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HISPANIC BORDER LEADERSHIP INSTITUTE | ||||||||
Executive ReportHBLI Scholars' Forum May 22 to 23, 2000 | ||||||||
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© October, 2000
This executive summary is based on presentations made at the HBLI Scholars' Forum held at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona, on May 22_23, 2000. | ||||||||
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HBLI is pleased to present its Scholars. The organization of a group of experts, both researchers and practitioners, grew out of the "Platica" series of distinguished speakers. That is, at each of the four campuses where doctoral fellows are studying to become effective change agents in significant leadership roles after graduation, persons who are scholars or expert practitioners are invited to share their knowledge with the fellows. While the Platica Speaker Series has been beneficial to the fellows, it was believed that it would more useful to the HBLI consortium to organize such persons for the following purposes: 1. Scholars would be convened once a year to have a rich dialogue on current issues of importance that affect Hispanic Education. The discussion would be video taped and a printed executive summary of the proceedings shared. 2. Doctoral fellows would have access to this meeting and thus could establish a one-on-one conversation with certain scholars. 3. Scholars could write policy papers for HBLI 4. Scholars could serve on dissertation committees of HBLI doctoral fellows. 5. Scholars could become mentors for fellows. | ||||
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Table of Contents Introduction: A Gathering of Latino Intellegencia Leonard A. Valverde Dialogue One: Donde Estamos? The Census: Implications and Consquences Baltazar Acevedo Dialogue Two: How Can Knowledge Influence Power Brokers? John Garcia Barbara Robles Dialogue Three: K-12 Public Education: Bilingual Education— Concepcion Valadez Leonard Baca Dialogue Four: Accessing Higher Education Beyond Community Colleges and Roberto Haro Appendices: | ||
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Leonard A. Valverde Professor, Educational Leadership and Policy Studies "A Gathering of Latino Intellegencia" HBLI Scholars' Program (see Appendix A) was formed with the idea of bringing together experts within the academy and without to think about and discuss crucial issues related to Hispanic education from K-12 public schools to community colleges and graduate education. Towards this end, the first HBLI Scholars' Forum was held on May 22 and 23, 2000, at Arizona State University. Fourteen scholars attended the forum, which stretched over two days and consisted of four dialogue sessions (see Appendix B), each dealing with an important issue regarding Hispanic education. One or two scholars were asked to speak at the beginning of each dialogue to help frame the issue from their perspective and share what they felt was the most critical and important ideas pertaining to the issue. The hope was that this would spark reactions from the others and bring some focus and/or controversy to discussing the issue. In the ensuing conversations, scholars shared their views and added to what the framers said or challenged the view of the framers altogether, so that a rich dialogue that benefited all and stimulated thinking about the issues followed. Joining the scholars were HBLI doctoral fellows preparing to be change agents. What is presented here are the framing statements for the four dialogues. The four topics represent the wide range of problems historically facing Hispanics in their educational experience. In the first dialogue, Dr. Baltazar Acevedo broadens his discussion beyond the census to talk about how policy in general is seen by most academics and how to reconceive the relationships between different policy areas. By doing so, researchers and practitioners can be more effective in conceiving solutions to plaguing problems. In the second dialogue, John Garcia and Barbara Robles discuss ways to influence policy makers. Professor Garcia suggests that it is important to develop personal connections with policy makers while Professor Robles challenges academics to rethink how they can most effectively influence policy makers. It is clear that a new way of interacting needs to occur in order to shape public policy that will better the education of Latino students. The third dialogue addresses probably the most controversial K-12 educational program, bilingual education. Concepcion Valadez, speaking in Spanish but reported herein in English, focuses on the politics of language and how bilingual education is being co-opted by Anglos, while Leonard Baca places bilingual education within its historical context. Lastly, Dr. Roberto Haro discusses Hispanic access to higher education from a California perspective in the fourth dialogue. He outlines the current trends and difficulties faced by Latinos in California, and he postulates what the future may hold for Latinos seeking higher education in the Southwest. v | ||
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Dialogue One Donde Estamos? What will data from the census mean for policy directions and educational programs and practice? What are the social and long-range implications of this census? For example, if the census count tells us that Latinos are the fastest-growing and youngest population in the United States, then more Hispanics will have to be trained as teachers and more Anglo teachers will have to be trained in dual language instruction (Spanish-English) and/or, at a minimum, cultural understanding. Another issue is Hispanic representation. A recent (May 2000) article on the front page of the Los Angeles Times discussed how the census will only produce one new congressperson for California. The article implied that California will pick up one congressperson due to immigration, of which 40 percent is Latino. But more than likely, the new congressional seat will not represent Hispanics in California because of gerrymandering, politics between parties, and the attitude Californians have towards Latinos, as seen in recent referendums, such as the Unz initiative, anti-bilingual education. | ||
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Baltazar Acevedo Acevedo and Associates Expanding the Educational Nexus In order to make this presentation, I needed to get angry, and in order to get angry in regard to the social conscience, I turned to David Montejano's book, Anglos and Mexicans in the Making of Texas, 1836-1986 for inspiration. Since this discussion requires a policy base, I went back and found a statement by Montejano in which he says, "that race situations exist when they are defined by public policy." What does that mean in terms of us as individuals who have been involved mostly in the policy implementation rather than the policy making side of higher education? What it really means is that our history, our present, and our future are grounded in racist public policy in the Southwest as practiced by the Anglo power brokers. Montejano contends that the Anglo settlers of nineteenth century Texas were already socialized and trained in how to discriminate, having done so against the African Americans and Native Americans across a young United States. That being said, how is this historical context related to the policy issues that challenge us today as we attempt to respond to the demands of serving the needs of our diverse constituencies through institutions? I have done some demographic studies for the Tomas Rivera Center, and in doing so, I became aware of how demographic data is a cornerstone to the evolution of public policy. Of concern to me is the continued and expanding gap within our community of any correlations between how the different policy silos [education, housing, health, economics, etc.] are inter-related with each other. This situation, in which policy areas are examined separate from each other, has become more pronounced and evident to me as my consulting practice has allowed me to interact with many beneficiaries of bad public policy in the barrios of Houston and other Southwestern United States communities. The community based organizations (CBOs) and community development corporations (CDCs) are in a constant state of disenfranchisement as they attempt to programmatically respond to disjointed public policies that are generated by educational agencies and different government committees, and flow through various interpretations by Washington, D.C. policy shapers and by regional work force commissions. These policies are disjointed since they are generated within nonintegrated silos that treat each target population as existing in isolation from | ||
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other silos. The health agency silo fails to recognize the education silo, which ignores the housing silo, and so on. My work consists of what I refer to as "guerilla consulting" through which I work with la communidad by assisting the disenfranchised CBOs and CDCs to deal with issues of development of health, housing, education, and technology. All have been placed forth through fragmented policies and procedures that are not linked to the "life reality" of the target populations. I believe that all policy must have a "nexus" from which all corollary programs are interconnected in a sane and reasonable manner. As an educator I must profess to a bias that makes education the center point or nexus for all succeeding social policy. The 2000 census will generate much data that is going to drive many policies and corresponding fiscal and political allocations, which in turn will determine future institutional practices. It is our responsibility to make sure that all data and corresponding policies do not remain isolated and insulated from each other as is too often the case now of the social and public policy framework. It is necessary for both researchers and policy brokers to make connections between data that comes out of the census so that we may have a holistic interpretation of the net impact of emerging policy practices on all segments of our society. If everything goes through education as the nexus, then you have to make connections with what happens between health, community development, housing, political participation, business development, economic development, technology, and so forth. What I have noticed over the last thirty years as an educator is that a lot of times public policy that evolves from the silo view has a tendency to create a "comfort zone" within our own professional or academic practice (our silo). That means that if we are in education, we talk about policy in that context, or if we are in technology or business development, then through these contexts. What happens is that we look at some data, for example, that in Texas 65 percent of the children do not have health insurance, and we see that as a public health issue instead of asking, what is the educational issue inherent in that data? When we hear that 45 percent of Hispanics in the United States reside in substandard housing, we fail to discern what that data implies about education. What are the education and health correlations when data surfaces that makes us aware that malnutrition is rampant in over 1500 colonias from Juarez/El Paso eastward to Matamoros/Brownsville—what are the implications for education? I have been looking at the aforementioned issues, and I propose that one of the
