Written By Gabriela Guadalupe Fox News Latino
I am a Hispanic undergraduate student at Florida International University and when I graduate in 2014, I need a job.
The big question is where will I find one? Read More
By Rachel Mehlhaff / Staff Writer Denton Record-Chronicle
DALLAS — Texas’ higher education commissioner told the University of North Texas Board of Regents that higher education in Texas has worked hard to be average. Read More
Bill Maxwell – The Tampa Tribune.
A few days before Florida’s Republican primary, former Gov. Jeb Bush wrote a column suggesting ways the GOP could win the Hispanic Read More
By Emery Cowan
Tse Chi “Chad” Yen will graduate from Fort Lewis College this December with a degree in psychology and a promising job prospect at a nonprofit in Denver. Yen acknowledges he is in a better place than many in this struggling economy, but not without a cost: about $27,000 in student loans.
But without those loans and some scholarships, “I wouldn’t be here,” Yen said.
The most recent numbers show that college students around the country are taking on more debt in order to finish their degrees. College seniors who graduated with student loans in 2010 owed an average of $25,250 – up 5 percent from last year, according to a report released this month from the Project on Student Debt at the Institute for College Access & Success. At the same time, there are fewer and fewer good-paying jobs awaiting recent graduates:. Read More
The nation‘s educators must work to improve college completion rates for Latino students if the United States is to remain economically competitive in the world, according to a report released Friday by the College Board. While Latinos make up the fastest growing group of students in the nation, they are behind the national average for college completion by more than half. At present, 19.2 percent of Latinos who enter college complete college, while the national average hovers around 40 percent, according to the report. Read More
By Andres Oppenheimer aoppenheimer@MiamiHerald.com
Despite the avalanche of bad news for President Barack Obama, he remains the most likely winner of the 2012 elections.
That’s the conclusion I reached after watching the top Republican presidential hopefuls in recent weeks, as they started in earnest the race for their party’s nomination. They have taken such a hard line on issues that are dear to Latinos, that I don’t see how any of them can win the 40 percent of the Hispanic vote that pollsters say Republicans will need to win the White House.
The last Republican president, George W. Bush, got 40 percent of the Hispanic vote in 2004, and the Latino vote has only become more important since. Former Republican candidate Sen. John McCain — who ran as a moderate on immigration — lost the 2008 campaign in part because he got only 31 percent of the Hispanic vote, pollsters say.
So the question today is, how will any of the current Republican hopefuls win a sizable part of the Hispanic vote, when they are embracing a much harder line on Hispanic issues than McCain did in 2008?
At the Republican debate Thursday in Iowa, none of the participating hopefuls supported a comprehensive immigration reform policy — as McCain did four years ago — that would both secure the border and allow an earned path to legalization for millions of undocumented immigrants who are willing to, among other things, pay fines and learn English.
Their common stand seemed to be: “Let’s first seal the border” and crack down on “illegals.” Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who did not participate in the debate but announced his candidacy two days later, toes the same enforcement-first line.
As they try to woo conservative Republicans who tend to be the largest voting blocs in the primaries, they are likely to escalate their rhetoric. To Hispanics, they look like a group bent on the massive deportation of the estimated 11 million undocumented residents in the country, even bright students brought here as babies by their parents.
Republican pollsters note that according to their surveys, Hispanic voters place the economy, education and health ahead of immigration on their list of priorities. Read More
By JEANNIE KEVER Copyright 2011 Houston Chronicle
Meyer Lewis rolls in late to cooking class, in high spirits after swapping stories with a group of fellow World War II veterans.
“How you doing, sweetheart?” he calls to Ariel Wadler, a 15-year-old volunteer with the weekly class, where a dozen people — all of them women, most in wheelchairs — already have gathered around a table to mix blueberry muffins.
Next door, Noel Tobias, a 35-year-old Filipino immigrant, is slicing vegetables, dusting a dish with paprika and plucking a baking sheet of pastries from the oven, hoping the day’s offerings will please his often-picky, mostly Anglo, older diners.
“Every day is like school for me,” he jokes. “I sometimes hear there are not enough potatoes in the stew, or my rice is overdone.”
Meet the future.
As the first baby boomers hit retirement age, 80 percent of the nation’s retirees are Anglo. Steve Murdock, director of the Hobby Center for the Study of Texas at Rice University, predicts that within a decade, a majority of children in the United States will be Latino, African-American, Asian or members of another minority group.
Houston is in the vanguard: Census estimates indicate almost 70 percent of Houston residents 65 and older are Anglo; 77 percent of those younger than 30 are not.
