This is pretty cool. Even better would be to provide students and families accessibility to computers outside of school, too.
-Patricia
By STEVE LOHR | NY Times
Published: August 16, 2008
COUNT me a technological optimist, but I have always thought that the people who advocate putting computers in classrooms as a way to transform education were well intentioned but wide of the mark. It’s not the problem, and it’s not the answer.
Yet as a new school year begins, the time may have come to reconsider how large a role technology can play in changing education. There are promising examples, both in the United States and abroad, and they share some characteristics. The ratio of computers to pupils is one to one. Technology isn’t off in a computer lab. Computing is an integral tool in all disciplines, always at the ready.
Web-based education software has matured in the last few years, so that students, teachers and families can be linked through networks. Until recently, computing in the classroom amounted to students doing Internet searches, sending e-mail and mastering word processing, presentation programs and spreadsheets. That’s useful stuff, to be sure, but not something that alters how schools work.
The new Web education networks can open the door to broader changes. Parents become more engaged because they can monitor their children’s attendance, punctuality, homework and performance, and can get tips for helping them at home. Teachers can share methods, lesson plans and online curriculum materials.
In the classroom, the emphasis can shift to project-based learning, a real break with the textbook-and-lecture model of education. In a high school class, a project might begin with a hypothetical letter from the White House that says oil prices are spiking, the economy is faltering and the president’s poll numbers are falling. The assignment would be to devise a new energy policy in two weeks. The shared Web space for the project, for example, would include the White House letter, the sources the students must consult, their work plan and timetable, assignments for each student, the assessment criteria for their grades and, eventually, the paper the team delivers. Oral presentations would be required.
The project-based approach, some educators say, encourages active learning and produces better performance in class and on standardized tests.
The educational bottom line, it seems, is that while computer technology has matured and become more affordable, the most significant development has been a deeper understanding of how to use the technology.
“Unless you change how you teach and how kids work, new technology is not really going to make a difference,” said Bob Pearlman, a former teacher who is the director of strategic planning for the New Technology Foundation, a nonprofit organization.
The foundation, based in Napa, Calif., has developed a model for project-based teaching and is at the forefront of the drive for technology-enabled reform of education. Forty-two schools in nine states are trying the foundation’s model, and their numbers are growing rapidly.
Behind the efforts, of course, are concerns that K-12 public schools are falling short in preparing students for the twin challenges of globalization and technological change. Worries about the nation’s future competitiveness led to the creation in 2002 of the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, a coalition whose members include the Department of Education and technology companies like Apple, Cisco Systems, Dell and Microsoft.
The government-industry partnership identifies a set of skills that mirror those that the New Technology Foundation model is meant to nurture. Those skills include collaboration, systems thinking, self-direction and communication, both online and in person.
State officials in Indiana took a look at the foundation’s model and offered travel grants for local teachers and administrators to visit its schools in California. Sally Nichols, an English teacher, came away impressed and signed up for the new project-based teaching program at her school, Decatur Central High School in Indianapolis.
Last year, Ms. Nichols and another teacher taught a biology and literature class for freshmen. (Cross-disciplinary courses are common in the New Technology model.) Typically, half of freshmen fail biology, but under the project-based model the failure rate was cut in half.
“There’s a lot of ownership by the kids in their work instead of teachers lecturing and being the givers of all knowledge,” Ms. Nichols explained. “The classes are just much more alive. They don’t sleep in class.”
IN Indiana, the number of schools using the foundation model will increase to six this year, and an additional dozen communities have signed up for the next year, said David Shane, a member of the state board of education. “It’s caught fire in Indiana, and we’ve got to have this kind of education to prepare our young people for the future in a global economy that is immersed in technology.”
The extra cost for schools that have adopted the New Technology model is about $1,000 per student a year, once a school is set up, says Mr. Pearlman of the foundation. After the first three years, the extra cost should decline considerably, he said.
In England, where the government has promoted technology in schools for a decade, the experiment with technology-driven change in education is further along.
Five years ago, the government gave computers to students at two schools in high-crime neighborhoods in Birmingham. For the students, a Web-based portal is the virtual doorway for assignments, school social activities, online mentoring, discussion groups and e-mail. Even students who are suspended from school for a few days beg not to lose their access to the portal, says Sir Mark Grundy, 49, the executive principal of Shireland Collegiate Academy and the George Salter Collegiate Academy. Today, the schools are among the top in the nation in yearly improvements in students’ performance in reading and math tests.
Sir Mark says he is convinced that advances in computing, combined with improved understanding of how to tailor the technology to different students, can help transform education.
“This is the best Trojan horse for causing change in schools that I have ever seen,” he said.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Illegal immigrants opted to stay during Gustav
This is terrible!
-Patricia
By PETER PRENGAMAN | Associated Press
September 2, 2008
NEW ORLEANS — Many of the illegal immigrants who have been rebuilding New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina stayed behind when Gustav struck because they were afraid of being arrested if they boarded the buses and trains arranged by emergency officials.
"We know that people died during Katrina, but we had no choice but to stay here," said Carlos Mendoza, a 21-year-old illegal immigrant from Honduras who rode out the storm with seven other people. They took shelter in an apartment that is close to a street corner where day laborers congregate.
"Many stayed because of fear," Mendoza said. "I would say at least 50 percent of us."
Authorities offered to evacuate residents on buses and trains — and promised not to ferret out illegal immigrants. But fear of being arrested or deported kept Mendoza and every other undocumented person he knows from accepting the free ride.
Immigrant-rights groups estimate the city is home to as many as 30,000 illegal immigrants. No one knows how many stayed behind.
New Orleans' Hispanic population is tiny compared to other major American cities. But it was practically nonexistent until Katrina destroyed large swaths of the city. The reconstruction boom attracted thousands of illegal immigrants, mostly men from Mexico and Central America who worked as day laborers.
The jobs aren't quite as plentiful as they were immediately after Katrina. And even when work was easy to find, the pay wasn't always enough for immigrants to afford cars and the money needed to flee from a storm on their own.
On top of that, the government's crackdown on illegal immigrants has made day laborers nervous to travel.
"Moving around has become very difficult for undocumented workers," said Pablo Alvarado, director of the National Day Labor Organizing Network.
The city did take some steps to make it easier: evacuation news releases were distributed in Spanish, and the city's 311 number had Spanish-speaking operators.
"Every action that we took in English, we tried to do in Spanish as well," city spokesman James Ross said.
But the message did not get through to wary Hispanic communities that have experienced increased immigration raids in recent years, said Jacinta Gonzalez, a day labor organizer with the New Orleans Workers Center for Racial Justice.
Adding to the difficulties, Gonzalez said, were problems with the 311 service. Several day laborers complained of being on hold for more than 30 minutes before getting connected with a Spanish-speaking operator.
And when illegal immigrants realized they would be asked to register to be evacuated, the situation became even more untenable, she said. Part of the evacuation plan included giving evacuees wristbands with identifying information that could be entered into a computer database to track where people were.
"The government didn't give people assurances that they would be returned to New Orleans" and not deported, Gonzalez said. "Just sending out press releases the day before the evacuation isn't going to work."
In the Central City neighborhood, home to many Hispanics, some who stayed could be seen peeking out their windows as police patrols passed by to enforce a curfew. Several declined interviews or would not open the door.
"I told them all to leave," said Raymond Francois, resident who returned to his home Tuesday and was knocking on doors of Hispanic neighbors who stayed. "But they told me they couldn't. They were worried about not having papers."
Santiago Gradiz, a 61-year-old illegal immigrant from Honduras, got a ride to Houston with a handful of other people in the same situation. They left Saturday, he said, to try to avoid any checkpoints.
He and 10 others are staying in a one-room apartment, and they don't plan to return to New Orleans until cleanup efforts are complete and extra police and soldiers are no longer on the streets. Besides the danger of the storm, Gradiz said, he was afraid that staying could also get him deported because he would be more noticeable to police.
"Luckily I had some money from working the day before moving furniture," and could help pay the costs of the trip, he said.
Jose Gordillo, 50, never even considered trying to leave. The Mexico native and his two adult sons, all three illegal immigrants, instead stayed in their rented house.
"It's been a few weeks since we got work, so we didn't have the money to leave," Gordillo said. "I felt a little panicked during the storm, but with God's help we made it."
-Patricia
By PETER PRENGAMAN | Associated Press
September 2, 2008
NEW ORLEANS — Many of the illegal immigrants who have been rebuilding New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina stayed behind when Gustav struck because they were afraid of being arrested if they boarded the buses and trains arranged by emergency officials.
"We know that people died during Katrina, but we had no choice but to stay here," said Carlos Mendoza, a 21-year-old illegal immigrant from Honduras who rode out the storm with seven other people. They took shelter in an apartment that is close to a street corner where day laborers congregate.
"Many stayed because of fear," Mendoza said. "I would say at least 50 percent of us."
Authorities offered to evacuate residents on buses and trains — and promised not to ferret out illegal immigrants. But fear of being arrested or deported kept Mendoza and every other undocumented person he knows from accepting the free ride.
Immigrant-rights groups estimate the city is home to as many as 30,000 illegal immigrants. No one knows how many stayed behind.
New Orleans' Hispanic population is tiny compared to other major American cities. But it was practically nonexistent until Katrina destroyed large swaths of the city. The reconstruction boom attracted thousands of illegal immigrants, mostly men from Mexico and Central America who worked as day laborers.
The jobs aren't quite as plentiful as they were immediately after Katrina. And even when work was easy to find, the pay wasn't always enough for immigrants to afford cars and the money needed to flee from a storm on their own.
On top of that, the government's crackdown on illegal immigrants has made day laborers nervous to travel.
"Moving around has become very difficult for undocumented workers," said Pablo Alvarado, director of the National Day Labor Organizing Network.
The city did take some steps to make it easier: evacuation news releases were distributed in Spanish, and the city's 311 number had Spanish-speaking operators.
"Every action that we took in English, we tried to do in Spanish as well," city spokesman James Ross said.
But the message did not get through to wary Hispanic communities that have experienced increased immigration raids in recent years, said Jacinta Gonzalez, a day labor organizer with the New Orleans Workers Center for Racial Justice.
Adding to the difficulties, Gonzalez said, were problems with the 311 service. Several day laborers complained of being on hold for more than 30 minutes before getting connected with a Spanish-speaking operator.
And when illegal immigrants realized they would be asked to register to be evacuated, the situation became even more untenable, she said. Part of the evacuation plan included giving evacuees wristbands with identifying information that could be entered into a computer database to track where people were.
"The government didn't give people assurances that they would be returned to New Orleans" and not deported, Gonzalez said. "Just sending out press releases the day before the evacuation isn't going to work."
In the Central City neighborhood, home to many Hispanics, some who stayed could be seen peeking out their windows as police patrols passed by to enforce a curfew. Several declined interviews or would not open the door.
"I told them all to leave," said Raymond Francois, resident who returned to his home Tuesday and was knocking on doors of Hispanic neighbors who stayed. "But they told me they couldn't. They were worried about not having papers."
Santiago Gradiz, a 61-year-old illegal immigrant from Honduras, got a ride to Houston with a handful of other people in the same situation. They left Saturday, he said, to try to avoid any checkpoints.
He and 10 others are staying in a one-room apartment, and they don't plan to return to New Orleans until cleanup efforts are complete and extra police and soldiers are no longer on the streets. Besides the danger of the storm, Gradiz said, he was afraid that staying could also get him deported because he would be more noticeable to police.
"Luckily I had some money from working the day before moving furniture," and could help pay the costs of the trip, he said.
Jose Gordillo, 50, never even considered trying to leave. The Mexico native and his two adult sons, all three illegal immigrants, instead stayed in their rented house.
"It's been a few weeks since we got work, so we didn't have the money to leave," Gordillo said. "I felt a little panicked during the storm, but with God's help we made it."
Dropouts Don’t Have to Stay Out: Studies Shed Light on Graduation Rates
Check out the full report to one of the studies mentioned in this article:
What Matters for Staying on-Track and Graduating in Chicago Public High Schools
-Patricia
By Robin Chait, Melissa Lazarín | August 26, 2008
Center for American Progress
Just as schools across the country are preparing for a new school year, two new studies came out last week that provide insight into the persistent graduation crisis in the United States. The first is a study from the U.S. Department of Education that finds that graduation rates have declined for three years in a row. The graduation rate for the 2005-06 school year was 73.4 percent, a drop from the 2004-05 rate of 74.7 percent and the 2003-04 rate of 75 percent. These drops may be small, but they clearly highlight the lack of progress we are making in improving our unacceptably low graduation rates.
Why do these rates matter? Students who fail to graduate from high school earn less money and have fewer job opportunities. Moreover, in today’s knowledge-based economy, a high school degree is no longer sufficient to compete for high-skilled jobs. High school dropouts today face an even greater challenge in earning a decent living than they did 30 years ago.
The second study sheds some light on why our graduation rates are failing to budge. Researchers at WestEd followed 3,856 freshmen in the San Bernardino City Unified School District through high school graduation and tracked the experiences of those who dropped out before graduation. Thirty-five percent of students in the district dropped out at least once during their high school careers, mirroring national trends, and the majority left during their first year of high school. The critical freshman year transition has been well documented by other research, where studies have indicated that students are much less likely to graduate if they are not on track by the end of their freshman year.
What the WestEd study finds is that for about a third (31 percent) of these dropouts, dropping out of school is a “temporary interruption rather than a permanent high school outcome.” In the San Bernardino school district, students re-enrolled in high school because they had difficulty finding employment without a high school degree, but also because principals, teachers, and other education staff helped to pull them back into the classroom. Only about 18.4 percent of these students ended up graduating in five years, but the fact that this school district was able to recover a third of their dropouts shows that active, school-level dropout recovery strategies should be a critical element of any comprehensive approach to increasing graduation rates.
Yet what happened to those students who re-enrolled, but failed to graduate? More than half of those who re-enrolled only enrolled for one year or less. In interviews about why they dropped out a second or third time, these students cited family responsibilities and feelings of hopelessness about being able to make up sufficient course credits to graduate in a reasonable period of time.
Interestingly, ninth-grade dropouts were more likely to re-enroll, as were black students and female students. English-language learners, Latinos, and male students, who dropped out at higher rates in the study, and like African Americans tend to be most at risk of dropping out in general, were less likely to re-enroll, indicating perhaps that the barriers to re-enrollment may differ for these groups of students.
These data point to at least three guiding strategies for dropout prevention and recovery:
1. Districts and schools need to focus on freshman year as a critical transition point. Students who struggle academically or socially, or have frequent absences or behavior problems at any time during their freshman year, should receive immediate academic and social support. This support could take the form of afterschool tutoring, counseling, and remedial coursework. Students who are on track by the end of freshman year are much more likely to graduate.
2. Students who are failing academically are much more likely to drop out and need academic support. One of the primary reasons students drop out of school is because of academic failure. Districts and schools need to design systems that quickly identify those students who are struggling and provide them with additional help, which may include additional course work or tutoring.
3. Dropouts need flexible and engaging schooling options that allow them to recover credits relatively quickly. If, as the WestEd report illustrates, dropping out is not necessarily a permanent condition, states and districts need to rethink their dropout recovery strategies to employ a series of flexible interventions that meet the particular needs of students who have left school. Students need a number of potential ways to re-enroll in school, depending on their circumstances. These flexible options might include night classes, summer school, or online courses. Students need to feel that earning sufficient credits toward graduation is a manageable task.
Federal policy can support these strategies. It should invest in research and development to identify promising school models and strategies for recovering dropouts. The Graduation Promise Act, introduced in both the Senate and the House, and incorporated into early drafts reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, provides $2.4 billion for states to intervene in struggling high schools and develop research-based models to turn them around. This research could support the development of school reform models to support effective dropout recovery efforts.
Federal policy should also support states and districts in developing alternative pathways for students who have dropped out of school. One promising school reform model worthy of federal support is the early college high school—a blended institution that combines high school and college curricula and credits, allowing students to graduate in more than four years if they need the additional time, but simultaneously allowing them to earn college credits. These schools are motivating to students, since graduation means not only a high school diploma, but some progress toward a college degree, as well. A similar model that allows students who have dropped out to complete their high school diploma while they are earning a college degree at a community college has been included in the renewal of the Higher Education Act. The reauthorization of ESEA is an opportunity to broaden such efforts.
As these reports demonstrate, accurate graduation rate data are essential for helping states and districts design effective programs that help more students graduate. If states and districts don’t know who is dropping out and when, they won’t be able to design effective interventions. U.S. Department of Education Secretary Margaret Spellings has already initiated important steps to improve the data on graduation rates by proposing a common definition and disaggregation by race, ethnicity, and other major characteristics. Graduation rates, like progress on academic achievement standards, are an important element of a school’s success and should be considered when evaluating schools’ overall progress for accountability.
Our national graduation rates may have stagnated, but we now have more information than ever to design policies to counter this trend. Federal policy should support states and districts in ensuring that students transition successfully into high school, providing additional academic help to struggling students and alternative schooling options to students who have dropped out of school.
What Matters for Staying on-Track and Graduating in Chicago Public High Schools
-Patricia
By Robin Chait, Melissa Lazarín | August 26, 2008
Center for American Progress
Just as schools across the country are preparing for a new school year, two new studies came out last week that provide insight into the persistent graduation crisis in the United States. The first is a study from the U.S. Department of Education that finds that graduation rates have declined for three years in a row. The graduation rate for the 2005-06 school year was 73.4 percent, a drop from the 2004-05 rate of 74.7 percent and the 2003-04 rate of 75 percent. These drops may be small, but they clearly highlight the lack of progress we are making in improving our unacceptably low graduation rates.
Why do these rates matter? Students who fail to graduate from high school earn less money and have fewer job opportunities. Moreover, in today’s knowledge-based economy, a high school degree is no longer sufficient to compete for high-skilled jobs. High school dropouts today face an even greater challenge in earning a decent living than they did 30 years ago.
The second study sheds some light on why our graduation rates are failing to budge. Researchers at WestEd followed 3,856 freshmen in the San Bernardino City Unified School District through high school graduation and tracked the experiences of those who dropped out before graduation. Thirty-five percent of students in the district dropped out at least once during their high school careers, mirroring national trends, and the majority left during their first year of high school. The critical freshman year transition has been well documented by other research, where studies have indicated that students are much less likely to graduate if they are not on track by the end of their freshman year.
What the WestEd study finds is that for about a third (31 percent) of these dropouts, dropping out of school is a “temporary interruption rather than a permanent high school outcome.” In the San Bernardino school district, students re-enrolled in high school because they had difficulty finding employment without a high school degree, but also because principals, teachers, and other education staff helped to pull them back into the classroom. Only about 18.4 percent of these students ended up graduating in five years, but the fact that this school district was able to recover a third of their dropouts shows that active, school-level dropout recovery strategies should be a critical element of any comprehensive approach to increasing graduation rates.