major challenges to researchers, to those young scholars we are preparing and those in public
policy positions, is that we need to be the ones that define ourselves, not the Anglo establishment. | ||
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for why we are here, which is the legal precedent set in the Treaty of Guadilupe Hildago. Under the terms of the treaty, we were guaranteed full legal constitutional rights at some point, but we have had to go through a continual legal enfranchisement battle to get our educational rights, housing rights, health rights, or our political participation rights. Many of our forefathers could not vote because they could not afford the poll tax—some of your parents are probably in that group. I know my grandparents and parents were. These are some of the issues that we are trying to address in the research I am doing. My research is being done as a consultant with community development organizations that take these data and try to influence philanthropy, such as the Ford Foundation, the Kellogg Foundation, the Houston Endowment, the Meadows Foundation and institutions of that type. There is one challenge that I want to put forth. We need to collectively challenge bad policy through data-based research that requires a data-based response from the powers that be. The research context, the "nexus" for me as an educator, is education. This nexus should be the point through which all census data passes through on its way to good policy generation. The 2000 census will have little use to us, unless we monitor its data and the policy outcomes by focusing on the programs and institutional practices that emerge to mitigate for or against our community's continued prosperity and continued enfranchisement. As researchers our community will come to see us as beacons of light that brings to light bad or ill-conceived social policies because we have been diligent in attending to a framework that is grounded in a nexus that is data based and inter-related. v | ||
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Dialogue Two How Can Knowledge The general perception is that law makers, both state and national, and rule makers, such as local governing boards, are lay persons who need and seek out information and understanding to help them draft and vote on legislation and policy that will favorably advance an issue. The reality is that when it comes to important Hispanic issues, racism and economics play a negative role in trying to gain a positive resolution to the problems. If education is going to improve for Latinos, then power brokers will have to be approached and effectively convinced on how to best resolve the issues. How do we influence policy makers so they construct an environment that is better for our population and conducive to a better society? How do we get lay people to understand and know what is best for us regarding educational matters? How do we help those who are sympathetic and cooperative and want to do a good job to pass legislation or adopt policy that will be helpful to create good schools? | ||
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John Garcia Professor of Political Science Working Connections: A Holistic Approach to The challenge of this discussion is to think about how to articulate or reflect on a process that is part of my daily life. We must ask questions of ourselves as academics before trying to impact or transform policy makers. We are talking about what I call working connections, and those connections are very real and very significant. They are purposive, in that if we engage in this area it is for a particular purpose, so understanding why we are doing what we are doing is important, it grounds and directs us in those interactions. What do we as academics have to say? What is our purpose when interacting with policy makers? The sense here is that we want to impact the direction of policy, we want to impact the specific components of the big public policy arena or action. What is important is what you have to say, and why you feel you have to say that to someone in the policy making arena. These are very basic questions, but you must have that kind of base to engage in whatever activities you pursue after answering those questions. What difference will your involvement have in the policy making arena in the Latino community? In an ideal sense, we can change the world, we can impact the quality of education of young Latinos/Latinas in terms of their well being in the general sense, and that is a very good goal to have. The reality is that my specific action is going to have an impact, either short term or long term. The long term may be much more nebulous, but it may be why you do things. Because the short-term results are generally incremental, if effective at all, the immediate impact may not be sufficient to sustain you. The other point I want to make is that not all academics are concerned with what is involved in policy making, so academics are not the hotbed of the policy making process. I have some colleagues who are very well known in the political participation/electoral arena. They get called by local news stations and are asked about what is happening in a local election, and they respond, "Oh, I don't know about local elections, I'm not familiar with what's going on." You can talk about the political process in the abstract or on the general level, but there is no motivation or information about trying to deal with the concrete, which is what public policy has to deal with. | ||
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The connections that academics make must have a personal element. It is a relational situation, not necessarily saying we have to be best of friends with people in the public policy arena, but there has to be some kind of personal connection. That connection can be direct or indirect. I talked to someone recently, and I said I had a meeting with a U.S. senator a few years ago. The senator was on the fence about whether he was going to vote on an issue or not. I had an opportunity to talk to that senator because an ex-student of mine was on his staff and was concerned about his position and felt he wanted a third party to project a certain perspective on that. I had some visibility and some reputation, so I became the conduit and the substance to talk about that conversation. But again, there was a connection, either direct or not. The other thing is, how do you make a connection between your own research, knowledge, and analysis and public policy? As academics we certainly have a degree of expertise, specific kinds of knowledge bases, and analytical perspectives. What is that connection with public policy? In some sense you get back to the question of the nature of research and its application and interpretation relative to specific concrete situations in policy issues. What is your involvement as an individual in activities, situations, and organizations dealing with Latinos? I may not lecture to the League of Women Voters as a political scientist, but I am active in my neighborhood association or as a soccer dad. Being involved in on-going activities such as these, while not necessarily wearing the academic hat, is important. You are involved in your community because of a variety of connections, from family to neighborhood, and that's an important dimension of being instructive in the policy making arena when it occurs because you have concrete experiences, insights, and knowledge that are not always derived from an academic setting or context. This is a holistic sense of involvement, in that academics are also parents, neighbors, residents, members of a variety of organizations, and that composite helps reinforce the specific academic contribution we can make in a variety of different contexts. One other thing, which we deal with the least directly, is for each of us to ask, what is public policy? I suspect we would get a variety of answers to that question. How you see your role as an individual in the policy arena reflects how you see public policy. A simple political science definition of public policy is to say that it is what governments do; that's one way to operationalize or define that. Most academics would say, "I write on international migration. Influencing public policy for me would be to send reprints of my articles to the speaker of the house. That's how I'm engaged in public policy." It is important to have a sense, from your point of view, of what public policy is, how you understand that process and the components of it, and what the nature of your connection to public policy | ||