The coming demographic and generational revolution is playing out in microcosm at Seven Acres Jewish Senior Care Services in southwest Houston, where most of the residents are Anglo, and just across the bayou at Fondren Middle School, where 92 percent of the students are Latino or African-American. Read More
Debt is one of the primary reason that the wealth gap exists
A Pew Study released recently detailed the enormous wealth gap that exists between whites and blacks in America.
The study found that blacks and Latinos make approximately a nickel to every dollar that whites make. Additionally, the study found that more than a third of Blacks and Latinos have zero or negative wealth, as a result of severe debt. .
These findings have sparked many heated discussions about the cause of this gap and who or what is to blame. Some argue that the gap is a result of minorities not pulling themselves up by their “bootstraps” and taking full advantage of the opportunities that are available.
Others feel that the gap is a result of centuries of systemic racism coupled with a history of chattel slavery and government supported policies that made it illegal for people of color to own and more importantly transfer property to their heirs.
Also, for the more academically inclined, you can read a brilliant exposition on this topic by legal scholar Cheryl I. Harris in her work Whiteness as Property.
Although people differ on how Blacks and Latinos have incurred substantially more debt than their white counterparts, there is no question that this debt is one of the primary reason that the wealth gap exists.
Here are a few ways that being savvy about how we approach our education can reduce or avoid the accumulation of excessive debt and put ourselves on the right side of the wealth divide:
1. Pursue Post-Secondary Education – For many Black and Latino families, a college education or some additional training or certification beyond high school is surest route out of poverty and into the middle class. Studies show that a college-educated person can earn between $450,000 and $1,000,000 more than a person without a college degree over their lifetime.
Despite this evidence, the number of Blacks and Latinos (particularly males) who fail to even earn a high school diploma is increasing at an alarming rate and contributes to an ever widening academic achievement gap. Read More
By MICHAEL BARBARO and FERNANDA SANTOS
The administration of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, in a blunt acknowledgment that thousands of young black and Latino men are cut off from New York’s civic, educational and economic life, plans to spend nearly $130 million on far-reaching measures to improve their circumstances.
The program, the most ambitious policy push of Mr. Bloomberg’s third term, would overhaul how the government interacts with a population of about 315,000 New Yorkers who are disproportionately undereducated, incarcerated and unemployed. Read More
Anyone who has been paying attention for the past 20 years knows by now that, in America, Asian students perform the best, white students perform just below them, and Latino and African-American students are performing on the lowest rung of the academic ladder. Anyone who has been paying attention in the past 10 years knows that, worldwide, American students stack up very poorly against the students from most advanced nations, and, in particular, they look very bad indeed when compared to students in China and Korea.
So what the heck is going on in Asia, or in Europe, Finland? What are their schools doing for their students that we are not doing here in America? When one actually examines schools in Asia and schools in America, one discovers that there is not a gap in methodology. What one discovers is that there is a gap in respect and reverence for learning.
There has been much ado in the media recently about Amy Chua, a Chinese-American mother, and her book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. An awful lot of Americans are appalled about her methods for raising her children. She demanded the best from them and accepted nothing less. She did not feed their self-esteem. She let them know that success comes from hard work, not from feeling good about yourself. This springs from a Confucian mindset. Work hard. Persevere. Respect authority. You will get ahead. Failure, not only reflects on yourself, but on your family and the values they convey to you.
Somewhere around the 1970′s, we in America decided that a child’s self-esteem was important to their social and psychological development. We somehow dismissed the fact that kids who work hard will outstrip kids who feel good about themselves, no matter what they do in the classroom. We have ended up with a lot of kids who think they are a great deal better than they actually are. They can’t read at appropriate levels. They can’t do math at appropriate levels. They don’t have a clue about the foundations of their society and how we, as a people, got here.
Then, as a result of all this self-esteem and the need to not destroy everyone’s self-esteem, grade inflation ensued. Can’t go failing kids and destroying their belief in themselves. Bad juju. Every kid got passed along, regardless. Kids ended up graduating from high school without knowing squat. The U.S. ends up dropping precipitously in comparisons with other nations.
Furthermore, when you compare the teaching methods in American schools to the teaching methods of schools in the nations who lead the pack, you find that it isn’t the methodology. Chinese students, who happen to lead the pack, routinely complain about rote learning, about lack of allowance for creativity, and pine for a more American system of education. So what’s going on in American schools? Read More
In 2001, Perry signed a bill in Texas, known as the DREAM Act, which allowed some undocumented college students to receive in-state tuition rates at state colleges and universities.