Yet what happened to those students who re-enrolled, but failed to graduate? More than half of those who re-enrolled only enrolled for one year or less. In interviews about why they dropped out a second or third time, these students cited family responsibilities and feelings of hopelessness about being able to make up sufficient course credits to graduate in a reasonable period of time.
Interestingly, ninth-grade dropouts were more likely to re-enroll, as were black students and female students. English-language learners, Latinos, and male students, who dropped out at higher rates in the study, and like African Americans tend to be most at risk of dropping out in general, were less likely to re-enroll, indicating perhaps that the barriers to re-enrollment may differ for these groups of students.
These data point to at least three guiding strategies for dropout prevention and recovery:
1. Districts and schools need to focus on freshman year as a critical transition point. Students who struggle academically or socially, or have frequent absences or behavior problems at any time during their freshman year, should receive immediate academic and social support. This support could take the form of afterschool tutoring, counseling, and remedial coursework. Students who are on track by the end of freshman year are much more likely to graduate.
2. Students who are failing academically are much more likely to drop out and need academic support. One of the primary reasons students drop out of school is because of academic failure. Districts and schools need to design systems that quickly identify those students who are struggling and provide them with additional help, which may include additional course work or tutoring.
3. Dropouts need flexible and engaging schooling options that allow them to recover credits relatively quickly. If, as the WestEd report illustrates, dropping out is not necessarily a permanent condition, states and districts need to rethink their dropout recovery strategies to employ a series of flexible interventions that meet the particular needs of students who have left school. Students need a number of potential ways to re-enroll in school, depending on their circumstances. These flexible options might include night classes, summer school, or online courses. Students need to feel that earning sufficient credits toward graduation is a manageable task.
Federal policy can support these strategies. It should invest in research and development to identify promising school models and strategies for recovering dropouts. The Graduation Promise Act, introduced in both the Senate and the House, and incorporated into early drafts reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, provides $2.4 billion for states to intervene in struggling high schools and develop research-based models to turn them around. This research could support the development of school reform models to support effective dropout recovery efforts.
Federal policy should also support states and districts in developing alternative pathways for students who have dropped out of school. One promising school reform model worthy of federal support is the early college high school—a blended institution that combines high school and college curricula and credits, allowing students to graduate in more than four years if they need the additional time, but simultaneously allowing them to earn college credits. These schools are motivating to students, since graduation means not only a high school diploma, but some progress toward a college degree, as well. A similar model that allows students who have dropped out to complete their high school diploma while they are earning a college degree at a community college has been included in the renewal of the Higher Education Act. The reauthorization of ESEA is an opportunity to broaden such efforts.
As these reports demonstrate, accurate graduation rate data are essential for helping states and districts design effective programs that help more students graduate. If states and districts don’t know who is dropping out and when, they won’t be able to design effective interventions. U.S. Department of Education Secretary Margaret Spellings has already initiated important steps to improve the data on graduation rates by proposing a common definition and disaggregation by race, ethnicity, and other major characteristics. Graduation rates, like progress on academic achievement standards, are an important element of a school’s success and should be considered when evaluating schools’ overall progress for accountability.
Our national graduation rates may have stagnated, but we now have more information than ever to design policies to counter this trend. Federal policy should support states and districts in ensuring that students transition successfully into high school, providing additional academic help to struggling students and alternative schooling options to students who have dropped out of school.
Nine out of 10 students in Class of '08 pass California high school exit exam
By Dana Hull | Mercury News
09/09/2008
About 9 in 10 students from the Class of 2008 have passed the California High School Exit Exam, according to data released by the state this morning. But thousands more are still struggling to master the test and earn their high school diploma.
This year marks the first time that special education students are required to take and pass the exit exam. Slightly more than half of special education students - 53.8 percent - in the Class of 2008 had passed the exit exam as of May.
There are more than 468,000 students in the Class of 2008; of those about 10 percent are special education students. The vast majority of California's special education students have learning disabilities such as dyslexia.
"Parents of kids with disabilities are horrified by the exit exam, and they are more horrified now that we have the statistics," said Sid Wolinsky of Disability Rights Advocates, a Berkeley-based law firm that sued the state over concerns that the exit exam is discriminatory. "Dyslexia is a killer on tests, even for students who are very bright. If you are dyslexic, on a multiple choice test the numbers literally float on the page." California high school students first take the two-part English and Math exit exam in the 10th grade. The English Language portion of the exam includes 79 multiple-choice questions and a writing essay; the math portion of the exam includes 92 multiple-choice questions. Students who fail the exit exam as sophomores have multiple opportunities to retake the test until they pass it.
Statewide, about 78 percent of all 10th graders passed the math portion of the exit exam on the first try. In Santa Clara County, the figure was higher, at 85 percent. On the English portion of the test, 79 percent of 10th graders passed statewide while 84 percent of Santa Clara County students passed it.
09/09/2008
About 9 in 10 students from the Class of 2008 have passed the California High School Exit Exam, according to data released by the state this morning. But thousands more are still struggling to master the test and earn their high school diploma.
This year marks the first time that special education students are required to take and pass the exit exam. Slightly more than half of special education students - 53.8 percent - in the Class of 2008 had passed the exit exam as of May.
There are more than 468,000 students in the Class of 2008; of those about 10 percent are special education students. The vast majority of California's special education students have learning disabilities such as dyslexia.
"Parents of kids with disabilities are horrified by the exit exam, and they are more horrified now that we have the statistics," said Sid Wolinsky of Disability Rights Advocates, a Berkeley-based law firm that sued the state over concerns that the exit exam is discriminatory. "Dyslexia is a killer on tests, even for students who are very bright. If you are dyslexic, on a multiple choice test the numbers literally float on the page." California high school students first take the two-part English and Math exit exam in the 10th grade. The English Language portion of the exam includes 79 multiple-choice questions and a writing essay; the math portion of the exam includes 92 multiple-choice questions. Students who fail the exit exam as sophomores have multiple opportunities to retake the test until they pass it.
Statewide, about 78 percent of all 10th graders passed the math portion of the exit exam on the first try. In Santa Clara County, the figure was higher, at 85 percent. On the English portion of the test, 79 percent of 10th graders passed statewide while 84 percent of Santa Clara County students passed it.
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Professor worries TAKS test breeds ignorant voters
This is very interesting. Check out Dr. Casye's article "What the TAKS Test Can Teach Us About Our Students"
-Patricia
By RICK CASEY
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle
Aug. 23, 2008
Kevin Jefferies may live in The Heights, but he's not a latte-sipping, arugula-munching elitist.
If he were, he wouldn't get so much pleasure out of commuting to Brazoria County for his job as head of the Economics and Government Department at Alvin Community College.
The 47-year-old University of Houston Ph.D. enjoys his students and works hard to figure out the best way to teach them.
"Since only a small fraction of my students will pursue political science, my objective is to train citizens," he wrote in a paper he presented last February at an American Political Science Association conference in San Jose, Calif.
No voter registration cards
That paper, "What the TAKS Test can Teach Us about Our Students," should be required reading for the Legislature's blue-ribbon panel that is studying whether Texas should revise its school accountability system with its heavy reliance on the controversial Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills.
About 90 percent of Jefferies' students are eligible to be first-time voters in a presidential election this year. The paper explains why that fact makes him nervous.
Too nervous, for example, to make it too easy for the students to vote.
"I don't have voter registration cards in my classroom," he said Friday. "I say if you can figure out how to register, then you can vote."
Although Jefferies' paper is a critique of the TAKS test, his research didn't start out as an attempt to assess the test. It began when he decided to use questions from the previous year's test (made available by the Texas Education Agency) at the beginning of a semester to see how much his students knew.
He was pleased to see they scored percentages in the mid-70s. It's not bad to start a course with the equivalent of a "C" on a test.
On some questions, the students did especially well. About 98 percent correctly answered multiple-choice questions about Miranda warnings.
More than 90 percent correctly said a section of the Declaration of Independence referring to King George's misuse of the military led to the Constitution's putting the military under the president.
But Jefferies soon discovered that the student's performance on TAKS questions didn't mean they understood the basic concepts that should provide the starting point for a college government course.
So the next semester he gave students an open-ended test on the same subject matter before giving them the TAKS questions.
Only seven in 10 knew what the Miranda warning was. Only 35 percent could say why freedom of speech was important, and 30 percent understood that King George's abusive use of the military led to the constitutional provision making the president commander in chief.
An aha! moment
As he looked closer at the TAKS questions, Jefferies saw that they were structured in such a way that the question suggested the answer.
The Miranda question, for example, presents the warning and asks the purpose. Only one of the choices mentioned protections for the accused. The other "answers" suggest that the warning is to promote job security for lawyers or limits the rights of judges.
The question on King George's use of the military gives a similarly obvious choice of answers. One suggests that it led to Congress's ability to legislate taxes, and another that it caused a provision that the vice president may be impeached. It's not to hard to figure that the president's role as commander in chief is the right answer.
"The answer to the question can easily be inferred from a close reading of the question itself," Jefferies wrote.
So not only does the constant drilling on facts for the TAKS test limit the time students can spend learning higher thinking skills and the ability to write, but the test may not even be measuring knowledge so much as an ability to glean clues from questions to get the right answers.
That the TAKS test wasn't measuring knowledge about government is further suggested by some of the definitions Jefferies' students offered.
Legislature? "Group within the government that is responsible for determining specified issues."
Unalienable rights? "Rights given to Americans," or, "Rights of non-citizens."
Jefferies concludes that one reason so many young people are alienated from politics is they don't even understand the language necessary to engage in it.
Still, he presses on.
"I'm not completely discouraged," he says. "But there's a lot of work to be done."
You can write to Rick Casey at P.O. Box 4260, Houston, TX 77210, or e-mail him at rick.casey@chron.com
-Patricia
By RICK CASEY
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle
Aug. 23, 2008
Kevin Jefferies may live in The Heights, but he's not a latte-sipping, arugula-munching elitist.
If he were, he wouldn't get so much pleasure out of commuting to Brazoria County for his job as head of the Economics and Government Department at Alvin Community College.
The 47-year-old University of Houston Ph.D. enjoys his students and works hard to figure out the best way to teach them.
"Since only a small fraction of my students will pursue political science, my objective is to train citizens," he wrote in a paper he presented last February at an American Political Science Association conference in San Jose, Calif.
No voter registration cards
That paper, "What the TAKS Test can Teach Us about Our Students," should be required reading for the Legislature's blue-ribbon panel that is studying whether Texas should revise its school accountability system with its heavy reliance on the controversial Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills.
About 90 percent of Jefferies' students are eligible to be first-time voters in a presidential election this year. The paper explains why that fact makes him nervous.
Too nervous, for example, to make it too easy for the students to vote.
"I don't have voter registration cards in my classroom," he said Friday. "I say if you can figure out how to register, then you can vote."
Although Jefferies' paper is a critique of the TAKS test, his research didn't start out as an attempt to assess the test. It began when he decided to use questions from the previous year's test (made available by the Texas Education Agency) at the beginning of a semester to see how much his students knew.
He was pleased to see they scored percentages in the mid-70s. It's not bad to start a course with the equivalent of a "C" on a test.
On some questions, the students did especially well. About 98 percent correctly answered multiple-choice questions about Miranda warnings.
More than 90 percent correctly said a section of the Declaration of Independence referring to King George's misuse of the military led to the Constitution's putting the military under the president.
But Jefferies soon discovered that the student's performance on TAKS questions didn't mean they understood the basic concepts that should provide the starting point for a college government course.
So the next semester he gave students an open-ended test on the same subject matter before giving them the TAKS questions.
Only seven in 10 knew what the Miranda warning was. Only 35 percent could say why freedom of speech was important, and 30 percent understood that King George's abusive use of the military led to the constitutional provision making the president commander in chief.
An aha! moment
As he looked closer at the TAKS questions, Jefferies saw that they were structured in such a way that the question suggested the answer.
The Miranda question, for example, presents the warning and asks the purpose. Only one of the choices mentioned protections for the accused. The other "answers" suggest that the warning is to promote job security for lawyers or limits the rights of judges.
The question on King George's use of the military gives a similarly obvious choice of answers. One suggests that it led to Congress's ability to legislate taxes, and another that it caused a provision that the vice president may be impeached. It's not to hard to figure that the president's role as commander in chief is the right answer.
"The answer to the question can easily be inferred from a close reading of the question itself," Jefferies wrote.
So not only does the constant drilling on facts for the TAKS test limit the time students can spend learning higher thinking skills and the ability to write, but the test may not even be measuring knowledge so much as an ability to glean clues from questions to get the right answers.
That the TAKS test wasn't measuring knowledge about government is further suggested by some of the definitions Jefferies' students offered.
Legislature? "Group within the government that is responsible for determining specified issues."
Unalienable rights? "Rights given to Americans," or, "Rights of non-citizens."
Jefferies concludes that one reason so many young people are alienated from politics is they don't even understand the language necessary to engage in it.
Still, he presses on.
"I'm not completely discouraged," he says. "But there's a lot of work to be done."
You can write to Rick Casey at P.O. Box 4260, Houston, TX 77210, or e-mail him at rick.casey@chron.com
Professor Protests Over Black Admissions at U.C.L.A.
This is ridiculous. I wonder if he's ever thought to check the files and qualifications of incoming white students who are children of alumni.
-Patricia
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: August 30, 2008
LOS ANGELES (AP) — A professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, resigned from an admissions committee Thursday, saying he suspected officials were cheating to illegally admit more black students but have blocked access to data that would prove it.
The professor, Tim Groseclose, who teaches political science classes, said he was concerned because “applicants often reveal their own race in the essay portion of the application,” according to an article in The Orange County Register. California’s public universities are banned from using race as an admissions criterion.
University officials said that admissions evaluators do not see the names, race or ethnicity of applicants and that they are following the law. Of the freshmen that will start classes next month, 235 students are black, or about 5 percent of the class. Two years ago, just 96 African-American freshman enrolled.
Professor Groseclose said he wanted to use statistical analysis to examine whether students were being admitted by race. He asked for 1,000 student files, including essays, with the names removed, which officials refused because of privacy issues.
Professor Groseclose said he supports offering preferences to recruit and admit more black students.
-Patricia
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: August 30, 2008
LOS ANGELES (AP) — A professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, resigned from an admissions committee Thursday, saying he suspected officials were cheating to illegally admit more black students but have blocked access to data that would prove it.
The professor, Tim Groseclose, who teaches political science classes, said he was concerned because “applicants often reveal their own race in the essay portion of the application,” according to an article in The Orange County Register. California’s public universities are banned from using race as an admissions criterion.
University officials said that admissions evaluators do not see the names, race or ethnicity of applicants and that they are following the law. Of the freshmen that will start classes next month, 235 students are black, or about 5 percent of the class. Two years ago, just 96 African-American freshman enrolled.
Professor Groseclose said he wanted to use statistical analysis to examine whether students were being admitted by race. He asked for 1,000 student files, including essays, with the names removed, which officials refused because of privacy issues.
Professor Groseclose said he supports offering preferences to recruit and admit more black students.
Friday, August 29, 2008
One-in-Five and Growing Fast: A Profile of Hispanic Public School Students
Check out the Full Report
-Patricia
by Rick Fry and Felisa Gonzales, Pew Hispanic Center
8.26.2008
The number of Hispanic students in the nation's public schools nearly doubled from 1990 to 2006, accounting for 60% of the total growth in public school enrollments over that period. There are now approximately 10 million Hispanic students in the nation's public kindergartens and its elementary and high schools; they make up about one-in-five public school students in the United States. In 1990, just one-in-eight public school students were Hispanic.
Strong growth in Hispanic enrollment is expected to continue for decades, according to a recently released U.S. Census Bureau population projection. The bureau projects that the Hispanic school-age population will increase by 166% by 2050 (to 28 million from 11 million in 2006), while the non-Hispanic school-age population will grow by just 4% (to 45 million from 43 million) over this same period.1 In 2050, there will be more school-age Hispanic children than school-age non-Hispanic white children.
Using data from the 2006 American Community Survey (ACS), this report presents information on the demographic characteristics of Hispanic students in public schools. It compares Hispanic public school students with their non-Hispanic counterparts. The large sample sizes available in the ACS also enable detailed comparison of Hispanic students across generational groups.
Key findings from the report:
* The vast majority of Hispanic public school students (84%) were born in the United States.
* Seven-in-ten (70%) Hispanic students speak a language other than English at home.
* Nearly one-in-five (18%) of all Hispanic students speak English with difficulty.
* Nearly three-in-five Hispanic students (57%) live in households with both of their parents compared with 69% of non-Hispanic white students and 30% of non-Hispanic black students.
* More than seven-in-ten U.S. born Hispanic students of immigrant parents (71%) live with both parents. Smaller shares of foreign-born students (58%) and U.S.-born students of native parentage (48%) reside with both parents.
* More than a quarter of Hispanic students (28%) live in poverty, compared with 16% of non-Hispanic students. In comparison, more than a third of non-Hispanic black students (35%) reside in poverty and about one-in-ten non-Hispanic white students live in a poor household.
* Foreign-born Hispanic students (35%) are more likely than their native-born counterparts (27%) to live in poverty.
1The U.S. Census Bureau projects the size of the population age 5 to 17. The growth of public school enrollment will not exactly match the growth of the school-age population because some children are not enrolled in school, some children attend private schools and some adults are enrolled in public schools.
-Patricia
by Rick Fry and Felisa Gonzales, Pew Hispanic Center
8.26.2008
The number of Hispanic students in the nation's public schools nearly doubled from 1990 to 2006, accounting for 60% of the total growth in public school enrollments over that period. There are now approximately 10 million Hispanic students in the nation's public kindergartens and its elementary and high schools; they make up about one-in-five public school students in the United States. In 1990, just one-in-eight public school students were Hispanic.
Strong growth in Hispanic enrollment is expected to continue for decades, according to a recently released U.S. Census Bureau population projection. The bureau projects that the Hispanic school-age population will increase by 166% by 2050 (to 28 million from 11 million in 2006), while the non-Hispanic school-age population will grow by just 4% (to 45 million from 43 million) over this same period.1 In 2050, there will be more school-age Hispanic children than school-age non-Hispanic white children.
Using data from the 2006 American Community Survey (ACS), this report presents information on the demographic characteristics of Hispanic students in public schools. It compares Hispanic public school students with their non-Hispanic counterparts. The large sample sizes available in the ACS also enable detailed comparison of Hispanic students across generational groups.
Key findings from the report:
* The vast majority of Hispanic public school students (84%) were born in the United States.
* Seven-in-ten (70%) Hispanic students speak a language other than English at home.
