require an investment of $100 million. She also discussed proposed legislation to expand national service programs, possibly including an Education Corps similar to Teach for America.
Finally, Ceja reminded the audience that Congress relies on input and that faxes and phone calls to Congress in support of issues really matter. She indicated that members of the public can receive alerts from the House Education and Labor committee. For example, they can sign up for e-newsletters at http://feeds2.feedburner.com/edlabordems/newsletter.
Michael Casserly, Executive Director, Council of the Great City Schools agreed that the information presented in the book constitutes a crisis. The crisis is of particular concern to the Council of Great City Schools, which represents the largest 67 urban school systems in the United States, as 30% of all Latino students and 40% of all English Language Learners (ELLs) attend these schools.
While he has no complaints about The Latino Education Crisis: The Consequences of Failed Social Policies, Casserly would augment the volume with additional information.
For example, he would even further emphasize that Latino and ELL students lack access to instructionally vigorous courses including Advanced Placement and gifted classes. Casserly agreed that Latino students and English language learners also lack access to qualified teachers. Too often classes are taught by new and inexperienced teachers, by teachers who are not bilingual or by paraprofessionals.
Special programs for Latino students or ELLs vary widely in quality. Some have weak implementation, some offer only a little time and support, some take misguided approaches to English language acquisition (under or overemphasizing native languages or focusing too much on immersion). Clear criteria for entry and exit in program models are also needed, along with improved assessment for ELLs.
Casserly emphasized the importance of finding leaders who can articulate a set of strategies, have high expectations and who can really move the academic status of students in a positive direction. He says that there is a need for organizational collaboration and coherence. Latino education and ELL instruction can improve when goals are integrated and walls are broken down.
Sarita Brown, President, Excelencia in Education stated that the book sets the stage for a discussion about how communities will leverage change, and focused her remarks on the ways in which the higher education system must make changes to meet the needs of today’s student population. There is opportunity in the current crisis.
The release of the 2000 Census brought unprecedented national attention to the Latino population in the United States. Now federal agencies see some value in listening and confronting the issue of educational achievement. In 2000, the final report of the President's Advisory Commission and the staff of the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans, “Creating the Will: Hispanics Achieving Educational Excellence,” quantified the national investment in Latino human capital across 24 agencies. Many of the issues from the time of that report have not changed. Latinos are the second largest racial/ethnic group in the country. They are also the youngest group, are under-educated, are educationally diverse and represent the future workforce and leadership. The public has a misconception of Latinos as primarily immigrants, undocumented, English Language Learners and high school dropouts. Instead, Brown demonstrated; Latinos are primarily U.S. citizens, English dominant and high school graduates.
Brown called on colleges to recognize the reality facing Latino students. The facts are that Latino students in higher education are often first generation college students, attend part-time, attend community colleges, commute to college, live off campus, enroll close to home, work off campus while enrolled, and do not complete college in traditional paths. First generation college students face particular informational barriers. It may take these students 6 to 10 years to complete college. While programs should strive to increase degree acquisition and decrease the amount of time to a degree, they should also celebrate when the finish line is reached, even if it takes a long time. Part-time college enrollment may not be optimal, but it is realistic for many. Part-time institutions are available in the communities where these young people live and many have developed expertise at responding the unique challenges of this population.
Brown ended by saying that Latino youth have enormous potential and unbridled ambitions that should be tapped.
Highlights from the Question and Answer Session
The first question, asked by the first Latina member of the Arlington School Board, was about what a can be done at the local level to guide funds from the stimulus package to address the needs of Latino children in her district. She finds the definitions of Title I and IDEA to be too limiting for the needs she sees. Ceja answered that Chairman Miller of the House Education and Labor Committee is very interested in these issues. She recognized that those directly responsible for delivering Title I and IDEA funds need to make a case for how the funds are distributed. Casserly replied that Title I and IDEA might not be the best resources for her needs. State stabilization funds funneled through the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) itself, including Title III for bilingual education may provide more flexibility.
A comment by Cliff Adelman with the Institute for Higher Education Policy concerned the importance of gathering data on how many Latinos are benefiting from education programs provided through the military. While these programs have great benefit, he said, it is unfortunate that educational advisors to the military have been severely cut. He suggested that Andrés may very well have attended and completed college after enlisting. Casserly agreed that this is an important data collection task and added that he was himself drafted out of college and used the GI bill for graduate school. Gándara said that the example of Andrés was not just to say they lost track of him but to suggest the loss of human capital, not to mention the tax base, represented by his lack of success in reaching his goals of a college education.
Another question asked why after 40 years, the policies have not acknowledged that speaking multiple languages is an asset for everyone. The reply was that speaking Spanish has been considered a liability, but policies need to leverage this asset for great dividends.
