An "uncomfortable" report for San Diego's educators:
Although they are a majority of students in San Diego County, Latinos face a bleak academic environment, according to a report released Saturday by the county Office of Education. The report, presented at the ninth annual Latino Education Summit in San Diego, showed that Latino students have disproportionately higher dropout rates, lower test scores and less preparation for college than their white and Asian peers...
Oscar Medina, a bilingual education coordinator with the county and a member of the San Diego Latino Coalition for Education, which helped prepare the report, said the data should make community members feel "uncomfortable."
Among the report's findings:
About half of Latino students are not fluent in English.
Latino students have a graduation rate of 66 percent, compared with an average of 79 percent for all students. Dropout rates are higher for males than females.
Latino students are less likely to pass the standardized tests used to assess a school's academic performance. Likewise, they score consistently lower than their white and Asian peers on college admissions tests.
When it comes to meeting the prerequisites for admission to California's public colleges, about 20 percent of Latino students complete all of the required courses..
Bad news indeed. However, it's hard to see how Latino students will make strides towards learning English - which is essential for educational success in this country - if this type of report generates this type of response:
Much of the discussion focused on improving bilingual education and ensuring equal access to educational opportunities from kindergarten through college. Medina, the county coordinator, said preserving a student's native language strikes at the heart of promoting success.
"It's an issue of identity that has to do with a student's notion of self-worth and self-esteem," Medina said. "It also allows access to grade-level curriculum and helps guarantee academic success."
If half of all Latino students in San Diego can't speak English, I'd say the schools are doing a bang-up job of helping them "preserve" their native language - but I also think that's part of the problem. I may be off-base here, but I don't recall that America's former immigrants became successful because our schools worried endlessly about their self-esteem or cultural identities, and wanted them to preserve their native language at all cost.
Some attendees said that while it was important to examine the obstacles to higher academic performance and college admissions that face Latinos, eliminating those discrepancies ultimately rested with focusing on the needs of individual students.
"We have to move one step beyond that and mentor, and counsel and encourage them," said Carol Herrera, a trustee of the Vista Unified School District. "We know that for any child, praise and encouragement is a big factor in academic success."
Yes, and so is challenge, discipline, and taking risks of failure. I don't think that Latino students are so individual that these methods that work with other kids won't work with them. It's good to see schools focusing on Latino students early to prepare them for college, but given the dismal results of this report, I'd have expected to see a lot more hard ideas discussed about how to fix this growing problem.
Posted by kswygert at November 14, 2004 03:54 PM