BY CINDY TOOPES COURIER STAFF WRITER
OTTUMWA — Removing illegal immigrants from a work site sounds like a good, simple move to some people.
For those actually involved in such a raid, it’s anything but good or simple and changes need to happen.
State agencies and officials are still sorting out the impact of the immigration raid Dec. 12, 2006, at the Swift meatpacking plant in Marshalltown, according to Sandra Sanchez.
She presented “The Impact of Immigration Raids” Friday during the Fourth annual Diversity Conference at Indian Hills Community College.
“What happened was so irregular from a legal, moral and human perspective that a national commission is doing hearings,” she said.
The raid affected not only illegal workers but also their employer, the school district, the business climate and housing opportunities.
“Employment in general was depressed,” she said.
In many families, both parents worked at the Swift plant.
“What happened to their kids who were in school or in daycare? The parents weren’t allowed to make calls and the schools didn’t know what to do with the kids,” she said.
Former Gov. Tom Vilsack guided changes so the Department of Human Services can now intervene on behalf of children. The local community helped, too, through churches and other volunteers.
“Even if it’s a raid, people have the right to a phone call and the right to legal representation,” Sanchez said. “They took the workers to Camp Dodge, which is a military facility. Lawyers and [priests] can’t get in, not even for a few hours.”
Sanchez said there was a “major change” in immigration agencies in 2003. The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) used to handle immigration but was split into Citizenship and Immigration Services (CIS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
“Immigrants are afraid of ICE. They won’t go to the police,” she said. “ICE can be seen as bad but people need to stay in communication with police.”
If the immigration process isn’t finished, they do have the right to send you out, she added.
CIS adjudication officers used to have a lot of discretion. For example, someone’s green card application could include “something that’s a red flag.”
“In the past, the officials would give you an appointment to discuss this. Now, more often than not, they will call ICE,” she said.
Sanchez illustrated the impact of immigration-related policies on immigrant families. She offered the example of an immigrant family living in Iowa for 13 years.
In the family, the father is a permanent resident for four years but his wife is undocumented. They have one undocumented child, age 16, and two citizen children, ages 12 and 9.
The family will need money so someone has to work. The father can but the mother and the teen can’t, and if they do, they often face low pay, no benefits, as well as risking exploitation and discrimination.
“This is negative for the entire family and eventually for the community,” Sanchez said.
Most people need a car and that means a driver’s license. The father can get a license but the mother and the teen can’t. They “can hardly get car insurance” and that’s another negative impact, Sanchez said.
As for raids and the ICE Law Enforcement, the mother and the teen could face ICE raids, incarceration and removal at any time.
Sanchez distributed a chart showing all these policies, as well as health care, education, public benefits and “unwelcoming environment and stress.”
She recommended prevention before and after a raid. Prevention could include a massive campaign of “Know Your Rights Plus” presentations, ongoing advocacy for immigration reform and ongoing education targeting voters, legislators and other potential allies.
Saturday, April 05, 2008
Poverty in plenty in "The Migrant Project"
Rick Nahmias follows his food to the fields and documents the journey on with Nikon.
By Sean Mitchell, Special to The Times
April 2, 2008
RICK NAHMIAS was at cooking school in an affluent ZIP Code of the Napa Valley, a mouth-watering abundance of fruit and vegetables arrayed for his instruction every day, when it occurred to him to wonder at the hidden source of this bounty. "It astounded me," he says, "that nobody there talked about where all this food was coming from."
A screenwriter, photographer and then researcher for political columnist Arianna Huffington, Nahmias had gone to Napa with the thought of maybe getting into the restaurant business. But his curiosity sent him in another direction altogether: on a mission to document through photographs the lives of contemporary farmworkers in California.
The result of his six-month immersion in the fields, "The Migrant Project," is on exhibit at the Museum of Tolerance through April 25, one stop on a national tour. The exhibit's 40 black-and-white images offer a glimpse into the seldom-acknowledged reality of the labor force necessary to provide food for the nation's supermarkets and dinner tables. These photographs of farmworkers and their families are not overtly political, yet taken as a whole, they raise unavoidable questions about the wages and living conditions of the people who make the state's $32-billion-a-year agricultural industry possible.
The poverty and drudgery of the estimated 1.1 million California farmworkers (nine in 10 of whom are Latino) are not news, except that Nahmias' photographs provide fresh evidence that their long-lamented hardships and indignities remain much the same as they were when César Chávez began organizing in the Central Valley in the 1960s.
"I think it's a fallacy if anyone thinks that documentarians don't have an objective, a point of view," Nahmias says. "I'm not trying to disguise the fact that I come to the subject with sympathy for the people I'm photographing. But I want to believe I'm putting the information out there and allowing the audience to form their own opinions."
New mission
After that week in Napa Valley in 2002, Nahmias, now 42, returned with a new passion that compelled him to quit his job with Huffington and begin investigating where his tomatoes and strawberries came from and who picked them. Versed in the ways of Hollywood as a writer with projects in development, he briefly considered making a documentary film but rejected the idea in favor of doing something that would require only himself and a camera, his old Nikon FE, "the one thing in my hands that I knew I could count on," he says.
A native of the San Fernando Valley and graduate of New York University (with a double major in film and religious studies), Nahmias wasn't a professional photographer and wasn't even sure how he was going to go about the assignment he had given himself. "I left with a lot of uncertainty about where my next paycheck was going to come from, but I felt I had to take a chance and do this."
He started applying for grants and didn't get any, meanwhile reading anything and everything about the history of farmworkers in California. He deliberately avoided the "iconic imagery" in such work by photographers Dorothea Lange and Horace Bristol, who traveled the same fields during the Great Depression, or in the more recent political protest photographs of Richard Steven Street.
After he was underway, at a friend's insistence, Nahmias did allow himself to look at the James Agee-Walker Evans book "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men," an exploration of the lives of sharecroppers in the American South, published in 1941.
"There's a photo in the book of a pair of migrant's shoes, and it connected directly in my mind with a shot I had of a dozen pair of shoes, representing the shoes of people sharing one bedroom," he says. "It was an 'aha' moment," carrying the message that not a lot had changed for migrant workers in 70 or 80 years and that the symbols of their backbreaking labor were eerily identical.
But Nahmias also began to see how his work might be different from that of photographers who had gone before. "I found gay farmworkers, farmworkers with HIV, women and children, reflecting issues in our current society."
Though the issue of immigration is a popular backdrop for images of Latino laborers today, Nahmias tried to avoid that in "The Migrant Project." "I wanted to capture more intimate moments," he says, "that might help the mainstream Middle American identify with these human beings."
The cover of the book that accompanies the exhibit is a shot of buckets of tomatoes carried by a line of workers who disappear out of the frame and remain faceless. Another favorite shot of the author's is of a small white cross marking the grave of an unidentified worker. It's one of dozens in a bare dirt field, stenciled with the words No Olvidado (Not Forgotten). In another photo, a man stands beside towering stacks of strawberry flats, evoking the legend that workers fill between 30 and 120 flats a day.
Nahmias started with a single contact in Oxnard and made his own way behind the scenes and into the lives of the migrants. "One person led to the next," he says. Over the six months he made eight trips in all, three to five days at a time, to the Central Valley, the Coachella Valley and the Imperial Valley. "I slept at Motel 6s, stayed with family and friends," he says. Farmworkers also invited him to share their modest, crowded quarters.
He carried only black-and-white film (Kodak Tri-X and Ilford), used available light and tried not to be limited by what he didn't know. "There was a certain naivete that kept me more open to what I was doing. I didn't come to this as an expert. But I did come with my own sensibility. Experts in photography could criticize some of these images from a technical point of view -- the lighting certainly."
