MD Minority and Urban Institute Conference June 20th
and 21st
http://www.education.umd.edu/institutesandcenters/MIMAUE/conference/
Reflections from sessions attended:
- The
Role of Leadership in Raising Minority Achievement- Pedro Reyes,
Department of Educational Administration, University of Texas, Austin
Summary of:
- Raising
the Academic Achievement of Latino Students: Lessons from the Field- Sonia
Nieto, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
- Who
are the Latino students in our schools?
- How
are they experiencing school/education?
- Myths
and realities- what do they need to know?
- What
are the implications for changing school policies and practices?
- Personal
level important but can not look at in isolation-values-behaviors-beliefs
- Collective
work (professional development needed!!)
- Major
issues to be considered-access and equity, i.e. who has access to high
quality education? Why? How?
- Profoundly
a multicultural question
- Who
is taking calculus? AP? Getting into GT programs? Science labs? Is the
bilingual program in the basement? ESOL in the basement or backroom?
- Prevalent
myths
- All
Latino alike
- Latino
students do poorly in school because their parents do not care about
education – in real life education only thing that can help—aspirations
are higher than European, but expectations are less-hope to be a doctor
and hope to graduate from high school
- Culturally
and experientially deprived
- Once
Latino’s learn English, they will do well in school
- Since
newest immigrants- once here for awhile will do better-false assumptions
- Actually
in Latino family—family is #1
- Out
of school because culturally mediation
- Teachers
need to know:
- General
information from the 2000 census
- more
than 35 million and more than 25 are Mexican
- not
newest in long history of immigrant experience-differs considerably from
that of European immigrants
- heterogeneous
population in race-social class-time in US-language fluency-history of
origin and in US and political orientation
- Puerto
Rican- upper middle class; Mexican social lower class
- Race
** key issue --except for some Asians from particular countries-all other non European immigrants
have done poorly in the US
- Also
different in what they look like
- Cuban-70%
HS graduate and 25% BA
- Teachers
should also know:
- Profile
of Latino population (especially
as related to their school)
- 14%
of US school age population = Latino
- most
Latinos attend poorly funded (urban) schools
- highly
segregated schools (segregated more than AA schools)
- higher
drop out rate (30-80%) rate-depends on how the data is collected per
year doesn’t look bad Also some get GED so they count that as completion
but this is not equal to HS degree
- high
stakes testing has for the most part affected Latino’s (-) and
disproportionably
- high
rate of retention-held back once- 50% chance dropout
- held
back twice 75% chance drop out
- poor
academic achievement
(math-science-reading) 220 points lower on ???
- Educators
also should know:
- Or
learn about the Latino culture, values and history
- Latino
IS US history
- General
understanding of the colonial history of LA and Caribbean
- Racial
and ethnic composition of the regions and the resulting culture and make
up of that region
- How
socioeconomic and sociopolitical contexts effect this population (from
back home and here in US)
- Need
to know cultural and linguistics strengths and how these impact cultural
and linguistic maintenance
- Research
shows that bilingual better than not
- Danger
of “premature assimilation” (Portes & Rumbaut) i.e. so fast that
they loose contacts with back home and culture they are from (-)
effect-do not fit in anywhere
- Particular
strengths include:
- Close
family relationships
- Focus
on community responsibility
- Resilience
in the face of adversity
- “A
house for my Mother”- Big brother-sister mentors for school and how kids
try to succeed to “get a house fro their mother”
- Educators
need to know the need and importance of the Latino caring and
mentoring-disconnect between US culture of top down and “cold” nature of
teachers and what the Latino perceive as what a teacher needs to be
- Research
literature from 1960’s to present indicates that sign of caring for
Latino students is important
- Beyond
knowing—what are implications for policy and practice? What should we do?
- Educations
need to explore their identity, biases & privileges
- Need
to understand how their own autobiographies are implicated in their
work
- Need
to handle have on where they and where others are coming FROM
- Learner
of their students
- Educators
need to find out who their students are:
- Create
learning environments that welcome and affirm all students
- Center
pedagogy—focus on realities of their lives
- Educators
need to demonstrate care in numerous ways
- Having
higher expectations and rigorous standards
- Develop
stronger interpersonal relationships with students AND parents/family
- Respecting
and affirming student’s language and culture
- Building
on students strength to support their learning
- Mentoring
students (college)
- Educators
need to become multicultural and bilingual
- Learning
more to teach more comprehensively
- Reforming
curriculum, making it more complete and honest
- Seeking
ways to involve families in school matters
- Kids
on display and they will come
- Promoting
students 1st and 2cd language
- Recruiting
bilingual and Latino faculty and staff
- Provide
relevant PD for teachers and staff
- Questions
Poverty and Race have identified as further issues to study:
- What
are the impacts of a highly mobile classroom on the stable students in a
classroom?
- What
are the impacts of a highly mobile classroom on teachers?
- What
are the ways in which welfare reform impacts the classroom?
- What
are the ways in which child welfare/foster care system impacts classroom
mobility?
- How
does high mobility impact new federal and state accountability systems?
- What
is the experience of private/parochial schools with classroom mobility?
- How
does the Department of Defense deal with classroom mobility in the
schools it runs?
- To
what degree do reform proposals-e.g.- higher teacher qualifications,
smaller schools/classroom-reduce classroom mobility?
- What
litigation possibilities-in the housing area as well as the education
area-exist to force needed change: what are the legal theories, with
respect to housing policy and other relevant areas, that might produce
desirable results?
- Research
Needs and Questions regarding “residential Education”
- Who
are best served in these settings?
- What
is the “value-added” of the residential component, which is the most
expensive and controversial part?
- What
aspects of these programs make the most impact?
- How
are children’s lives improved in these programs?
- How
do students in these settings fare compared with students of similar
backgrounds and talents who live in foster homes, group homes, or those
who remain in poverty-stricken neighborhoods?
- What
are the effective practices and policies of other countries which would
contribute to those in the US?
o
Other excellent resources:
o www.prrac.org- Poverty and Race Research
Action Council
o CORE:
the Coalition for Residential Education, 1620 Eye St NW, #202, Wash., DC
20006 202 496 9189 www.residentialeducation.org
o TABS:
The Association of Boarding Schools, 4455 Connecticut Ave. NW, Wash., DC
20008 202 966 8705 www.schools.com
o National
Association of Independent Schools, 1620 L. Street. NW, #1100, Wash., DC
20036 202 973 9717 www.nais.org
o Richard
McKenzie, Rethinking Orphanges for the 21st Century (Sage
Publications, 1999)
o Richard
McKenzie, The Home: A Memoir of Growing Up In An Orphanage (Basic Books, 1996)
o Heidi
Goldsmith, Residential Education: An Option for America’s Youth (Milton Hershey
School, Hershey, PA, 1995)
o “Bring
Back the Orphanage? Israel Has a Better Idea,” Moment Magazine, June 1995
o NABRE-Network
of Alliances Bridging Race and Ethnicity- www.jointcenter.org/nabre and Youth
NABRE - www.jointcenter.org/youthnabre-interactive
websites that highlight promising practices in race relations activites in
communities
o Information
about Poverty- www.povertyusa.org
o Sizing
Things Up: What Parents, Teachers & Students Think About Large & Small
High Schools by Jean Johnson, Ann Duffett & Steve Farkas (www.publicagenda.org )
o The
Impact of Welfare Reform on Immigrant Welfare Use, by George Borjas (March,
2002) – www.cis.org (5605)
o Lack
of Appropriate Research Leads to Gaps in Knowledge About Children in Immigrant
Families (Feb. 2002) The Forum