* Nearly one-in-five (18%) of all Hispanic students speak English with difficulty.
* Nearly three-in-five Hispanic students (57%) live in households with both of their parents compared with 69% of non-Hispanic white students and 30% of non-Hispanic black students.
* More than seven-in-ten U.S. born Hispanic students of immigrant parents (71%) live with both parents. Smaller shares of foreign-born students (58%) and U.S.-born students of native parentage (48%) reside with both parents.
* More than a quarter of Hispanic students (28%) live in poverty, compared with 16% of non-Hispanic students. In comparison, more than a third of non-Hispanic black students (35%) reside in poverty and about one-in-ten non-Hispanic white students live in a poor household.
* Foreign-born Hispanic students (35%) are more likely than their native-born counterparts (27%) to live in poverty.
1The U.S. Census Bureau projects the size of the population age 5 to 17. The growth of public school enrollment will not exactly match the growth of the school-age population because some children are not enrolled in school, some children attend private schools and some adults are enrolled in public schools.
Deported Children Abandoned in Mexico
This should concern everyone!
-Patricia
Melissa del Bosque | Texas Observer
August 15th, 2008 at 2:45 pm
A new study finds that unaccompanied children are being abandoned on the Mexican side of the border at an alarming pace.
In the last seven months, U.S. authorities have deported at least 90,000 children to Mexico, according to a study by the Mexican Government’s Commission on Population, Border and Immigration Affairs.
At least 13,500 of these children ages 17 and under were deported to Mexican border states but never reconnected with their parents or legal guardians. Many of these children have resorted to begging with the hopes of crossing into the United States again to be reunited with family members, according to the study. Other abandoned children are being cared for by churches and non-governmental organizations.
Many of these children were caught while being smuggled into the United States. U.S. authorities typically funnel the children through an “expedited” deportation process — sending them back to Mexico in a matter of hours.
The study cites another disturbing statistic: for every three adults deported to Mexico, one child is left abandoned in the United States.
Mexican border governors met with Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff about the deportations in February in Washington, D.C.
One of the biggest problems is lack of coordination between the U.S. and Mexican authorities. Jose Guadalupe Osuna Millan, governor of Baja California, told Chertoff that many children end up homeless because Mexican authorities are not advised when the children will arrive and don’t have time to find appropriate housing for them.
Eugenio Javier Hernandez Flores, the governor of Tamaulipas, said that his state receives 35,000 deported immigrants a year, many of them children. “Our governments need to work on a procedure for these undocumented children,” he said.
The Mexican governors said that among the children there were also South American and Central American children being deported to Mexico.
Edmundo Ramirez Martinez, Secretary of the Commission on Population, Borders and Migrant Affairs, told Mexican legislators that the International Convention on the Rights of Children requires that children be “repatriated” to their home countries rather than “deported.”
Repatriation means that the United States would return the child back to his or her specific home rather than abandon the child at the border.
Repatriating children, however, would cost the U.S. more time and money.
Money and effort the Bush administration thus far isn’t willing to invest.
-Patricia
Melissa del Bosque | Texas Observer
August 15th, 2008 at 2:45 pm
A new study finds that unaccompanied children are being abandoned on the Mexican side of the border at an alarming pace.
In the last seven months, U.S. authorities have deported at least 90,000 children to Mexico, according to a study by the Mexican Government’s Commission on Population, Border and Immigration Affairs.
At least 13,500 of these children ages 17 and under were deported to Mexican border states but never reconnected with their parents or legal guardians. Many of these children have resorted to begging with the hopes of crossing into the United States again to be reunited with family members, according to the study. Other abandoned children are being cared for by churches and non-governmental organizations.
Many of these children were caught while being smuggled into the United States. U.S. authorities typically funnel the children through an “expedited” deportation process — sending them back to Mexico in a matter of hours.
The study cites another disturbing statistic: for every three adults deported to Mexico, one child is left abandoned in the United States.
Mexican border governors met with Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff about the deportations in February in Washington, D.C.
One of the biggest problems is lack of coordination between the U.S. and Mexican authorities. Jose Guadalupe Osuna Millan, governor of Baja California, told Chertoff that many children end up homeless because Mexican authorities are not advised when the children will arrive and don’t have time to find appropriate housing for them.
Eugenio Javier Hernandez Flores, the governor of Tamaulipas, said that his state receives 35,000 deported immigrants a year, many of them children. “Our governments need to work on a procedure for these undocumented children,” he said.
The Mexican governors said that among the children there were also South American and Central American children being deported to Mexico.
Edmundo Ramirez Martinez, Secretary of the Commission on Population, Borders and Migrant Affairs, told Mexican legislators that the International Convention on the Rights of Children requires that children be “repatriated” to their home countries rather than “deported.”
Repatriation means that the United States would return the child back to his or her specific home rather than abandon the child at the border.
Repatriating children, however, would cost the U.S. more time and money.
Money and effort the Bush administration thus far isn’t willing to invest.
Communicating Culture
Helping international refugees become part of the community
BY TARA MORGAN
August 27, 2008
In a basement in downtown Boise, a bustling room filled with the hum of various languages. Refugees from Bhutan, Burundi and Burma shuffled in their chairs as interpreters explained how to fill out American job applications. Kids in glittery T-shirts tugged at their mothers' traditional, brightly colored sarongs. After the International Rescue Committee's weekly job-training class was over, Ganga Ram Gautam, a Nepali-speaking torture victim from Bhutan, asked an interpreter to explain how excited he is to finally be in America. Gautam—who was an interesting blend of east and west dressed in a black polo shirt with a South Asian red streak on his forehead—said that he used to be a farmer, but after being scarred by hot irons on his back, he is no longer able to do the heavy lifting required for the job. He's thankful to be learning English and hopes to get a job at a place like Wal-Mart.
"He is very happy to be here and wants to thank the IRC," explained interpreter Raj Shrestha. "Now he can sign his name and knows some of the alphabet so he can try to get a job."
With refugee families arriving year round, there are always new faces—and new languages—that need help assimilating into Boise's increasingly complex cultural tapestry. Though this can seem like an insurmountable task at times, the handful of dedicated community leaders and volunteers who work to educate incoming refugee families are completely committed to the cause. As the first people refugees meet when they get off the plane and the first people they turn to for help acclimating to their new homes, this group of agency directors, case workers, volunteers and community members work closely to ensure refugees are equipped with the necessary skills to pursue the American dream.
Right now in Boise, 93 languages are spoken from 101 different countries, with the majority of this dizzying diversity coming from the refugee community. Unlike migrants, who choose to come to America seeking a better life, refugees are people with no other choice.
According to the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, a refugee is defined as someone who, "owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality, and is unable to or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country."
In most cases, refugees are either returned home from the camps where they seek asylum, or resettled permanently in the country hosting the camp. Only 1 percent of all refugees are approved for resettlement in a third country like the United States. But before any of these people can set foot on American soil, they must maneuver through a complex system of verification. Asylum seekers who meet U.S. criteria for resettlement are first interviewed in their country of refuge by an Immigration and Naturalization Services officer. If they are approved, they are then matched with one of 10 resettlement organizations in the United States and assigned to a city. Boise is home to three non-profit resettlement organization offices: International Rescue Committee, World Relief and Agency for New Americans. Though all refugees receive some sort of formal American cultural orientation before they depart for the United States, the majority of cultural education—everything from reading clocks to navigating the health-care system—is provided at the local resettlement agency level.
Handling the Influx
"There's a natural cap in the town with the three agencies [handling] resettling here. There's only so many apartments, doctors' offices; the infrastructure can only handle so much flow," said Larry M. Jones, affiliate director of World Relief in Boise. "It's like putting water through a pipe. You can only get so much through."
Refugee populations in Boise fluctuate depending on international crises as well as local availability of trained interpreters, jobs, housing and medical facilities. Presently, Boise agencies are settling large numbers of Burundians, Burmese, Iraqis and Bhutanese, and late summer is their busiest time of year.
As the federal government scrambles to spend the money earmarked for refugee resettlement before the end of the fiscal year, local agencies are struggling to handle the surge of refugees who emerge wide-eyed and exhausted from the Boise Airport terminal. Though Boise has been distinguished as a city that can provide for the needs of these specific populations—with a low cost of living, available interpreters and ample religious institutions—resettlement staff and volunteers are still working around the clock to keep up with the weekly arrivals.
"Each agency has its very own unique personality and philosophy about how refugees are resettled. But in the end, we all receive the same federal funding and we all have to adhere to the same standards and requirements for resettlement," said Leslye Boban, director of IRC in Boise.
Federal funding for refugee resettlement flows into the Idaho Office of Refugees, a private contractor that is a part of the larger Mountain States Group. In addition to the money dispersed to the agencies, each refugee is granted a one-time amount of $425, a small sum referred to as "welcome money."
Ten years ago, refugee resettlement funds in Idaho were controlled by the State Department of Health and Welfare, but moving to a private contractor has helped shed the myriad layers of bureaucracy that can often clog state systems.
"Because of the smallness [of IOR], it gives us the ability to be a little more progressive and creative in providing services," said Steve Rainey, director of the IOR's English Language Center. "Frequently, Idaho is on the cutting edge of refugee services in the whole country."
Another thing that local agencies have in their favor is their incredibly close working relationship. Each of the agencies' directors meet once a month with Rainey to discuss successful resettlement strategies and to bounce around new ideas for combating problems. Whether it's finding solutions to apartment shortages for large refugee families or discussing employment opportunities for largely illiterate populations, the agencies rely heavily on one another.
"Generally, we have a very collaborative relationship," said Christina Bruce-Bennion, local director of ANA.
Home Away From Home
When refugee families first arrive, an agency staff member and an interpreter greet them at the airport and take them directly to their new, furnished apartments to sign a lease. Though there aren't any complexes in town that are designated solely for refugees, there are a few that have established close partnerships with the agencies to provide affordable housing.
"We are, I'm sure, one of the mainstays of their income because the three agencies are placing 400 to 500 apartments a year, Jones said. "[The refugees] walk in the door tired and confused, and there's sheets on the bed, there might even be flowers on the table, there's food in the refrigerator ... Their education starts the moment they get off the plane."
Some refugee populations, like the Burundians and the Bhutanese, have lived in refugee camps for the majority of their lives and have little or no experience with running water, modern appliances or even carpet.
Kary Burin, a volunteer with IRC, has spent the past few months assisting the Piyos family from Burundi. For a few hours every week, Burin teaches them English, takes them grocery shopping and helps answer general questions they have about American life.
"[IRC] likes the volunteers to go over to the house and look around and see if there are any problems," Burin explained. "Check the refrigerator, make sure that they're properly preserving their food, that they don't have any food sitting in cupboards. Because they're refugees, they don't waste any food, so they're never going to throw it away."
Before they get established and have a steady source of income, refugee families like the Piyos receive a food card from their resettlement agency with a monthly limit for groceries. Burin has taken the Piyos to WinCo a number of times and helped the family fill their cart with bulk basics like beans, rice, potatoes, bananas and meat.
"A real challenge is comparison shopping because the refugee camp always handed them stuff," Burin said. "They have no more concept that two similar things could sit side by side on the shelf and that, for some reason, you'd be paying twice as much for one as the other. So trying to explain that and to see if they understand it is very difficult."
But not all refugee families in Boise are entirely unfamiliar with modern living and a capitalist economy. Laura Corollo, an IRC volunteer who works with an Iraqi refugee family, explains that her family is adjusting rather quickly to their new way of life.
"Once I taught them the bus schedule, they were on the bus all the time. When I would come over for my weekly visits, they weren't saying, 'OK, can you drive us to the grocery store? Can you drive us here?' They had already done it," Corollo said.
The Iraqi family was forced to flee Baghdad after the father, a mechanical engineer, was persecuted for working for a U.S. company. Though Corollo describes the family as having updated cell phones and clothing, she notes that they still sometimes need help navigating cultural intricacies and adjusting to their new country's social norms.
"I was over [at their apartment] and somebody came by to sell them a cable plan. It was funny because they opened the door and they welcomed him in ... they thought that he was just a friend or neighbor," Corollo said.
One important cultural assimilation mechanism for refugees is television. By watching TV, refugees are able to observe American culture and pick up on English colloquialisms without the pressure of direct, face-to-face communication. Though some refugee families, like the Piyos, were unfamiliar with TV before resettling here, they have quickly taken to the entrancing technology.
"Television is a really great way to learn English, except—and I've heard this about other refugees, too—they like the Spanish language channel," Burin said with a laugh. "I speculated it had something to do with the over-the-top soap operas. Someone else said that they think it's because it's the soccer channel. The other day, one of the refugees said to me as I was leaving, 'manana.'"
Learning the Language
One of the main federal requirements for refugees is attending mandatory English language classes. Refugees from all three agencies attend class daily at the English Language Center near Jefferson and 16th streets until they find full-time employment. Since every refugee varies in his or her educational background and previous English experience, the ELC provides seven different levels of English classes ranging from a class for refugees who are illiterate in their native language to an advanced class that accommodates refugees with highly developed English skills.
But teaching English to refugees is more of a lesson in the nuances of American culture than it is a flash-card-filled romp through sentence structure and split infinitives.
"Most people, when they think of a language class, think grammar and vocabulary. For us, language is being able to navigate your environment. Whether it's riding the bus, whether it's finding out about a concert, all of that really is language," Rainey said. "A person can't become culturally integrated or culturally adept without language and they can't get the language without the culture."
To reinforce the language skills the refugees have learned in class, ELC teachers often take trips to neighboring North End stores and banks. From distinguishing between shampoo and conditioner at Rite Aid to making deposits at U.S. Bank, all of the vocabulary the students learn has practical and immediate applications in their everyday lives. The ELC hopes that, by structuring their learning environment less traditionally, the refugees will feel more comfortable appropriating and utilizing their newly acquired language skills.
"Our classes are very informal, in that, as much as possible, we'd like for them to reflect a social gathering and not a formal classroom. The type of language we use every day isn't academic. It's more like composing music than it is doing mathematics," Rainey said.
One of the major barriers affecting all aspects of refugee assimilation and education is the often unspeakable trauma that drove refugees from their homes in the first place.
"If you're just looking at language acquisition, nothing else, because of the trauma refugees have been through, and because they didn't choose to come here, it creates a different set of needs than any other language learner has," Rainey said. "A lot of times people will seem disinterested, not motivated to learn the language, and that's a very common symptom of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder."
Though all of the resettlement agencies in town provide resources for refugees to cope with their mental anguish and trauma, IRC has developed a unique pilot program for smaller children that they hope can be expanded and used with their parents also.
"There's a technique called EMDR—Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing. It's a simple technique that activates both sides of the brain," Boban explained. The technique has patients focus on their trauma while an external stimulus, like tapping, is applied to the head. "We're combining it with art therapy to help them release traumas without actually having to talk about the trauma. We're working with a counseling group to also do the same technique with the parents, because you can't work with the kids and open them up like that and go home to a chaotic, unstable environment."
Another community member working closely with refugee children is Ann Farris, director of Boise School District's English Language Learners school. The school, which opened in its new location this year in the old Jackson Elementary, specializes in education for refugee and immigrant students who don't speak English as a first language.
"We're right at 200 [students] already. We found last year that we were at about 66 percent refugees, so it's probably close or might have crept up even higher to 70 percent this year," Farris said.
Students in seventh through 12th grades are eligible to attend the English Language Learners school for four semesters. The students then transition into their neighborhood schools, where interpreters assist them in integrating into the required curriculum. Elementary-aged students, on the other hand, transition into the regular classrooms soon after they arrive.
"The kids become what we call 'cultural brokers' and they become the helpers of their families in so many ways, helping them navigate how things work and, of course, they're acquiring the English language, typically at such a rapid pace," Farris said. "Some of the parents, they're taking English classes, too, and certainly trying, but [the children] really are the information sharers."
Rights and Responsibilities
In addition to daily language classes at the English Language Center, refugees also attend a weekly job-training class offered by their agency. Because of the limited amount of funding and staff support at the agencies, economic self-sufficiency is their most pressing goal. Each agency spends a considerable amount of time instructing refugees in the expectations and skills required to succeed in the American workplace.
At a recent job-training session held by World Relief at Crossroads Church on Cole Road, the conference room bustled with an assortment of refugee populations. Each time job developer Lindsay Keban explained things like how to look for jobs in classified ads or proper phone habits when speaking to potential employers, the room blossomed with a litany of languages.
With seven interpreters at this session, translating for populations ranging from Arabic-speaking Somalis to Karen-speaking Burmese, the church sounded like a break room at the United Nations. Just like the English language classes, job-training classes tend to have a wider scope than just employment.
"At some point in the last few years, we had had refugee groups that were so far removed from American culture that we realized we just needed to spend that much more time with them. So the classes have become 12 weeks," Keban said.
Other agencies in town have also noticed an educational divide with recent incoming refugee populations. IRC developed a job training program specifically for Burundian women, many of whom are pre-literate, pre-numerate and have never been employed.
The program works with local hotels like Shiloh Inn and Hotel 43 to train these women in the skills they would need to be housekeepers—everything from working the hotel's elevators to identifying various cleaning chemicals.
"Eighty percent of refugees are women and children. A lot of the women that are coming are single moms. These women have to work, there's no choice and there's no support network for them. So the faster we can get them employed, the less vulnerable they are, the less vulnerable their children are," Boban said.
Though ANA has a similar program for Burmese women, it also focuses on helping more highly educated refugees get new credentials. People who were history teachers or doctors before they were forced to flee their country often have a much harder time adjusting to the more menial jobs they're required to initially accept as refugees.
"We have a lot of Iraqis coming, some of them are very highly educated, speak English very well and have very high expectations of employment," Bruce-Bennion noted.
Each of the job training classes offered by the agencies covers a specific topic, from riding public transportation to filling out job applications to the importance of punctuality. Though these lessons are covered at the English Language Center's cultural orientations, which happen every eight weeks, repetition is regarded as the most important way for refugees to solidify new information.
"Everybody agrees that the more times the information is given, in different ways, at different junctures of someone's experience when they first come in, the better it is going to be for them. They're going to be better prepared," explained Jamie Delavan, a volunteer who has partnered with Idaho Women's Network to put together a new, agency-spanning Refugee Education Training Program.
Delavan has worked closely with Ronna Parish, Pam Twilegar and Erika Molchan to develop a cultural training manual for refugees and the volunteers who work with them. Though they initially began working on the program with IRC, the group hopes their five-part "Know Your Rights" program will soon be integrated into the cultural orientations of all three agencies.
The program places a strong emphasis on culture-specific education, dividing classes into single-language groups so that the usual cacophony of interpreters isn't so distracting. The group's program also focuses heavily on human rights, stressing that all people are guaranteed certain rights regardless of their sex, race, religion or nationality.