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and concrete issues is. Again, concrete issues is an important realm, in that contrary to what we do, many times it is not abstract but very specific and focused in terms of that setting. Is there a formula to engaging in public policy? You want to be involved with the policy making process, how do you do it? Is there a road map? In the whole self-improvement area there are all kinds of "seven steps to spiritual well being," or "steps to financial security," and so forth. I would suggest that there are so many different paths for engaging in public policy, each one influenced by our own idiosyncrasies, experiences, and backgrounds, that there is no set path. But there are things to keep in mind. What are your own expectations about being engaged in the policy making process? Why are you doing it? Why do you want to do it? If you are involved, you may ask yourself over a period of time, why am I subjecting myself to this, why am I frustrating myself, and so on. It's important to have some sense of your expectations and your objectives in engaging in policy making. The second thing that is important for academics is, are you willing to communicate by any means necessary? Academics, as with most professions, have their own jargon, their own vocabulary, and even as academics we do not always understand each other. It is even worse if we use that same jargon to communicate with other individuals. So if we have something to say, we have to think about what we are willing to do to change our vocabulary or to communicate effectively without the academic trappings as if we were talking to AERA, ASA, or APSA, etc. That's an important investment one has to make. In summary, there are three key things to think about as academics when dealing with public policy. First, our connections as academics can be enhanced or created by other colleagues, ex-students, or students who are interning or exploring different career paths. Our students are important connections to help us in this policy making process. Second, is your research subject to application to public policy? You may do some very good research, but it may have very limited application to public policy contexts. We don't all design our research with application in mind. Lastly, are your insights based on aspects other than your own research? That gets back to this holistic idea that, as an individual, the totality of your experience and involvement are resources useful for engaging in the policy making process. So, my basic theme is that we need to have a good grounding in ourselves in what we are about, what we do, what are we good at, and how we are able to relate that perspective, analysis, and insight into a connection with people engaged in the public policy process. v | ||
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Barbara Robles LBJ School of Public Affairs Changing the Perspective of I want to pretty much take up where John left off, and I think I have a different take on it because we represent different disciplines here. I believe that our strength lies in our interdisciplinary expertise and the ways we contribute to amplifying agendas as public intellectuals shaping these same agendas. I want to focus on several factors in my talk: strategic ownership, public intellectuals, and leadership. I think those are three areas that are really important. The points I want to make have more to do with changing the perceptions of ourselves as academics to go a little beyond our usual environment, which is the academy. I will touch on these points briefly at first and expand on them later. The first issue is that we have to help shape, strategically define, and own agendas of change. I think ownership is important, because we have a tendency to place a lot of emphasis on efficiency considerations. As an economist, I know this is big in the public policy arena, where we have to think about efficiency. Sometimes I think that optimal outcomes are actually the inefficient outcomes, and the inefficiency (in the sense of more time-consuming and more inclusive of the decision-making process) comes from everybody feeling that they have a vested interest in the process and the outcome. The second point I would like to make is that research is somewhat nonlinear and is generally conducted with a time lag. Baltazar mentioned seeing public policy as a matrix with a nexus, a two-dimensional figure with rows and columns. This is an interesting concept, using the image of a matrix to capture what we are trying to do. I would go one step further and actually use the terminology of an array, which has three or more dimensions, because that allows us to bring in our expertise in the social sciences and cultural studies. With the idea of an array, we can incorporate any number of factors, such as race, class, gender, language, culture, economic environment, geography, and so forth, all of which would be lost in a simple, two dimensional matrix. What we want to change in terms of the political process and outcomes has a lot to do with our cultural values and our intrinsic language differences and the fact that we as a population are different from the mainstream. So we have to think not only in terms of a matrix but also multi-dimensionally as an array. | ||
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We also need to think in terms of commonality nodes, such as language and culture and common goals and agendas, when we are dealing with changing policy. Education, for example, is an issue that cuts across all population groups. The third point I wanted to make is that we are really twenty-first century public intellectuals and we need to stop thinking of ourselves as only having a domain in the academy. Actually, we are training the leaders of the new millennium, and the students who are coming in and are part of the process are going to have a wide variety of experiences. As academics, we have a comparative advantage in training and coaching the leadership. We serve as trainers of information brokering, and we need to reevaluate our roles in the academy and how we are teaching to transgress. That's what we are doing. We are revolutionizing in many ways the minds of the students as they come in, opening them up to different ideas and to the possibility of the permanence of change, not just this temporary social change. Finally, an important thing, and I would be remiss as an economist if I didn't talk about it, and that is one word: money. In the political process, budgetary allocation and resource allocation is crucial. That is generally where our voices get lost. We are remiss in staying within the academy and not recognizing the political process for what it is, especially when it comes to budgetary allocation. In fact, we are well versed in the budgetary dynamics of the university, given our experience in having hit the wall and having made mistakes, and that is the kind of information students need to have in the classroom as well. I don't care if we are talking about education, political science, sociology, or cultural studies, at some point the leaders of tomorrow, our students, are going to have to deal with issues of resource allocation and finance, and it is important that we share that information with them. Even though we don't think of that as an academic topic, it is an important piece of information for our students. Having outlined those four points, I want to talk a little bit about specifics. When I mentioned before strategically defining and owning agendas of change, I am talking about all levels of government: local, state, and federal. They all coalesce, they have connections, and we need to have, especially in our dialogues with legislators, a commonality of interest. You have to figure out, as an academic, what is their agenda, what do they want to get done during that session, and we have to make sure that we have the same time frame. One of our problems as academics is that we have the luxury of studying a topic over several years. We have a research agenda that is quite rich, but its time dimension does not dovetail with the political process. We need to rethink how we do our research and the timing of it. We need to think in terms of two- and four-year results that build from the short and intermediate term into the long term. I don't think we can just stop at recommendations. When we are | ||
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tapped for information, we have to have recommendations, plans for implementation, On the second thing, when we are talking about mediating arrays and research, we have a comparative advantage, because it is our business to produce ideas, to produce knowledge, and to do research, so we need to start cultivating positive and negative scenarios. We have a tendency to focuses on the problem as opposed to possible solutions, outcomes, and the consequences of the problem. A really good example of this would be to take all the statistics on our dropouts and ask, what if all of the students who dropped out did have a high school education that is comparable to the major population? What would be their tax contribution in terms of tax dollars? It's those kinds of scenarios that grab the attention of the politicians, because then they start realizing that this is not just a social problem, it is also a problem that has to do with government and funding government. One of the most powerful tools we have is to blend quantitative and qualitative methodologies. Quantitative information, though, can make a splash, as when you talk about the Latino community from 1995 to 1998 having declined 24 percent in its net wealth compared to all other populations. That grabs the attention, but it does not tell us why that is happening—we need qualitative information for that. We need to learn from the successes of others, and this is where we have to think
in terms of umbrellas. There is a general perception within mainstream America that all
Latinos are under one umbrella, that we are nondiverse and all eat salsa; we need to celebrate
our diversity while maintaining our commonalities. We are a Latino population with a lot
of different components, and we are going to continue to be a Latino population that may
be viewed as monolithic in terms of the majority population, but we know within
ourselves that we are very diverse. As Mexican Americans, we can learn from the Cubans and
the Chinese Americans about entrepreneurship and political maneuvering. Yes, they have When we are talking about twenty-first century public intellectuals, we talk amongst ourselves quite effectively, those of us who actually bridge the different disciplines. But John Garcia is right, we have a tendency to talk in our own subvocabularies. What we need to do is think in terms of concise communications. In my experience with politicians, they want to know it in two pages or less. It is great to send them an article, but send it to their | ||
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chief of staff, that is the person who will be reading it. As to the politicians themselves, you would be better off spending an evening socializing and planting little seeds of information. Anything beyond two pages people won't read, they don't have the time. Using visual aids effectively is something else we need to learn how to do.