One thing he did know and felt strongly about was that he wanted to shoot with film rather than with a digital camera, as well as in black and white. "There's a purity to black and white that gets to the essence of a composition, clearing everything else away. The faces might not be as strong if not in black and white. If you use color, you have to know the whole palette and how every element is going to reflect on the others."
As for preferring film, he says, "There's a certain disposability with a digital frame that is endemic of our society. Every time you click that shutter, a statement is being made or should be made. There's a texture to the human face that I see in film more clearly."
Drawing attention
Before he was through, Nahmias did win some grants. Libraries and public schools helped support his work. Dolores Huerta, co-founder of the United Farm Workers, wrote an introduction for his book. And he went on to get paying jobs as a professional photographer, documenting, in one project, a liver transplant at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.
And the Museum of Tolerance booked his show. "The theme of the migrant workers touches on human dignity and human rights which resonate in our museum every day," says Director Liebe Geft, explaining why she decided to display "The Migrant Project" in a museum devoted chiefly to memories of the Holocaust. "These faceless, nameless people, we are the beneficiaries of their labor."
"I don't think 40 images is going to change anything," Nahmias says, "but I hope it might invite a conversation, drop something into the head of a 12-year-old that resurfaces 10 years later in a way you can't foresee."
The biggest payoff for him, he says, was witnessing the reactions of farmworkers and their families standing in front of his framed photos, some of them crying, simply because "it was the first time, they told me, they had seen themselves represented with dignity. I didn't know what to do with that. It was a gift, humbling."
By Sean Mitchell, Special to The Times
April 2, 2008
RICK NAHMIAS was at cooking school in an affluent ZIP Code of the Napa Valley, a mouth-watering abundance of fruit and vegetables arrayed for his instruction every day, when it occurred to him to wonder at the hidden source of this bounty. "It astounded me," he says, "that nobody there talked about where all this food was coming from."
A screenwriter, photographer and then researcher for political columnist Arianna Huffington, Nahmias had gone to Napa with the thought of maybe getting into the restaurant business. But his curiosity sent him in another direction altogether: on a mission to document through photographs the lives of contemporary farmworkers in California.
The result of his six-month immersion in the fields, "The Migrant Project," is on exhibit at the Museum of Tolerance through April 25, one stop on a national tour. The exhibit's 40 black-and-white images offer a glimpse into the seldom-acknowledged reality of the labor force necessary to provide food for the nation's supermarkets and dinner tables. These photographs of farmworkers and their families are not overtly political, yet taken as a whole, they raise unavoidable questions about the wages and living conditions of the people who make the state's $32-billion-a-year agricultural industry possible.
The poverty and drudgery of the estimated 1.1 million California farmworkers (nine in 10 of whom are Latino) are not news, except that Nahmias' photographs provide fresh evidence that their long-lamented hardships and indignities remain much the same as they were when César Chávez began organizing in the Central Valley in the 1960s.
"I think it's a fallacy if anyone thinks that documentarians don't have an objective, a point of view," Nahmias says. "I'm not trying to disguise the fact that I come to the subject with sympathy for the people I'm photographing. But I want to believe I'm putting the information out there and allowing the audience to form their own opinions."
New mission
After that week in Napa Valley in 2002, Nahmias, now 42, returned with a new passion that compelled him to quit his job with Huffington and begin investigating where his tomatoes and strawberries came from and who picked them. Versed in the ways of Hollywood as a writer with projects in development, he briefly considered making a documentary film but rejected the idea in favor of doing something that would require only himself and a camera, his old Nikon FE, "the one thing in my hands that I knew I could count on," he says.
A native of the San Fernando Valley and graduate of New York University (with a double major in film and religious studies), Nahmias wasn't a professional photographer and wasn't even sure how he was going to go about the assignment he had given himself. "I left with a lot of uncertainty about where my next paycheck was going to come from, but I felt I had to take a chance and do this."
He started applying for grants and didn't get any, meanwhile reading anything and everything about the history of farmworkers in California. He deliberately avoided the "iconic imagery" in such work by photographers Dorothea Lange and Horace Bristol, who traveled the same fields during the Great Depression, or in the more recent political protest photographs of Richard Steven Street.
After he was underway, at a friend's insistence, Nahmias did allow himself to look at the James Agee-Walker Evans book "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men," an exploration of the lives of sharecroppers in the American South, published in 1941.
"There's a photo in the book of a pair of migrant's shoes, and it connected directly in my mind with a shot I had of a dozen pair of shoes, representing the shoes of people sharing one bedroom," he says. "It was an 'aha' moment," carrying the message that not a lot had changed for migrant workers in 70 or 80 years and that the symbols of their backbreaking labor were eerily identical.
But Nahmias also began to see how his work might be different from that of photographers who had gone before. "I found gay farmworkers, farmworkers with HIV, women and children, reflecting issues in our current society."
Though the issue of immigration is a popular backdrop for images of Latino laborers today, Nahmias tried to avoid that in "The Migrant Project." "I wanted to capture more intimate moments," he says, "that might help the mainstream Middle American identify with these human beings."
The cover of the book that accompanies the exhibit is a shot of buckets of tomatoes carried by a line of workers who disappear out of the frame and remain faceless. Another favorite shot of the author's is of a small white cross marking the grave of an unidentified worker. It's one of dozens in a bare dirt field, stenciled with the words No Olvidado (Not Forgotten). In another photo, a man stands beside towering stacks of strawberry flats, evoking the legend that workers fill between 30 and 120 flats a day.
Nahmias started with a single contact in Oxnard and made his own way behind the scenes and into the lives of the migrants. "One person led to the next," he says. Over the six months he made eight trips in all, three to five days at a time, to the Central Valley, the Coachella Valley and the Imperial Valley. "I slept at Motel 6s, stayed with family and friends," he says. Farmworkers also invited him to share their modest, crowded quarters.
He carried only black-and-white film (Kodak Tri-X and Ilford), used available light and tried not to be limited by what he didn't know. "There was a certain naivete that kept me more open to what I was doing. I didn't come to this as an expert. But I did come with my own sensibility. Experts in photography could criticize some of these images from a technical point of view -- the lighting certainly."
One thing he did know and felt strongly about was that he wanted to shoot with film rather than with a digital camera, as well as in black and white. "There's a purity to black and white that gets to the essence of a composition, clearing everything else away. The faces might not be as strong if not in black and white. If you use color, you have to know the whole palette and how every element is going to reflect on the others."
As for preferring film, he says, "There's a certain disposability with a digital frame that is endemic of our society. Every time you click that shutter, a statement is being made or should be made. There's a texture to the human face that I see in film more clearly."
Drawing attention
Before he was through, Nahmias did win some grants. Libraries and public schools helped support his work. Dolores Huerta, co-founder of the United Farm Workers, wrote an introduction for his book. And he went on to get paying jobs as a professional photographer, documenting, in one project, a liver transplant at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.
And the Museum of Tolerance booked his show. "The theme of the migrant workers touches on human dignity and human rights which resonate in our museum every day," says Director Liebe Geft, explaining why she decided to display "The Migrant Project" in a museum devoted chiefly to memories of the Holocaust. "These faceless, nameless people, we are the beneficiaries of their labor."
"I don't think 40 images is going to change anything," Nahmias says, "but I hope it might invite a conversation, drop something into the head of a 12-year-old that resurfaces 10 years later in a way you can't foresee."
The biggest payoff for him, he says, was witnessing the reactions of farmworkers and their families standing in front of his framed photos, some of them crying, simply because "it was the first time, they told me, they had seen themselves represented with dignity. I didn't know what to do with that. It was a gift, humbling."