"We wanted to set it up so we could focus on, 'Here are the rights that you have living in the United States,' and then, 'Here are the responsibilities that go along with those rights. So, you have the right to religious freedom, but you have to obey the laws. You have the right to an education, but here's the system that you have to work within in order to get that education,'" Parish said.
Another part of the group's program is an orientation to Idaho law. For this session, Boise Police officer and refugee liaison Shelli Sonnenberg explains everything from what to do when a police officer pulls them over, to how much it costs to call 911. Since many refugees are accustomed to dealing with corrupt cops who operate on a system of bribes and kickbacks, it can be hard for them to accept police officers in a non-threatening role.
"When the new Americans get here, I teach them about the laws of this country and focus on the ones that are really different from where they're from. The big ones are probably domestic battery, child abuse, statutory rape. Depending on the countries that they come from, those are completely different laws that don't even exist," Sonnenberg explained.
She has been instrumental in creating understanding between the police department and refugees. Sonnenberg developed a refugee orientation class for new police hires and instructs them in cultural sensitivity for the various refugee populations living in Boise.
Though a lot of the police calls Sonnenberg receives from refugees don't fall under her traditional jurisdiction, she's happy to respond to all the calls that she can, if only to show refugees that the police department is there when they are in need.
"Maybe they didn't have running water, or maybe they didn't have electricity, which may not be a police problem, but when they think that their landlord has turned off their power, not realizing that maybe a light bulb has burned out, then they call me. I had one little boy call 911 because his mom wouldn't make him pizza. To him, that actually was an emergency," Sonnenberg said.
A Permanent Home
Though each agency aims to have refugees settled and self-sufficient within six to eight months of arrival—when food stamps and Medicaid start to run out—they are now working with community organizations to develop educational programs with a more long-term reach. Saint Alphonsus Regional Medical Center received a $500,000 grant to open a center to provide reproductive health and infant care for non-English speaking women. The center is called Care Maternal and Child Health Clinic and will open in St. Al's next year.
"Our desire is to get health advisers from every cultural group so they can give us input on how we can improve services within their culture. We're working with different community agencies to solidify and make sure that we are doing what we can and not reinventing the wheel," said Judy Hobbs, manager of the St. Al's Family Center.
Also, the Boise Police Department is developing an interpreter program in which refugees who speak English and are familiar with American culture will be trained to accompany police officers on some of their more serious calls. The interpreters will be able to act as liaisons between non-English speakers and the police in times of crisis.
"They'll go through law enforcement training so that they have an idea what's expected of them. Using those individuals as our interpreters, then maybe we'll get to have some insight into the way their culture works and how—in those high stress situations—how we can handle it better," Sonnenberg said.
By becoming interpreters, refugees are given the opportunity to help those in need. Most of the interpreters who work with the three agencies in town have gone through one of the resettlement programs. As more refugees acclimate to American life, become proficient in English and train to be interpreters, they open doors for other refugees to resettle in Boise.
"Many times, former refugees become interpreters. Maybe they've gone through the resettlement process or they might have [spoken] good English to begin with. Each of the agencies really engages bilingual people and provides training opportunities for them to become effective interpreters," said Jan Reeves, director of the Idaho Office of Refugees.
Raj Shrestha, a Nepali interpreter from Bhutan, is one of those who has successfully made the transition into American society. At IRC's job-training session, Shrestha was the interpreter for a long table of Bhutanese refugees. Dressed in casual western clothing, Shrestha explained the nuances he's learned since he's been here—like shaking his head from side to side is a sign of disagreement, not approval like in his culture. He's also mastered the art of looking into people's eyes while they're speaking, an action that is seen as highly disrespectful in Bhutan.
When Gautam approached to tell his story of torture due to mistaken identity and to show the painful scars that run down his back, Shrestha interpreted his words. As Gautam spoke, Shrestha waited patiently for him to finish, then said:
"Everything the IRC is doing is really helping [the Bhutanese refugee community] get where they need to be. He wants to thank them for all they do."
BY TARA MORGAN
August 27, 2008
In a basement in downtown Boise, a bustling room filled with the hum of various languages. Refugees from Bhutan, Burundi and Burma shuffled in their chairs as interpreters explained how to fill out American job applications. Kids in glittery T-shirts tugged at their mothers' traditional, brightly colored sarongs. After the International Rescue Committee's weekly job-training class was over, Ganga Ram Gautam, a Nepali-speaking torture victim from Bhutan, asked an interpreter to explain how excited he is to finally be in America. Gautam—who was an interesting blend of east and west dressed in a black polo shirt with a South Asian red streak on his forehead—said that he used to be a farmer, but after being scarred by hot irons on his back, he is no longer able to do the heavy lifting required for the job. He's thankful to be learning English and hopes to get a job at a place like Wal-Mart.
"He is very happy to be here and wants to thank the IRC," explained interpreter Raj Shrestha. "Now he can sign his name and knows some of the alphabet so he can try to get a job."
With refugee families arriving year round, there are always new faces—and new languages—that need help assimilating into Boise's increasingly complex cultural tapestry. Though this can seem like an insurmountable task at times, the handful of dedicated community leaders and volunteers who work to educate incoming refugee families are completely committed to the cause. As the first people refugees meet when they get off the plane and the first people they turn to for help acclimating to their new homes, this group of agency directors, case workers, volunteers and community members work closely to ensure refugees are equipped with the necessary skills to pursue the American dream.
Right now in Boise, 93 languages are spoken from 101 different countries, with the majority of this dizzying diversity coming from the refugee community. Unlike migrants, who choose to come to America seeking a better life, refugees are people with no other choice.
According to the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, a refugee is defined as someone who, "owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality, and is unable to or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country."
In most cases, refugees are either returned home from the camps where they seek asylum, or resettled permanently in the country hosting the camp. Only 1 percent of all refugees are approved for resettlement in a third country like the United States. But before any of these people can set foot on American soil, they must maneuver through a complex system of verification. Asylum seekers who meet U.S. criteria for resettlement are first interviewed in their country of refuge by an Immigration and Naturalization Services officer. If they are approved, they are then matched with one of 10 resettlement organizations in the United States and assigned to a city. Boise is home to three non-profit resettlement organization offices: International Rescue Committee, World Relief and Agency for New Americans. Though all refugees receive some sort of formal American cultural orientation before they depart for the United States, the majority of cultural education—everything from reading clocks to navigating the health-care system—is provided at the local resettlement agency level.
Handling the Influx
"There's a natural cap in the town with the three agencies [handling] resettling here. There's only so many apartments, doctors' offices; the infrastructure can only handle so much flow," said Larry M. Jones, affiliate director of World Relief in Boise. "It's like putting water through a pipe. You can only get so much through."
Refugee populations in Boise fluctuate depending on international crises as well as local availability of trained interpreters, jobs, housing and medical facilities. Presently, Boise agencies are settling large numbers of Burundians, Burmese, Iraqis and Bhutanese, and late summer is their busiest time of year.
As the federal government scrambles to spend the money earmarked for refugee resettlement before the end of the fiscal year, local agencies are struggling to handle the surge of refugees who emerge wide-eyed and exhausted from the Boise Airport terminal. Though Boise has been distinguished as a city that can provide for the needs of these specific populations—with a low cost of living, available interpreters and ample religious institutions—resettlement staff and volunteers are still working around the clock to keep up with the weekly arrivals.
"Each agency has its very own unique personality and philosophy about how refugees are resettled. But in the end, we all receive the same federal funding and we all have to adhere to the same standards and requirements for resettlement," said Leslye Boban, director of IRC in Boise.
Federal funding for refugee resettlement flows into the Idaho Office of Refugees, a private contractor that is a part of the larger Mountain States Group. In addition to the money dispersed to the agencies, each refugee is granted a one-time amount of $425, a small sum referred to as "welcome money."
Ten years ago, refugee resettlement funds in Idaho were controlled by the State Department of Health and Welfare, but moving to a private contractor has helped shed the myriad layers of bureaucracy that can often clog state systems.
"Because of the smallness [of IOR], it gives us the ability to be a little more progressive and creative in providing services," said Steve Rainey, director of the IOR's English Language Center. "Frequently, Idaho is on the cutting edge of refugee services in the whole country."
Another thing that local agencies have in their favor is their incredibly close working relationship. Each of the agencies' directors meet once a month with Rainey to discuss successful resettlement strategies and to bounce around new ideas for combating problems. Whether it's finding solutions to apartment shortages for large refugee families or discussing employment opportunities for largely illiterate populations, the agencies rely heavily on one another.
"Generally, we have a very collaborative relationship," said Christina Bruce-Bennion, local director of ANA.
Home Away From Home
When refugee families first arrive, an agency staff member and an interpreter greet them at the airport and take them directly to their new, furnished apartments to sign a lease. Though there aren't any complexes in town that are designated solely for refugees, there are a few that have established close partnerships with the agencies to provide affordable housing.
"We are, I'm sure, one of the mainstays of their income because the three agencies are placing 400 to 500 apartments a year, Jones said. "[The refugees] walk in the door tired and confused, and there's sheets on the bed, there might even be flowers on the table, there's food in the refrigerator ... Their education starts the moment they get off the plane."
Some refugee populations, like the Burundians and the Bhutanese, have lived in refugee camps for the majority of their lives and have little or no experience with running water, modern appliances or even carpet.
Kary Burin, a volunteer with IRC, has spent the past few months assisting the Piyos family from Burundi. For a few hours every week, Burin teaches them English, takes them grocery shopping and helps answer general questions they have about American life.
"[IRC] likes the volunteers to go over to the house and look around and see if there are any problems," Burin explained. "Check the refrigerator, make sure that they're properly preserving their food, that they don't have any food sitting in cupboards. Because they're refugees, they don't waste any food, so they're never going to throw it away."
Before they get established and have a steady source of income, refugee families like the Piyos receive a food card from their resettlement agency with a monthly limit for groceries. Burin has taken the Piyos to WinCo a number of times and helped the family fill their cart with bulk basics like beans, rice, potatoes, bananas and meat.
"A real challenge is comparison shopping because the refugee camp always handed them stuff," Burin said. "They have no more concept that two similar things could sit side by side on the shelf and that, for some reason, you'd be paying twice as much for one as the other. So trying to explain that and to see if they understand it is very difficult."
But not all refugee families in Boise are entirely unfamiliar with modern living and a capitalist economy. Laura Corollo, an IRC volunteer who works with an Iraqi refugee family, explains that her family is adjusting rather quickly to their new way of life.
"Once I taught them the bus schedule, they were on the bus all the time. When I would come over for my weekly visits, they weren't saying, 'OK, can you drive us to the grocery store? Can you drive us here?' They had already done it," Corollo said.
The Iraqi family was forced to flee Baghdad after the father, a mechanical engineer, was persecuted for working for a U.S. company. Though Corollo describes the family as having updated cell phones and clothing, she notes that they still sometimes need help navigating cultural intricacies and adjusting to their new country's social norms.
"I was over [at their apartment] and somebody came by to sell them a cable plan. It was funny because they opened the door and they welcomed him in ... they thought that he was just a friend or neighbor," Corollo said.
One important cultural assimilation mechanism for refugees is television. By watching TV, refugees are able to observe American culture and pick up on English colloquialisms without the pressure of direct, face-to-face communication. Though some refugee families, like the Piyos, were unfamiliar with TV before resettling here, they have quickly taken to the entrancing technology.
"Television is a really great way to learn English, except—and I've heard this about other refugees, too—they like the Spanish language channel," Burin said with a laugh. "I speculated it had something to do with the over-the-top soap operas. Someone else said that they think it's because it's the soccer channel. The other day, one of the refugees said to me as I was leaving, 'manana.'"
Learning the Language
One of the main federal requirements for refugees is attending mandatory English language classes. Refugees from all three agencies attend class daily at the English Language Center near Jefferson and 16th streets until they find full-time employment. Since every refugee varies in his or her educational background and previous English experience, the ELC provides seven different levels of English classes ranging from a class for refugees who are illiterate in their native language to an advanced class that accommodates refugees with highly developed English skills.
But teaching English to refugees is more of a lesson in the nuances of American culture than it is a flash-card-filled romp through sentence structure and split infinitives.
"Most people, when they think of a language class, think grammar and vocabulary. For us, language is being able to navigate your environment. Whether it's riding the bus, whether it's finding out about a concert, all of that really is language," Rainey said. "A person can't become culturally integrated or culturally adept without language and they can't get the language without the culture."
To reinforce the language skills the refugees have learned in class, ELC teachers often take trips to neighboring North End stores and banks. From distinguishing between shampoo and conditioner at Rite Aid to making deposits at U.S. Bank, all of the vocabulary the students learn has practical and immediate applications in their everyday lives. The ELC hopes that, by structuring their learning environment less traditionally, the refugees will feel more comfortable appropriating and utilizing their newly acquired language skills.
"Our classes are very informal, in that, as much as possible, we'd like for them to reflect a social gathering and not a formal classroom. The type of language we use every day isn't academic. It's more like composing music than it is doing mathematics," Rainey said.
One of the major barriers affecting all aspects of refugee assimilation and education is the often unspeakable trauma that drove refugees from their homes in the first place.
"If you're just looking at language acquisition, nothing else, because of the trauma refugees have been through, and because they didn't choose to come here, it creates a different set of needs than any other language learner has," Rainey said. "A lot of times people will seem disinterested, not motivated to learn the language, and that's a very common symptom of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder."
Though all of the resettlement agencies in town provide resources for refugees to cope with their mental anguish and trauma, IRC has developed a unique pilot program for smaller children that they hope can be expanded and used with their parents also.
"There's a technique called EMDR—Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing. It's a simple technique that activates both sides of the brain," Boban explained. The technique has patients focus on their trauma while an external stimulus, like tapping, is applied to the head. "We're combining it with art therapy to help them release traumas without actually having to talk about the trauma. We're working with a counseling group to also do the same technique with the parents, because you can't work with the kids and open them up like that and go home to a chaotic, unstable environment."
Another community member working closely with refugee children is Ann Farris, director of Boise School District's English Language Learners school. The school, which opened in its new location this year in the old Jackson Elementary, specializes in education for refugee and immigrant students who don't speak English as a first language.
"We're right at 200 [students] already. We found last year that we were at about 66 percent refugees, so it's probably close or might have crept up even higher to 70 percent this year," Farris said.
Students in seventh through 12th grades are eligible to attend the English Language Learners school for four semesters. The students then transition into their neighborhood schools, where interpreters assist them in integrating into the required curriculum. Elementary-aged students, on the other hand, transition into the regular classrooms soon after they arrive.
"The kids become what we call 'cultural brokers' and they become the helpers of their families in so many ways, helping them navigate how things work and, of course, they're acquiring the English language, typically at such a rapid pace," Farris said. "Some of the parents, they're taking English classes, too, and certainly trying, but [the children] really are the information sharers."
Rights and Responsibilities
In addition to daily language classes at the English Language Center, refugees also attend a weekly job-training class offered by their agency. Because of the limited amount of funding and staff support at the agencies, economic self-sufficiency is their most pressing goal. Each agency spends a considerable amount of time instructing refugees in the expectations and skills required to succeed in the American workplace.
At a recent job-training session held by World Relief at Crossroads Church on Cole Road, the conference room bustled with an assortment of refugee populations. Each time job developer Lindsay Keban explained things like how to look for jobs in classified ads or proper phone habits when speaking to potential employers, the room blossomed with a litany of languages.
With seven interpreters at this session, translating for populations ranging from Arabic-speaking Somalis to Karen-speaking Burmese, the church sounded like a break room at the United Nations. Just like the English language classes, job-training classes tend to have a wider scope than just employment.
"At some point in the last few years, we had had refugee groups that were so far removed from American culture that we realized we just needed to spend that much more time with them. So the classes have become 12 weeks," Keban said.
Other agencies in town have also noticed an educational divide with recent incoming refugee populations. IRC developed a job training program specifically for Burundian women, many of whom are pre-literate, pre-numerate and have never been employed.
The program works with local hotels like Shiloh Inn and Hotel 43 to train these women in the skills they would need to be housekeepers—everything from working the hotel's elevators to identifying various cleaning chemicals.
"Eighty percent of refugees are women and children. A lot of the women that are coming are single moms. These women have to work, there's no choice and there's no support network for them. So the faster we can get them employed, the less vulnerable they are, the less vulnerable their children are," Boban said.
Though ANA has a similar program for Burmese women, it also focuses on helping more highly educated refugees get new credentials. People who were history teachers or doctors before they were forced to flee their country often have a much harder time adjusting to the more menial jobs they're required to initially accept as refugees.
"We have a lot of Iraqis coming, some of them are very highly educated, speak English very well and have very high expectations of employment," Bruce-Bennion noted.
Each of the job training classes offered by the agencies covers a specific topic, from riding public transportation to filling out job applications to the importance of punctuality. Though these lessons are covered at the English Language Center's cultural orientations, which happen every eight weeks, repetition is regarded as the most important way for refugees to solidify new information.
"Everybody agrees that the more times the information is given, in different ways, at different junctures of someone's experience when they first come in, the better it is going to be for them. They're going to be better prepared," explained Jamie Delavan, a volunteer who has partnered with Idaho Women's Network to put together a new, agency-spanning Refugee Education Training Program.
Delavan has worked closely with Ronna Parish, Pam Twilegar and Erika Molchan to develop a cultural training manual for refugees and the volunteers who work with them. Though they initially began working on the program with IRC, the group hopes their five-part "Know Your Rights" program will soon be integrated into the cultural orientations of all three agencies.
The program places a strong emphasis on culture-specific education, dividing classes into single-language groups so that the usual cacophony of interpreters isn't so distracting. The group's program also focuses heavily on human rights, stressing that all people are guaranteed certain rights regardless of their sex, race, religion or nationality.
"We wanted to set it up so we could focus on, 'Here are the rights that you have living in the United States,' and then, 'Here are the responsibilities that go along with those rights. So, you have the right to religious freedom, but you have to obey the laws. You have the right to an education, but here's the system that you have to work within in order to get that education,'" Parish said.
Another part of the group's program is an orientation to Idaho law. For this session, Boise Police officer and refugee liaison Shelli Sonnenberg explains everything from what to do when a police officer pulls them over, to how much it costs to call 911. Since many refugees are accustomed to dealing with corrupt cops who operate on a system of bribes and kickbacks, it can be hard for them to accept police officers in a non-threatening role.
"When the new Americans get here, I teach them about the laws of this country and focus on the ones that are really different from where they're from. The big ones are probably domestic battery, child abuse, statutory rape. Depending on the countries that they come from, those are completely different laws that don't even exist," Sonnenberg explained.