“We must say to every child learning in a Texas classroom, ‘We don’t care where you come from, but where you are going, and we are going to do everything we can to help you get there,’” said Perry about the bill.
In 2010, after Arizona passed an immigration reform bill that was praised by many Republicans, Perry was critical of the new law and said he would not support similar legislation in Texas, stating, “It would not be the right direction for Texas.”
Perry also supports immigration reforms similar to former President George W. Bush’s proposals (Bush was also Governor of Texas prior to Perry). While president, Bush tried to get immigration reforms passed that would have provided a path to citizenship for some undocumented workers in the U.S. after they paid a fine.
As the Republican nominee for president, Bush did well among Latino voters in both 2000 and 2004. In 2004, he received more than 40 percent of the Latino vote. Latinos, who are mostly Catholic and evangelical Christian, have high levels of religiosity and are more likely to hold conservative positions on abortion and homosexuality.
The Republican Party may also have an opportunity to attract Latino voters on the issues of reforming Social Security and Medicare in the next election. By burdening future generations with debt to maintain the current rates of growth in these programs, keeping Social Security and Medicare as they are benefits the elderly and hurts the young.
Democrats generally favor only modest changes to these programs while Republicans have shown more willingness to restructure the programs. Since Latinos in the U.S. are, on average, younger than the general population, Republicans may be able to mobilize Latinos on the issue of reforming Social Security and Medicare.
Republican defenses of free-market capitalism may also speak to some Latinos, especially those who are business owners. Read More
Being the largest minority group in United States, the Hispanic population tends to grow each and every year. Despite their growing number the rate of Hispanics attending college is very low.
Thus a number of organization have come together to give forth college grants for Hispanic so that they could meet their need of paying their program fees. By being qualified Hispanics have more opportunities and a better job prospect.
It can open new avenues to the life and can make it better in so many ways.
It has often been seen that members of minority groups work in low paid jobs just in order to make their ends meet. The thought of expenses revolving around education is something that can make them avoid it. In order to help them out in this there are many college grants and scholarship opportunities set up. Read More
By PAUL WEBER
SAN ANTONIO — San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro, the rising Democratic star whose White House potential is already the stuff of political forecasting, co-headlined a recent gathering of Hispanic leaders and blasted the immigration agenda of Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Republicans as the most “anti-Latino” in a generation.
Shortly after, the event’s other headliner took the stage: Perry himself.
“That was me basically saying, `Look, you’re not going to do all these things and act as though everything’s fine,’” said Castro, days after his June address to the National Association of Latino and Elected Appointed Officials.
Having already climbed among the country’s most prominent Latino politicians, the 36-year-old Castro is starting his second terms as mayor of the nation’s seventh-largest city more at ease with both his celebrity and speaking out. His NALEO appearance railed against Perry-backed efforts to target so-called “sanctuary cities” of illegal immigrants and GOP lawmakers prioritizing new voter ID laws, and was a possible glimpse of speeches to come if Perry enters the race for president.
Since taking office in June 2009, Castro has made more than a dozen trips to Washington. Not all have been for meetings with President Barack Obama’s administration, but the third-year mayor has nonetheless talked immigration and energy policy in the White House, alongside other invites such as former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
Castro backed Obama’s fiscal policy speech in April and joined a presidential delegation to Mexico City. First lady Michelle Obama even lauded Castro and fitness initiatives in San Antonio — despite about two-thirds of the city being obese or overweight, which ranks the area among the nation’s fattest.
The exposure has driven speculation about Castro’s political future; the governor’s mansion, Congress or a cabinet-level post swirling as the usual rumors. In San Antonio, a mayor can serve four two-year terms.
Castro said he’s likely not going anywhere until 2017.
“This was a job I really did look forward to growing up, when I thought about politics,” Castro said. “So I’m not in a hurry to leave.”
His identical twin brother, on the other hand, is already making his next move. Texas state Rep. Joaquin Castro will challenge nine-term Democratic U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett in 2012 for his congressional seat, which the Republican-controlled Texas Legislature redrew this past session. Read More
The United States is walking a path to greater diversity. And younger people are leading the way.
For the first time in national history, the majority of young people in two states — California and New Mexico — now identify as Hispanic, according to census data released this year.
In eight additional states — Nevada, Arizona, Texas, Mississippi, Georgia, Florida, Maryland and Hawaii — white children are in the minority compared with peers from other racial and ethnic groups combined, according to data analyzed by William Frey at the Brookings Institution.