Friday, April 04, 2008
Defining a Uniform GPA Calculation for "Top 10 Percent" College Admission--Easier Said Than Done
TEXAS AFT LEGISLATIVE HOTLINE--WEDNESDAY, APRIL 2, 2008
(copyright 2008 Texas AFT)
Last year the state legislature directed the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board to establish a uniform, statewide standard for measuring high-school students' grade point averages. The idea is to make sure all students admitted automatically to Texas colleges and universities based on their "top 10 percent" grades are being judged by the same yardstick. Supposedly the new standard would apply to first-time freshmen applying to enter "general academic teaching institutions" in the fall of 2009.
The Coordinating Board on March 28 asked the state attorney general to interpret what the 2007 law means. Conflicting views have emerged as to whether it actually requires school districts to use whatever statewide method of calculating GPA that the Coordinating Board adopts. The attorney general's advisory opinion on this question may not be forthcoming for six months or more.
Meanwhile, the rule-making machinery of the Coordinating Board grinds onward, with a meeting just this morning of an advisory group on uniform GPA. Texas AFT monitored today's discussion and came away convinced that any consensus on a uniform GPA methodology is a long way off, calling into serious doubt whether the legislature's fall 2009 deadline can be met.
One superintendent in attendance pointed out that his district has found it a struggle just to establish a common calculation of GPA across four campuses. You can imagine, he suggested, how much more difficult it will be to impose a uniform GPA calculation on every high school in the state.
At this point, there's not even a consensus on methodology between the commissioner of higher education, Dr. Raymund Paredes, and the GPA advisory committee. They differ on which courses will count for purposes of the "top 10 percent" rule. They disagree on how much extra weight to give for Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate, and Dual Credit courses, and on whether to give any extra weight at all for Pre-AP, Pre-IB, or Honors courses. The commissioner wants to give credit for high-school courses taken in middle school; the advisory committee does not. The advisory group says out-of-state grades should not count; the commissioner says they should if they're on the student's transcript. The commissioner and these Coordinating Board advisers cannot even agree on how many places after the decimal should be used in calculating the uniform GPA; they say at least three, he says no more than three.
Commissioner Paredes also wants the legislature to revisit this statute and put off the effective date of the uniform GPA standard from the fall of 2009 until the fall of 2012, "so that high-school freshmen beginning in 2008 are aware of the new method for university admissions." However, even the commissioner's proposed new time line would require adoption of that new GPA methodology by this summer. In fact, if Paredes means what he says about including high-school work completed in middle school, then shouldn't the Coordinating Board really have adopted the uniform GPA standard by the fall of 2006, when the senior class of 2012 entered seventh grade?
To top things off, Commissioner Paredes insists that the statewide, uniform GPA "is designed for use in college admissions and is not meant to infringe on a school district's right to establish its own method for determining GPA" or "to impact local district policy." Taken at face value, this assertion suggests that a district GPA could be used to determine which students to honor for top grades locally, while a separate state-mandated GPA calculation would decide if these students really deserved "top 10 percent" recognition and thereby earned automatic college admission. Lawsuits, anyone?
So let's take stock of the situation: An advisory opinion requested from the attorney general is months away. Any rational consensus statewide on the specifics of GPA calculation apparently is even further away. No provision has been made by the legislature to cover the acknowledged local costs of compliance with the new GPA requirement. (Picture not just the software modifications but also the poor counselors and other staffers trying to keep two sets of books on students' GPA--in their spare time from administering TAKS exams.)
In view of all these complications, we have a suggestion. The commissioner has already recommended that lawmakers next January should change the effective date of the new GPA calculation. The commissioner and the Coordinating Board also should politely inform the authors of this GPA legislation that the current rule-making time line is unrealistic, and they should seek at least tacit approval for holding off on rule adoption until the legislature has had a chance to revisit the question.
(copyright 2008 Texas AFT)
Last year the state legislature directed the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board to establish a uniform, statewide standard for measuring high-school students' grade point averages. The idea is to make sure all students admitted automatically to Texas colleges and universities based on their "top 10 percent" grades are being judged by the same yardstick. Supposedly the new standard would apply to first-time freshmen applying to enter "general academic teaching institutions" in the fall of 2009.
The Coordinating Board on March 28 asked the state attorney general to interpret what the 2007 law means. Conflicting views have emerged as to whether it actually requires school districts to use whatever statewide method of calculating GPA that the Coordinating Board adopts. The attorney general's advisory opinion on this question may not be forthcoming for six months or more.
Meanwhile, the rule-making machinery of the Coordinating Board grinds onward, with a meeting just this morning of an advisory group on uniform GPA. Texas AFT monitored today's discussion and came away convinced that any consensus on a uniform GPA methodology is a long way off, calling into serious doubt whether the legislature's fall 2009 deadline can be met.
One superintendent in attendance pointed out that his district has found it a struggle just to establish a common calculation of GPA across four campuses. You can imagine, he suggested, how much more difficult it will be to impose a uniform GPA calculation on every high school in the state.
At this point, there's not even a consensus on methodology between the commissioner of higher education, Dr. Raymund Paredes, and the GPA advisory committee. They differ on which courses will count for purposes of the "top 10 percent" rule. They disagree on how much extra weight to give for Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate, and Dual Credit courses, and on whether to give any extra weight at all for Pre-AP, Pre-IB, or Honors courses. The commissioner wants to give credit for high-school courses taken in middle school; the advisory committee does not. The advisory group says out-of-state grades should not count; the commissioner says they should if they're on the student's transcript. The commissioner and these Coordinating Board advisers cannot even agree on how many places after the decimal should be used in calculating the uniform GPA; they say at least three, he says no more than three.
Commissioner Paredes also wants the legislature to revisit this statute and put off the effective date of the uniform GPA standard from the fall of 2009 until the fall of 2012, "so that high-school freshmen beginning in 2008 are aware of the new method for university admissions." However, even the commissioner's proposed new time line would require adoption of that new GPA methodology by this summer. In fact, if Paredes means what he says about including high-school work completed in middle school, then shouldn't the Coordinating Board really have adopted the uniform GPA standard by the fall of 2006, when the senior class of 2012 entered seventh grade?
To top things off, Commissioner Paredes insists that the statewide, uniform GPA "is designed for use in college admissions and is not meant to infringe on a school district's right to establish its own method for determining GPA" or "to impact local district policy." Taken at face value, this assertion suggests that a district GPA could be used to determine which students to honor for top grades locally, while a separate state-mandated GPA calculation would decide if these students really deserved "top 10 percent" recognition and thereby earned automatic college admission. Lawsuits, anyone?
So let's take stock of the situation: An advisory opinion requested from the attorney general is months away. Any rational consensus statewide on the specifics of GPA calculation apparently is even further away. No provision has been made by the legislature to cover the acknowledged local costs of compliance with the new GPA requirement. (Picture not just the software modifications but also the poor counselors and other staffers trying to keep two sets of books on students' GPA--in their spare time from administering TAKS exams.)
In view of all these complications, we have a suggestion. The commissioner has already recommended that lawmakers next January should change the effective date of the new GPA calculation. The commissioner and the Coordinating Board also should politely inform the authors of this GPA legislation that the current rule-making time line is unrealistic, and they should seek at least tacit approval for holding off on rule adoption until the legislature has had a chance to revisit the question.
Pa. judge sentences 3 to learn English
This is outrageous! -Patricia
Associated Press
Thu Mar 27, 2008
WILKES-BARRE, Pa. - A judge known for creative sentencing has ordered three Spanish-speaking men to learn English or go to jail.
The men, who faced prison for criminal conspiracy to commit robbery, can remain on parole if they learn to read and write English, earn their GEDs and get full-time jobs, Luzerne County Judge Peter Paul Olszewski Jr. said.
