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The real barriers to higher education For five years of her young life in Mexico, Tania Mejia had a dream – to be back in the United States with her father. The American was born in California, but at the age of 8, Tania moved with her mother and five siblings to Michoacan, Mexico. The young girl’s education suffered as she was held back two years. “I was put in first grade because I didn’t know how to read and write in Spanish,” recalls the young teen, whose primary language is Spanish. Tania returned last year, landing in Santa Ana. The 13-year-old was bumped up to eighth grade by the Santa Ana Unified School District, although she only had a fifth-grade education. Her struggle to catch up in time to be both qualified for and emboldened about a college education is a real issue among thousands of the county’s children of immigrants. Because without a college education, job choices will be limited, at best, bleak at worst, for the emerging generation awakening to a fast-moving, technological world. SETTLED IN Today, Tania lives with three cousins and her aunt and uncle, her legal guardians. Her father visits her on the weekends as he works long hours. Still, the girl with deep brown eyes anticipates going to college and becoming a police officer. But first, she must catch up in math, science, and English to pass the California High School Exit Exam and get a competitive SAT score for college admission. The struggle continues. Family separations, language and cultural barriers, low-income schools, and immigration issues keep many Latinos from obtaining high school and college degrees. Conference talk Experts at a recent conference in Santa Ana, hosted by the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans, addressed this problem. Fact: Only 6-of-10 Latinos in California graduated with a high school diploma in 2003. In the U.S., Latino family households have nearly 6 million children under the age of 18 – that is, school-aged children. But America will fall behind if students are not getting postsecondary education. They represent the largest group of future American workers. Of Orange County’s 3.1 million residents, more than 1 million, or about 33%, are Latino. Among Orange County’s school-age children, about 200,000 are Latino. The demand for a highly educated American workforce will grow by 1.8 million by 2022. OC Family Magazine wrote about this in its September 2006 story “Class of 2022: California needs your highly educated child.” The jobs will be waiting, but will the workforce be able? At the conference, President Ray Mellado of the Hispanic Engineer National Achievement Awards Cooperation (HENAAC) noted that foreign-born students are outnumbering American student graduates, especially Latinos. “Latinos comprised only 1% of all Ph.D. graduates in American universities last year, in contrast to 40% who were foreign-born students,” he says. FINDING A CHAIR Conference experts agreed that one of the problems Latino children face is attending crowded, low-income schools, where resources are limited. “One counselor per 500 students is something we cannot accept,” says Hazel Mingo, of the Office of Federal Student Aid and U.S. Department of Education. At a school district such as Santa Ana, which is comprised of 92% Latinos out of its 58,000 students, more is required than simply classroom teaching. Says Bill Habermehl, superintendent of schools for Orange County: “SAUSD has done a remarkable job in targeting resources, and keeping test scores above the statewide average, but SAUSD has been met with serious challenges as they lost $28 million in the past three years.” School enrollment, which boosts revenue coming to a district, has dropped in recent years – by some 4,000 students – as families move to lower-cost areas of the state. At Santa Ana Unified, 75% of students qualify for free and reduced lunches, indicating families’ poverty level. And many Latino students struggle with English and math learning. “There is a dichotomy here because we can’t put students in rigorous classes when they come to our district with low literacy levels,” says Jane Russo, interim superintendent for SAUSD. Some 60% of students are English language learners, slowing the process. In addition, a lack of college culture in the home slows university applications.. “Latino parents do not understand what scholarships and federal grants are and they are scared to send their children to a university because they fear going into debt,” says student-service specialist Rosa Harrizon of Los Promotores, a program launched in SAUSD to help parents navigate the school system in Spanish. She says parents often would rather have their children work, especially undocumented children who cannot get federal aid. STANDING STRONG Conference attendees suggested parents, teachers and community leaders need to work together to improve Latino attendance in college. “People think Latino parents do not care about their children’s education,” says Harrizon. “The reality is that it is hard for Latino parents to go to school meetings when they work so much and do not understand English.” There are ongoing solutions to end the achievement gap. Mellado of HENAAC says three goals are necessary. First, educating parents that math is the “new liberal arts degree of the future” in their language. Second, preparing students in technology programs, and third, applying more science curriculum to the classroom. A recent UC Irvine pilot program, The Pathway Project, is underway to help students get into college from Santa Ana Unified. In this four-year project, UCI researchers received $2.9 million that will reach 104 middle and high school teachers and more than 1,800 students who are intermediate English language learners and above. “This program will focus on college-level reading,” says Carol Booth Olson, senior lecturer in UCI’s Department of Education and principal investigator of the project. She says the program steers clear of the conventional teaching of practicing pronunciation, and instead analyzes character, plot and setting of text because the High School Exit Exam and all-important SAT scores push students to practice more interpretative reading and analytical writing. Nayeli Pagaza is a Fountain Valley-based writer. |
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