The number of white children in the United States actually shrank by 4.3 million kids from 2000 to 2010, according to the analysis.
Meanwhile, the number of Hispanic and Asian children grew by a total of 5.5 million. Hispanics made up the bulk of this growth.
“Were it not for Hispanics, the nation’s child population would have declined,” Frey writes in his report, titled “America’s Diverse Future.” Read More
By Ashby Jones
Emboldened by their booming population, Hispanics are pushing for a bigger swath of the legislative map that will shape Congress for years to come—and running up against the peculiar politics of redistricting.
Latinos are out to change the once-a-decade redrawing of the map to boost their voting power as immigration, education, unemployment and other issues they care about rise to the top of the national agenda.
But redistricting plans in Texas, Illinois and California—which together will control nearly one-quarter of the seats in the House of Representatives starting after the 2012 election—are vexing many Hispanic interest groups. They say none of the maps include enough districts made up of a majority of voting-age Hispanic citizens.
States are often required by law to create new “majority minority” districts to reflect population gains the year after the national census—2011, in this case. From 2000 to 2010, the number of Latinos in Texas jumped 42% to 9.5 million, according to the latest census. Illinois had a 32% increase to two million. California saw a 28% surge, to 14 million. Read More
Hispanics now make up 49 percent of the population of the State of Texas and account for 50 percent of the school age population. 
When compared to the nation, Texas has 32 percent more Latinos. By stark comparison, the representation in the Texas Legislature is not 50 percent Hispanic. In fact, the few Latinos in the legislature have been working to see that the state is redistricted to represent more of the Hispanics that have entered our state, even suing the governor to see that the needs of this demographic group are met.
However, it would appear that the state legislature has a different agenda when considering our Latino growth that does not mirror opportunity or representation. Two major bills crossed through the Capitol building related to Hispanic growth and labeled through an effort on the State’s part to reform immigration, a Voter ID Bill and Sanctuary Cities Bill, were debated this legislative session.
The Voter ID bill passed the legislature and heads to Governor Perry’s desk. This law will simply require a photo ID to vote in any election. There will be 5 different types of IDs accepted: Texas driver’s license, Texas concealed handgun license, military photo card, U.S. passport, or election ID certificate (provided by the Texas Department of Public Safety without charge to those who do not have other acceptable ID cards). The Sanctuary Cities Bill, which did not pass this legislative session, would have prevented cities, counties and other governmental entities from adopting policies that prevent law enforcement officers or other employees from inquiring into the immigration status of a person arrested or lawfully detained. Authorities can subsequently report individuals to federal immigration officials if they are thought to be in the country illegally.
The discussion of Hispanic growth at the school level was not debated and discussed openly during session among lawmakers but it did occur on message boards, blogs, and other web portals. Early discussion of the topic, before the legislative session began, centered on a potential bill that would have required school districts to count the number of illegal immigrants entering our schools. Other thoughts on the topic considered requiring tuition for illegal immigrants, separate tax payments for apartment dwellers, the DREAM Act (which would subsidize education costs and grant amnesty to people 35 years old or younger who illegally entered the United States before they were 16 years of age), and simply preventing children of immigrants from attending school. Read More
By Merlene Davis
In recent weeks, Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., and Newt Gingrich, both of whom are vying to be the next Republican presidential candidate, blamed President Barack Obama for the high unemployment rate in the African-American and Hispanic communities.
That gave me pause.
While there is extremely high unemployment in minority communities and especially for black, Latino and Native American men, blaming it on the Johnny-come-lately is disingenuous.
True enough, having more black men unemployed during this recession dramatically increases the gap between employment of black men and white men. But the difference has been significant for years.
A report released this week by the College Board Advocacy & Policy Center spreads the blame around a bit more. “The Educational Experience of Young Men of Color: A Review of Research, Pathways and Progress” concludes, “There is an educational crisis for young men of color in the United States.”
The report looked at issues young men of color face, then examined which of six paths some of those young men, all students, took after high school.
What the authors found is that the country, and not just Obama, as Bachmann and Gingrich would have us believe, has failed these young men.
The failure lies with all of us for not correctly addressing a problem that can very well lead to this country’s inability to compete globally. Read More
As the 2012 Presidential campaign begins and questions loom about who the GOP front runner will be and Obama’s second term fate; there is one critical question that remains unasked, let alone unanswered: Who really owns the Hispanic vote?
