From: Ponte Al Dia

In his preliminary conference to President Obama’s speech on higher education August 9, at the University of Texas at Austin, Education Secretary Arne Duncan addressed the administration’s plans for their higher education agenda and its effect on the Hispanic community.
Duncan’s opening remarks echoed Obama’s March 13 weekly address message when he announced his reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, in which he pointed out the United States now trails many developed nations in key areas of public schooling.
“Our competitors understand that the nation that out-educates us today, will out-compete us tomorrow,” Duncan said.
Duncan outlined the administration’s vision for the Hispanic community by saying the President and the Department of Education are committed to making sure Hispanics, who, according to the Pew Hispanic Research Center had a 15 percent increase of freshmen college enrollment between 2007-2008 — higher than any other ethnicity — see an increase in college graduation.
Duncan said Hispanics account for 11 percent of students and college, but that those numbers were not enough.
“The President has laid out a cradle to career agenda.” He said “Nowhere is this more important than in the Hispanic community.”
About an hour later, Obama gave his speech in Austin Texas were he made reference to helping out Hispanics by upgrading community colleges and “reinvesting in our HBCUs (Historical Black Colleges and Universities) and Hispanic Serving Institutions,” he said.
U.S. public schools are currently ranked 12th globally according to Duncan, a statistic he said the Obama administration hopes to change before the end of the decade.
“Right now Hispanics represent 20 percent of America’s public school students, and they will play a key role in helping us meet the Presidents’ goal,” Duncan said.
Duncan expressed support for increasing educational opportunities for undocumented students.
“Both I and the President have been strong supporters of the DREAM Act.” He said. “I think every child in this country deserves a chance to get a great education, so as the country moves forward with immigration reform, that’s something I am going to be strongly advocating for; every child in this country deserves a chance to go to college.”
Duncan highlighted some of the accomplishments the Obama administration has made since 2008 including increasing Pell Grant funding by $60 billion and making the FAFSA form shorter and less complicated which has led to a 20 percent increase in applicants.
In addition to this, Duncan emphasized that individuals who work as a teacher, police officer or serve in some form of U.S. public service for ten years after they graduate will have their federal student loan debt forgiven.

Popularity: 3% [?]

From: Latina Lista

President Obama outlined a plan today to reduce the high school dropout rate. He deserves kudos for understanding that this educational crisis goes beyond local communities and state jurisdictions, and has serious national implications for the future.

According to the President’s statistics:

Every school day, about 7,000 students decide to drop out of school - a total of 1.2 million students each year - and only about 70% of entering high school freshman graduate every year.
Without a high school diploma, young people are less likely to succeed in the workforce. Each year, our nation loses $319 billion in potential earnings associated with the dropout crisis.
The bulk of the dropouts are low-income Latinos and African Americans.

The President and his team feel that the way to stem the flow of dropouts is:

For school districts to basically seize control of the underperforming schools and implement one of four options.
Personalize and individualize student instruction and support to keep them engaged and focused on success, provide alternative educational routes to keep students on track to graduate and have schools make better use of data and information to more easily identify high-risk students.
Promote a culture of college readiness.
In and of themselves, each of these areas provide a good start but there are three more components that any initiative to keep Latino students in school must address as well if significant progress is to be made.

1. Impress upon Latino parents that school is a necessity.

While all Latino parents want their children to succeed, not all of them think that a higher education is necessarily the ticket for doing that. Too many parents see education as a legal necessity — they’re children have to go to school or they will have to pay a fine otherwise.

The general concept of a career versus a job is not known in most lower-income Latino households, especially when it’s been the custom to live from paycheck to paycheck. A job has always been seen to be more valuable than an education because the benefits are immediate.

There should be the promotion of the concept of “careers and trades” among Latino families with the pay scale/benefits for them versus the pay scale/benefits of jobs that don’t need higher education or specialized training.

Until the mindset is changed that a career/trade is more desirable than a job then Latino families will always value the immediate benefit of a paycheck over any potential salary that comes as a result of a diploma/certificate.