The men, Luis Reyes, Ricardo Dominguez and Rafael Guzman-Mateo, plus a fourth defendant, Kelvin Reyes-Rosario, all needed translators when they pleaded guilty Tuesday.
"Do you think we are going to supply you with a translator all of your life?" the judge asked them.
The four, ranging in age from 17 to 22, were in a group that police said accosted two men on a street in May. The two said they were asked if they had marijuana, told to empty their pockets, struck on the head, threatened with a gun and told to stay off the block.
Attorneys for the men said they were studying the legality of the ruling and had not decided whether to appeal. One of the attorneys, Ferris Webby, suggested that the ruling was good for his client, Guzman-Mateo.
"My client is happy," Webby said. "I think it's going to help him."
The judge sentenced the four men to jail terms of four to 24 months. But he gave the three men, who already had served at least four months, immediate parole. Reyes-Rosario remains imprisoned on an unrelated drug charge.
Olszewski ordered the three to return with their parole officers in a year and take an English test. "If they don't pass, they're going in for the 24 (months)," he said.
Olszewski is known for outside-the-box sentencing.
He has ordered young defendants who are school dropouts to finish school. He often orders defendants to get full-time employment. But he also has his staff coordinate with an employment agency to help them find the jobs.
Associated Press
Thu Mar 27, 2008
WILKES-BARRE, Pa. - A judge known for creative sentencing has ordered three Spanish-speaking men to learn English or go to jail.
The men, who faced prison for criminal conspiracy to commit robbery, can remain on parole if they learn to read and write English, earn their GEDs and get full-time jobs, Luzerne County Judge Peter Paul Olszewski Jr. said.
The men, Luis Reyes, Ricardo Dominguez and Rafael Guzman-Mateo, plus a fourth defendant, Kelvin Reyes-Rosario, all needed translators when they pleaded guilty Tuesday.
"Do you think we are going to supply you with a translator all of your life?" the judge asked them.
The four, ranging in age from 17 to 22, were in a group that police said accosted two men on a street in May. The two said they were asked if they had marijuana, told to empty their pockets, struck on the head, threatened with a gun and told to stay off the block.
Attorneys for the men said they were studying the legality of the ruling and had not decided whether to appeal. One of the attorneys, Ferris Webby, suggested that the ruling was good for his client, Guzman-Mateo.
"My client is happy," Webby said. "I think it's going to help him."
The judge sentenced the four men to jail terms of four to 24 months. But he gave the three men, who already had served at least four months, immediate parole. Reyes-Rosario remains imprisoned on an unrelated drug charge.
Olszewski ordered the three to return with their parole officers in a year and take an English test. "If they don't pass, they're going in for the 24 (months)," he said.
Olszewski is known for outside-the-box sentencing.
He has ordered young defendants who are school dropouts to finish school. He often orders defendants to get full-time employment. But he also has his staff coordinate with an employment agency to help them find the jobs.
U.S. Students Achieve Mixed Results on Writing Test
April 4, 2008
U.S. Students Achieve Mixed Results on Writing Test
By SAM DILLON
About a third of the nation’s eighth-grade students, and roughly a quarter of its high school seniors, are proficient writers, according to nationwide test results released Thursday.
That proportion of students demonstrating writing proficiency is about the same as in 2002, when a similar exam was last given.
But the results of the latest test, administered last year, also found modest increases in the skills of lower-performing students. Nearly 9 students in 10 can now demonstrate at least a basic achievement in writing, defined as partial mastery of the skills needed for proficient work.
As in the past, girls outperformed boys by far, most decisively at the eighth-grade level, where 41 percent of them achieved proficiency, compared with 20 percent of boys. The racial achievement gap narrowed slightly, with black and Hispanic students’ writing improving a bit more than did whites’.
The results for eighth graders, though not for seniors, were broken down by states, the top performers of which were New Jersey, where 56 percent of students scored at or above proficiency levels, and Connecticut, where the number was 53 percent. Nineteen states ranked above New York, where it was 31 percent.
That a third of the nation’s eighth graders can write with proficiency may not sound like much, but it is the best performance by eighth-grade students in any subject tested in the national assessment in the last three years. Only 17 percent of eighth graders were proficient on the 2006 history exam, for example.
Though some experts questioned whether the writing test, which requires students to compose only brief essays in a short time, was an accurate measure of their ability, officials of the government’s testing program said they were encouraged by the results.
“I am happy to report, paraphrasing Mark Twain, that the death of writing has been greatly exaggerated,” said Amanda P. Avallone, an eighth-grade English teacher who is vice chairwoman of the board that oversees the testing program, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as “the nation’s report card.”
The results were released at the Library of Congress in Washington. The host, James H. Billington, the librarian of Congress, drew laughs when he expressed concern about “the slow destruction of the basic unit of human thought — the sentence,” as young Americans do most of their writing in disjointed prose composed in Internet chat rooms or in cellphone text messages.
“The sentence is the biggest casualty,” Mr. Billington said. “To what extent is students’ writing getting clearer?”
Ms. Avallone sought to allay his concern.
“I know that the sentence has not been put to rest as a unit of communication,” she said.
Ms. Avallone also said the difference in scores between girls and boys might result in part from lower literacy expectations for boys in the public schools.
“These days I seldom if ever hear the message that math and science do not matter for girls,” she said, “yet I do still encounter the myth that many boys won’t really need to write very much or very well once they leave school.”
The national writing test was given to 140,000 eighth graders and 28,000 12th graders selected to form a representative sample of all students nationwide in the two grades. Each student wrote two 25-minute essays intended to measure skills at writing to inform, persuade and tell stories.
Thirty-three percent of eighth graders scored at or above the proficiency level, which the test designers defined as competency in carrying out challenging academic tasks. Eighty-eight percent scored at or above the basic level, up from 85 percent in 2002.
“These results pleased and encouraged me,” said Michael Casserly, executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools, which represents the nation’s 60 largest urban districts. “A lot of cities have introduced explicit writing programs. You go into urban schools and you see hallways lined with samples of student writing. Writing programs have gotten better.”
If Mr. Casserly was encouraged, some others were not, particularly in light of other indicators of Americans’ writing prowess. A survey of 120 corporations conducted by the College Board in 2003, for instance, concluded that a third of employees in the nation’s blue-chip companies, including many recent college graduates, wrote poorly.
“American students’ writing skills are deteriorating,” said Will Fitzhugh, founder of The Concord Review, a journal that features history research papers written by high school students.
Mr. Fitzhugh expressed skepticism that the national assessment accurately measured students’ overall writing skills, because, he said, it tested only their ability to write brief essays jotted out in half an hour.
“The only way to assess the kind of writing that students will have to do in college,” he said, “is to have them write a term paper, and then have somebody sit down and grade it. And nobody wants to do that, because it’s too costly.”
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
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U.S. Students Achieve Mixed Results on Writing Test
By SAM DILLON
About a third of the nation’s eighth-grade students, and roughly a quarter of its high school seniors, are proficient writers, according to nationwide test results released Thursday.
That proportion of students demonstrating writing proficiency is about the same as in 2002, when a similar exam was last given.
But the results of the latest test, administered last year, also found modest increases in the skills of lower-performing students. Nearly 9 students in 10 can now demonstrate at least a basic achievement in writing, defined as partial mastery of the skills needed for proficient work.
As in the past, girls outperformed boys by far, most decisively at the eighth-grade level, where 41 percent of them achieved proficiency, compared with 20 percent of boys. The racial achievement gap narrowed slightly, with black and Hispanic students’ writing improving a bit more than did whites’.