It is clear that the Hispanic voice matters. This is overwhelmingly evident with President Obama’s recent visit to Puerto Rico and the GOP’s efforts in January to begin charting a course of action under the leadership of Jeb Bush – the proclaimed GOP ambassador to Latino voters. However, it is fair to say that progress is slow and both the Democrats and Republicans are being challenged in their efforts to solidify a trustworthy relationship with the Hispanic community.
And yet according to one recent report, by the 2012 election, the Latino vote is anticipated to increase by 26 percent to 12.2 million voters, or 8.7 percent of the country’s total. Why are both parties so slow-footed when it comes to courting the Latino vote? Read More
Haven’t both parties learned from the recent decline in Obama’s loyalty rating amongst Hispanics? Hispanics may lag some other immigrant groups in achievement to date, but their immigrant perspective makes them more knowledgeable than many believe.
As the Founder of the Center for Hispanic Leadership, I have been personally asked to take an active role in the past 24 months to help bring Hispanics into the political process, in support of specific political candidates. Whether these requests are coming from PACs or some of the higher ranking candidate advisors themselves – I am appalled by the blatant tactics they use. Therefore, I have declined to help until they get it right. This is why I am writing this article. To help our politicians and business leaders understand the real issues.
With over 50 million Hispanics in the US, it’s time that our politicians figure out how to authentically include the voices of Hispanics in real ways. Failure to do so will mean missing out on relationships, loyalty, markets, customers, employees – and the future of America. Politicians can learn a lot from America’s corporations that have made progress in recognizing the competitive advantage that cultural intelligence brings to their workforce. Corporations realize that developing Hispanic leaders gives them an opportunity to innovate in new ways by embracing their cultural roots. Corporate leaders have learned that in today’s global marketplace, one size doesn’t fit all anymore.
Corporations view their ROI in Hispanic leadership by the impact and influence they can create. Unfortunately for politicians, their ROI is only measured in votes.
Hispanics must be allowed to own their vote. And this doesn’t mean that it’s for sale. The conventional approach to attract voters does not apply to Hispanics. Remember that Hispanics have trouble trusting others, let alone themselves. There are many reasons that Hispanics are the fastest growing sector of entrepreneurs in the US. One reason is that they want to create opportunity for themselves because they do not believe that others are genuinely listening to them. What too many US politicians fail to recognize is that Hispanics greatly desire to have a voice and make a difference. This alone is why Hispanics must own their vote. If they are not allowed to own it, they will continue to believe that their identity represents a liability, rather than an asset, to our country.
Hispanics in the US are experiencing an identity crisis. The lack of infrastructure limits their advancement. For years politicians have failed to create new policies and programs for Hispanics, because they don’t see the value of investment in this community. As a result, Hispanics have been forced to assimilate just to be accepted and it many cases, get a job. Many Hispanics will tell you that assimilation represents their path to advancement.
Unfortunately, Hispanics fail to realize that assimilation accelerates their own identity crisis. As they begin to lose touch with their culture and values, Hispanics lose the ability to contribute in a unique way to the patchwork quilt of the American story. They lose their own language.
At a time where the US is reinventing itself, our country would benefit from the experiences gained and lessons learned from the immigrant past of 50 million Hispanics whose history in their mother countries have been fueled by reform and revolution.
The changing demographics in America require that our politicians become more culturally intelligent about Hispanics and begin to empower their voice and encourage them to take action. Read More
By Gretchen Livingston
Latinos are less likely than whites to access the internet, have a home broadband connection or own a cell phone, according to survey findings from the Pew Hispanic Center, a project of the Pew Research Center. Latinos lag behind blacks in home broadband access but have similar rates of internet and cell phone use.
While about two-thirds of Latino (65%) and black (66%) adults went online in 2010, more than three-fourths (77%) of white adults did so. In terms of broadband use at home, there is a large gap between Latinos (45%) and whites (65%), and the rate among blacks (52%) is somewhat higher than that of Latinos. Fully 85% of whites owned a cell phone in 2010, compared with 76% of Latinos and 79% of blacks.
Hispanics, on average, have lower levels of education and earn less than whites. Controlling for these factors, the differences in internet use, home broadband access and cell phone use between Hispanics and whites disappear. In other words, Hispanics and whites who have similar socioeconomic characteristics have similar usage patterns for these technologies.
Hispanics, on average, are also younger than whites. However, even within each age group, Hispanics show lower levels of technology use than do whites.