2. Equalize the digital divide by providing Latino families with home computers and Internet service.

Low-income Latino families, because they live paycheck to paycheck, feel that computers are a luxury item. However, we know that the computer with Internet access is an invaluable tool for the whole family if instructed on how to use it.

Schools and organizations have been supplying families with free computers but there also should be a special deal worked out with local cable companies that provide Internet access services. Along with the computers, school districts should be able to negotiate a special service deal for those families who qualify for deeply discounted Internet service.

Bridging the digital divide in the home is one way to engage the whole family in education as they learn how to use the Internet and expand their base of knowledge.

3. Children need to know the adults in the school care about them.

Over the years when doing stories about Latino dropouts, the one complaint or observation all the kids had was that they felt no one cared if they showed up for school or not. They felt no adult — the teacher or the principal or the counselor — cared one bit about them.

From a cultural perspective where personal relationships are a priority, this omission within the school, especially if the school is overcrowded, is an extremely important one.

To meet this challenge, individual schools should set up times where kids can go and just talk to teachers who aren’t in a hurry or resent students taking away from their planning periods or to counselors who aren’t overworked trying to get seniors ready to graduate.

One-on-one face time isn’t needed by every student but those who are struggling with school are struggling with other things as well and all they need is the comfort of telling an adult who will listen to them without criticizing and judging them.

4. Pass the DREAM Act

Not sure if anyone knows the percentage of undocumented Latino students who are dropping out of high school because they feel they have no future since they can’t work or pay in-state tuition to afford to go to college, but there are reports that many of the Latino dropouts are undocumented students.

It makes sense that they would feel this way. They work hard, get good grades but knowing that it’s not going to do them any good many lose hope and the will to go on. So they drop out, join gangs, loiter.

The loss of potential is enormous. These kids deserve hope. They have the talent to finish school and go on to college or learn a trade and it’s a given their skills will be needed in the future.

Popularity: 14% [?]

From: Herald Tribune

Univision on Tuesday started a multiyear campaign to boost academic achievement among Latinos in the United States by telling parents about what it takes to ensure their children finish high school and graduate from college.

The campaign, entitled in Spanish “The Moment is Now,” comes as Latino high school and college graduation rates are far below the national average and the Latino unemployment rate is among the nation’s highest at 12.6 percent.

With Latinos making up about a fifth of the nation’s kindergarten through 12th-graders, that is a major concern for the entire nation, said Univision Networks President Cesar Conde. The nation’s largest Spanish-language network is teaming with the U.S. Department of Education, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and nonprofits to highlight best practices from communities nationwide.

Conde said Latino parents, like most Americans, value education. And many came to the U.S. to provide better educational opportunities for their children. But once here, they often do not know how to navigate the system.

“We want to raise the standards and the expectations that we in the Hispanic community have for the youth,” Conde said. “And we want to educate parents who may not think some opportunities are within their children’s grasp.”

Univision will use its television and radio networks and its mobile and Internet platforms to provide information to parents about how to make sure their children are ready for college, as well as where to turn for student loans and scholarships — a key component that can be daunting even for those familiar with U.S. financial and academic systems.

According to federal data, about 13 percent of Latinos in the U.S. have a college degree, compared with about a quarter of the population as a whole. Less than half of Latinos who attend college graduate, compared to a national average of 54 percent.

An exact cost of the program has not been determined but is expected to be several million dollars in cash and donations.

Among Univision’s first programs will be a March 6 special hosted by top Univision news anchor Jorge Ramos that brings together children and their families to talk about the obstacles they face in continuing their education.

Univision worked with the Gates Foundation to focus its campaign beyond high school graduation to helping students master the skills needed to make it in college, said foundation spokesman Chris Williams.

Juan Sepulveda, head of the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans, said the government will help “on the content side,” providing experts such as federal officials, educators and grass-roots groups. He said it was important to dispel the notion that Latino youths are not succeeding because they do not speak English, or that such campaigns mainly target those in the country illegally.

