Hispanics in American Education, ay ay ay
Hello, and salutations.
(And apologies for the face-palm inducing ‘ay ay ay’)
Ignore my failing comedy career.
This week’s topic is about Hispanics in American Education!
Before I start, here is are some statistics from the United States Department of Education!
Percentage of 25–29 year-olds who have degrees in 1996
Hispanic students
-high school diploma or equivalent : 61.1%
-college: 50.9%
-beyond 4 years of college: 16.4%
Compared to our lovely friends who are white
-high school diploma or equivalent : 92.6%
-college: 67.0%
-beyond 4 years of college: 31.1%
As discussed last blog, I suck at math, but there is a pretty glaring difference between the two groups.
So the real question is why is there such a huge discrepancy??
For starters here is some good news and some bad news (I will be referencing the article down below)
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/07/28/5-facts-about-latinos-and-education/
Good news! The high school dropout rates among Hispanic students has dramatically fallen! More are applying to college!
Bad News! The old trend of Hispanic students not going onto 4 year colleges is still about the same. In 2014, the percentage of Hispanic adults 25–29 with bachelor degrees and more was 15%(PEW research statistic)
Before we move on, a disclaimer must be made.
These numbers do not wholly represent all of the diverse people groups we lump as “Hispanic/Latino”
There are distinctive educational/immigration trends depending on the ethnicity
(back to using the stats from the Department of Education)
- In 1993 approximately half of adults of Mexican descent 25–34 did not graduate high school, 26 % of Puerto Rican adults, 16% of Cuban, 32% of Central, South American descent.
- Both immigrant and native-born adults of Mexican descent have lower levels of educational attainment than adults of Central American, South American and Cuban descent. (quote)
Back to the regularly scheduled program.
There are many different ‘theories’ as to why Hispanic Americans seem to be unable to progress in closing the achievement gap despite the “trend of higher awareness of the benefits of receiving higher education, and higher aspirations among Hispanic and black students.”
Here are some of the reasons that scholars/articles have brought up
1. Hispanic seniors(high school) in comparison to other high school senior demographics tend to put off applying to college or not apply at all (I.e. going to trade school, career colleges, vocational schools etc.)
2. Hispanic students are more likely to attend 2-year colleges, without transferring to 4-year colleges
3. The lack of participation in Pre-K programs (I’ll explain the significance)
4. Many Hispanic students are in ESL (English Second Language) programs.
Let’s take a brief look at each of those ideas for a little, shall we?
Starting off
- Why aren’t there many students who go the ‘traditional route?’
I’m going to be making claims, based on my observation and very informal interviewing I did with my friends of Latin American/ Hispanic descent.
Many of these students aren’t made to feel like they can do it. My high school English teacher, who attended the same high school when he was a teen, told us that they used to have carpentry classes and others that had more ‘vocational’ uses. Hispanic students were encouraged to take those classes by their counselors. Yup. Based off of stereotypes and connotations, these students were not made to feel that they were capable of ‘academia’ and were funneled towards trade schools.
Another important point to bring up is how important family life and economics play into all of this. There are many studies that show that if a family is of a poorer background it is more difficult for children to get the same scholastic resources to further their education. (Obviously, there are exceptions to this rule and thank goodness for that).
2. Low 4 year college transfer rates from community colleges. Tying into the points made from #1, if these students did not have access to clear career paths or awareness on the legions of job options other than the handful that they know, you cannot expect these students to all of a sudden become engineers and lawyers. There is a huge discrepancy of information given to these students, which I noticed when I was attending community college. Some students did not know about the scholar’s program that I knew about because someone had told me. Some students did not know the benefits of earlier class scheduling and little perks, by being in the scholar’s program. Those little discrepancies add up.
3.The lack of participation in Pre-K programs. I have heard of the frequent joking of how competitive pre-kinder programs can be in the eyes of the newbie parents. Studies have shown the significance of behavior and academic conduct between students who did and did not attend these pre-k programs. There are significant differences in dynamic of these students because of family background (They are NOT bad hombres… *death glare at the orange cheeto in the white house*)
Lower class parents tend to work multiple jobs, meaning babies are not given the time to review their reading or speaking with mom and dad who are out working day and night. There is less support for school work, literacy practices (reading, writing) simply because the parent’s do not have time or money to provide these materials, contributing to said achievement gap. AGAIN, this does not apply to everyone, this is an unfortunate trend we see for people of lower socioeconomic background, who tend to be minorities (loosely paraphrased from Hispanics in the United States: An Agenda for the Twenty-First Century)
4. ESL is a tricky issue to tackle mostly because it really ties into the access to resources as discussed for #3. There is a very high percentage of families who come from immigrant backgrounds, obviously going to use their mother tongue at home, making it more difficult for children of older ages (older than 7 basically) to learn the ESL curriculum, then get adjusted to the school’s curriculum. Standardized tests do not make it any easier for these students.
Basically, any possible hurdle you can imagine that could stunt a child’s educational growth is at play. Add the combination of stereotyping and it does not help at ALL.
I hope I did a decent job of capturing this, because I am a middle class Asian child who cannot even begin to think of how horrendously difficult it must be.
Well, thats all for now friends.
So long. Farewell. See you next week!!
(and wash your hands)