The results for eighth graders, though not for seniors, were broken down by states, the top performers of which were New Jersey, where 56 percent of students scored at or above proficiency levels, and Connecticut, where the number was 53 percent. Nineteen states ranked above New York, where it was 31 percent.
That a third of the nation’s eighth graders can write with proficiency may not sound like much, but it is the best performance by eighth-grade students in any subject tested in the national assessment in the last three years. Only 17 percent of eighth graders were proficient on the 2006 history exam, for example.
Though some experts questioned whether the writing test, which requires students to compose only brief essays in a short time, was an accurate measure of their ability, officials of the government’s testing program said they were encouraged by the results.
“I am happy to report, paraphrasing Mark Twain, that the death of writing has been greatly exaggerated,” said Amanda P. Avallone, an eighth-grade English teacher who is vice chairwoman of the board that oversees the testing program, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as “the nation’s report card.”
The results were released at the Library of Congress in Washington. The host, James H. Billington, the librarian of Congress, drew laughs when he expressed concern about “the slow destruction of the basic unit of human thought — the sentence,” as young Americans do most of their writing in disjointed prose composed in Internet chat rooms or in cellphone text messages.
“The sentence is the biggest casualty,” Mr. Billington said. “To what extent is students’ writing getting clearer?”
Ms. Avallone sought to allay his concern.
“I know that the sentence has not been put to rest as a unit of communication,” she said.
Ms. Avallone also said the difference in scores between girls and boys might result in part from lower literacy expectations for boys in the public schools.
“These days I seldom if ever hear the message that math and science do not matter for girls,” she said, “yet I do still encounter the myth that many boys won’t really need to write very much or very well once they leave school.”
The national writing test was given to 140,000 eighth graders and 28,000 12th graders selected to form a representative sample of all students nationwide in the two grades. Each student wrote two 25-minute essays intended to measure skills at writing to inform, persuade and tell stories.
Thirty-three percent of eighth graders scored at or above the proficiency level, which the test designers defined as competency in carrying out challenging academic tasks. Eighty-eight percent scored at or above the basic level, up from 85 percent in 2002.
“These results pleased and encouraged me,” said Michael Casserly, executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools, which represents the nation’s 60 largest urban districts. “A lot of cities have introduced explicit writing programs. You go into urban schools and you see hallways lined with samples of student writing. Writing programs have gotten better.”
If Mr. Casserly was encouraged, some others were not, particularly in light of other indicators of Americans’ writing prowess. A survey of 120 corporations conducted by the College Board in 2003, for instance, concluded that a third of employees in the nation’s blue-chip companies, including many recent college graduates, wrote poorly.
“American students’ writing skills are deteriorating,” said Will Fitzhugh, founder of The Concord Review, a journal that features history research papers written by high school students.
Mr. Fitzhugh expressed skepticism that the national assessment accurately measured students’ overall writing skills, because, he said, it tested only their ability to write brief essays jotted out in half an hour.
“The only way to assess the kind of writing that students will have to do in college,” he said, “is to have them write a term paper, and then have somebody sit down and grade it. And nobody wants to do that, because it’s too costly.”
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
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Thursday, April 03, 2008
Foundation leadership on diversity is missing
John C. Gamboa | SF Gate Open Forum
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Thanks to Assemblyman Joe Coto's "sunshine" bill, The Foundation Diversity and Transparency Act, the public has heard more about diversity and accountability on philanthropic foundation boards in two months than it has in two decades. This bill, which my organization sponsored, would require large foundations to disclose their board and grant-giving diversity. Information of this type is already provided by every major bank and regulated utility in the state. What we did not realize, though, is how this issue would ignite a firestorm of controversy and condemnation from major foundations. Almost every week there is a new charge that the proposed law would unleash "diversity police" or promote "reverse racism."
The strongest argument against AB624 has not been raised by anyone in the philanthropic world, and there is good reason why. If the $700 billion of foundation assets were truly private in nature, then the Legislature has no right to require transparency as to the uses of these funds. But the taxpayers subsidize through tax exemptions to the foundation world between $40 billion and $80 billion a year.
These taxpayer subsidies were awarded in order to encourage the foundations to assist the poor and under-served communities. They were not intended, for example, to subsidize the opera or the symphony, which throughout the United States receive more than $1 billion in assistance from foundations and wealthy donors. As Robert Reich, a former U.S. secretary of labor and currently a public policy professor at UC Berkeley, has written, "These aren't charitable contributions. They're often investments in the lifestyles the wealthy already enjoy and want their children to have."
For the past three years, the Greenlining Institute has published an annual report that looks at philanthropic foundation giving to minority community nonprofits. Our last unrefuted study found that only 3.6 percent of giving went to these organizations, despite the fact that people of color make up more than half of the state. Of this, only 3/10ths of 1 percent went to African Americans. Our reports have also found that only 10 percent of total giving goes to low-income communities. Many community leaders feel this low level of giving to the needy does not make sense, considering how much foundations receive every year in tax subsidy.
What foundations may fear the most is not the Coto transparency bill, but where it may eventually lead. Today, foundations spend only a quarter, on the average, of their annual income on philanthropy. Included in this sum are grants to wealthy universities that already have huge endowments, an example of which is the Koret Foundation's $3 million dollar gift to Stanford in 2006. Foundations could be doing far more to address the immediate crisis, particularly during a recession, if they spent a larger portion of their annual income on philanthropy. For example, foundations today spend only half their income every year. If they were to spend 80 percent of their annual income, that number would rise to more than $100 billion a year.
To further support Assemblyman Joe Coto's bill, Greenlining has asked the chairman of the congressional Ways and Means Committee, Rep. Charles Rangel, to request a GAO study of the dollar amount of annual federal, state and local tax subsidies to the foundation world. And, the governor, facing a major budget crisis and substantial cuts in health, education and other social services to low-income families, may wish to ask the State Franchise Tax Board to report on the dollar amount of California taxpayer subsidies. Greenlining estimates it at $4 billion a year. This may be enough to avoid cuts in education and health care for low-income families.
In the spirit of compromise and maximizing impact, Greenlining invites all foundations, including the Koret Foundation, to join us in a venture which will have profound and long-lasting benefits for our state's underserved families. We have written Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to request that half of the annual income of the state's foundations be devoted to helping low-income victims of the recession for the next two years. In a time of recession, we hope that foundations will be vocal supporters of this idea.
John C. Gamboa is executive director of the Greenlining Institute. The opposing view by Jeffrey A. Farber of the Koret Foundation ran in Open Forum on March 25. To read it, go to sfgate.com
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Thanks to Assemblyman Joe Coto's "sunshine" bill, The Foundation Diversity and Transparency Act, the public has heard more about diversity and accountability on philanthropic foundation boards in two months than it has in two decades. This bill, which my organization sponsored, would require large foundations to disclose their board and grant-giving diversity. Information of this type is already provided by every major bank and regulated utility in the state. What we did not realize, though, is how this issue would ignite a firestorm of controversy and condemnation from major foundations. Almost every week there is a new charge that the proposed law would unleash "diversity police" or promote "reverse racism."
The strongest argument against AB624 has not been raised by anyone in the philanthropic world, and there is good reason why. If the $700 billion of foundation assets were truly private in nature, then the Legislature has no right to require transparency as to the uses of these funds. But the taxpayers subsidize through tax exemptions to the foundation world between $40 billion and $80 billion a year.
These taxpayer subsidies were awarded in order to encourage the foundations to assist the poor and under-served communities. They were not intended, for example, to subsidize the opera or the symphony, which throughout the United States receive more than $1 billion in assistance from foundations and wealthy donors. As Robert Reich, a former U.S. secretary of labor and currently a public policy professor at UC Berkeley, has written, "These aren't charitable contributions. They're often investments in the lifestyles the wealthy already enjoy and want their children to have."