“It’s really a small population of students with undocumented status,” he said. “The majority are U.S. citizens.”

Sepulveda said the administration chose to work with Univision because of the success it has had in previous campaigns, including its citizenship and voter-registration efforts in the run-up to the 2008 election.

Conde acknowledged it will not be easy to convince parents to forgo the immediate financial help a high school graduate can bring to the household if he goes straight to work.

“But we need to ensure our parents and community as a whole understand the long-term benefits of a college degree not just for the individual, but for the family.”

Popularity: 15% [?]

The Bay Area is bucking a national trend of racial segregation in charter schools, according to a new national study.

The study by The Civil Rights Project at UCLA called “Choice Without Equity: Charter School Segregation and the Need for Civil Rights Standards” was released Feb. 4 and found that charter schools “are more racially isolated than traditional public schools in virtually every state and large metropolitan region.” Almost a third of charter school students in the nation end up “in apartheid schools with zero to one percent white classmates, the very kind of schools that decades of civil rights struggles fought to abolish in the South.”

But in the Bay Area, the study showed that is not so. Of the nearly 20,000 students in 76 charter schools in the Oakland, San Francisco and Fremont area, 23 percent are black, 24 percent are white and 41 percent are Latino, the study said. Public schools in the same area showed 11 percent black students, 33 percent white and 29 percent Latino.

In the San Jose, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara area where there are 26 charter schools with nearly 11,000 students, 4 percent are black, 33 percent are white and 49 percent Latino. Public schools in the area have 3 percent black students, 26 percent white and 38 percent Latino.

That’s in stark contrast to places like New York, for example, where 66 percent of charter school students are black, just 10 percent white and 22 percent Latino, the study said.

In Washington D.C., 89 percent of charter school students are black, 3 percent white and 8 percent Latino.

Yvette Felarca, a teacher at King Middle school in Berkeley and the national organizer for By Any Means Necessary, has been speaking out against a charter school proposal in Berkeley because she thinks it will segregate black and Latino kids when what they need is integration.

The Berkeley school board will soon vote on a proposal to create a charter school for 700 middle and high school students in the city. The Revolutionary Education and Learning Movement has been preapproved for a $1.2 million startup grant from the California Department of Education.

Although she “completely agrees” with the study as a whole, Felarca said she is skeptical of statistics showing about an even number of black and white children in Oakland and San Francisco charter schools.

“Charter schools lead to more segregation, which leads to more inequality which is the opposite of what they promise to be,” Felarca said. She also said black parents in Berkeley who have come to public meetings and spoken out in favor of the charter school proposals are misguided.

“They are understandably concerned, but when someone is coming and dangling a charter school in front of you, and they say you will have control over it and it’s going to be better for your child, you see that as an answer,” Felarca said.

“But it’s snake oil. It’s a false product. It means a divestment from the public education system as a while and it’s going to mean segregated and inferior education.”

But Victor Diaz, the Berkeley public school principal who is the main person behind the charter school proposal, said black and Latino parents are interested in charter schools because the public schools are failing them.

In Berkeley that is particularly true where almost 40 percent of black students at Berkeley High School got D and F grades in English and math last year while just 5 percent of white students had Ds and Fs, according to a study released Jan. 20.

Thirty percent of Latino students received D and F grades last year.

“It’s an ignorant argument to say that charter developers believe that we’re going to take these kids and put them in a place away from everyone else because their brains are so small they must be isolated,” Diaz said. “That is what By Any Means Necessary is saying about our proposal.”

Diaz said most charter school developers are creating programs where communities “lack access to A, B or C.” “African-American students would be less likely to enroll in charter schools if the school district was showing consistent performance in that group,” Diaz said. “We’ve watched our (minority) kids’ performance decline year after year, so why wouldn’t they want another solution?”

Popularity: 9% [?]