Survey questions also probed for the use of non-voice applications on cell phones. Respondents were asked specifically about whether they access the internet and whether they use email, texting or instant messaging from a cell phone. The findings reveal a mixed pattern of non-voice cell phone application use across ethnic and racial groups. Hispanics are less likely than whites to use any non-voice applications on a cell phone (58% vs. 64%), and they are also less likely than whites to send or receive text messages (55% vs. 61%). However, Hispanics and whites are equally likely to access the internet and send or receive email from a cell phone. And Hispanics are more likely than whites to engage in instant messaging (34% vs. 20%). Compared with blacks, Hispanics are less likely to access the internet (31% vs. 41%) or send or receive email (27% vs. 33%) from a cell phone, but rates of texting and instant messaging are similar for the two groups. Read More
By Syeda Hasan
The University introduced a new research program that aims to address the declining number of Latino males pursuing higher education at a symposium Friday.
UT’s Division of Diversity and Community Engagement hosted the Latino Male Symposium on campus and presented the initiatives of its new program Project MALES, or Mentoring to Achieve Latino Educational Success. The program is designed to find solutions to educational obstacles Latino male students commonly face.
Shaun Harper, assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania, said in fall 2009, UT had 7.7 percent more Latino women enrolled than men, and 14.2 percent more Latino women than men successfully completed their degrees.
Victor Saenz, UT assistant professor and Project MALES director, said the program will conduct research on Latino male students’ experiences as they transition from high school to college and provide resources such as personalized mentoring and career advising to help students succeed. Read More
For the past several years, education has topped the list of Latino voter priorities — often beating out even immigration, health care, and jobs. Enthusiasm for higher education has been much higher among Latinos compared to the general population. Yet, their hopes and expectations don’t yet match up with reality. While 94 percent of Latinos say they expect their own children to go to college, only 13 percent of Latinos have a college degree or higher.
(Today), the White House released a report which sets forth a strategy to address that discrepancy. Many of the proposals are part of Obama’s general education plan: creating more “Promise Neighborhood” projects, turning around low-performing schools, supporting innovative teaching methods, reforming No Child Left Behind, and boosting the number of effective teachers in the classroom. However, the White House also sets forth proposals that directly address many of the obstacles that Latinos in particular face:
– Training and growing the number of effective Latino teachers in the classroom by providing special support to Minority-Serving Institutions and through the national TEACH Campaign which “aims to increase the number, quality and diversity of candidates seeking to become teachers.”
– Providing more support for Latinos enrolled in adult education programs to learn English and to improve their reading, writing and numeracy skills.
– Strengthening Hispanic-Serving Institutions by investing $1 billion in public and private nonprofit colleges and universities with a student body that is at least 25 percent Latino.
– Strengthening Pell Grants, creating more affordable loans, and simplifying the financial aid application process. Read More
Out of the 14,000 school districts across the nation, less than 2 percent have a Latino or Latina superintendent. A new professional development program hopes to change those statistics.
The Association of Latino Administrators and Superintendents (ALAS) is launching the ALAS Superintendents Leadership Academy. The year-long program hopes to train educators to become superintendents of Hispanic-serving school districts in the United States.
The ALAS Superintendents Leadership Academy is the first of its kind to focus on the research pertaining to English Language Learners (ELL) as well as adoption of teaching practices and policy initiatives designed to meet the diverse needs of students. It is not unusual for school districts to have high numbers of Spanish speakers as well as students from many language backgrounds other than English as their home language.
“We are looking for people who have already demonstrated leadership,” Dr. Agustin Orci, ALAS executive director, told Latina Lista via phone from his office in Las Vegas, Nevada. “We are trying to find key people in education. We have set high standards.”
Dr. Orci said that while sensitivity to the Latino culture and knowledge about Latino issues are essential qualifications, speaking Spanish isn’t included among them. Read More
By Melissa Ludwig
State Rep. Joaquín Castro, D-San Antonio, and Excelencia in Education, a Washington-based nonprofit, announced a partnership Wednesday to boost college degree attainment among Latinos, which lags behind other groups’ despite their booming population.
Called Ensuring America‘s Future, the initiative aims to identify and expand programs that work for Latinos, such as taking dual enrollment classes in high school.
For the U.S. to regain its top global ranking for college degree attainment, Latinos will need to earn 3.3 million additional degrees by 2020, tripling the pace they are going now, said Sarita Brown, co-founder and president of Excelencia.
“The magnitude of the challenge exceeds what any one of us can do,” Brown said. “We must work together.”
Deborah Santiago, co-founder and vice president for policy and research at Excelencia, said the initiative focuses on completion because many Latinos start college, but never finish.
In Texas, only 30 percent of Latinos complete an associate’s or bachelor’s degree within six years, compared to 40 percent of Anglos.