She has been instrumental in creating understanding between the police department and refugees. Sonnenberg developed a refugee orientation class for new police hires and instructs them in cultural sensitivity for the various refugee populations living in Boise.
Though a lot of the police calls Sonnenberg receives from refugees don't fall under her traditional jurisdiction, she's happy to respond to all the calls that she can, if only to show refugees that the police department is there when they are in need.
"Maybe they didn't have running water, or maybe they didn't have electricity, which may not be a police problem, but when they think that their landlord has turned off their power, not realizing that maybe a light bulb has burned out, then they call me. I had one little boy call 911 because his mom wouldn't make him pizza. To him, that actually was an emergency," Sonnenberg said.
A Permanent Home
Though each agency aims to have refugees settled and self-sufficient within six to eight months of arrival—when food stamps and Medicaid start to run out—they are now working with community organizations to develop educational programs with a more long-term reach. Saint Alphonsus Regional Medical Center received a $500,000 grant to open a center to provide reproductive health and infant care for non-English speaking women. The center is called Care Maternal and Child Health Clinic and will open in St. Al's next year.
"Our desire is to get health advisers from every cultural group so they can give us input on how we can improve services within their culture. We're working with different community agencies to solidify and make sure that we are doing what we can and not reinventing the wheel," said Judy Hobbs, manager of the St. Al's Family Center.
Also, the Boise Police Department is developing an interpreter program in which refugees who speak English and are familiar with American culture will be trained to accompany police officers on some of their more serious calls. The interpreters will be able to act as liaisons between non-English speakers and the police in times of crisis.
"They'll go through law enforcement training so that they have an idea what's expected of them. Using those individuals as our interpreters, then maybe we'll get to have some insight into the way their culture works and how—in those high stress situations—how we can handle it better," Sonnenberg said.
By becoming interpreters, refugees are given the opportunity to help those in need. Most of the interpreters who work with the three agencies in town have gone through one of the resettlement programs. As more refugees acclimate to American life, become proficient in English and train to be interpreters, they open doors for other refugees to resettle in Boise.
"Many times, former refugees become interpreters. Maybe they've gone through the resettlement process or they might have [spoken] good English to begin with. Each of the agencies really engages bilingual people and provides training opportunities for them to become effective interpreters," said Jan Reeves, director of the Idaho Office of Refugees.
Raj Shrestha, a Nepali interpreter from Bhutan, is one of those who has successfully made the transition into American society. At IRC's job-training session, Shrestha was the interpreter for a long table of Bhutanese refugees. Dressed in casual western clothing, Shrestha explained the nuances he's learned since he's been here—like shaking his head from side to side is a sign of disagreement, not approval like in his culture. He's also mastered the art of looking into people's eyes while they're speaking, an action that is seen as highly disrespectful in Bhutan.
When Gautam approached to tell his story of torture due to mistaken identity and to show the painful scars that run down his back, Shrestha interpreted his words. As Gautam spoke, Shrestha waited patiently for him to finish, then said:
"Everything the IRC is doing is really helping [the Bhutanese refugee community] get where they need to be. He wants to thank them for all they do."
Similar Impacts Found in Study Of Immigration Crackdowns
By Kristen Mack
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 28, 2008; Page PW01
Prince William County may have one of the nation's toughest enforcement laws against illegal immigration, but a recent examination of largely less stringent measures across the country found that their impact on communities is often the same.
Five years ago, immigration enforcement wasn't on the radar of most local law enforcement agencies, according to James Pendergraph, director of state and local coordination for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The 287(g) program, which is named for the section of the law authorizing it and allows local law enforcement officials to assist ICE in processing illegal immigrants, was first authorized in 1996. Yet the law sat unused for most of a decade. In 2003 Alabama became the first state to implement an agreement.
Only six more agreements were made from 2004 to 2006. The number has jumped since, with 55 state and local law enforcement agencies entering into agreements. An additional 80 are in the pipeline.
Prince William signed on last summer. Part of what distinguishes it from other jurisdictions is that it works with ICE in its jails and through a special task force of police officers on the street. But as in other communities, its law has divided the community and raised fears among immigrants.
"Prince William has been the catalyst for the expansion of the 287(g) program across the U.S.," said Board of County Supervisors Chairman Corey A. Stewart (R-At Large).
"There were just a handful doing it before us. The pioneering jurisdictions, Prince William principally among them, have been the impetus for this proliferation."
Randy Capps, a senior research associate with the Urban Institute, studied the evolution of the program and its potential effects on communities.
"It coincides with the concerted effort, by a well-coordinated group of like-minded people, to put pressure on authorities to get involved in immigration enforcement," he said of the agreements.
Most of the participating 287(g) jurisdictions are in the Southeast; Virginia had the most, with nine, followed by North Carolina, with eight.
More than 60,000 suspected illegal immigrants have been identified through the program in the past two years, Capps found. Statistics ICE provided to the Virginia State Crime Commission show that in fiscal 2007, law enforcement agencies in the state made 12,073 reports to the federal agency, which resulted in 694 detentions.
The Urban Institute also conducted a case study on how the program was implemented in four jurisdictions in northwestern Arkansas. It found a steady but moderate number of arrests, about 15 per week. Yet the fear level increased among immigrants. Many were scared to drive or leave their homes.
All of that should sound familiar to Prince William residents.
"If you are an illegal immigrant, you should be anxious and concerned about driving," Stewart said. "To the extent that we have caused anxiety among the illegal community, I think that's a good thing, because we don't want them here in the first place."
Among the potential effects of arrests on communities, Capps cited increasing distrust between the community and police and a decrease in the number of immigrants reporting crime. Capps made his presentation last week to several hundred police and local officials at a conference on immigration policing and civil liberties in the District. The conference was sponsored by the Police Foundation, a private national group.
At its Sept. 9 meeting, the first after a month-long recess, the county board is expected to get an update on illegal immigration enforcement.
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 28, 2008; Page PW01
Prince William County may have one of the nation's toughest enforcement laws against illegal immigration, but a recent examination of largely less stringent measures across the country found that their impact on communities is often the same.
Five years ago, immigration enforcement wasn't on the radar of most local law enforcement agencies, according to James Pendergraph, director of state and local coordination for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The 287(g) program, which is named for the section of the law authorizing it and allows local law enforcement officials to assist ICE in processing illegal immigrants, was first authorized in 1996. Yet the law sat unused for most of a decade. In 2003 Alabama became the first state to implement an agreement.
Only six more agreements were made from 2004 to 2006. The number has jumped since, with 55 state and local law enforcement agencies entering into agreements. An additional 80 are in the pipeline.
Prince William signed on last summer. Part of what distinguishes it from other jurisdictions is that it works with ICE in its jails and through a special task force of police officers on the street. But as in other communities, its law has divided the community and raised fears among immigrants.
"Prince William has been the catalyst for the expansion of the 287(g) program across the U.S.," said Board of County Supervisors Chairman Corey A. Stewart (R-At Large).
"There were just a handful doing it before us. The pioneering jurisdictions, Prince William principally among them, have been the impetus for this proliferation."
Randy Capps, a senior research associate with the Urban Institute, studied the evolution of the program and its potential effects on communities.
"It coincides with the concerted effort, by a well-coordinated group of like-minded people, to put pressure on authorities to get involved in immigration enforcement," he said of the agreements.
Most of the participating 287(g) jurisdictions are in the Southeast; Virginia had the most, with nine, followed by North Carolina, with eight.
More than 60,000 suspected illegal immigrants have been identified through the program in the past two years, Capps found. Statistics ICE provided to the Virginia State Crime Commission show that in fiscal 2007, law enforcement agencies in the state made 12,073 reports to the federal agency, which resulted in 694 detentions.
The Urban Institute also conducted a case study on how the program was implemented in four jurisdictions in northwestern Arkansas. It found a steady but moderate number of arrests, about 15 per week. Yet the fear level increased among immigrants. Many were scared to drive or leave their homes.
All of that should sound familiar to Prince William residents.
"If you are an illegal immigrant, you should be anxious and concerned about driving," Stewart said. "To the extent that we have caused anxiety among the illegal community, I think that's a good thing, because we don't want them here in the first place."
Among the potential effects of arrests on communities, Capps cited increasing distrust between the community and police and a decrease in the number of immigrants reporting crime. Capps made his presentation last week to several hundred police and local officials at a conference on immigration policing and civil liberties in the District. The conference was sponsored by the Police Foundation, a private national group.
At its Sept. 9 meeting, the first after a month-long recess, the county board is expected to get an update on illegal immigration enforcement.
U.S.: End Beating of Children in Public Schools
Violation of dress code can be a matter of not tucking in your shirt according to students I've talked to in a high school that practices paddling. Crazy!
-Patricia
Abusive, Discriminatory Punishment Undermines Education
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: hrwpress@hrw.org or media@aclu.org
DALLAS – More than 200,000 US public school students were punished by beatings during the 2006-2007 school year, Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union said in a joint report released today. In the 13 states that corporally punished more than 1,000 students per year, African-American girls were twice as likely to be beaten as their white counterparts.
In the 125-page report, "A Violent Education: Corporal Punishment of Children in U.S. Public Schools," the ACLU and Human Rights Watch found that in Texas and Mississippi children ranging in age from 3 to 19 years old are routinely physically punished for minor infractions such as chewing gum, talking back to a teacher, or violating the dress code, as well as for more serious transgressions such as fighting. Corporal punishment, legal in 21 states, typically takes the form of "paddling," during which an administrator or teacher hits a child repeatedly on the buttocks with a long wooden board. The report shows that, as a result of paddling, many children are left injured, degraded, and disengaged from school.
"Every public school needs effective methods of discipline, but beating kids teaches violence and it doesn't stop bad behavior," said Alice Farmer, Aryeh Neier Fellow at Human Rights Watch and the ACLU, and author of the report. "Corporal punishment discourages learning, fails to deter future misbehavior and at times even provokes it."
The report found that in the 13 southern states where corporal punishment is most prevalent, African-American students are punished at 1.4 times the rate that would be expected given their numbers in the student population, and African-American girls are 2.1 times more likely to be paddled than might be expected. There is no evidence that these students commit disciplinary infractions at disproportionate rates.
"Minority students in public schools already face barriers to success," said Farmer. "By exposing these children to disproportionate rates of corporal punishment, schools create a hostile environment in which these students may struggle even more."
Students with mental and physical disabilities are also punished at disproportionate rates, with potentially serious consequences for their development. In Texas, for instance, 18.4 percent of the total number of students who were physically punished were special education students, even though they make up only 10.7 percent of the student population.
"A Violent Education" is based on four weeks of on-the-ground research in Mississippi and Texas in late 2007 and early 2008, including more than 175 interviews with children, teachers, parents, administrators, superintendents, and school board members.
The report documents several cases in which children were beaten to the point of serious injury. Since educators who beat children have immunity under law from assault proceedings, parents who try to pursue justice for injured children encounter resistance from police, district attorneys, and courts. Parents also face enormous, sometimes insurmountable, obstacles in trying to prevent physical punishment of their children. While some school districts permit parents to sign forms opting out of corporal punishment for their children, the forms are often ignored.
In the report, the ACLU and Human Rights Watch cite experts on best practices in school discipline, who emphasize traditional approaches such as detention, and modern approaches such as positive behavior support systems. Positive behavior support systems, which are school-wide discipline systems that stress a clear structure of rewards and consequences for student behavior, have been effectively implemented in major U.S. school systems. States and school boards that fail to implement best practices allow the status quo, or school beatings, to remain in place.
Human Rights Watch and the ACLU call upon the U.S. government to prohibit corporal punishment in all public schools and urge state governments, school boards, superintendents, and administrators to eliminate physical punishment in their schools.
Selected Witness Accounts:
"He took me into the office and gave me three licks. … He made me hold onto the wall and he paddled me. … It hurt for about two hours, it felt like fire under my butt."
– Matthew S., who was paddled in second grade for throwing food in a school cafeteria in the Mississippi Delta.
"The other kids were watching and laughing. It made me want to fight them… When you get a paddling and you see everyone laugh at you, it make you mad and you want to do something about it."
– Peter S., a middle school student in the Mississippi Delta.
"What made me so angry: he's three years old, he was petrified. He didn't want to go back to school, and he didn't want to start his new school. I was so worried that this was going to constantly be with him, equating going to school with being paddled."
– Rose T., mother of a 3-year-old boy in Texas who was bruised from physical punishment after he refused to stop playing with his shoes in class.
"I went into the principal's office. … He gave me a chair and said hold onto the chair. The paddle had holes in it. Then he just did three swats. … I was hit on my buttocks. … There were holes in the paddle to make it go faster. … It hurt very much. There were definitely red marks and then swelling… almost welt-like markings. It didn't last for more than a couple days. … It left me feeling very humiliated. I think there were several levels of emotion. Physical pain, mental humiliation. … And being a female at that age, it was like there was this older man hitting me on the butt. That's weird… even at that age I knew it was inappropriate."
– Allison G., a recent graduate punished as a teenager in Texas for being late to class multiple times.
"I've heard this said at my school and at other schools: ‘This child should get less whips, it'll leave marks.' Students that are dark-skinned, it takes more to let their skin be bruised. Even with all black students, there is an imbalance: darker-skinned students get worse punishment."
– Account of Abrea T., former teacher in rural Mississippi.
"I see corporal punishment as a form of slavery. Beating on the slaves was how the headman got them to do something… we're focused so much on making kids do what we want. Think about the mental capacity that this kind of treatment leaves our children with. We are telling them we don't respect them. They leave that principal's office and they think, ‘they don't consider me a human being.' That young person loses self-respect."
– Account from Doreen W., school board member in a Mississippi Delta town.
To read the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights Watch report, "A Violent Education: Corporal Punishment of Children in U.S. Public Schools," please visit: www.aclu.org/intlhumanrights/gen/36476res20080819.htm
-Patricia
Abusive, Discriminatory Punishment Undermines Education
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: hrwpress@hrw.org or media@aclu.org
DALLAS – More than 200,000 US public school students were punished by beatings during the 2006-2007 school year, Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union said in a joint report released today. In the 13 states that corporally punished more than 1,000 students per year, African-American girls were twice as likely to be beaten as their white counterparts.
In the 125-page report, "A Violent Education: Corporal Punishment of Children in U.S. Public Schools," the ACLU and Human Rights Watch found that in Texas and Mississippi children ranging in age from 3 to 19 years old are routinely physically punished for minor infractions such as chewing gum, talking back to a teacher, or violating the dress code, as well as for more serious transgressions such as fighting. Corporal punishment, legal in 21 states, typically takes the form of "paddling," during which an administrator or teacher hits a child repeatedly on the buttocks with a long wooden board. The report shows that, as a result of paddling, many children are left injured, degraded, and disengaged from school.
"Every public school needs effective methods of discipline, but beating kids teaches violence and it doesn't stop bad behavior," said Alice Farmer, Aryeh Neier Fellow at Human Rights Watch and the ACLU, and author of the report. "Corporal punishment discourages learning, fails to deter future misbehavior and at times even provokes it."
The report found that in the 13 southern states where corporal punishment is most prevalent, African-American students are punished at 1.4 times the rate that would be expected given their numbers in the student population, and African-American girls are 2.1 times more likely to be paddled than might be expected. There is no evidence that these students commit disciplinary infractions at disproportionate rates.
"Minority students in public schools already face barriers to success," said Farmer. "By exposing these children to disproportionate rates of corporal punishment, schools create a hostile environment in which these students may struggle even more."
Students with mental and physical disabilities are also punished at disproportionate rates, with potentially serious consequences for their development. In Texas, for instance, 18.4 percent of the total number of students who were physically punished were special education students, even though they make up only 10.7 percent of the student population.
"A Violent Education" is based on four weeks of on-the-ground research in Mississippi and Texas in late 2007 and early 2008, including more than 175 interviews with children, teachers, parents, administrators, superintendents, and school board members.
The report documents several cases in which children were beaten to the point of serious injury. Since educators who beat children have immunity under law from assault proceedings, parents who try to pursue justice for injured children encounter resistance from police, district attorneys, and courts. Parents also face enormous, sometimes insurmountable, obstacles in trying to prevent physical punishment of their children. While some school districts permit parents to sign forms opting out of corporal punishment for their children, the forms are often ignored.
In the report, the ACLU and Human Rights Watch cite experts on best practices in school discipline, who emphasize traditional approaches such as detention, and modern approaches such as positive behavior support systems. Positive behavior support systems, which are school-wide discipline systems that stress a clear structure of rewards and consequences for student behavior, have been effectively implemented in major U.S. school systems. States and school boards that fail to implement best practices allow the status quo, or school beatings, to remain in place.
Human Rights Watch and the ACLU call upon the U.S. government to prohibit corporal punishment in all public schools and urge state governments, school boards, superintendents, and administrators to eliminate physical punishment in their schools.
Selected Witness Accounts:
"He took me into the office and gave me three licks. … He made me hold onto the wall and he paddled me. … It hurt for about two hours, it felt like fire under my butt."
– Matthew S., who was paddled in second grade for throwing food in a school cafeteria in the Mississippi Delta.
"The other kids were watching and laughing. It made me want to fight them… When you get a paddling and you see everyone laugh at you, it make you mad and you want to do something about it."
– Peter S., a middle school student in the Mississippi Delta.
"What made me so angry: he's three years old, he was petrified. He didn't want to go back to school, and he didn't want to start his new school. I was so worried that this was going to constantly be with him, equating going to school with being paddled."
– Rose T., mother of a 3-year-old boy in Texas who was bruised from physical punishment after he refused to stop playing with his shoes in class.
"I went into the principal's office. … He gave me a chair and said hold onto the chair. The paddle had holes in it. Then he just did three swats. … I was hit on my buttocks. … There were holes in the paddle to make it go faster. … It hurt very much. There were definitely red marks and then swelling… almost welt-like markings. It didn't last for more than a couple days. … It left me feeling very humiliated. I think there were several levels of emotion. Physical pain, mental humiliation. … And being a female at that age, it was like there was this older man hitting me on the butt. That's weird… even at that age I knew it was inappropriate."
– Allison G., a recent graduate punished as a teenager in Texas for being late to class multiple times.
"I've heard this said at my school and at other schools: ‘This child should get less whips, it'll leave marks.' Students that are dark-skinned, it takes more to let their skin be bruised. Even with all black students, there is an imbalance: darker-skinned students get worse punishment."
– Account of Abrea T., former teacher in rural Mississippi.
"I see corporal punishment as a form of slavery. Beating on the slaves was how the headman got them to do something… we're focused so much on making kids do what we want. Think about the mental capacity that this kind of treatment leaves our children with. We are telling them we don't respect them. They leave that principal's office and they think, ‘they don't consider me a human being.' That young person loses self-respect."
