Public schools in the United States are “woefully unprepared
to deal with the fastest growing ethnic group” in the nation, according to
Andrew Rotherham, writing in 2011 in Time
magazine (1). That group, now 16% of our
population, is Hispanic (the preferred term, over “Latino/Latina”) and by 2050,
the percentage will have grown to more than 30%. In the short period from 2001 to 2008, the
population of public schools has grown from 17% Hispanic to 21% and in many
districts across the nation, including the entire state of Texas, Hispanic
origin students make up more than 50% already. States like Virginia, North
Carolina and some western states seem “to have been caught flat-footed” by this
population boom, even though we have known the forecasts for decades.
The list of areas in which Hispanic populations are
underserved in the United States is long, and in the educational field, it is
perhaps predictable. English language teaching for non-native speakers continues
to languish in terms of both instructional research and practical pedagogy;
college admissions for Hispanic students is far behind both their white and
African-American counterparts; access to pre-school education lags far behind
all other groups and, according to an article in Educational Leadership* in February, 2010, Hispanic children are
likely to be among the “poorest of the poor”. This portrait is further
contextualized by information about the parents of school-age children in the
Hispanic community, where parents are likely to be under-educated and have less
access to health care and further educational opportunities. For example, only
about 10% of Hispanic mothers have a college degree, as opposed to roughly
one-third for “white” mothers. Hispanic children are also more likely to attend
“hyper-segregated schools”, those that are 90-100% children of color. Given
other national statistics, this means that Hispanic children have less in terms
of facilities, resources and high quality teachers.
Luis C. Moll, writing in Language
Arts magazine, as far back as 1988, pointed out that the educational
problems facing Hispanic students are also the problems linked to class, race
and social status generally in the United States. (3) His research testified to the
effectiveness of particular instructional techniques and the provision of
adequate resources as a way to improve the standards for Hispanic children.
Other research, such as that provided by CREDE
(Center for Research on Education, Diversity and Excellence) in 2002, points
out that education does not occur in a vacuum. (4)
There are socio-historical forces at play and there is also considerable
diversity amongst and across the catch-all terminology of “Hispanic". There is class difference, country of origin
difference and economic background difference, all of which make it more
difficult to offer solutions and programs. However, across these variations,
educators continue to provide consistent advice as to what works with
communities defined as “immigrant”, whether recently arrived or second/third
generation. Of course, that term also covers arrivals from privileged economic
and educational backgrounds, lured to the United States in order to take up
prestigious jobs. The group we are most
concerned with is that much larger population that arrived here seeking a
better life, a better education and a better chance of secure housing, health
care and employment.
There is another
hurdle that we do not often discuss: immigrant communities compete with both
African-American communities and the “white” world for increasingly scarce
resources. While the research on Black
male education is extensive, and the focus on providing better opportunities
for the African-American community is decades old, the same cannot be said for
Hispanic communities. The risk of an
unhelpful competition amongst underserved groups for resources and the
resultant tensions will not serve any community and certainly won’t improve
overall educational standards across the country. We have to be able to provide
a research and resource focus on every
community that makes up the growing statistical group of those living in
poverty, poverty of resources and poverty in terms of the opportunities to
increase educational attainment.
What Works?
Both CREDE and the Pew Hispanic Center provide similar
conclusions in terms of how best to improve the educational provisions for
Hispanic students. English language teaching of a high caliber; the right level
of resources, the right training for teachers, particularly those in ESOL
categories, and perhaps most vital, a clear sense that our students from
whatever backgrounds and national origins, can achieve and have a right to be
provided with the circumstances in which success is more, not less, likely.
Recently published statistics indicate some growth in both college admissions
rates and high school graduations rates for Hispanic students and we need to
find out what has promoted this growth. For both statistical reasons, and for
the sake of our national sense of what is right and moral, we need to do more
and better.
- Rotherman, Andrew J. (2011). The Education Crisis No One Is Talking About. Time. Available: http://content.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2070930,00.html
- Gándara, Patricia. (2010). Special Topic / The Latino Education Crisis. Educational
Leadership, 67 (5). Available: http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/feb10/vol67/num05/The-Latino-Education-Crisis.aspx
- Moll, L. C. (1988). Some key issue in teaching Latino students. Language Arts,
65(5),465-472. - Padrón, Yolanda N., Waxman, Hersh C. & Rivera, Héctor H. (2002). Educating HIspanic Students: Obstacles and avenues to Improved academic achievement. Santa Cruz, California: Center for Research on Education, Diversity & Excellence. Available: http://www.cal.org/crede/pdfs/epr8.pdf