Latinos must close the gap to catch up to other groups. In Texas, 33 percent of all adults hold at least an associate’s degree, compared with only 16 percent of Latino adults.
The population of Latinos is surging, making the task more urgent than ever, Santiago said. Almost half of all schoolchildren in Texas are Latino, representing the face of Texas’ future. Read More
By Jamaal Abdul-Alim
While a panel discussion held by The College Board on Capitol Hill this week was meant to highlight a new report on the lagging rates of educational attainment among non-White men, some of the panelists questioned the need for more research on the subject.
“How much data do we need?” asked panelist Dr. Roy Jones, executive director for the Eugene T. Moore School of Education’s Call Me MISTER Program at Clemson University. (MISTER is an acronym for Mentors Instructing Students Toward Effective Role-models).
His remarks came after a discussion of the new report titled “The Educational Experience of Young Men of Color: A Review of Research, Pathways and Progress,” co-authored by John Michael Lee Jr., a co-panelist and policy director at the College Board’s Advocacy and Policy Center.
Among other things, the report delineates the current landscape and projections of degree attainment among minorities in the United States, making note of the fact that, while minorities will collectively rival Whites in numbers in 2019, degree attainment among minorities, with the exception of Asians, trails significantly behind that of Whites. For instance, while 41.6 percent of 25- to 34-year-olds in the U.S. had attained an associate’s degree or higher as of 2008, the rate was 30.3 and 19.8 percent for African-Americans and Latinos, respectively, versus 49 percent for Whites and 70.7 percent for Asians. The report was released with two companion reports that reflect student voices on the issues as well as the federal legal implications.
“I love John’s stuff,” Jones said of Lee’s report. “But we need to apply some of John’s stuff tomorrow.”
“We know all there is to know,” Jones continued. “It’s really the will to act.”
Lee, a co-panelist, responded with a little verbal one-upmanship regarding the need for action, saying, “We need to ask what we can do today.” Read More
By James Vaznis
The College Board unveiled an initiative at a forum at Harvard University yesterday to improve the academic achievement of young men of color, saying that bolstering their educational success should be a national priority.
In making the announcement at the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research, the board urged more mentoring of young men of color, better training of teachers on cultural sensitivity, and greater academic support and other services for them in college.
Those recommendations follow the release of two reports by the board yesterday that showed young men of color lagging behind their white male counterparts, as well as female students of their own race or ethnicity.
One report explored rates of college-degree attainment, unemployment, and incarceration, among other barometers of academic, emotional, and social well-being. The other report chronicled the struggles that young men of color confront in getting through college.
One of the more disturbing findings focused on 12th-grade reading levels on the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress exams. In reading, 51 percent of African-American males and 45 percent of Hispanic males scored below basic. Read More
By TERRENCE STUTZ
AUSTIN – Texas‘ minority student enrollment continues to surge, but the state’s teacher corps isn’t keeping pace.
That has left large numbers of black and Hispanic children without the role models experts believe would help them achieve more.
Hispanic students made up more than 48 percent of the enrollment in Texas schools in the 2008-09 school year, the most recent figures available, and the state projects they’ll be more than half by the 2011-12 school year.
When black student enrollment – increasing at a much slower pace – is added, more than 62 percent of students are minorities. A decade ago, it was 53 percent.
Two out of three Texas teachers in the past school year were white, a proportion that has changed only slightly in recent years. The teacher pool was 22 percent Hispanic and 9.6 percent black last year. Read More
The College Board is releasing two reports today on the crisis facing young black and Latino men, who, the reports find, continue to be measurably less educated than minority women and white men.
According to the reports, 16 percent of Latino and 28 percent of African-American men ages 25 to 34 had obtained an associate’s degree or higher as of 2008, while the comparable figure for white men was 44 percent and for Asian men, 70 percent.
The report also said that foreign-born members of those lagging minority groups were more likely to drop out than those born in the United States, especially in the case of Hispanics. While the total dropout rate for male Latinos is 20 percent, the foreign-born dropout rate is 14 percentage points higher.
“The Educational Experience of Young Men: A Review of Research, Pathways, and Progress” draws on statistics from the Census Bureau and other research documents, highlighting the need for change in the education sector. The report often compares the statistical success of men versus women. In almost every case, women are shown to have received more education.