– Account from Doreen W., school board member in a Mississippi Delta town.
To read the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights Watch report, "A Violent Education: Corporal Punishment of Children in U.S. Public Schools," please visit: www.aclu.org/intlhumanrights/gen/36476res20080819.htm
Focusing on Immigration at the DNC
A notable line from this article: And because the government cannot deport millions of people, what they do is to make people’s lives miserable so they will leave on their own,” Sharry said. “The New York Times calls it a ‘strategic misery.’ We call it non-violent cleansing.
-Patricia
New America Media, News Report, Anthony D. Advincula
Aug 26, 2008
Editor’s Note: Immigration is a hot button issue at the DNC in Denver and many participants are clamoring for comprehensive reform, reports NAM New York-based editor, Anthony D. Advincula.
DENVER, Co—Before the opening gavel hit the sounding block at the convention’s opening ceremony, Democratic leaders and supporters here did not waste time and took the immigration issues to stage yesterday afternoon.
The Democrats described the current immigration system as dysfunctional, affecting the economy and moral fiber of American society, and reiterated that the Democratic Party strongly recommends a comprehensive immigration reform law to fix the problem.
“Everything with our current immigration enforcement is a failure, starting with ICE,” Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) said in an almost three-hour immigration panel discussion at downton Hilton Inn. “Roughly 30,000 ICE workers lack qualifications.”
Lofgren lashed out at the government for appointing ICE Assistant Secretary Julie Myers, who had no previous experience relating to immigration. “At 46, after working for the Department of Commerce and at the Office of Independent Counsel under Kenneth Starr, the government asked her to do this job. We need to have qualified individuals to handle immigration issues.”
With a rising number of skilled immigrants, U.S. military service personnel being denied legal status, as well as immigrant families who have been entangled in complicated legal bouts and continue to be separated, Lofgren added that the administrative and legal aspects of immigration are clearly discombobulated.
“What kind of system is this when we want a sailor who served for our country to just remain in Iraq because he has a conditional immigration status and is facing a 3- or 10-year ban?” she said. “Detainees have been denied proper healthcare and we declined due process.”
She illustrated the massive ICE arrest of Latino workers in Postville, Iowa, where they were not only denied legal representation, but also charged with robbery. Lofgren alleged that even the judge there scripted the workers’ pleas. She also claimed that about 70 percent of undocumented immigrants in the country are highly skilled and could certainly bolster the U.S. economy.
Frank Sharry, executive director of America’s Voice, admitted that immigration is the biggest challenge for Democrats.
“Republicans always say that we have good laws with bad people violating these good laws. And because the government cannot deport millions of people, what they do is to make people’s lives miserable so they will leave on their own,” Sharry said. “The New York Times calls it a ‘strategic misery.’ We call it non-violent cleansing. This is what they (Republicans) do to try to take control of the system.”
Immigration is indicative to this year’s presidential election, he added. “It’s the defining issue. This is the reason that Senator John McCain had to change his position on comprehensive immigration reform to get the people around him and put him as the party’s candidate.”
For people who say that undocumented immigrants should wait in line, Sharry’s response is: “Where’s the line that they can get into?” He pointed out that there is no effective system that allows immigrants to wait, because they are waiting for nothing. “Believe me, anyone would want to take the airplane to come to this country, rather than crossing the river.”
Democratic leaders also assured that their party would continue to endorse elements of comprehensive immigration reform – and that it will be the position of the national party no matter what the Congress does.
“I’m confident that during the first term of Barack Obama, we will have comprehensive immigration reform,” Lofgren said. “What we need to do is to make it public.”
Marco Lopez, Jr., director of the Arizona State Department of Commerce, concurred. “Immigration reform is the only way to end the violence at the border. It will solve crimes relating to human smuggling.”
Lopez, who was the former mayor of Nogales, Arizona, said that 50 percent of immigration-related arrests in his state happen in a 20-mile stretch between Nogales and Tucson, where organized smuggling rings operate.
“We should stand up to bullies. We should stand up to people hijacking the immigration debates. We should stand up to those who exclude people based on their race and where they come from,” Sharry said. “It’s ridiculous to hear people rejoicing when there are few people who speak Spanish in their schools. I hope this all ends soon.”
-Patricia
New America Media, News Report, Anthony D. Advincula
Aug 26, 2008
Editor’s Note: Immigration is a hot button issue at the DNC in Denver and many participants are clamoring for comprehensive reform, reports NAM New York-based editor, Anthony D. Advincula.
DENVER, Co—Before the opening gavel hit the sounding block at the convention’s opening ceremony, Democratic leaders and supporters here did not waste time and took the immigration issues to stage yesterday afternoon.
The Democrats described the current immigration system as dysfunctional, affecting the economy and moral fiber of American society, and reiterated that the Democratic Party strongly recommends a comprehensive immigration reform law to fix the problem.
“Everything with our current immigration enforcement is a failure, starting with ICE,” Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) said in an almost three-hour immigration panel discussion at downton Hilton Inn. “Roughly 30,000 ICE workers lack qualifications.”
Lofgren lashed out at the government for appointing ICE Assistant Secretary Julie Myers, who had no previous experience relating to immigration. “At 46, after working for the Department of Commerce and at the Office of Independent Counsel under Kenneth Starr, the government asked her to do this job. We need to have qualified individuals to handle immigration issues.”
With a rising number of skilled immigrants, U.S. military service personnel being denied legal status, as well as immigrant families who have been entangled in complicated legal bouts and continue to be separated, Lofgren added that the administrative and legal aspects of immigration are clearly discombobulated.
“What kind of system is this when we want a sailor who served for our country to just remain in Iraq because he has a conditional immigration status and is facing a 3- or 10-year ban?” she said. “Detainees have been denied proper healthcare and we declined due process.”
She illustrated the massive ICE arrest of Latino workers in Postville, Iowa, where they were not only denied legal representation, but also charged with robbery. Lofgren alleged that even the judge there scripted the workers’ pleas. She also claimed that about 70 percent of undocumented immigrants in the country are highly skilled and could certainly bolster the U.S. economy.
Frank Sharry, executive director of America’s Voice, admitted that immigration is the biggest challenge for Democrats.
“Republicans always say that we have good laws with bad people violating these good laws. And because the government cannot deport millions of people, what they do is to make people’s lives miserable so they will leave on their own,” Sharry said. “The New York Times calls it a ‘strategic misery.’ We call it non-violent cleansing. This is what they (Republicans) do to try to take control of the system.”
Immigration is indicative to this year’s presidential election, he added. “It’s the defining issue. This is the reason that Senator John McCain had to change his position on comprehensive immigration reform to get the people around him and put him as the party’s candidate.”
For people who say that undocumented immigrants should wait in line, Sharry’s response is: “Where’s the line that they can get into?” He pointed out that there is no effective system that allows immigrants to wait, because they are waiting for nothing. “Believe me, anyone would want to take the airplane to come to this country, rather than crossing the river.”
Democratic leaders also assured that their party would continue to endorse elements of comprehensive immigration reform – and that it will be the position of the national party no matter what the Congress does.
“I’m confident that during the first term of Barack Obama, we will have comprehensive immigration reform,” Lofgren said. “What we need to do is to make it public.”
Marco Lopez, Jr., director of the Arizona State Department of Commerce, concurred. “Immigration reform is the only way to end the violence at the border. It will solve crimes relating to human smuggling.”
Lopez, who was the former mayor of Nogales, Arizona, said that 50 percent of immigration-related arrests in his state happen in a 20-mile stretch between Nogales and Tucson, where organized smuggling rings operate.
“We should stand up to bullies. We should stand up to people hijacking the immigration debates. We should stand up to those who exclude people based on their race and where they come from,” Sharry said. “It’s ridiculous to hear people rejoicing when there are few people who speak Spanish in their schools. I hope this all ends soon.”
Immigration: Too Hot for the Dems?
By Roberto Lovato, New America Media.
August 27, 2008.
America's brutal immigration detention network is getting little attention from Democratic reformers and their institutional allies in Denver.
DENVER, Colo. -- On the eve of the official nomination of presidential candidate Barack Obama, the son of an immigrant, some of the leading voices shaping the Democratic Party's immigration reform platform reveal a mix of reserved optimism and pragmatism.
While the Blue Dog Democrats -- a group of 47 moderate and conservative Democratic Party members of the United States House of Representatives -- support a position on immigration that bears more than a passing resemblance to the "enforcement only" approach of many Republicans, other Democrats support a combination of legalization and major reforms as alternatives to the raids and detentions that defined the Bush era of immigration.
In between these two positions are a significant number of Democrats and their supporters, who want to focus primarily on legalization without including any significant changes to the policies that enable raids and massive detention like this week's raid in Mississippi.
Outside of the Pepsi Convention Center are hundreds of immigrant rights groups planning a major mobilization this Thursday -- the day of Obama's acceptance speech. They will protest what they believe is the unwillingness of Democrats and their Washington-based immigrant rights allies to seriously support what the press release of the March 25th Coalition calls "human legalization and a moratorium on raids and deportations."
As she anxiously awaits the end of Bush era, Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., Chair of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security, and International Law, says she sees real change on the immigration horizon. "I'm confident that with an Obama presidency we will have comprehensive immigration reform in the first term -- but it's not going to be easy."
Lofgren, a former immigration attorney, and other panelists speaking at one of the few events on immigration among the hundreds at the convention, were cautiously optimistic. But they also expressed a number of different interpretations of what the types of policies define "comprehensive immigration reform."
For her part, Lofgren, who did not support the McCain-Kennedy bill -- which combined policies legalizing the more than 12 million undocumented immigrants in the United States with policies increasing the number of ways to persecute, prosecute, jail and deport future undocumented immigrants -- believes that "an important part of the answer is not to have so many people who do not have legal status." But at the same time, she believes that something must be done to bring an end to a "whole (detention) system that is wrong and causing lots of suffering." Lofgren and a number of other Democrats in Congress cite the recent case of the Chinese immigrant Hui Lui Ng, who died in immigration detention just two weeks before the DNC.
Though he, too, decries the raids, detention and deportation cited by Lofgren and others as the "least humane part of the broken immigration system," Simon Rosenberg, President and Founder of the New Democrat Network (NDN), which sponsored the panel, is not optimistic that these issues will be included in whatever reform package gets introduced next.
"Although desirable, I think it would be difficult to include fixing the detention and (immigration) judicial system in comprehensive immigration reform, because it really wasn't a critical part of what came about last time," said Rosenberg. "It doesn't mean that it shouldn't get done. I'm just not sure if that's the best vehicle for it. If the goal is to include these issues in comprehensive immigration reform, then we have lots of work to do to make them front and center in this debate."
Frank Sharry, executive director of America's Voice, a Washington-based immigration reform group, admitted that he and other supporters of the McCain-Kennedy legislation failed because they "made concessions" on detention, enforcement and other issues in order to woo Republicans, who, Sharry said, "failed to bring any votes."
"We knew the Senate bill was deeply flawed, but we believed the legalization component for the 12 million immigrants was decent, and the family reunification provisions could be fixed before the final passage," Sharry said.
Sharry also stated that he and others were "hopeful" they could change some of the more than 700 pages of enforcement language in the McCain-Kennedy legislation.
For his part, Congressman Raul M. Grijalva, whose district in McCain's home state of Arizona was referred to during hallway talk at the DNC as "ground zero" for the immigration reform debate, said he has been pushing for his colleagues to place a priority not just on legalization, but on detention and raids as well. "We can't wait any more when it comes to demilitarizing and improving enforcement and detention," Grijalva said, as he received word of the ICE raid in Mississippi. "It's what I hear in my district all the time; all the time. And things have gotten better for us (Democrats) in the past five years. Our side has to get tougher. We can't afford to be as muted this time."
August 27, 2008.
America's brutal immigration detention network is getting little attention from Democratic reformers and their institutional allies in Denver.
DENVER, Colo. -- On the eve of the official nomination of presidential candidate Barack Obama, the son of an immigrant, some of the leading voices shaping the Democratic Party's immigration reform platform reveal a mix of reserved optimism and pragmatism.
While the Blue Dog Democrats -- a group of 47 moderate and conservative Democratic Party members of the United States House of Representatives -- support a position on immigration that bears more than a passing resemblance to the "enforcement only" approach of many Republicans, other Democrats support a combination of legalization and major reforms as alternatives to the raids and detentions that defined the Bush era of immigration.
In between these two positions are a significant number of Democrats and their supporters, who want to focus primarily on legalization without including any significant changes to the policies that enable raids and massive detention like this week's raid in Mississippi.
Outside of the Pepsi Convention Center are hundreds of immigrant rights groups planning a major mobilization this Thursday -- the day of Obama's acceptance speech. They will protest what they believe is the unwillingness of Democrats and their Washington-based immigrant rights allies to seriously support what the press release of the March 25th Coalition calls "human legalization and a moratorium on raids and deportations."
As she anxiously awaits the end of Bush era, Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., Chair of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security, and International Law, says she sees real change on the immigration horizon. "I'm confident that with an Obama presidency we will have comprehensive immigration reform in the first term -- but it's not going to be easy."
Lofgren, a former immigration attorney, and other panelists speaking at one of the few events on immigration among the hundreds at the convention, were cautiously optimistic. But they also expressed a number of different interpretations of what the types of policies define "comprehensive immigration reform."
For her part, Lofgren, who did not support the McCain-Kennedy bill -- which combined policies legalizing the more than 12 million undocumented immigrants in the United States with policies increasing the number of ways to persecute, prosecute, jail and deport future undocumented immigrants -- believes that "an important part of the answer is not to have so many people who do not have legal status." But at the same time, she believes that something must be done to bring an end to a "whole (detention) system that is wrong and causing lots of suffering." Lofgren and a number of other Democrats in Congress cite the recent case of the Chinese immigrant Hui Lui Ng, who died in immigration detention just two weeks before the DNC.
Though he, too, decries the raids, detention and deportation cited by Lofgren and others as the "least humane part of the broken immigration system," Simon Rosenberg, President and Founder of the New Democrat Network (NDN), which sponsored the panel, is not optimistic that these issues will be included in whatever reform package gets introduced next.
"Although desirable, I think it would be difficult to include fixing the detention and (immigration) judicial system in comprehensive immigration reform, because it really wasn't a critical part of what came about last time," said Rosenberg. "It doesn't mean that it shouldn't get done. I'm just not sure if that's the best vehicle for it. If the goal is to include these issues in comprehensive immigration reform, then we have lots of work to do to make them front and center in this debate."
Frank Sharry, executive director of America's Voice, a Washington-based immigration reform group, admitted that he and other supporters of the McCain-Kennedy legislation failed because they "made concessions" on detention, enforcement and other issues in order to woo Republicans, who, Sharry said, "failed to bring any votes."
"We knew the Senate bill was deeply flawed, but we believed the legalization component for the 12 million immigrants was decent, and the family reunification provisions could be fixed before the final passage," Sharry said.
Sharry also stated that he and others were "hopeful" they could change some of the more than 700 pages of enforcement language in the McCain-Kennedy legislation.
For his part, Congressman Raul M. Grijalva, whose district in McCain's home state of Arizona was referred to during hallway talk at the DNC as "ground zero" for the immigration reform debate, said he has been pushing for his colleagues to place a priority not just on legalization, but on detention and raids as well. "We can't wait any more when it comes to demilitarizing and improving enforcement and detention," Grijalva said, as he received word of the ICE raid in Mississippi. "It's what I hear in my district all the time; all the time. And things have gotten better for us (Democrats) in the past five years. Our side has to get tougher. We can't afford to be as muted this time."
Poverty rate fell in 2007, census data show
Other Southern California counties also show slight declines. The effects of the sharp economic downturn and rising unemployment since last year are unclear.
By Rich Connell and David Pierson | LA Times
August 27, 2008
Poverty across Southern California declined significantly during the first seven years of the decade, a period marked by a booming economy, gentrifying neighborhoods and soaring housing prices, according to census data released Tuesday.
Bucking a national trend, Los Angeles County's poverty rate dropped notably between 2000 and 2007, the data showed, with the percentage of residents living below the federal poverty level falling from 17.9% in 2000 to 14.7% last year. Similar declines occurred in Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura counties. By contrast, the national poverty rate rose slightly during the same period.
The new figures from the Census Bureau's annual American Community Survey reflect broad economic and demographic changes occurring in Southern California, analysts say.
"The population is getting older, and older people have higher incomes," said Dowell Myers, a USC professor of policy, planning and development. Also, immigration rates are continuing to decline, and it is the most recent newcomers who tend to have the highest poverty rates, he said.
"We have an immigrant population that is settling in, and that is raising their incomes," he added.
The figures do not reflect the effect of the sharp economic downturn that took hold this year, and researchers said it is unclear whether declines in poverty will continue in 2008.
For Brigitte Erickson, the first half of this decade was marked by comfortable personal finances that allowed her a nice apartment, dinners at restaurants and other entertainment. But two years ago, the 58-year-old Azusa woman's circumstances began to change. A big rent increase forced her to move out of her Arcadia apartment, and the rising cost of gas and other consumer goods prompted her to go out less often. "My only luxury now is having cable TV," said Erickson, who works in the women's clothing business. "I never go anywhere."
And some advocates for the poor argue that the declining poverty numbers don't tell the whole story.
For example, according to an analysis by the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, the census survey shows that despite the drop in the poverty level, the number of workers in Los Angeles County who earn less than $25,000, 30% of the full-time workforce, has dropped only slightly from 2006. "We have a lot of low-wage jobs," said Jessica Goodheart, research director for the alliance. "It impacts every aspect of our civic life."
Falling poverty rates also have not necessarily meant rising household incomes, the census found.
Median household incomes have risen in Los Angeles, Riverside and San Bernardino counties. But in the region's two more affluent counties, Ventura and Orange, median incomes declined when adjusted for inflation. The median income in Ventura and Orange counties -- the point at which half of households earn more and half earn less -- is about $73,000, while in the other counties the figure is about a third lower.
Uneven trends are also affecting families at the middle and bottom of the economic ladder, where median incomes fell from 2006 to 2007, according to a study by the California Budget Project, a nonpartisan research group.
"It took six years for low- and middle-income Californians to regain ground lost from the 2001 recession. But those gains were too little, too late," said Jean Ross, the research group's executive director.
Marianne Haver Hill, executive director of MEND, the largest charitable group in the San Fernando Valley, said the decrease in poverty rates also may be a product of federal efforts to encourage welfare recipients to find jobs. But whatever gains have been made are rapidly being reversed for many families now that the economy is slipping, she said.
"We have families renting and living in unfinished garages for $500 to $600 a month, and even that's a huge chunk of their income, let alone the increased cost of food and" transportation, she said.