For the past three years, the Greenlining Institute has published an annual report that looks at philanthropic foundation giving to minority community nonprofits. Our last unrefuted study found that only 3.6 percent of giving went to these organizations, despite the fact that people of color make up more than half of the state. Of this, only 3/10ths of 1 percent went to African Americans. Our reports have also found that only 10 percent of total giving goes to low-income communities. Many community leaders feel this low level of giving to the needy does not make sense, considering how much foundations receive every year in tax subsidy.
What foundations may fear the most is not the Coto transparency bill, but where it may eventually lead. Today, foundations spend only a quarter, on the average, of their annual income on philanthropy. Included in this sum are grants to wealthy universities that already have huge endowments, an example of which is the Koret Foundation's $3 million dollar gift to Stanford in 2006. Foundations could be doing far more to address the immediate crisis, particularly during a recession, if they spent a larger portion of their annual income on philanthropy. For example, foundations today spend only half their income every year. If they were to spend 80 percent of their annual income, that number would rise to more than $100 billion a year.
To further support Assemblyman Joe Coto's bill, Greenlining has asked the chairman of the congressional Ways and Means Committee, Rep. Charles Rangel, to request a GAO study of the dollar amount of annual federal, state and local tax subsidies to the foundation world. And, the governor, facing a major budget crisis and substantial cuts in health, education and other social services to low-income families, may wish to ask the State Franchise Tax Board to report on the dollar amount of California taxpayer subsidies. Greenlining estimates it at $4 billion a year. This may be enough to avoid cuts in education and health care for low-income families.
In the spirit of compromise and maximizing impact, Greenlining invites all foundations, including the Koret Foundation, to join us in a venture which will have profound and long-lasting benefits for our state's underserved families. We have written Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to request that half of the annual income of the state's foundations be devoted to helping low-income victims of the recession for the next two years. In a time of recession, we hope that foundations will be vocal supporters of this idea.
John C. Gamboa is executive director of the Greenlining Institute. The opposing view by Jeffrey A. Farber of the Koret Foundation ran in Open Forum on March 25. To read it, go to sfgate.com
Holding NCLB Accountable
Fair Test Issue: Apr 2008
The papers collected in Holding NCLB Accountable: Achieving Accountability, Equity, & School Reform point out the deep flaws in the accountability structure of No Child Left Behind. They describe how the law is failing to improve schools and analyze the lack of state and local capacity to improve ill-funded schools serving very needy populations. Finally, the authors propose useful steps to overhaul the law.
For example, Willis Hawley's "NCLB and Continuous School Improvement" focuses on needed changes in assessment and capacity building. Rather than judging schools on standardized test scores, Hawley suggests gathering information on a variety of important outcomes, using such sources as portfolios. This approach will require construction of new assessment systems, for which the federal government should provide funding. This richer information, in turn, should support coherent improvement approaches rather than merely labeling and then sanctioning schools.
Here's the link to check out the papers on-line. -Patricia
The papers collected in Holding NCLB Accountable: Achieving Accountability, Equity, & School Reform point out the deep flaws in the accountability structure of No Child Left Behind. They describe how the law is failing to improve schools and analyze the lack of state and local capacity to improve ill-funded schools serving very needy populations. Finally, the authors propose useful steps to overhaul the law.
For example, Willis Hawley's "NCLB and Continuous School Improvement" focuses on needed changes in assessment and capacity building. Rather than judging schools on standardized test scores, Hawley suggests gathering information on a variety of important outcomes, using such sources as portfolios. This approach will require construction of new assessment systems, for which the federal government should provide funding. This richer information, in turn, should support coherent improvement approaches rather than merely labeling and then sanctioning schools.
Here's the link to check out the papers on-line. -Patricia
We estimate that 81-85% of our freshmen from Texas high schools will be automatically admitted under the Top 10% Law
From an email
April 2, 2008
Dear Friends,
Many of you have told me that you are concerned about the Top 10% Law and its effect on admissions at UT Austin. We're concluding the admissions cycle here on the 40 Acres, and I'd like to share some figures with you.
We received 29,626 applications for the fall 2008 freshman class. Our target enrollment for that class is 7,200. We have already admitted more than 9,100 Texas applicants who graduated in the top 10% of their high school class. Those figures clearly demonstrate the problem we face.
Of course, not all the Top 10% admitted students will attend UT. But we estimate that 81-85% of our freshmen from Texas high schools will be automatically admitted under the Top 10% Law, and it could reach 100% within the next two years. After all, last year's figure was 71%, so we've experienced a substantial increase in only 12 months.
The law penalizes many well-rounded students. Furthermore, we are unable to admit many students with extraordinary skills in music, art, mathematics, or leadership because we are required to select so many students according to a sole criterion, class rank. When our children come to us and ask for advice, we properly tell them to do well in school, but also to be well rounded by getting involved in their community. Then when they want to come to UT, they find out only one thing matters. That's a terrible message to send to our young people.
In addition, only one in four of our top 10% students is Hispanic or African American. We are running out of room to recruit minority students who, for example, are in the 15th percentile and who have other indices of leadership. We can do a better job diversifying our class if we have more flexibility. When the Top 10% Law was originally passed, about 41% of our Texas students came in under it. All we are asking is to return to that original model.
In testimony before the Legislature on many occasions, I have stated that if we granted automatic admission to half the freshman class and considered all admissions criteria for the other half, we could accomplish the goals of the Top 10% Law while building a diverse and well-rounded student body. In my travels across Texas, I will continue to try to educate the people of our state and our elected representatives about the effects of the Top 10% Law on educational opportunities at The University of Texas at Austin. I hope you will join me.
Thanks for all you do for the University.
Bill Powers
President
The University of Texas at Austin
April 2, 2008
Dear Friends,
Many of you have told me that you are concerned about the Top 10% Law and its effect on admissions at UT Austin. We're concluding the admissions cycle here on the 40 Acres, and I'd like to share some figures with you.
We received 29,626 applications for the fall 2008 freshman class. Our target enrollment for that class is 7,200. We have already admitted more than 9,100 Texas applicants who graduated in the top 10% of their high school class. Those figures clearly demonstrate the problem we face.
Of course, not all the Top 10% admitted students will attend UT. But we estimate that 81-85% of our freshmen from Texas high schools will be automatically admitted under the Top 10% Law, and it could reach 100% within the next two years. After all, last year's figure was 71%, so we've experienced a substantial increase in only 12 months.
The law penalizes many well-rounded students. Furthermore, we are unable to admit many students with extraordinary skills in music, art, mathematics, or leadership because we are required to select so many students according to a sole criterion, class rank. When our children come to us and ask for advice, we properly tell them to do well in school, but also to be well rounded by getting involved in their community. Then when they want to come to UT, they find out only one thing matters. That's a terrible message to send to our young people.
In addition, only one in four of our top 10% students is Hispanic or African American. We are running out of room to recruit minority students who, for example, are in the 15th percentile and who have other indices of leadership. We can do a better job diversifying our class if we have more flexibility. When the Top 10% Law was originally passed, about 41% of our Texas students came in under it. All we are asking is to return to that original model.
In testimony before the Legislature on many occasions, I have stated that if we granted automatic admission to half the freshman class and considered all admissions criteria for the other half, we could accomplish the goals of the Top 10% Law while building a diverse and well-rounded student body. In my travels across Texas, I will continue to try to educate the people of our state and our elected representatives about the effects of the Top 10% Law on educational opportunities at The University of Texas at Austin. I hope you will join me.