From: El Gato

There’s no question that Latinos and African-Americans are woefully underrepresented in the nation’s medical schools. For the select few that have the opportunity to recite the Hippocratic Oath?–?an oath taken by doctors to practice ethical medicine?–?the road to M.D. is an arduous one. Once admitted, students are subjected to rigorous training and an academic curriculum that leaves little time for stress relief. The pressure to succeed at these elite institutions is so great that 25.1% of medical students have considered suicide according to a recent study by the Annals of Internal Medicine.

Juanita (name changed for privacy), a student at the University of Texas Medical School at Houston, is in her last year before residency, a period of clinical training for new doctors. She always wanted to be a doctor since she was a child, and wants to open a clinic for the immigrant community in Houston. As a first generation Mexican-American, she has found that the culture in medical school completely clashes with her family values. The result has been four years of isolation from both communities. “When you get to medical school, the other students are supposed to become your family. They spend holidays together, go on vacations together, and depend on each other for everything. I wasn’t raised like that. I only have one family.” Her reluctance to conform to medical school culture has handicapped her both academically, socially, and left her unable to fulfill her familial obligations. “Truthfully I don’t want my story told yet. I haven’t survived. It’s not over for me yet. I don’t know if I will.”

David Alonzo, whose family is from Jalisco, Mexico, just got matched to a Urology residency program in Miami. He moved to Houston from Alamo, Texas to attend Baylor College of Medicine, one of the top 10 medical schools in the country. Having never been away from his family, David calls his mother everyday. ” It’s just my mom and myself in the immediate family and we are very close. I call her each and every day whenever I get a chance and I think we have gotten even closer with more than 400 miles distance between us these 4 years of med school.” The initial transition to life in the big city without family was difficult and almost caused him to fail a block of tests. David regained his composure because he realized his family was rooting for him and Rio Grande Valley would benefit from his M.D. “My dream was always to become a doctor and return to my home. It is ridiculously medically underserved and I would not be able to do that if I failed out of medical school,” says David. Family and faith are his main priorities. When he isn’t talking to his mother, he tried to go to church every week. “If I could sit an hour in front of the TV, I could sit an hour in church or call my family.” David advises future Latino medical students to set their own priorities and find time to have fun.

13Another Baylor student, Daisy Gracia, had the opposite experience. Daisy’s family is from Mexico, but she was raised in South Texas. She feels the relationship with her family has not changed, and talks to them daily. The transition from undergraduate to medical school was not a difficult one for Daisy. ”I have been used to taking a lot of courses and studying,” she explains. Her finances are taken care of through a scholarship that covers her tuition and fees. The biggest obstacle for Daisy was a health issue that caused her to become hospitalized. Even after the time off, she was able to get back in school just in time to graduate with her class. Daisy advises that anything can be achieved if students take advantage of opportunities, work hard and study early. “I always thought becoming a doctor was only a dream but now it’s my reality.”

The court decision of Hopwood v. Texas (1996) prohibited programs at universities in Texas from using race as a factor in admissions and financial aid. At the University of Texas School of Medicine at San Antonio, the decision decreased the number Hispanics accepted from 35 students to less than 15. Since then, the school has spent numerous resources in reversing this trend, and in 2009 the school admitted over 45 Hispanic students. Robert Witzburg, M.D., Associate Dean and Director of Admissions at Boston University School of Medicine, says holistic admissions standards provide a supportive environment for minority students because they “bring together a diverse student body constituted by academically gifted, highly motivated, resilient students who share a deep commitment to the values and goals of our profession.” Medical schools have been so consumed with boosting their minority enrollment numbers that there is a lack of programs to support these students once admitted. Fortunately there are various student organizations such as the Latino Medical Student Association where students find other like-minded individuals that can relate to their challenges in medicine. To find a comprehensive support program at a prestigious medical schools is rare. Latinos in these elite schools instead turn to an informal network of friends, family, and faith?–?the three pillars this community was built on. Juanita says, “Most Americans would think I came from a disadvantaged household. My family is not perfect, but growing up I felt so blessed. We have pride in our roots, treat our neighbors like part of the family, and a faith so strong that miracles are part of our reality.”

Popularity: 9% [?]