The data about Asian/Pacific Islander men is particularly noteworthy. The authors cite the “model minority myth”— the assumption that a minority group is the superior, or “model,” group — and then challenge it, emphasizing that Asian men face problems similar to those of other minorities. Read More
One container is headed to a club meeting with Elizabeth, a senior at St. Margaret’s Episcopal School. The other – for a friend’s birthday – goes with Ramon, a junior at St. Margaret’s, an independent college-prep school.
It’s shortly after 6 a.m., and the siblings climb into the car to go to the Santa Ana train station. There, among the business commuters is a group of students in school uniforms — crisp white shirts and navy blazers.
With a firm hug, Florencia sees them off. Read More
By MARK MUCKENFUSS
The Press-Enterprise
California State University Chancellor Charles B. Reed told 800 people attending a Cal State San Bernardino conference on Monday that Latinos will play an increasing part in the future success of the state.
“Latinos will play such a pivotal role in keeping our nation competitive in the next few decades,” Reed said, alluding to the recent U.S. census that showed 38 percent of Californians are now Latino. He said educators need to “ensure their college graduation rates keep growing.”
Reed was addressing the second annual Latino Education and Advocacy Days conference at the university.
The conference, referred to by one of its main organizers, Enrique Murillo Jr., as “Latino Ed Palooza,” drew a slightly larger in-person crowd this year and expanded its presence online. The conference was streamed live to schools across the United States, 15 Central and South American countries and Spain. At one point, Murillo announced 2 million viewers were online. Read More
By George Will
DALLAS — For a conservative Texan seeking national office, it could hardly get better than this:
In a recent 48-hour span, Ted Cruz, a candidate for next year’s Republican Senate nomination for the seat being vacated by Republican Kay Bailey Hutchison, was endorsed by the Club for Growth PAC, FreedomWorks PAC, talk radio host Mark Levin and Erick Erickson of RedState.com.
And Cruz’s most conservative potential rival for the nomination decided to seek a House seat instead.
For conservatives seeking reinforcements for Washington’s too-limited number of limited-government constitutionalists, it can hardly get better than this: Before earning a Harvard law degree magna cum laude (and helping found the Harvard Latino Law Review) and clerking for Chief Justice William Rehnquist, Cruz’s senior thesis at Princeton — his thesis adviser was professor Robert George, one of contemporary conservatism’s intellectual pinups — was on the Constitution’s Ninth and 10th Amendments. Then as now, Cruz argued that these amendments, properly construed, would buttress the principle that powers not enumerated are not possessed by the federal government. Read More
The League of United Latin American Citizens, the oldest and largest Latino membership organization in the United States, filed suit today against the State of Texas challenging the manner in which redistricting for the United States House of Representatives, the State House of Representatives and the Texas State Board of Education have been drawn or will be drawn.
LULAC attorneys including Luis Vera, Jose Garza, Rolando Rios & George Korbell have been working since last November on the redistricting process in Texas. Once the 2010 Census figures for Texas were made public, George Korbell drew redistricting maps that were used by Texas LULAC leaders in their testimony before the state legislature. These maps made clear that the four new congressional districts that Texas gained as a result of its fast growing Hispanic population, could be drawn in a manner that would create four new Latino performing districts.
“For 82 years, LULAC has worked to defend the voting rights of Latinos in the state of Texas and throughout the nation,” stated Margaret Moran, LULAC National President. “The lawsuit filed by LULAC today against Texas will ensure that Latinos in Texas benefit from the new districts that state gained as a result of Hispanic population growth.” Read More
The best indicator of a state’s progress in math and reading are the results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress(NAEP). This is considered the “gold-standard” of tests. The assessments include some multiple choice tests, but also include many open-response items that require students to show their work and arrive at the correct answer rather than eliminating choices on multiple-choice items.Texas made tremendous gains on the NAEP mathematics tests in the 1990s, especially the 4th grade mathematics test. Indeed, Texas was repeatedly singled out as a leader in education reform because of these large gains. Grissmer and Flanagan (1999) studied Texas and determined that reduced class sizes, business community support, and an accountability system that disaggregated scores by race/ethnicity and student socio-economic status were largely responsible for these gains. At the Brookings Institute symposium on statewide progress, Dr.Uri Treisman and I (2000) also argued that the increased equity in the school finance system also helped drive improvement.
But what happened since then? Are we still making progress? Commissioner Robert Scott often touts that our students are ranked at or near the top of their peers when compared to other states in the nation. Indeed, this is an accurate statement. Yet–it has been an accurate statement for 20 years. Our high-ranking has little to do with what we have done lately, but everything with what we did 20 to 30 years ago.
Let’s look at how our 4th grade students are faring. Read More