Andres Cruz used to put in 50 hours per week at $12 per hour building granite and marble countertops for new and remodeled homes. For added income, he would peddle Popsicles for a few hours on weekends at MacArthur Park. But in January, the 48-year-old Westlake resident was laid off.
Now, he competes against more than a dozen other Popsicle vendors at the park, making $40 on a good afternoon. A second job at $8 per hour maintaining a coin laundry helps, but overall he takes in about half his previous pay. "I'm working a lot more and making a lot less," Cruz said.
The census data also show that child poverty remains a major problem in Los Angeles County. More than 1 in 5 residents younger than 18 were living below the poverty line in 2007, which is about $21,000 for a family of four. The county rate did not change significantly from the year before, according to Tuesday's report.
Now, job losses, housing problems and the rising cost of goods and services are weighing heavily on the economic tier above the poverty line, social service agencies said.
The census report offers "a bright moment that has a dark lining to it," said Alicia Lara, vice president of community investment for United Way of Southern California. "We're concerned because the middle class is being squeezed."
By Rich Connell and David Pierson | LA Times
August 27, 2008
Poverty across Southern California declined significantly during the first seven years of the decade, a period marked by a booming economy, gentrifying neighborhoods and soaring housing prices, according to census data released Tuesday.
Bucking a national trend, Los Angeles County's poverty rate dropped notably between 2000 and 2007, the data showed, with the percentage of residents living below the federal poverty level falling from 17.9% in 2000 to 14.7% last year. Similar declines occurred in Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura counties. By contrast, the national poverty rate rose slightly during the same period.
The new figures from the Census Bureau's annual American Community Survey reflect broad economic and demographic changes occurring in Southern California, analysts say.
"The population is getting older, and older people have higher incomes," said Dowell Myers, a USC professor of policy, planning and development. Also, immigration rates are continuing to decline, and it is the most recent newcomers who tend to have the highest poverty rates, he said.
"We have an immigrant population that is settling in, and that is raising their incomes," he added.
The figures do not reflect the effect of the sharp economic downturn that took hold this year, and researchers said it is unclear whether declines in poverty will continue in 2008.
For Brigitte Erickson, the first half of this decade was marked by comfortable personal finances that allowed her a nice apartment, dinners at restaurants and other entertainment. But two years ago, the 58-year-old Azusa woman's circumstances began to change. A big rent increase forced her to move out of her Arcadia apartment, and the rising cost of gas and other consumer goods prompted her to go out less often. "My only luxury now is having cable TV," said Erickson, who works in the women's clothing business. "I never go anywhere."
And some advocates for the poor argue that the declining poverty numbers don't tell the whole story.
For example, according to an analysis by the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, the census survey shows that despite the drop in the poverty level, the number of workers in Los Angeles County who earn less than $25,000, 30% of the full-time workforce, has dropped only slightly from 2006. "We have a lot of low-wage jobs," said Jessica Goodheart, research director for the alliance. "It impacts every aspect of our civic life."
Falling poverty rates also have not necessarily meant rising household incomes, the census found.
Median household incomes have risen in Los Angeles, Riverside and San Bernardino counties. But in the region's two more affluent counties, Ventura and Orange, median incomes declined when adjusted for inflation. The median income in Ventura and Orange counties -- the point at which half of households earn more and half earn less -- is about $73,000, while in the other counties the figure is about a third lower.
Uneven trends are also affecting families at the middle and bottom of the economic ladder, where median incomes fell from 2006 to 2007, according to a study by the California Budget Project, a nonpartisan research group.
"It took six years for low- and middle-income Californians to regain ground lost from the 2001 recession. But those gains were too little, too late," said Jean Ross, the research group's executive director.
Marianne Haver Hill, executive director of MEND, the largest charitable group in the San Fernando Valley, said the decrease in poverty rates also may be a product of federal efforts to encourage welfare recipients to find jobs. But whatever gains have been made are rapidly being reversed for many families now that the economy is slipping, she said.
"We have families renting and living in unfinished garages for $500 to $600 a month, and even that's a huge chunk of their income, let alone the increased cost of food and" transportation, she said.
Andres Cruz used to put in 50 hours per week at $12 per hour building granite and marble countertops for new and remodeled homes. For added income, he would peddle Popsicles for a few hours on weekends at MacArthur Park. But in January, the 48-year-old Westlake resident was laid off.
Now, he competes against more than a dozen other Popsicle vendors at the park, making $40 on a good afternoon. A second job at $8 per hour maintaining a coin laundry helps, but overall he takes in about half his previous pay. "I'm working a lot more and making a lot less," Cruz said.
The census data also show that child poverty remains a major problem in Los Angeles County. More than 1 in 5 residents younger than 18 were living below the poverty line in 2007, which is about $21,000 for a family of four. The county rate did not change significantly from the year before, according to Tuesday's report.
Now, job losses, housing problems and the rising cost of goods and services are weighing heavily on the economic tier above the poverty line, social service agencies said.
The census report offers "a bright moment that has a dark lining to it," said Alicia Lara, vice president of community investment for United Way of Southern California. "We're concerned because the middle class is being squeezed."
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Small school superintendents must be creative to fill all teaching positions
By Mark Coddington
The Grand Island Independent
Posted Aug 23, 2008 @ 10:29 PM
GRAND ISLAND —
When Superintendent Amy Malander advertised for an art teacher at Cedar Rapids public school in 2006, she didn't exactly get overrun with applications.
Actually, she didn't get any.
Not that it was much of a surprise -- it had happened a few years before with a family and consumer science opening. She advertised for a science teacher the same year as the art job and got a single applicant. This year, she got two applications for a math position.
So Malander improvised. She persuaded an elementary teacher certified to teach K-8 art to tack on high school art, too.
The lack of a certification certainly wasn't desirable to Malander or the state, but in a district with about 135 K-12 students and no other options, it would have to do.
Superintendents of small schools across Central Nebraska can rattle off survival stories like Malander's. It has always been difficult to recruit teachers for specialized positions such as music and industrial arts, they said, but never more difficult than it is today.
And the shortage of qualified applicants is hitting small districts, with their rural settings and lower salaries, the hardest.
"You used to have a job open in social studies, and you'd get 15, 16, 17 applicants," said Mike McCabe, superintendent of Ansley and Arcadia school districts, with 195 and 118 students, respectively. "Now you'd be lucky to get four or five."
At Hampton public schools, Superintendent Holly Herzberg considers herself largely insulated from a teacher shortage. Her 147-student district is close to Grand Island, Aurora and York, giving teachers several options of places to live and employers for their spouses.
She was excited about the number of applications she got recently for a vocational ag position: four.
To a man, the superintendents said they were still able to find high-quality teachers despite the shallow pool of applicants.
But they also described themselves as lucky for just that reason.
"We got some darn good people. We kind of came out of this (year) in excellent shape," said Bob Brown, superintendent of Sargent and Arnold districts in Custer County. "That's not always going to happen."
Social lives and salaries
One explanation for the shortage is simple: a generation of young people who have embraced higher salaries and big-city life in Lincoln, Omaha or outside the state.
It's essentially Nebraska's long-lamented "Brain Drain," played out in teaching.
McCabe said he has seen that older applicants with a spouse and family tend to find small towns appealing as a place to raise children. But recent college graduates tend to dismiss small schools out of hand, because as singles in their early 20s, they see rural areas as a social dead-end.
"I don't think they're looking at the school so much as they're looking at the town's environment and atmosphere," McCabe said.
John Poppert, superintendent of Giltner public schools, said he can understand that concern.
"They're 23, 24 years old," Poppert said. "There's not much to do in Giltner compared to Grand Island or Hastings."
The state's teacher's union, the Nebraska State Education Association, agrees that teachers are leaving the state for what seem to be greener pastures.
NSEA officials cite statistics from the state Department of Education that revealed that only about half of the people of who received teaching certificates from the state in 2005 were teaching here two years later.
But their explanation is different: Teachers are leaving the state not necessarily for more populated areas, but for higher pay, said Jess Wolf, NSEA's president and a former teacher and principal in Arlington.
Wolf noted that the state ranks 45th in the country in teacher pay and cited several examples of colleagues who left for higher pay in Iowa, Kansas or Wyoming.
Several superintendents acknowledged that their districts couldn't pay as much as larger districts -- let alone other fields.
"If you're graduating in math and the sciences, you're going into engineering and not into education because of the low salary," Malander said. "The business world is just outpaying us."
Wolf acknowledged, too, that fluctuation in small schools' state aid limits the amount districts, particularly small ones, could spend on their teachers' salaries.
Still, he said raising salaries significantly could be feasible.
"It takes some gut decisions on the part of school districts to decide where they're going to spend their money," Wolf said.
A proactive approach
This staffing shortage doesn't mean, though, that superintendents are relegated to advertising a position, then praying for applicants.
Many are diligent in building relationships with education departments in the state's colleges, then relentless in pursuing the graduating students in those departments.
Dan Bird, superintendent of Burwell public schools, said it's not unusual for him and his colleagues to call coveted students directly with a sales pitch for their district.
That's a significant change from years past, when the onus was more on candidates to make themselves stand out to districts.
"Instead of waiting for them to come to you, you're making the call, asking them to come," Bird said.
He said he also tries to determine early in the school year which of his teachers aren't planning on returning, so he can advertise earlier and get a better crop of candidates.
"Early" used to mean April, Bird said. Now, it usually means before Jan. 1.
Bird also partners with Burwell Economic Development to give out a recruiting CD highlighting the community's assets to potential candidates.
Others try to include incentives outside their salary limitations.
The Giltner district owns five homes in town that it rents out to young teachers for a low cost.
McCabe said he has reached an agreement with the local teachers' union to allow him to count years of experience that a new teacher doesn't have toward the state's pay scale.
Wolf noted that such arrangements are only legal if the local union representatives sign off on them. He said the NSEA generally disapproves of them, as they leave less funds for other teachers in future negotiations.
Other districts try a more homegrown approach. Malander said she's working to help a Cedar Rapids woman get a foreign language teacher's certificate through a University of Nebraska at Kearney program, and the brightest Cedar Rapids students are told about the opportunities to come back and teach in their hometown.
"You have to start doing your own recruiting," Malander said.
The Grand Island Independent
Posted Aug 23, 2008 @ 10:29 PM
GRAND ISLAND —
When Superintendent Amy Malander advertised for an art teacher at Cedar Rapids public school in 2006, she didn't exactly get overrun with applications.
Actually, she didn't get any.
Not that it was much of a surprise -- it had happened a few years before with a family and consumer science opening. She advertised for a science teacher the same year as the art job and got a single applicant. This year, she got two applications for a math position.
So Malander improvised. She persuaded an elementary teacher certified to teach K-8 art to tack on high school art, too.
The lack of a certification certainly wasn't desirable to Malander or the state, but in a district with about 135 K-12 students and no other options, it would have to do.
Superintendents of small schools across Central Nebraska can rattle off survival stories like Malander's. It has always been difficult to recruit teachers for specialized positions such as music and industrial arts, they said, but never more difficult than it is today.
And the shortage of qualified applicants is hitting small districts, with their rural settings and lower salaries, the hardest.
"You used to have a job open in social studies, and you'd get 15, 16, 17 applicants," said Mike McCabe, superintendent of Ansley and Arcadia school districts, with 195 and 118 students, respectively. "Now you'd be lucky to get four or five."
At Hampton public schools, Superintendent Holly Herzberg considers herself largely insulated from a teacher shortage. Her 147-student district is close to Grand Island, Aurora and York, giving teachers several options of places to live and employers for their spouses.
She was excited about the number of applications she got recently for a vocational ag position: four.
To a man, the superintendents said they were still able to find high-quality teachers despite the shallow pool of applicants.
But they also described themselves as lucky for just that reason.
"We got some darn good people. We kind of came out of this (year) in excellent shape," said Bob Brown, superintendent of Sargent and Arnold districts in Custer County. "That's not always going to happen."
Social lives and salaries
One explanation for the shortage is simple: a generation of young people who have embraced higher salaries and big-city life in Lincoln, Omaha or outside the state.
It's essentially Nebraska's long-lamented "Brain Drain," played out in teaching.
McCabe said he has seen that older applicants with a spouse and family tend to find small towns appealing as a place to raise children. But recent college graduates tend to dismiss small schools out of hand, because as singles in their early 20s, they see rural areas as a social dead-end.
"I don't think they're looking at the school so much as they're looking at the town's environment and atmosphere," McCabe said.
John Poppert, superintendent of Giltner public schools, said he can understand that concern.
"They're 23, 24 years old," Poppert said. "There's not much to do in Giltner compared to Grand Island or Hastings."
The state's teacher's union, the Nebraska State Education Association, agrees that teachers are leaving the state for what seem to be greener pastures.
NSEA officials cite statistics from the state Department of Education that revealed that only about half of the people of who received teaching certificates from the state in 2005 were teaching here two years later.
But their explanation is different: Teachers are leaving the state not necessarily for more populated areas, but for higher pay, said Jess Wolf, NSEA's president and a former teacher and principal in Arlington.
Wolf noted that the state ranks 45th in the country in teacher pay and cited several examples of colleagues who left for higher pay in Iowa, Kansas or Wyoming.
Several superintendents acknowledged that their districts couldn't pay as much as larger districts -- let alone other fields.
"If you're graduating in math and the sciences, you're going into engineering and not into education because of the low salary," Malander said. "The business world is just outpaying us."
Wolf acknowledged, too, that fluctuation in small schools' state aid limits the amount districts, particularly small ones, could spend on their teachers' salaries.
Still, he said raising salaries significantly could be feasible.
"It takes some gut decisions on the part of school districts to decide where they're going to spend their money," Wolf said.
A proactive approach
This staffing shortage doesn't mean, though, that superintendents are relegated to advertising a position, then praying for applicants.
Many are diligent in building relationships with education departments in the state's colleges, then relentless in pursuing the graduating students in those departments.
Dan Bird, superintendent of Burwell public schools, said it's not unusual for him and his colleagues to call coveted students directly with a sales pitch for their district.
That's a significant change from years past, when the onus was more on candidates to make themselves stand out to districts.
"Instead of waiting for them to come to you, you're making the call, asking them to come," Bird said.
He said he also tries to determine early in the school year which of his teachers aren't planning on returning, so he can advertise earlier and get a better crop of candidates.
"Early" used to mean April, Bird said. Now, it usually means before Jan. 1.
Bird also partners with Burwell Economic Development to give out a recruiting CD highlighting the community's assets to potential candidates.
Others try to include incentives outside their salary limitations.
The Giltner district owns five homes in town that it rents out to young teachers for a low cost.
McCabe said he has reached an agreement with the local teachers' union to allow him to count years of experience that a new teacher doesn't have toward the state's pay scale.
Wolf noted that such arrangements are only legal if the local union representatives sign off on them. He said the NSEA generally disapproves of them, as they leave less funds for other teachers in future negotiations.
Other districts try a more homegrown approach. Malander said she's working to help a Cedar Rapids woman get a foreign language teacher's certificate through a University of Nebraska at Kearney program, and the brightest Cedar Rapids students are told about the opportunities to come back and teach in their hometown.
"You have to start doing your own recruiting," Malander said.
Hundreds of Workers Held in Immigration Raid
This is outrageous! I really do hope that this issue comes up during tonight's closing of the Democratic Convention. -Patricia
By ADAM NOSSITER | NY Times
August 25, 2008
LAUREL, Miss. — In another large-scale workplace immigration crackdown, federal officials raided a factory here on Monday, detaining at least 350 workers they said were in the country illegally Numerous agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement descended on a factory belonging to Howard Industries Inc., which manufactures electrical transformers, among other products.
As of late Monday afternoon, no criminal charges had been filed, said Barbara Gonzalez, an agency spokeswoman, but she said that dozens of workers had been “identified, fingerprinted, interviewed, photographed and processed for removal from the U.S.”
The raid follows a similar large-scale immigration operation at a meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa, in May when nearly 400 workers were detained. That raid was a significant escalation of the Bush administration’s enforcement practices because those detained were not simply deported, as in previous raids, but were imprisoned for months on criminal charges of using false documents.
The mass rapid-fire hearings after the Postville raid took place in a temporary court facility on the grounds of the National Cattle Congress in Waterloo, Iowa. An interpreter was later sharply critical of the proceedings, saying the immigrants did not understand the charges against them.
An immigrant rights group in Jackson, Miss., the state capital, was critical of Monday’s raid, saying families with children were involved.
“It’s horrific what ICE is doing to these families and these communities,” said Shuya Ohno, a spokesman for the Mississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance. “It’s just hard to imagine that this is the United States of America.”
In Laurel on Monday afternoon, several dozen family members of immigrants waited for news of their relatives at the Immaculate Conception Catholic Church. There were several small children. A priest at the church who identified himself only as Father Sergio refused to allow interviews with the families or answer any questions, saying only: “People are afraid. We need to calm them. There are mothers and children involved.”
Entrances to the sprawling plant, in an industrial section south of town, had been blocked off by ICE. A nearby fast-food restaurant was full of the blue-shirted agents, one of whom would say only that a “little inspection” was under way at the facility.
A woman entering the church grounds with four small children said several of the youngsters’ parents had been detained. The woman, Mary Troyer, said she was a translator for many of the families.
“I don’t like this at all,” Ms. Troyer said. “I don’t understand it. They have come here to work. It’s very sad.”
The ICE spokeswoman, Ms. Gonzalez, said the workers would be taken to an ICE detention center to “await the outcome of their cases.” She said 50 would be “released into the community” instead of being sent to the center, for “humanitarian reasons,” including medical difficulties or the need to take care of children.
She said no lawyers were present while the workers were being interrogated. “Everyone will have due process under law,” Ms. Gonzalez said.
Late Monday afternoon, the grim-faced workers, some of them handcuffed, were lined up near white and silver buses as the rain poured down.
In a statement issued after the raid, Howard Industries, one of the largest employers in the region, acknowledged that it was “visited” by immigration agents trying to determine if its employees were citizens or otherwise legally authorized to work in the country.
“Howard Industries runs every check allowed to ascertain the immigration status of all applicants for jobs,” the statement said. “It is company policy that it hires only U.S. citizens and legal immigrants.”
Bill Chandler, executive director of the Mississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance, called the Laurel raid a violation of human rights.
“We’re very disturbed at what’s happened,” Mr. Chandler said. “It’s a real contradiction between our proclaimed values of hard work and family in Mississippi and the actions of local law enforcement, and ICE. I think it’s a real affront to our values. They’re creating their own terrorism by going after workers.”
After the Iowa raid, the federal interpreter said many of the immigrants did not understand the charges to which they pleaded guilty. But federal officials said the judges in the cases believed that the guilty pleas had been made freely and voluntarily.