Phil Graham, in the Senate, is known as the king of charts, among other things. He is an
economist who used to be a professor of economics at Texas A&M University in College
Station. He is very effective at getting across the visual information of the bottom line of what Our students are our best resource and, if anything, our best product. At the Center for Mexican American studies we are initiating for the first time a paid internship for Mexican American legislative office. We are making sure that our students, who are trained at the university, are actually part of the political process. This is a way to plant the seeds through the students by getting them to write the briefing memos for the representatives and the senators. Where do the students get their ideas? They get them from the classroom. We need to think of internships as not just being for legislature, but for NGOs, city government, state agencies, and even federal departments. When you can get students placed in positions where they are writing or doing the grunt research and then passing along the information to the policy makers, this is an infiltration of the policy making process. Yes it is important for us to be at the table, yes it is important for us to have a voice and direct link, but we can have an indirect one as well. Finally, a word about money. No budget is apolitical; that's a fact of life. It disturbs a lot of my students when I talk about this, because they want to know the technique. They want to know how to estimate the budget, how to project money, they want to know about expenditure programs. They think that a budget is cut and dry, that it is about technical information. You can do the most technically precise estimate and pass it on, and it is going to turn into sausage when it come to the actual political process, because budgets are about compromise. So you have to know not only the vocabulary of the budget but where you can compromise. You have to choose where you are going to fight your battles, what you can give on, and what you can't give on. That last thing I'm going to talk about regarding money is the following. We have the tendency to think of ourselves, in the policy making arena, in terms of education. We have to be concerned about K-12, so we think in terms of the students. We have to start thinking about ourselves as taxpayers and as consumers contributing to the revenue base. | ||
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We have an incredible amount of power in terms of our purchasing power as an
aggregate. Going back to Baltazar's nexus, we need to think of ourselves in a multidimensional
framework. All of these policy issues hit all of the multidimensionality that we bring as
citizens. We are not just workers, we are not just students, we are not just welfare beneficiaries, v | ||
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Dialogue Three K-12 Public Education: Bilingual There are many facets to bilingual education and numerous difficulties facing its continued existence. Because the "modern day" bilingual education programs were born out of 1960s "civil disobedience and civil rights movement," they have been collectively interpreted as more of a political endeavor than an instructional program that will help limited- or non-English speaking students. As such, bilingual education is continuously under attack at the federal level for re-authorization and re-funding and at the state level, such as the California anti-bilingual education referendum. It is also challenged at the local school board level when selecting a program type (for example should it be transitional or continuous), for level of funding support, and for how extensive it will be throughout the district, and so on. Given this genesis, is it possible for the bilingual education political war to be won, and if so, how? Even by educators, due to political influence, the practice of bilingual education is seen as a deficit model of education. The "disadvantage" label is incorrectly placed on children, saying that they are not capable learners, so they are seen negatively. Bilingual education is distorted by negative politics and, unfortunately, is wrapped around by the racism that exists in this country. It is a critical issue for future generations, yet recently a fight in which we have lost hard-won ground. That's not to say that we should not continue to fight for it (where properly staffed and funded, it has been effective), but we really need to look hard at what strategies we can implement to keep this much needed program viable. | ||
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Concepción M. Valadez University of California, Los Angeles Bilingual Education and Language Policies Comparing the Battle for Bilingual Education to the Vietnam War is an appropriate analogy, to a degree. Many of us have earned Purple Heart Medals in fighting to defend Bilingual Education. As an instructional approach, bilingual education is a fairly simple concept to understand. If a student does not speak English and her instruction is given in English, learning will be hindered, at best. Bilingual education proposes to provide first language (L1) assistance in that instruction until a student has sufficient control of the English language to receive all instruction in English. This is the transitional model of bilingual education, the most common model we find in the United States, and the one that is under attack. Bilingual Education lost a major battle in California in June of 1998, when the voters of that state approved Proposition 227, also known as the Unz Initiative. This law effectively blocks non-English proficient students and limited-English proficient students from having access to formal schooling in public schools. Under the provisions of this law, one year of immersion in English is considered sufficient for the student to move to all English instruction. The law includes provisions for parents to ask for waivers and insist on first language instruction for their children, but the conditions for obtaining these waivers are difficult to meet. Further, many schools or districts where the administration was not supportive of bilingual education when it was mandated are now not even informing the parents of the waiver option. What is behind the Anti-Bilingual Education voter? Analyses of the campaign on that citizens' initiative before the vote showed that one-third of the voters were supporting bilingual education, one-third were opposed, and one-third were not sure they knew what this was all about. Anti-Bilingual Education VotersMany of these anti-bilingual people are misguided or misinformed about what this instructional approach is and what it aims to do. For some reason bilingual education seems to indicate that children study and stay in L1 forever. There is no understanding that skills and knowledge developed through L1 are available to the student to work with in L1 and L2 (second language) or any subsequent language that person learns. We have ample research that demonstrates the effectiveness of first language instruction not only in the acquisition | ||
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of English but also to academic achievement. These two factors impact on the development of a positive self-concept, which is related to school retention. Nevertheless, the research done on well-implemented bilingual education is heard.1 We bilingual educators have yet to learn how to get the public to listen to the research. Fear of nationalism and ethnocentrism is another reason some people are against bilingual education. In this respect, the transition model of bilingual education is doubtless the most innocuous of all the models. Transitional bilingual education, when implemented as intended, enhances the Americanization role of the schools. It prompts accelerated assimilation and encourages the shift from L1 usage to English. The transition model does not foster first language maintenance in its curriculum. Nevertheless, the politics of language is such that usage of a language by large numbers of people represents a power. It is the politics of language that undergirds the success of the English-only movement, the primary force leading the anti-bilingual education sentiment. The leaders of the English-Only Movement recognize the common suspicion of monolingual Americans when they see people speaking in a language they don't understand ("they must be talking about me"). These leaders also know that most American voters don't know what is going on in bilingual classrooms. Hence, the English-only movement has two broad fields in which to lay out its political offensive against bilingual education. In the case of Proposition 227, the campaign was run under the theme "English for the children." There were many well-meaning voters who fell for this propaganda line. The campaign went on the say that bilingual education was keeping immigrant children from learning English and that without English these poor children were doomed to a life little better than servitude. As has been mentioned, we bilingual educators could not get the word to the voters that in bilingual programs children are learning English and most importantly, not falling behind in the cognitive development appropriate to their age. Insufficient Support for Full Implementation of Bilingual ProgramsThe fight for bilingual education is not helped by the reality that many bilingual programs have not been fully implemented. Bilingual Education finds itself being judged without adequate support for implementation as intended. Again, in California, bilingual education | |||