From: Inside Higher Ed

A report being released today says that the gender gap in college enrollments has largely leveled off, with the key exception of Latino enrollments, where men are falling further behind women.

The report by the American Council on Education comes amid much talk nationally about the significance of trends that have left men making up only about 43 percent of college enrollments and new college graduates. Some colleges have gone so far as to talk about affirmative action for men, which in turn has prompted an investigation by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. And a flurry of articles have suggested problems for the United States economy and society if male educational attainment continues to decline.

The message of the report is largely encouraging, noting that “several indicators suggest that the size of the gender gap in higher education may have stabilized” and that the number of bachelor’s degrees being awarded to men is again on the rise. While women’s numbers are also increasing, the report says that the male increases are important in showing that “women’s success does not come at the expense of men.”

The Latino population is the only one where a significant enrollment gender gap appears to be growing, the report says.

Percentage of Undergraduates Who Are Male, by Race and Ethnicity, for Students 24 and Younger
Group 1995-6 1999-2000 2003-4 2007-8
All 48% 46% 45% 46%
White 49% 46% 46% 47%
Black 37% 40% 40% 41%
Latino 45% 45% 43% 42%
Asian 54% 50% 50% 49%
Native American n/a 45% 44% 49%

With regard to the Latino figures, the report notes that a significant portion of the Latino population is made up of recent immigrants — a group that tends to have low high school completion rates, making it more challenging for many Latinos (men and women) to become eligible for college. The report also draws attention to the issue of income and the gender gap. Across racial and ethnic groups, greater proportions of upper income students than lower income students are men, among those financially dependent on their parents.

Percentage of Dependent Undergraduates Who Are Male, 2007-8, by Race and Income
Lowest Income Quartile Highest Income Quartile
White 44% 51%
Black 42% 48%
Latino 42% 48%
Asian 45% 52%

And the report notes the issue of age — which may be increasingly important at a time when many adults past traditional college age are finding that they must return to college to advance professionally. Women appear much more likely than men to get that message, as women make up roughly two-thirds of undergraduates age 25 or older. Black and Native American female undergraduates 25 and older now outnumber those 24 or younger.

Jacqueline E. King, assistant vice president of ACE’s Center for Policy Analysis and author of the study, said in an interview that the results show that “we seem to have a new normal” and that it is reassuring that the gap isn’t growing. She said that in terms of narrowing the gap, a key message is to “identify the sources of the gap” and not to assume that gender splits are taking place for the same reasons at every campus and among every group.

She offered as a hypothetical a college with a 56 percent female enrollment. The college might find that a night program for nontraditional students was two-thirds female, and so there may not be a need to focus on traditional age men, but there may be a need for an effort to recruit and graduate working adult men. King said that while each college must consider its own strategies, she was skeptical of blanket affirmative action programs for male students, especially given the data showing that male students from upper income levels are doing well.

Deborah A. Santiago, vice president for policy and research at Excelencia in Education, a group that advocates for Latino students in higher education, said that “systemic” changes may be needed to close the gender gap among Latino students.

She said that for many low-income Latino males, the opportunity costs of higher education seem too great, when they compare paying for college to “earning $25 an hour in a construction job.” Since many of these male students would in fact benefit from higher education, she said it was important to focus on solutions that recognize their short-term economic needs. College work-study programs that recognize that many Latino males are contributing to family incomes, not just supporting themselves, may be one way to go, she said.

Latino males need work study “that keeps them engaged and on campus.”

Richard Whitmire, author of the book and the blog Why Boys Fail, said he was concerned about the new report’s emphasis, even as he agreed that it is “good news” to see the gender gap stabilizing.

He said that the report “leaves the impression that except for minorities the gender gaps are no longer a cause for worry,” an assumption he questions. “In today’s economy, college is the new high school. You want to be a cop or work in a machine shop, you need post-high school study,” he said. So stability at current levels “is hardly a positive sign.”

Whitmire also said he questioned the idea that “gender gaps are really racial gaps.” Why, he asked, are black girls growing up in the “same neighborhoods and same schools as their brothers” doing so much better than black boys at high school completion and college enrollment? “Solving racial learning gaps requires solving gender learning gaps,” he said.