Another question from an elected School Board member from New York concerned parent involvement and the potential of family literacy programs and programs like Even Start. Gándara referred to Chapter 7 of her book which has an example of effective parent involvement. She says this is a critical piece of the puzzle which is often left out. There are false assumptions that parents have nothing to offer.
SPEAKER BIOGRAPHIES
Patricia Gándara is a professor of education in the Graduate School of Education and Information Sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she also received her Ph.D. in Educational Psychology.She is Co-Director with Gary Orfield of the Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles at UCLA. In the past, she has served as associate director for the University of California's Linguistic Minority Research Institute, commissioner of post-secondary education for the state of California, and a bilingual school psychologist, social scientist with the RAND Corporation, and director of education research in the California legislature.
Gándara's research focuses on educational equity and access for low-income and ethnic minority students, on language policy, and on the education of Mexican-origin youth. She is the author and editor of numerous books, reports, and articles, including the forthcoming book from Teachers College Press (with M. Hopkins), Forbidden Language: English Learners and Restrictive Language Policies, and the newly released, The Latino Education Crisi:. The Consequences of Failed Social Policies, from Harvard University Press (with F. Contreras).
Sarita E. Brown is the President of Excelencia in Education, a 501(c)3 working to accelerate Latino success in higher education by linking research, policy, and practice to serve Latino students. She has spent more than two decades at prominent national educational institutions and at the highest levels of government working to implement effective strategies to raise academic achievement and opportunity for low-income and minority students. She started her career at the University of Texas at Austin by building a national model promoting minority success in graduate education. Coming to the nation’s capital in 1993 to work for educational associations, Ms. Brown was appointed as Executive Director of the White House Initiative for Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans under President Bill Clinton and U.S. Secretary of Education Richard Riley. Maintaining her commitment to improving the quality of education, Ms. Brown applied her talents and experience to the not-for-profit sector as Founding President of the Hispanic Scholarship Fund Institute and, since 2004, as Founding President of Excelencia in Education.
Ms. Brown is active in national educational organizations and serves on the Board of Directors for ACT Inc., the National College Access Network (NCAN) and on advisory committees for the Center for the Study of the President and Congress (CSPC), the Univision Communications Children’s Programming, the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO) Educational Fund, and the Journal of Hispanic Higher Education.
An outstanding public speaker, Ms Brown travels throughout the country to advocate for Latino college-going talent. Her writing on the topic includes her chapter, “Making the Next Generation Our Greatest Resource” in Latinos in the Nation’s Future edited by Henry Cisneros. She holds a bachelor's of arts in ethnic studies and a bachelor's of science and master's of arts in communication from The University of Texas at Austin. In 2009, she will receive an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters Degree from North Carolina State University.
Michael Casserly has served as Executive Director of the Council of the Great City Schools, the nation’s primary coalition of large urban public school systems, since January 1992. Before assuming this position, Casserly served as the organization's Director of Legislation and Research for 15 years.
As head of the Council, Casserly unified urban schools nationwide around a vision of reform and improvement; launched an aggressive research program on trends in urban education; convened the first Education Summit of Big City Mayors and Urban School Superintendents; led the nation's largest urban school districts to volunteer for the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP); led the first national study of common practices among the nation’s fastest improving urban school districts, and launched national task forces on achievement gaps, leadership and governance, finance, professional development, and bilingual education.
He is currently spearheading efforts to boost academic performance in the nation’s big city schools; strengthening management and operations; challenging inequitable state financing systems; and improving the public’s image of urban education.
While Director of Legislation and Research for the Council, Dr. Casserly initiated major reforms in Title I, Vocational Education, and Drug Free Schools. He also initiated and wrote the federal Magnet School Act and the Urban Schools of America Act. Since 1989, he has garnered over $25.0 billion in extra federal money for urban schools.
Casserly has also written numerous studies, reports and op-ed pieces on urban schools, including "Beating the Odds"—the nation’s first look at urban school performance on state tests. He has produced television shows with Dan Rather, Charlene Hunter-Gault, Carole Simpson, Carl Rowan, and Juan Williams, and serves on numerous national boards and advisory groups. He has also appeared on numerous television and radio shows, including the "Julian Bond Show,” "All Things Considered,” "Larry King Live" and many others.
His legislative work has been the subject of a college textbook on how Capitol Hill really works. He is considered by many to be one of Washington's best education advocates and lobbyists, and an expert on urban education, governance, finance, and federal legislation and policy. Washington Almanac listed Casserly as one of Washington D.C.'s 400 most powerful individuals, and USA Today calls Casserly a "crusader" for city schoolchildren.
Dr. Casserly is a U.S. Army veteran, and holds a Ph.D. from the University of Maryland and B.A. from Villanova University.
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The American Youth Policy Forum (AYPF), a nonprofit, nonpartisan professional development organization based in Washington, DC, provides learning opportunities for policy leaders, practitioners, and researchers working on youth and education issues at the national, state, and local levels.
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