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1 In the summer after the passage of 227, the same newspapers that had been taunting the alleged shortcoming of bilingual education suddenly needed to eat their words. Reports from San Francisco, San Jose and some California Central Valley schools were showing that children who had transitioned from bilingual education programs were outscoring English-only students in English Reading tests. | |||
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was presented as a failure because schools with large numbers of non-English proficient children were doing poorly academically. The records from the State Department of Education were showing that only fewer than 40 percent of the students who needed first language assistance were receiving some form of help. The vast majority of the students were already in English-only instruction. The kind of schooling promised under the Unz Initiative was already there for the 60 percent that were undoubtedly doing poorly in school. That fact was not made widely available to the public in the campaign, by either side. Lack of Support for Full Implementation of Bilingual EducationIf we look at the history of bilingual education in this country, we find periods when we have had support from the public for first language instruction to non-English speaking children. We also find periods when there has been strong repression against language diversity. Usually we find negative sentiment against language diversity during periods of economic crises or of international threats. At the present time we have neither of these. We have a very robust economy and we have no major international foes. However, there seems to be a perceived internal threat. The overt attacks on language diversity that we see in the anti-bilingual education movement appear to be part of a prevalent attack on ethnic diversity. We can make a case for the concerted attacks on Latino groups, whether native-born or immigrants. In the case of schools, the language issue has become a lightening rod. In recent California legislation we can also see other manifestations of animosity towards this group. In 1987, the voters passed the English-only law. With this legislation, maintenance bilingual education programs were virtually eliminated and only transition programs were allowed to continue. The field limped along, as mentioned above never with full implementation. Bilingual education has always lacked sufficient numbers of trained personnel. The appropriate schooling of the non-English speaking children has never been a high priority by the voting public, public officials, or many school administrators. There were several significant forerunners to Proposition 227. In 1994, the California voters passed Proposition 187, limiting services to undocumented immigrants' children. In 1996, the voters of the Golden State approved Proposition 209, which outlawed affirmative action in all areas. We can see that l87 attacked the young and 209 attacked the adults. In 1998 came 227, which severely limits how the concerned and trained teacher can help the non-English speaking child have a successful school start in this country. In June 2000, Proposition 21 was approved. This law increases the penalties for young delinquents. It is not difficult to see that with these laws, which on the face are benign and are passed by the voters, it is the Latino population that is most negatively affected. | ||
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Strategies for a Counter Attack NeededThe Vietnam analogy can serve to remind us, the Latino leaders, that we need a counteroffensive plan of our own. If we see the Spanish language as a valuable component of who we are, then we must address the question of how to defend its use. We all recognize the value of bilingualism, but many seem to think we have to sacrifice it for the acquisition of English. That was the belief of many parents, and that is the belief of many immigrant parents today. But there are also those who are seeing that their children were not being successful in school, despite knowing only English. At one time, bilingual education in this country offered the promise of first language maintenance. The goal was full bilingualism. The children were to develop and maintain their first language and also to fully develop their second language (English). That model is now found only in two-way programs, which are sometimes called two-way immersion programs. Curiously, Anglo parents who wish bilingualism for their children generally initiate these programs. The "language minority" children in those schools will receive instruction in their first language and English; the English-speaking children will receive their instruction in the second language and in English. Under Proposition 227 these programs were outlawed in California, but the politically savvy parents of most of these schools were successful in achieving Charter School status and have continued the programs. In the Los Angeles area we also find Spanish, Korean, and Japanese programs of this sort. One finds these types of programs in many parts of the country, but they are not yet in large numbers. I know of programs in East Texas promoted by forward-looking Latino and African American parents. This model, which requires community activism, seems to be a clear strategy for promoting the development and maintenance of Spanish among our people. Other strategies that are being used as a counteroffensive in California are the teaching of Spanish literacy in afternoon programs. These are activities prompted by the knowledge that children will become discouraged by the formal schooling in a language they are not understanding (English). I have some personal familiarity with this strategy. Informal bilingual education such as this was a strategy used in my community in Sanderson, Texas, some forty years ago. At that time, the school policy was English-only. After the school pushed out my three older sisters, the most successful having reached sixth grade, my mother took things in hand. By age four I was a reader and I could write, in Spanish, of course. My parents knew no English then. When I entered school, the transition to English reading only needed my learning that language. Other parents sent their children to "la escuelita." Weekly, with fifty cents in their hands, these children would go to someone's house in our colonia and receive classes in Spanish literacy. These classes helped many children stay in school; | ||
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they were assured they were not dumb—the message these students were getting from the English-only program in the public school. Other strategies for language development and maintenance can be borrowed from the Basque Country. The language repression of the Spanish Civil War and the Franco dictatorship (1936-1975) almost wiped out the regional language, Euskera. By the end of the Franco Regime, only 15 percent of the Basque population was dominant in Euskera. Currently, there is an enormous effort to rebuild that part of the Basque culture. The politics of language there is strong enough to channel an attitude that you cannot call yourself Basque if you do not speak Euskera well. University professors, office workers, bankers, all adults who did not have the benefit of bilingual education, are taking classes to correct that "deficiency." The children have formal schooling where development and maintenance are the goals. There are company language activities, such as parties, walkathons, and campings, where the participants challenge themselves to speak only in Euskera. These efforts are paying off. Bilingualism is increasing in all areas of the Basque Country and among people of all ages. My recommendation to the leadership in the Latino community is to lay out a set of goals, perhaps worked through as a military campaign. We need to work out a plan of action, with ways to attack each front. Education is certainly an important front. We know education is an institution we must make accountable to our community. But we also want to define what success in school means for our community. For instance, I would say that converting our Spanish monolingual immigrants into English monolinguals would not be considered a positive achievement for our people. I believe that language loss, language shift towards monolingualism in English, is a loss of potential to the individual, to the community, and to the nation. More importantly, the loss of language, especially if done under duress as is being promoted by anti-bilingual education forces, creates serious academic underachievement, disruption of family relationships, and problems in identity. I believe bilingualism and biculturalism is an ideal that we can model for the country. Further, I believe it is our responsibility to show that such persons can only make our communities and the country stronger. v | ||