Thanks for all you do for the University.
Bill Powers
President
The University of Texas at Austin
MEChA prepares high school students for college
Cindy Von Quednow | Daily Sundial
April 2, 2008
About 400 students from 20 middle and high schools visited CSUN on Saturday for the 10th Annual Raza Youth Conference organized by MEChA.
The theme for the daylong event was "The empowerment of our community begins with you."
"Our purpose is to inform students of the process of higher education," said sophomore Spanish major Angelica Amezcua, one of the main organizers of the event.
"Unfortunately, sometimes youth are disadvantaged and counselors don't tell them anything about the help they can receive once they're in college. We tell them that they are not alone and there is a lot of help out there," Amezcua said.
Monica Garcia, president of the Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education, and Eddie Torres, a CSUN graduate and community activist, were the keynote speakers. There was live entertainment from local bands and dance groups.
The conference was broken down into three workshop sessions that were conducted in English and Spanish by current and former CSUN students, CSUN professors and staff, MEChA members from other universities and community activists.
The workshops took place at classrooms inside Jerome Richfield and Sierra Hall. The issues discussed included financial aid, the Educational Opportunity Program, academia, culture, nutrition, immigration and sexuality.
Rosa Furumoto, assistant professor of Chicano/a studies, who conducted workshops on military recruitment, said, "For a lot of students in high school, this is their first experience for going to college. Counselors don't necessarily hear all students. Parents need to know their rights and their children's rights."
Since parental attendance and participation was encouraged, Nancy Menjivar, a senior psychology major, said the conference focused on the strong family structure prevalent in Latino homes.
"Having these events involves (parents) and that's the key to succeeding in college and succeeding in life," said Menjivar, who led a discussion on gang prevention and intervention.
Luis Gonzalez and his 14-year-ol daughter Arlyne, a student at Belvedere Middle School, agreed and said they enjoyed the conference. Arlyne said she would like to apply to CSUN in the future.
Belvedere was one of the four middle schools invited to the event. Some high school students thought it was a good idea to have students visit the university at a young age.
Nabitle Ibarra, 17, a student at Lincoln High School, said she thought it was important for middle school students to become aware of college.
"When I was in middle school, I didn't know that much about college," Ibarra said. "I just knew I had to go."
Steven Perez, 14, another Lincoln student, said, "This is a really good opportunity to see what college really looks like. I didn't have the chance to come here when I was in middle school, so it's good for students to come now."
Suzuky Silva, 17, said she found out about the different programs offered at CSUN and was informed about useful information on how to receive help in college.
"(The presenters) let people know about our culture and how we have struggled to get our education and the importance of continuing our education through middle school, high school and college."
Carlos Flores, a senior engineering major, who presented on immigration rights, said it is imperative that students take advantage of what they have available to them.
"We are here to teach students the proper path to follow to get the education they deserve and to inspire them because their stories are our stories," Flores said. "It is in our interests to outreach to young people and other people in the community...They are probably evaluating other students in similar situations, and they view us, if not as role models, as an inspiration."
Amezcua said MEChA started planning the event before the semester began during the winter break. Free breakfast and lunch was offered to students, parents and teachers.
U.S. to Require States to Use a Single School Dropout Formula
By SAM DILLON | NY Times
Published: April 1, 2008
Moving to sweep away the tangle of inaccurate state data that has obscured the severity of the nation’s high school dropout crisis, Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings will require all states to use one federal formula to calculate graduation and dropout rates, Bush administration officials said on Monday.
The requirement would be one of the most far-reaching regulatory actions taken by any education secretary, experts said, because it would affect the official statistics issued by all 50 states and each of the nation’s 14,000 public high schools.
Ms. Spellings will announce her action at a so-called dropout prevention summit in Washington on Tuesday, the officials said. The summit is organized by a group beginning a national campaign intended to reduce dropout rates.
“In the coming weeks, I will take administrative steps to ensure that all states use the same formula to calculate how many students graduate from high school on time — and how many drop out,” Ms. Spellings said in remarks prepared for delivery on Tuesday and made available to The New York Times.
Ms. Spellings’s statements underline the rising urgency among policymakers and corporate leaders to address the nation’s dropout epidemic, as well as the administration’s growing sense that efforts in Congress to rewrite the law this year may not succeed.
The adoption of a federal graduation formula would correct one of the most glaring weaknesses of the federal No Child Left Behind law. Although the law requires states and high schools to report their graduation rates to the federal government, it allows states to set their own formulas for calculating them. As a result, most states have used formulas that understate the number of dropouts, and official graduation rates are not comparable from state to state. The No Child law establishes no national school completion goal.
Michael Cohen, who was an assistant secretary of education under President Clinton, said the proposed measure would be considerably more important than most Department of Education regulations.
“This is a huge deal, in terms of its impact, because it will basically affect every high school in the country,” Mr. Cohen said.
Senior Education Department officials said Ms. Spellings would publish the proposed graduation formula requirement in the Federal Register, opening a period of public comment that often lasts several months, before issuing the final regulation later this year.
On Tuesday, Ms. Spellings is not expected to outline the specific graduation rate formula that she intends to require states to adopt. But in her remarks, she noted that all 50 governors in the National Governors Association signed a compact in 2005 agreeing to eventually calculate their graduation rates according to a common method.
Under that formula, graduation rates are calculated by dividing the number of students who receive a traditional high school diploma in any given year by the number of first-time ninth graders that entered four years earlier. The governors’ agreement lacks the force of law, and a few states have moved to enact the governors’ formula more vigorously than others.
Many states still use dozens of other graduation rate formulas that vary in reliability.
New Mexico, for example, has defined its graduation rate as the percentage of enrolled 12th graders who receive a diploma, a method that grossly undercounts dropouts by ignoring all students who leave school before 12th grade. North Carolina until last year used another formula that so exaggerated graduates that when the state adopted a more accurate method last year, its rate plummeted to 68 from 95 percent.
New York has reported a 77 percent graduation rate to comply with the No Child law. But the federal department uses a formula that closely approximates the governors’ formula to estimate a graduation rate for all 50 states, and using that method, New York’s graduation rate is 65 percent.
The dropout summit scheduled for Tuesday has been organized by former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and his wife, Alma, who is the chairwoman of the America’s Promise Alliance, the group beginning the national campaign.
“We Americans can’t afford to have a third or more of our kids not getting through high school — how can we have this?” Mr. Powell said in an interview. “Some places have a 70 percent dropout rate. We can’t have this.”
According to a report issued by the alliance for Tuesday’s summit, 1.2 million American teenagers drop out of high school every year. Christopher B. Swanson, the report’s author, said that to use the governors’ graduation formula, a state must have a statewide school record system capable of tracking each student through four years of high school.
Many states have made progress toward building such systems, Dr. Swanson said, but some have not, raising questions about how the Department of Education could require states to calculate a rate that is beyond their technological capacity, he said. The department might have to establish an interim graduation rate formula for use by some states until they can develop their tracking systems, and that could mean that graduation rates might for a time still not be comparable across states, he said.
Amy Wilkins, a vice president at Education Trust, a group that has pushed for more accurate reporting of graduation rates, said Ms. Spellings’s action “shows that she is impatient for changes in N.C.L.B. that she knows are commonsensical.”
“Reauthorization is taking longer than she wants to wait,” Ms. Wilkins said. “She’s tired of seeing flaws in the law limit its effectiveness. She has the power to make changes, and so she is.”
Published: April 1, 2008
Moving to sweep away the tangle of inaccurate state data that has obscured the severity of the nation’s high school dropout crisis, Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings will require all states to use one federal formula to calculate graduation and dropout rates, Bush administration officials said on Monday.