Popularity: 13% [?]

From: KAUZ News

Frustrated leaders and citizens are meeting Thursday (November 19) with the Texas State Board of Education.

They’re asking for more Latino and Native American representation in school curriculum.

The Board of Education is currently rewriting the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills Standards for social studies curriculum in grades k through twelve.

The new curriculum will be decided in March 2010 and will likely be used for the next 10 to 12 years.

The first mention of a Hispanic in the TEKS draft is not until third grade.

Some issues like government have no Latino or Native American representation at all.

Popularity: 14% [?]

From: Beyond Chron

Forty-nine per cent of all California public school k-12 students today are from Latino households, and most are doing poorly in the state’s public education system. While the failure of a huge percentage of students to achieve their academic and civic potential bodes ill for California’s future, it also represents an incredible and unacceptable failure on the part of the state’s education system to be responsive to the needs of its current population.

Some of the factors underlying Latino students’ lack of success in school are obvious: Latino students in California are typically in large overcrowded schools with high percentages of children from poor families, in classrooms with high student: teacher ratios, with less-qualified and less experienced teachers than students in more affluent and white neighborhoods, and are more likely to suffer the effects of a dumbed-down and irrelevant curriculum and an almost complete lack of academic guidance. They and their families are frequently stereotyped by school personnel as being uninterested in educational attainment, or as being unwilling or unable to lift themselves out of cycles of poverty, violence and victimization.

Add to these factors the decreasing numbers of Latino teachers coming into the profession, a lack of exposure to role models from students’ communities who have become professionals, a culture of deficit-based attitudes towards minority and low income students’ funds of knowledge, and the general unfriendliness of schools and their organization to parents who are unfamiliar with its systems.

Under such circumstances, certainly, the odds are stacked against Latino students graduating from high school and successfully navigating their way to higher education.

One California program, The Puente Project’s High School Program, currently in 35 public high schools and housed at the University of California’s Office of the President, has been quietly implementing high school reform practices to reverse this trend and, has been achieving solid results that hold promise for schools statewide.

Puente’s program design encompasses two distinct models: 1) the student program model and 2) the staff training model, which ensures fidelity to the program design and supports the long-term sustainability of the Puente program. Combined, these two models address the major barriers of higher education which educationally underserved students face.

Not an ELL or bilingual program, not a program for at-risk students, and not a remedial program, the Puente Project is a college preparation program targeting schools with a high proportion of students from underserved communities. Puente is open to all students.

Puente combines innovative and culturally competent teaching and counseling methods with community involvement. Since 1993, the program has trained hundreds of California public high school teachers and counselors to work together at their school sites to accelerate student progress and connect Puente students’ learning to the lives, experiences, and aspirations of their families and communities.

In their ninth and tenth grades, students stay with the same Puente-trained English teacher in an accelerated college-prep class. Puente teachers take a developmental approach to providing intensive instruction in writing; integrate Latino literature, culture, and issues into the curriculum; and require that each student submit a rigorous writing portfolio containing multiple genres at the end of each year.

Students’ social and cultural capital is recognized and built upon through interviews with family and community members, and through students’ own inquiries into cultural and community traditions, issues, and expectations. Such community-based writing assignments further their literacy and critical thinking skills, and prepare students for writing, reading, and research across the disciplines.

Students receive sustained academic counseling throughout high school with the Puente-trained bilingual counselor who ensures they take a challenging college-preparatory course of study. Counselors also coordinate college visits and other field trips. They are the heart of the parent component, developing and delivering a sequence of workshops to empower parents to become advocates for their children’s education and to fully understand the requirements for college.

Through the program’s community leadership/mentoring component, students develop leadership skills and devote considerable effort in community service. They meet and learn from role models and mentors from the professional community who help them determine and achieve their academic and career aspirations.