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Leonard Baca Professor and Director University of Colorado A War That Cannot Be Won? As a starting point for this discussion, Leonard Valverde has asked us to consider if bilingual education is our Vietnam, that is, a war that cannot be won. I do not think we can win it over the short run, but if we approach it over the long run, we can stay in the battle and come out ahead. What do we have going for us? First of all, we have thirty-two years of federal support, which has not been a huge amount of money compared to chapter one or other entitlement programs, but it has increased over time. Just last year the appropriation for bilingual teacher training doubled, which shows that there is some movement to support what we are doing. The research on bilingual education has been very supportive in the last twenty years. When many of us first entered this field twenty-five years ago, we did not have books, monographs, a bilingual research journal, or a lot of the other resources we have today. If you look at the work that has been published in the last few years, a lot of it is based on a horse race metaphor: Is ESL better than native language instruction? That is where the focus has been, and every bilingual program had to be evaluated to prove that | ||
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it was effective. In a sense, that is an unfair use of "accountability," because you have programs for the gifted, programs for math and science education, you have chapter one, and they are not held under the same microscope to prove that they are making a difference. We do not know if gifted programs, for example, are making a difference; we could take that money and put it into chapter one and we might be better off. We don't know answers to a lot of these policy questions in terms of how effective these programs are, yet bilingual education programs have always been asked to prove that they are more effective than the alternative programs. There have been a number of studies, as many of you know, that have looked at that question, and I think we have come out on top. One study, a GEO report from about seven years ago, took a panel of experts and mailed to them all the bilingual studies and asked them to answer some questions. The jury came out about seven to three in favor of native language instruction. So the research we have seen in the last several years in many ways supports native language instruction. But when that answer came in, right around the time the Ramirez study was published, some people in the Department of Education, especially during the Reagan administration, had been trying to kill the program and de-fund it, stop it or alter and amend it. They made a lot of progress so that bilingual education today funds a number of programs that are monolingual English. I do not know if that is widely known, but special alternative and special programs are in effect monolingual English programs that are being funded by bilingual education funds. The point I want to make is that with this horse race mentality—which is better, bilingual or ESL?—when all the votes are in we seem to come out on top. Keith Baker, an advocate for proving that structured English immersion is a better alternative, said that we have been asking the wrong question all these years. According to him we now need to ask a different question: Under which circumstances will either of these programs work most efficiently? We have seen that late-exit programs generally work better than early-exit programs, and that becoming fluent in English and competent in the subject matter is a lengthy process and not something we can do in two or three years. Most of the policies we have in place support early exit programs. In Colorado we have two years of funding for ESL or bilingual kids, assuming we can make kids proficient in English in two years. With Proposition 227 in California they have one year to get the job done. I think we can win the war if we give ourselves enough time. If we look at winning the war in the next five years, I do not think it is possible. There are too many strikes against us and the negative context within which bilingual education started continues to plague us. I think that Concepcion is right in the sense that two-way programs are the ones that work | ||
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the best; however, the beneficiaries of two-way programs, if we are not careful, will be majority students rather than our own kids. Teacher training is also an important aspect. The Bueno Center is completing a five-year study on bilingual teacher training for the CREEDE Research Center at the University of California at Santa Cruz, and we are finding that there are some training programs that work well, but there is a larger problem we need to address. We are not only short of bilingual teachers, but we are losing the battle on preparing minority teachers as well. Minority teachers constitute around 10 to 12 percent of the teaching population, and that has been steadily declining so that in a couple of years only 5 percent of all the teachers in the profession will be minority teachers. Thus while the number of minority students is increasing dramatically, the number of minority teachers is decreasing, and within that context, we have a tremendous shortage of bilingual education teachers. So, a lot has to be done for us to be able to win the battle. Part of what we have to do is police ourselves better, because there are some poor bilingual programs out there in our communities. Many programs go under the name of bilingual education that are not really bilingual education. We also need to be a lot more selective in the programs we support, rather than supporting bilingual education in a global, generic way. We have to be a lot more selective in establishing model demonstration programs. A group of scholars have created a project called "portraits of success," which I think we ought to look at. The National Bilingual Clearinghouse web page features these successful programs. Thus anyone can go to their web site and look at all the programs and get information about what really works well. I think this is the best strategy, to highlight the good programs that we have and not support bilingual education in general, because not all programs are of good quality. v | ||
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Dialogue Four Accessing Higher Education beyond Community Colleges After 40 years of supposedly affirmative action practices, Latinos are still underrepresented in higher education institutions. Demographics tell us that the underrepresentation is getting worse, since our number of high school graduates is increasing but college-going rates are still disproportionately low. In addition, these data tell us that most of our college going Hispanics are found in community colleges (60 percent), 33 percent attend comprehensive four-year colleges, 6 percent go to major research universities, and less than one percent go to nationally recognized private universities. What needs to be done to change this historical pattern? Or should we ignore this pattern and try to upgrade the quality of education offered by each type of institution? | ||
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Roberto Haro Professor and Director of Research Cesar E. Chavez Institute for Public Policy Latinos and Higher Education: Challenges for 2000 and Beyond By the NumbersMuch has been said and continues to be written about the "boom" in student enrollments in K-12. It has been called "Tidal Wave II" by Clark Kerr and the "Baby Boomlet" by others. This surge in the number of youths is having a profound effect on the schools, educational policy making, and in the political arena. What has not been well discussed is the Hispanic composition of this population group.1 Statistical information available from different reliable sources indicate a rapid increase in the college age cohort of Latinos2 in the Western United States. This comes at a time when the Latino population in states like Arizona, California, and Texas is booming. On a national scale, one out of very seven students in grades K-12 is enrolled in a public school in one of the above three states.3 Moreover, in California, Hispanic children will, in the next year, outnumber Anglos as the largest ethnic population group of high school graduates. This phenomenon is not new, or unexpected by most Raza and some Anglo scholars and demographers. However, as Professor Leo Estrada at UCLA has said, too many policy makers and people in leadership roles in education are in a state of "demographic denial" when it comes to the rapidly increasing Hispanic population, including legislators and governmental administrators. At the moment, the schools are not well prepared to meet the educational needs of Raza students. For example, the drop out rate of Latino students is the highest among the ethnic/racial groups in this country. In the report Facing the Consequences: An Examination of Racial Discrimination in U.S. Public Schools (Oakland, CA: Applied Research | |||
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1 Wilgoren, Jodi. "Swell of minority students is predicted at colleges." The New York Times, 24 May 2000. 2 The terms Hispanic, Latino, and Raza will be used interchangeably to avoid repetition and will include women and men with family origins in Cuba, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Central and South America, and other Spanish speaking parts of the world. 3 These data are from the Western Interstate Commission on Higher Education. School Enrollments, Projections by State: 2000-2010 (Preliminary report by TIAA, The College Board, and WICHE). Boulder, CO: March 2000. | |||