By ADAM NOSSITER | NY Times
August 25, 2008
LAUREL, Miss. — In another large-scale workplace immigration crackdown, federal officials raided a factory here on Monday, detaining at least 350 workers they said were in the country illegally Numerous agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement descended on a factory belonging to Howard Industries Inc., which manufactures electrical transformers, among other products.
As of late Monday afternoon, no criminal charges had been filed, said Barbara Gonzalez, an agency spokeswoman, but she said that dozens of workers had been “identified, fingerprinted, interviewed, photographed and processed for removal from the U.S.”
The raid follows a similar large-scale immigration operation at a meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa, in May when nearly 400 workers were detained. That raid was a significant escalation of the Bush administration’s enforcement practices because those detained were not simply deported, as in previous raids, but were imprisoned for months on criminal charges of using false documents.
The mass rapid-fire hearings after the Postville raid took place in a temporary court facility on the grounds of the National Cattle Congress in Waterloo, Iowa. An interpreter was later sharply critical of the proceedings, saying the immigrants did not understand the charges against them.
An immigrant rights group in Jackson, Miss., the state capital, was critical of Monday’s raid, saying families with children were involved.
“It’s horrific what ICE is doing to these families and these communities,” said Shuya Ohno, a spokesman for the Mississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance. “It’s just hard to imagine that this is the United States of America.”
In Laurel on Monday afternoon, several dozen family members of immigrants waited for news of their relatives at the Immaculate Conception Catholic Church. There were several small children. A priest at the church who identified himself only as Father Sergio refused to allow interviews with the families or answer any questions, saying only: “People are afraid. We need to calm them. There are mothers and children involved.”
Entrances to the sprawling plant, in an industrial section south of town, had been blocked off by ICE. A nearby fast-food restaurant was full of the blue-shirted agents, one of whom would say only that a “little inspection” was under way at the facility.
A woman entering the church grounds with four small children said several of the youngsters’ parents had been detained. The woman, Mary Troyer, said she was a translator for many of the families.
“I don’t like this at all,” Ms. Troyer said. “I don’t understand it. They have come here to work. It’s very sad.”
The ICE spokeswoman, Ms. Gonzalez, said the workers would be taken to an ICE detention center to “await the outcome of their cases.” She said 50 would be “released into the community” instead of being sent to the center, for “humanitarian reasons,” including medical difficulties or the need to take care of children.
She said no lawyers were present while the workers were being interrogated. “Everyone will have due process under law,” Ms. Gonzalez said.
Late Monday afternoon, the grim-faced workers, some of them handcuffed, were lined up near white and silver buses as the rain poured down.
In a statement issued after the raid, Howard Industries, one of the largest employers in the region, acknowledged that it was “visited” by immigration agents trying to determine if its employees were citizens or otherwise legally authorized to work in the country.
“Howard Industries runs every check allowed to ascertain the immigration status of all applicants for jobs,” the statement said. “It is company policy that it hires only U.S. citizens and legal immigrants.”
Bill Chandler, executive director of the Mississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance, called the Laurel raid a violation of human rights.
“We’re very disturbed at what’s happened,” Mr. Chandler said. “It’s a real contradiction between our proclaimed values of hard work and family in Mississippi and the actions of local law enforcement, and ICE. I think it’s a real affront to our values. They’re creating their own terrorism by going after workers.”
After the Iowa raid, the federal interpreter said many of the immigrants did not understand the charges to which they pleaded guilty. But federal officials said the judges in the cases believed that the guilty pleas had been made freely and voluntarily.
Immigration Issue Sparks American Racism ln Indian Country
This is worth taking the time to read...
-Patricia
Immigration issue sparks American racism
by: Editors Report / Indian Country Today
August 15, 2008.
Perhaps the flare-up of the immigration issue started out more legitimately. Certainly there are serious problems with waves of hundreds of thousands of people entering any country illegally. But like the head of a monstrous snake coming out of a thorny bush, the issue has grown its own nasty viper. Immigration has become the new magnet of American racism.
It's time to recognize this evil trend, and confront it.
From the oh-so-patriotic ''Minutemen,'' with their potential overlap to vigilante violence, to the actual rise in incidents of race crime against dark-skinned Mexican and other Hispanics, the evidence is that a climate of disdain and potential race and/or ethnic hatred is being generated in North America. This is very evident in the type of language and self-definition put up by not-so-unconsciously race-based pundits and politicians.
The issues generated by the inevitable trend to northern migration among people from Mesoamerica and South America are complicated. As usual, the North American mass media is loath to dig too deeply into its roots. Images of Mexican Indians jumping fences and crouch-running across open desert fields permeate the senses while the public is bombarded with way too many ill-informed and ill-conceived reports of major ''threats,'' all designed to keep viewers and readers titillated. Ignorant ire seems to dominate as a result. In this age of super-vigilance, the issue of Mexican Indians coming north in waves of humanity whose bottom line or social safety net has been ripped out is ripe for alarmist warnings by pundits and politicians alike, too many of whom like to charge Mexican and other Latin American migrants with causing all kinds of malignancy to America's economy, culture and social character.
Legitimate debate points include the inherent right of countries to secure their borders; reading the actual impacts of a million new Latin American immigrants per year for the next 20 years on various job sectors, on costs of additional social services, on crime rates and criminal justice systems, very specifically on border communities; and considering what would constitute a humane, fair and sound long-term solution to the situation of the many undocumented migrants already in-country. When these types of questions are thought about rationally and fairly, progress can be made toward resolutions.
Tragically, this is not the trend of the national discourse. Instead, the knives are flying. In the national discourse, the migration north is equated with the threat of terrorist violence, with crime, with all manner of potential diseases and, worst of all, with the threatened disintegration of the national culture. Thus, the proponents of the English-only movement, who perceive the English language to be under assault by, primarily, Spanish, but by extension, all other languages - Native and non-Native - spoken by families in neighborhoods across the United States. In an era when most of the world has already accepted English as the lingua franca of business and science, and at a time when all immigrants to the United States clearly understand the importance of speaking English even though it is difficult for many adults, the rising wave of anti-Spanish language hysteria is indeed troubling.
Racism within the immigration issue is primarily directed at Latin American migrants coming north in search of economic opportunity. The shorthand language used has to do with the sense by Anglo-Americans that the country is changing as so-called Hispanics or Latinos make up an ever-larger proportion of the minority population which, combined with blacks and Asian-Americans, now threatens to become established as the ''new majority'' and make the Euro-American population essentially the minority. Thus one can hear the likes of pundit and erstwhile presidential contender Pat Buchanan bemoan the fact that ''we are losing our country,'' shorthand in this case being that crucial ''we'' and all that such possessiveness implies.
Xenophobia directed at Mexicans has a long history in America. Anglo-America, after all, warred first with Spain and, later, Mexico for a century over more than a third of present-day U.S. territory. Stereotype and racial hatred, ethnic insults (Mexicans as a ''mongrel race,'' etc.) - apparent requirements of war - layered into the social consciousness of Anglo-Americans.
Salient points of this history not told by the conqueror were articulated in a recent New York Times essay by Tony Horwitz. To be faulted for too brazenly bypassing the indigenous perspective, Horwitz recounts accurately that North America's first European explorers and settlers were not English-speaking, but were from Spain. Horwitz: ''Four of the sample questions on our naturalization test ask about Pilgrims. Nothing in the sample exam suggests that prospective citizens need know anything that occurred on this continent before the Mayflower landed in 1620.''
So who led the first confirmed European landing on North America? Horwitz: ''A Spaniard, Juan Ponce de Leon, who landed in 1513,'' more than a century before the Pilgrims, ''at a lush shore he christened La Florida.'' Horwitz reminds us that ''the Spanish became the first Europeans to reach the Appalachians, the Mississippi, the Grand Canyon and the Great Plains. Spanish ships sailed along the East Coast, penetrating to present-day Bangor, Me., and up the Pacific Coast as far as Oregon.''
There is much history - centuries old and some quite recent - that does not enter the national discourse. Fast-forward to 2006, 12 years after NAFTA. It was the North American Free Trade Agreement, memory recalls, which ushered in the Zapatista Army of Indian peoples in 1994. The Zapatistas challenged even the federal army of Mexico militarily, while pointing out that loss of lands was displacing Indian peasants, who were migrating north in droves.
What's the connection? Since the advent of the lopsided, so-called free trade agreement, where U.S. corn and bean producers get to keep their government subsidies while poor and modest Mexican Indian farmers lose theirs, the bottom has fallen out of the regional and local farming villages. While these Indian villages have always experienced poverty, most have been self-sufficient, at least in producing and providing and sustaining from the basic Indian foods of corn, beans and other produce, chicken and pigs, the occasional cattle. That's the traditional Indian homestead for most of southern Mexico, Guatemala and elsewhere among agricultural communities in Mesoamerica and South America. This is the stalwart bastion of the mostly self-sufficient safety net upon which the people have depended for millennia. Indian people, real Mexican Indians - Maya, Zapoteca and other indigenous peoples, with distinct languages and varieties of ethnicity and oral tradition - have been severely displaced and dislocated over the past decade. U.S. trade policy has a whole lot to do with it.
These are the bulk of the millions of new migrants inexorably making their way north. These are the Indian refugees displaced from their lands by the destruction of the old ejido systems, the privatization of water and lands, and the demolishment of a national economy that, up to 10 years ago, could make sense of the ancient Indian agricultural and gastronomic complex of the corn tortilla and the bean, grown and consumed locally and regionally. This is the dislocation of replacing this kind of agriculture - as foundation and safety net of rural peoples - with export-oriented agri-business, such as is more possible in the north of Mexico where, generally, the mestizo and Spanish identity have rolled over most of the Indian consciousness of land self-sufficiency.
The climate of fear and loathing in the United States against this mass of dislocated humanity - a direct result of one-sided trade deals that dismiss the needs of whole regions - is presently fueled nightly most prominently by CNN's Lou Dobbs. Dobbs' program is regularly preoccupied with the troublesome illegality of the northward migration and its growing demographic. Dobbs' reporting is mostly accurate, but his tone and point of view heighten the potential for virulence. With violence against Mexicans and other Hispanics on the rise in the United States, it behooves commentators of Dobbs' caliber to provide the fullest possible understanding of the forces at work that drive so many Mexican Indian people to migrate at this time in history.
Dobbs reports on opinion and impacts in the United States but has yet to wonder on the causes of this constant northbound stream of people, how it originates in the indigenous southern region of Mexico and into Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua. And, most importantly, why? Why are these American indigenous people - traditionally attached to their places of origin - so driven these days to pick up and trek north in larger and larger numbers, consistently facing violence, starvation, dehydration and death? What are the conditions they are leaving behind? Who caused those conditions that callously condemn whole peoples to severe economic misery?
We say a better understanding of this complex issue is required before we allow racists to pit good people against good people, as if different mother tongues must necessarily be a source of insult and injury.
This editorial, by Jose Barreiro, originally appeared in Indian Country Today on July 19, 2006 [Vol. 26, Iss. 6]. It received a 2007 Unity Award in Media in the Editorial Writing in the Minority Audience division. The awards are given annually by Lincoln University. The former senior editor of ICT, Barreiro is now director of the Office of Latin America at the National Museum of the American Indian.
-Patricia
Immigration issue sparks American racism
by: Editors Report / Indian Country Today
August 15, 2008.
Perhaps the flare-up of the immigration issue started out more legitimately. Certainly there are serious problems with waves of hundreds of thousands of people entering any country illegally. But like the head of a monstrous snake coming out of a thorny bush, the issue has grown its own nasty viper. Immigration has become the new magnet of American racism.
It's time to recognize this evil trend, and confront it.
From the oh-so-patriotic ''Minutemen,'' with their potential overlap to vigilante violence, to the actual rise in incidents of race crime against dark-skinned Mexican and other Hispanics, the evidence is that a climate of disdain and potential race and/or ethnic hatred is being generated in North America. This is very evident in the type of language and self-definition put up by not-so-unconsciously race-based pundits and politicians.
The issues generated by the inevitable trend to northern migration among people from Mesoamerica and South America are complicated. As usual, the North American mass media is loath to dig too deeply into its roots. Images of Mexican Indians jumping fences and crouch-running across open desert fields permeate the senses while the public is bombarded with way too many ill-informed and ill-conceived reports of major ''threats,'' all designed to keep viewers and readers titillated. Ignorant ire seems to dominate as a result. In this age of super-vigilance, the issue of Mexican Indians coming north in waves of humanity whose bottom line or social safety net has been ripped out is ripe for alarmist warnings by pundits and politicians alike, too many of whom like to charge Mexican and other Latin American migrants with causing all kinds of malignancy to America's economy, culture and social character.
Legitimate debate points include the inherent right of countries to secure their borders; reading the actual impacts of a million new Latin American immigrants per year for the next 20 years on various job sectors, on costs of additional social services, on crime rates and criminal justice systems, very specifically on border communities; and considering what would constitute a humane, fair and sound long-term solution to the situation of the many undocumented migrants already in-country. When these types of questions are thought about rationally and fairly, progress can be made toward resolutions.
Tragically, this is not the trend of the national discourse. Instead, the knives are flying. In the national discourse, the migration north is equated with the threat of terrorist violence, with crime, with all manner of potential diseases and, worst of all, with the threatened disintegration of the national culture. Thus, the proponents of the English-only movement, who perceive the English language to be under assault by, primarily, Spanish, but by extension, all other languages - Native and non-Native - spoken by families in neighborhoods across the United States. In an era when most of the world has already accepted English as the lingua franca of business and science, and at a time when all immigrants to the United States clearly understand the importance of speaking English even though it is difficult for many adults, the rising wave of anti-Spanish language hysteria is indeed troubling.
Racism within the immigration issue is primarily directed at Latin American migrants coming north in search of economic opportunity. The shorthand language used has to do with the sense by Anglo-Americans that the country is changing as so-called Hispanics or Latinos make up an ever-larger proportion of the minority population which, combined with blacks and Asian-Americans, now threatens to become established as the ''new majority'' and make the Euro-American population essentially the minority. Thus one can hear the likes of pundit and erstwhile presidential contender Pat Buchanan bemoan the fact that ''we are losing our country,'' shorthand in this case being that crucial ''we'' and all that such possessiveness implies.
Xenophobia directed at Mexicans has a long history in America. Anglo-America, after all, warred first with Spain and, later, Mexico for a century over more than a third of present-day U.S. territory. Stereotype and racial hatred, ethnic insults (Mexicans as a ''mongrel race,'' etc.) - apparent requirements of war - layered into the social consciousness of Anglo-Americans.
Salient points of this history not told by the conqueror were articulated in a recent New York Times essay by Tony Horwitz. To be faulted for too brazenly bypassing the indigenous perspective, Horwitz recounts accurately that North America's first European explorers and settlers were not English-speaking, but were from Spain. Horwitz: ''Four of the sample questions on our naturalization test ask about Pilgrims. Nothing in the sample exam suggests that prospective citizens need know anything that occurred on this continent before the Mayflower landed in 1620.''
So who led the first confirmed European landing on North America? Horwitz: ''A Spaniard, Juan Ponce de Leon, who landed in 1513,'' more than a century before the Pilgrims, ''at a lush shore he christened La Florida.'' Horwitz reminds us that ''the Spanish became the first Europeans to reach the Appalachians, the Mississippi, the Grand Canyon and the Great Plains. Spanish ships sailed along the East Coast, penetrating to present-day Bangor, Me., and up the Pacific Coast as far as Oregon.''
There is much history - centuries old and some quite recent - that does not enter the national discourse. Fast-forward to 2006, 12 years after NAFTA. It was the North American Free Trade Agreement, memory recalls, which ushered in the Zapatista Army of Indian peoples in 1994. The Zapatistas challenged even the federal army of Mexico militarily, while pointing out that loss of lands was displacing Indian peasants, who were migrating north in droves.
What's the connection? Since the advent of the lopsided, so-called free trade agreement, where U.S. corn and bean producers get to keep their government subsidies while poor and modest Mexican Indian farmers lose theirs, the bottom has fallen out of the regional and local farming villages. While these Indian villages have always experienced poverty, most have been self-sufficient, at least in producing and providing and sustaining from the basic Indian foods of corn, beans and other produce, chicken and pigs, the occasional cattle. That's the traditional Indian homestead for most of southern Mexico, Guatemala and elsewhere among agricultural communities in Mesoamerica and South America. This is the stalwart bastion of the mostly self-sufficient safety net upon which the people have depended for millennia. Indian people, real Mexican Indians - Maya, Zapoteca and other indigenous peoples, with distinct languages and varieties of ethnicity and oral tradition - have been severely displaced and dislocated over the past decade. U.S. trade policy has a whole lot to do with it.
These are the bulk of the millions of new migrants inexorably making their way north. These are the Indian refugees displaced from their lands by the destruction of the old ejido systems, the privatization of water and lands, and the demolishment of a national economy that, up to 10 years ago, could make sense of the ancient Indian agricultural and gastronomic complex of the corn tortilla and the bean, grown and consumed locally and regionally. This is the dislocation of replacing this kind of agriculture - as foundation and safety net of rural peoples - with export-oriented agri-business, such as is more possible in the north of Mexico where, generally, the mestizo and Spanish identity have rolled over most of the Indian consciousness of land self-sufficiency.
The climate of fear and loathing in the United States against this mass of dislocated humanity - a direct result of one-sided trade deals that dismiss the needs of whole regions - is presently fueled nightly most prominently by CNN's Lou Dobbs. Dobbs' program is regularly preoccupied with the troublesome illegality of the northward migration and its growing demographic. Dobbs' reporting is mostly accurate, but his tone and point of view heighten the potential for virulence. With violence against Mexicans and other Hispanics on the rise in the United States, it behooves commentators of Dobbs' caliber to provide the fullest possible understanding of the forces at work that drive so many Mexican Indian people to migrate at this time in history.
Dobbs reports on opinion and impacts in the United States but has yet to wonder on the causes of this constant northbound stream of people, how it originates in the indigenous southern region of Mexico and into Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua. And, most importantly, why? Why are these American indigenous people - traditionally attached to their places of origin - so driven these days to pick up and trek north in larger and larger numbers, consistently facing violence, starvation, dehydration and death? What are the conditions they are leaving behind? Who caused those conditions that callously condemn whole peoples to severe economic misery?
We say a better understanding of this complex issue is required before we allow racists to pit good people against good people, as if different mother tongues must necessarily be a source of insult and injury.
This editorial, by Jose Barreiro, originally appeared in Indian Country Today on July 19, 2006 [Vol. 26, Iss. 6]. It received a 2007 Unity Award in Media in the Editorial Writing in the Minority Audience division. The awards are given annually by Lincoln University. The former senior editor of ICT, Barreiro is now director of the Office of Latin America at the National Museum of the American Indian.
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