The components of Puente — intensive language arts, academic guidance, parent empowerment, and community support — work together to provide the rigor, motivation, and relevance that empower students from underserved communities. Ample research has shown Puente to be successful. The program has weathered enormous funding cuts and staff layoffs and works against the grain in many schools where Latino students are tracked into remedial classes, and yet it endures because most of its students are beating the odds: 86% of Puente’s 2008 graduating cohort went on to college.

Schools need to explore avenues for integrating these practices into whole-school reform, and the need is so great that we need to consider how we can leverage the success of Puente’s experience to meet the needs of even younger students. Puente is currently responding to calls to implement the program at middle schools. Districts interested in partnering with the Puente Project can send a letter of interest to Frank Garcia, Puente’s Executive Director (frank.garcia@ucop.edu) and/or Jane Pieri, Director of HS Programs and Training (jane.pieri@ucop.edu).

Before yet another generation of Latino youth becomes disengaged and emerges from schooling with low skills, low self-esteem, and low expectations for their future, California’s education crisis needs to be recognized as a social justice issue that requires the scaling up of practices and policies that we know work.

Popularity: 10% [?]

From: The Daily Californian

UC Berkeley senior Maria Zaragoza, an English and film studies double major, said her experience growing up in a Latino household had a profound effect on the woman she is today.

But while Zaragoza made reference to the culture and diversity of her family life, two studies led by UC Berkeley researchers suggest ways in which the upbringing of Latino children may have had an impact on their early language and cognitive skills.

According to the studies, led by UC Berkeley education and public policy professor Bruce Fuller, toddlers in Latino families have less developed basic language and cognitive skills in comparison to those of Caucasian descent. Healthy prenatal care gives Latino children an initial advantage over Caucasian children, their robust birth weights contributing to early maturation.

But by the age of two or three, Caucasians surpass Latinos and the gap continues to grow, the studies say.

Funded in part by the Spencer Foundation, the primary study looked at a sample of 8,114 infants born in 2001, testing each at nine months and 24 months. The data seem to suggest that the lower educational levels of Latina mothers and larger family size contribute to the differences between ethnicities.

“The big drivers seem to be maternal education and the fact that Latino kids tend to be in homes with lower parent-to-child ratios,” Fuller said.

However, Fuller was quick to point out that these studies do not reflect on the intelligence of Latino children. There is no disparity in mental capacity between Latino and Caucasian toddlers, just the ability of their mothers to cultivate certain skills, he said.

“It’s really nurture over nature,” he said.

While public policy focuses mainly on three- and four-year-olds, the slowed cognitive growth for Latino children occurs up two years earlier. According to Fuller, the level of cognitive and language development at age three predicts reading scores in elementary school.

“The outcome of this study is distressing because it suggests their (Latino children’s) futures in elementary schools are fairly bleak,” Fuller said.

Zaragoza, however, finds fault with the studies, saying that her upbringing in a large, Latino family aided her growth, rather than hindered it.

“It is very ingrained that (Latinos are) family-oriented,” she said. “I think there are more people to act as a support system so I really disagree with that kind of assertion.”

Popularity: 12% [?]

From: KCBS.com

A UC Berkeley researcher says children born to immigrant Latina mothers tend to have poorer cognitive skills as toddlers than middle-class white children.
Professor of Education and Public Policy Bruce Fuller says the Latino babies start their life with an advantage.

“These newborns are very healthy,” he said. “They’re fat and happy and sometimes even healthier than babies born to middle class mothers.”

But Fuller says the toddlers start to lag behind middle-class white children in basic language and cognitive skills by the age of 2 or 3. He has a couple of theories as to “why.”

“Latino families overall tend to be larger,” he said. “That means that every individual toddler gets individual attention with a caring parent.”

Latina mothers are caring, says Fuller, but those studied didn’t spend as much time reading, playing games and doing other educational activities with their children as their white suburban counterparts, and the differences were apparent before they reached school.

Education levels also play a part, Fuller says. One fifth of the immigrant Latina mothers had taken college courses as opposed to two thirds of their suburban white counterparts.

Popularity: 12% [?]