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Center, March 2000) the researchers studied eleven major school districts to determine how minorities were doing. Some of the districts with large Latino populations included: Austin, TX; Chicago, IL; Denver, CO; Los Angeles, CA; Miami, FL; and San Francisco, CA. In this same report, the availability of Advanced Placement courses was reviewed to determine whether Raza students were in schools that had these classes. Again, the answer was a negative one, with most Hispanic students in schools that offered one, or no, Advanced Placement classes. Researchers like Patricia Gandara at the University of California at Davis, Amaury Nora at the University of Houston, and Laura Rendon at Long Beach State University, have conducted important new research that underscores the many obstacles inner city and rural schools place before Latino students, especially for those who want to continue on to a four-year college. Gary Orfield at the Harvard University School of Education has prepared several studies that document the increasing number of Raza students enrolled in "segregation schools" where few whites attend. This trend is real and a cause for genuine concern among educators, corporate leaders, and policy makers in different areas. As an example of the challenges that one state will face in trying to cope with the enormous increase in students, consider California. Between now and the year 2015, the number of children in California schools will almost double. To attempt to keep pace with this student increase, the schools will need to build a classroom each week for the next ten years and run most of the schools in urban areas on a year-round basis. Moreover, because of a 20 to 1 pupil-teacher ratio funded for the first four grades, more than 60,000 new instructors will be required to teach in grades K-4 within the next ten years. An additional 90,000 new teachers will be needed within the next decade to cope with the increased number of students who will be enrolling in California schools.4 Of the almost 290,000 teachers in California schools, almost half of them are 45 years of age or older. Moreover, approximately 30 percent of new teachers leave the teaching field after three or four years.5 Between these two developments, more than 40 percent of the current teaching corps in California will depart in the next ten years. As a result, California will need to hire approximately 276,000 teachers in the next 15 years to replace those who will retire, leave teaching after three or four years, and to cope with the enrollment boom. So What?What are the consequences that the demographic shifts in the Hispanic population portend? For those who have not yet seen or read the book by Georges Vernez, Closing the Education | |||
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4 These data were secured from the Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning in Santa Cruz, CA (www.cftl.org). 5 These data were secured from the California State University Institute for Education Reform, Sacramento, CA. | |||
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Gap: Benefits and Costs (Santa Monica, CA: Rand, 1999) the dangers of failing to well educate Raza in this country are well documented. College education for Latinos is seen as essential not only for Hispanics but for the nation as well.6 While the number of Hispanic students of college age continues to increase, in California and Texas, with the largest and second largest Latino populations, anti-affirmative action measures and court action have eliminated the use of ethnic/racial preferences in the college admissions and financial aid processes. The passage of Proposition 209 in California, and the decision in the Hopwood case in Texas, eliminated strategies that were used successfully to boost Latino enrollments at the most selective institutions in these two states. In the year immediately following the passage of Proposition 209 in California the enrollment of new Latino freshmen at the University of California dropped by more than 50 percent. The same conditions occurred in Texas after the Hopwood case was decided. We have, therefore, a "Parallax View" of the increase in the number of college age Hispanic students in this country. On the one side is the reality of the data and the numbers of students involved, and on the other side is a seeming indifference to this development. These two perspectives have not been reconciled and will continue to pose serious problems in the present and in the near future as well. Whither Higher Education?What do the above trends portend for Raza and higher education? Several things need to be considered. Research by different groups and scholars has revealed that Raza students do not have the same opportunities to qualify for selective colleges and universities as do their Anglo and Asian counterparts. In her recent piece on Latino college and university performance, Professor Patricia Gandara has documented that fewer Latinos are able to gain access to higher education than any other ethnic group.7 In the previously mentioned report, Facing the Consequences: An Examination of Racial Discrimination in U.S. Public Schools, the investigators learned that Advanced Placement classes and test preparation courses were not available at most schools attended by Latino students. Without strong standardized test scores and at least four Advanced Placement courses, Raza students will not be competitive in the admissions process at selective four-year colleges and universities. There are other factors that determine whether or not Latinos go to college and the type of institution they attend.8 | |||
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6 Wilgoren, Jodi. "College Education Seen as Essential." The New York Times, 4 May 2000. 7 Gandara, Patricia. "College & University Performance." In A Coordinated Approach to Raising the Socio-Economic Status of Latinos in California. Edited by E. Lopez, G. Puddefoot, and P. Gandara. Sacramento, CA: California Research Bureau, March 2000, p. 18. 8 The lack of adequate counseling in the schools, especially those in which most Latinos are enrolled, is a serious problem. Because of limited time and space it will not be discussed here. | |||
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Economic factors play a significant role in the type of higher education institution Latino students attend. In California, students are not allowed to attend on a part-time basis. They must take a minimum course load of 12 semester credits or 15 quarter units each term. With the elimination of preferences in the awarding of state grants-in-aid in California, Florida, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Washington states, and perhaps in Michigan, Hispanic students must incur considerable debt to finance their education. This forces many Raza students to work long hours or attend a college or university that allows them to attend part time. At the moment, 53 percent of Raza students enrolled in higher education are at a two-year college. Less than 19 percent of Hispanic students at two-year campuses ever transfer to a four-year college or university. Far too many Latino students at two-year colleges spend longer than they should in preparing for transfer to a four-year institution and in the process use up most, of not all, of the grant-in-aid money available to them. Rather than incur additional debt, these students work full time to finance their last few years of college, resulting in a dismal rate of degree attainment. Meanwhile, middle class families have successfully lobbied the state and federal government for grant money to finance their children's education. Even though they have the resources to pay for their son's or daughter's college education, these middle class families confront political leaders and demand financial assistance for them, irrespective of need. Larry Gladieux, formerly with The College Board in Washington, D.C., and Tom Mortenson have documented this new disturbing development. Consequently, even in a "flush" economy, the economic resources needed to assist Latino students help finance their education is being diverted to subsidize middle income families. And What of the Colleges?There are numerous documents, reports, and publications that stress the goal of diversity in our colleges and universities. The College Board and the State Higher Education Executive Officers (SHEEO) published a brief, but useful, report on ways to achieve diversity in higher education.9 In that report are included the growing number of challenges to affirmative action in the various states. Moreover, it identifies important K-16 initiatives that can help students gain access to a college or university. Unfortunately, many leaders in higher education are nervous about taking steps to enhance diversity at their campuses, especially if the threat of a civil suit is raised by groups such as the Center for Individual Rights (CIR) in Washington, D.C. It is important to recognize that most university leaders are selected by a board of regents of trustees composed mainly of moderate or conservative leaning person | |||
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9 Diversity in Higher Education: An Action Agenda for the States. Prepared by Esther M. Rodriguez. Denver, CO: SHEEO and The College Board, June 1999. | |||
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alities. Their choice for a president tends to result in someone not unlike them. Consequently, Latinas and Latinos are confronted by a leadership in academia reluctant, with few exceptions, to take risks with respect to affirmative action matters. There are other factors determining policy and decision making in higher education that should be mentioned. The rapid increase in the number of college-age students, particularly in the Western United States, is placing new limitations on access to higher education. At the University of California (UC) for example, highly qualified students are being turned away at all but three if its undergraduate campuses because of a lack of space. Within the next five to six years, approximately 60,000 additional new students will be eligible for admission to UC. To meet this demand, UC would have to build two new campuses like Berkeley and UCLA. The new Merced campus of the university will not come online until the year 2004 at the earliest, with a projected enrollment of 5,000 students. The California State University (CSU) system expects an increase in demand for access to its 22 campuses of 150,000 students within the next ten years. Already three of the CSU campuses are impacted and turning away students. And those three campuses are in areas with high concentrations of Latino students. The trustees of this system have decided on a dubious course of action, providing preference for admission to those students who live in the immediate vicinity of their local CSU campus. Bear in mind that the CSU does not require students to take either the SAT or the ACT for admission purposes. There is conversation at the systemwide offices of the CSU to consider the use of standardized test scores in the admission process. Such a policy would definitely work a hardship for Raza students and their families. Can the CSU accommodate 170,000 new full-time equivalent (FTE) students within the next ten years? At the present faculty to student ratio, an additional 7,080 new teaching faculty will be required. Currently, the median age for the CSU faculty is about 51. While there is no mandatory retirement age for faculty, approximately 42 percent of the 11,000 instructional faculty, or 4,620, are expected to leave the system in the next ten years. The CSU will need to hire 11,700 new and replacement faculty by the year 2010. Can it be done? Yes, but many students will find themselves in classes with an enrollment of more than 40, while others will be taught by online computer and video techniques, and still others will be in classes taught by lecturers without tenure and many without the appropriate terminal degree, the Ph.D. These data reflect a tremendous challenge for the CSU. A similar scenario is occurring in two-year colleges where increased student demand for access to transfer and some technical programs are outstripping available resources. | ||
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Moreover, many of the two-year institutions located near high tech groups are providing short-term programs that prepare students for high paying jobs, some even in the $30,000 to $40,000 starting range. Many of these high tech employers tell two-year students not to worry about completing a four-year degree until later. Some even hint that they "might" subsidize the earning of a four-year degree for new employees. It is too early to know if such vague promises will actually materialize. So What Do We Know?As Latinos become a larger part of the college eligible population, they will face numerous challenges in the form of limited space at selective institutions, higher entrance requirements, and diminishing financial assistance. While there is the possibility that some private colleges can increase their enrollments and attempt to accommodate more Latino students, this may at best be a form of tinkering at the margins. The cost of attending a private college, even with financial support from federal and state programs, may still be too prohibitive for most Hispanic students and their families. The preparation of new teachers, especially Latinas and Latinos, will be limited by the lack of available resources and space at the various schools of education. Consequently, the inner city and rural schools that could sorely use these new teachers will have to rely on other methods to improve their educational offerings. Many school districts will try to use technology to gain access to test preparation courses and Advanced Placement classes. This will compel Raza students and their families to become familiar with and use technology in order to gain access to the internet. These, and other challenges that confront Raza students and their families in completing a four-year college degree, are daunting. It is imperative, therefore, that the most selective universities and colleges begin to prepare Raza leaders who will be responsible for developing new strategies to increase the educational attainment of Latinas and Latinos. v | ||
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Appendix A | |||
HBLI Scholars Program | |||
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Baltazar Acevedo Jr. Former Community College President Houston, Texas Director, Bueno Center Bilingual Education Center Director, Julian Zamora Research Center Notre Dame University Director, Hispanic Research Institute Indiana University A. Reynaldo Contreras Professor of Education San Francisco State University Professor, School of Teacher Education San Diego State University Professor of Political Science The University of Arizona Executive Director Cesar Chavez Institute for Public Policy Director, Center for Mexican American Studies, University of Houston |
Gary Orfield Professor of Education Harvard University Professor, LBJ School of Public Affairs University of Texas at Austin Executive Director, Intercultural Development Research Association (IDRA) General Superintendent Dallas Independent School District Professor and Chair Department of Educational Professor, School of Education University of California, Los Angeles Professor of Anthropology University of California, Riverside Attorney at Law Claremont, California | ||
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Appendix B | ||
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HBLI Scholars Forum May 22_23, 2000 Arizona State University "A Gathering of Latino Intellegencia" Monday, May 22, 2000: Club Room, University Club Morning used for travel and hotel check-in. 2:00 p.m. Welcome and Background Brief introduction of all Scholars Background about HBLI Purpose of Scholars' Component 3:00 p.m. First Dialogue Session Baltazar Acevedo "Donde Estamos? The Census: Acevedo and Associates Implications and Consequences" Houston, Texas
What do some of these data mean for policy directions and then for educational programs or practice? What are social and long-range implications? For example, if the Census counts tell us that Latinos are the fastest growing and youngest population in the U.S., then more Hispanics will have to be trained as teachers and more Anglo teachers will have to be trained in dual language instruction (Spanish-English) and/or, at a minimum, cultural understanding. 5:30 p.m. Reception with Mariachis 6:30 p.m. Dinner
Tuesday, May 23 8:00 a.m. Full Breakfast _ Alumni Room Memorial Student Union 8:30 a.m. Second Dialogue Session John Garcia, U of Arizona "How Can Knowledge Influence Barbara Robles, UT-Austin Power Brokers?"
The general perception is that law makers (state and national) and rule makers (local governing boards) are lay persons who do seek out information and understanding to help them draft and vote on | ||
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legislation and policy that will advance favorably the issue. Layered on top of this perception is the reality that when it comes to issues of import to Hispanics, racism and economics play negatively toward gaining a positive resolution. Therefore, if education is going to be better for Latinos, then power brokers will have to be approached and convinced effectively. 10:00 a.m. Break with coffee 10:30 a.m. Third Dialogue Session Leonard Baca, U of Colorado "K-12 Public Education: Concepcion Valadez, UCLA Bilingual Education - A Latino Vietnam War. Can We Win?"
There are many facets to bilingual education and numerous difficulties facing its continued existence. Because the "modern day" bilingual education programs were born out of 1960s "civil disobedience and rights movement", they have been collectively interpreted as a political endeavor more than an instructional program that will help limited- or non-English speaking students. As such, bilingual education is continuously under attack at the federal level for reauthorization and re-funding, at the state level, to wit the Unz initiative, and at the local school board level for program type (transitional _ one to three years), level of funding support and how extensive it will be throughout the district, etc. Given this genesis, is it possible for the bilingual education political war to be won? If so, how? 12:30 p.m. Buffet Lunch 1:30 p.m. Fourth Dialogue Session Roberto Haro, SFSU "Accessing Higher Education Beyond Community Colleges and HSIs"
After 40 years of supposedly affirmative action practices, Latinos are still underrepresented in higher education institutions. Demographics tell us that the under-representation is getting worse since our number of high school graduates is increasing but college-going rates are not. In addition, these data tell us that most of our college going Hispanics are found in community colleges (60 percent), then attending comprehensive four-year colleges (33 percent), 6 percent going to major research universities, and less than one percent going to nationally recognized private universities. What needs to be done to change this historical pattern? Or should we keep this pattern and try to upgrade the quality of education offered by each type of institution? 3:30 p.m. Adjournment | ||
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