The requirement would be one of the most far-reaching regulatory actions taken by any education secretary, experts said, because it would affect the official statistics issued by all 50 states and each of the nation’s 14,000 public high schools.
Ms. Spellings will announce her action at a so-called dropout prevention summit in Washington on Tuesday, the officials said. The summit is organized by a group beginning a national campaign intended to reduce dropout rates.
“In the coming weeks, I will take administrative steps to ensure that all states use the same formula to calculate how many students graduate from high school on time — and how many drop out,” Ms. Spellings said in remarks prepared for delivery on Tuesday and made available to The New York Times.
Ms. Spellings’s statements underline the rising urgency among policymakers and corporate leaders to address the nation’s dropout epidemic, as well as the administration’s growing sense that efforts in Congress to rewrite the law this year may not succeed.
The adoption of a federal graduation formula would correct one of the most glaring weaknesses of the federal No Child Left Behind law. Although the law requires states and high schools to report their graduation rates to the federal government, it allows states to set their own formulas for calculating them. As a result, most states have used formulas that understate the number of dropouts, and official graduation rates are not comparable from state to state. The No Child law establishes no national school completion goal.
Michael Cohen, who was an assistant secretary of education under President Clinton, said the proposed measure would be considerably more important than most Department of Education regulations.
“This is a huge deal, in terms of its impact, because it will basically affect every high school in the country,” Mr. Cohen said.
Senior Education Department officials said Ms. Spellings would publish the proposed graduation formula requirement in the Federal Register, opening a period of public comment that often lasts several months, before issuing the final regulation later this year.
On Tuesday, Ms. Spellings is not expected to outline the specific graduation rate formula that she intends to require states to adopt. But in her remarks, she noted that all 50 governors in the National Governors Association signed a compact in 2005 agreeing to eventually calculate their graduation rates according to a common method.
Under that formula, graduation rates are calculated by dividing the number of students who receive a traditional high school diploma in any given year by the number of first-time ninth graders that entered four years earlier. The governors’ agreement lacks the force of law, and a few states have moved to enact the governors’ formula more vigorously than others.
Many states still use dozens of other graduation rate formulas that vary in reliability.
New Mexico, for example, has defined its graduation rate as the percentage of enrolled 12th graders who receive a diploma, a method that grossly undercounts dropouts by ignoring all students who leave school before 12th grade. North Carolina until last year used another formula that so exaggerated graduates that when the state adopted a more accurate method last year, its rate plummeted to 68 from 95 percent.
New York has reported a 77 percent graduation rate to comply with the No Child law. But the federal department uses a formula that closely approximates the governors’ formula to estimate a graduation rate for all 50 states, and using that method, New York’s graduation rate is 65 percent.
The dropout summit scheduled for Tuesday has been organized by former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and his wife, Alma, who is the chairwoman of the America’s Promise Alliance, the group beginning the national campaign.
“We Americans can’t afford to have a third or more of our kids not getting through high school — how can we have this?” Mr. Powell said in an interview. “Some places have a 70 percent dropout rate. We can’t have this.”
According to a report issued by the alliance for Tuesday’s summit, 1.2 million American teenagers drop out of high school every year. Christopher B. Swanson, the report’s author, said that to use the governors’ graduation formula, a state must have a statewide school record system capable of tracking each student through four years of high school.
Many states have made progress toward building such systems, Dr. Swanson said, but some have not, raising questions about how the Department of Education could require states to calculate a rate that is beyond their technological capacity, he said. The department might have to establish an interim graduation rate formula for use by some states until they can develop their tracking systems, and that could mean that graduation rates might for a time still not be comparable across states, he said.
Amy Wilkins, a vice president at Education Trust, a group that has pushed for more accurate reporting of graduation rates, said Ms. Spellings’s action “shows that she is impatient for changes in N.C.L.B. that she knows are commonsensical.”
“Reauthorization is taking longer than she wants to wait,” Ms. Wilkins said. “She’s tired of seeing flaws in the law limit its effectiveness. She has the power to make changes, and so she is.”
Queens immigrants join city march for rights
By Jeremy Walsh
04/03/2008
If New York City is regarded by many as a city of immigrants, Queens is a borough of immigrants, many of whom marched last week in Manhattan in the March for Immigrant New York.
More than 70 immigrant rights groups came out from the five boroughs to call for improved access to housing services, school improvements, immigrant services funding and health care access. Queens, whose population was 48.5 percent foreign-born in a 2006 U.S. Census survey, was represented by New Immigrant Community Empowerment from Jackson Heights, Queens Community House in Forest Hills and the Haitian American Unity Project, which has an office in Cambria Heights.
Shouting "Si, se puede" (Yes, we can) and other chants, the crowd of between 1,000 and 1,500 marched from Battery Park up to City Hall.
NICE Deputy Director Valeria Treves said 13 people involved with her group came out to march.
"There's been a lot of rhetoric about helping immigrant students, and we want to make sure something backs that up," she said.
According to the New York Immigration Coalition, which organized the rally, one in seven children in city schools is an English language learner. The group wants $500 million in education funding restored, including $15 million for teachers of English as a second language.
Chung Wha Hong, the coalition's executive director, hailed Mayor Michael Bloomberg for promising more resources to help these students last year, but said he and the Education Department are trying to ignore those promises.
"The mayor and City Council can do better," she said.
At least one Queens high school student took the podium to demand school improvements.
"We care about education," said Daniel Torreo, a student at Flushing International High School. "Our message to the mayor is keep the promises."
For Jackson Heights resident Matias Calihua, a Mexican immigrant who works on construction jobs, getting funding for English classes is crucial.
"We need to learn to speak English so we can get better jobs," he said, through an interpreter, of the day laborers on Roosevelt Avenue. "I know people who have been on Roosevelt for nine years. Many of them can't progress because they can't speak English."
One in four adult New Yorkers is not proficient in English, according to the immigration coalition,
Some construction bosses take advantage of the language gap to deny day laborers a decent wage, Calihua said. "Some offer us a lot less than we're worth."
Borough elected officials also came out to show their support.
"I, too, am a child of immigrants," said City Councilman Leroy Comrie (D-St. Albans), whose parents came from the Caribbean nation of Jamaica. "If you're working in the city and you're paying taxes, you should have equal rights and protection," he said.
City Councilman John Liu (D-Flushing) emphasized the importance of English language classes. As a child, he said, he had to translate for his Taiwanese parents once he learned the language.
"How many people here want to learn English?" he asked to loud cheers.
City Comptroller William Thompson said 40 percent of the city's population are first-generation immigrants.
"They play an important part in making New York City strong," he said.
04/03/2008
If New York City is regarded by many as a city of immigrants, Queens is a borough of immigrants, many of whom marched last week in Manhattan in the March for Immigrant New York.
More than 70 immigrant rights groups came out from the five boroughs to call for improved access to housing services, school improvements, immigrant services funding and health care access. Queens, whose population was 48.5 percent foreign-born in a 2006 U.S. Census survey, was represented by New Immigrant Community Empowerment from Jackson Heights, Queens Community House in Forest Hills and the Haitian American Unity Project, which has an office in Cambria Heights.
Shouting "Si, se puede" (Yes, we can) and other chants, the crowd of between 1,000 and 1,500 marched from Battery Park up to City Hall.
NICE Deputy Director Valeria Treves said 13 people involved with her group came out to march.
"There's been a lot of rhetoric about helping immigrant students, and we want to make sure something backs that up," she said.
According to the New York Immigration Coalition, which organized the rally, one in seven children in city schools is an English language learner. The group wants $500 million in education funding restored, including $15 million for teachers of English as a second language.
Chung Wha Hong, the coalition's executive director, hailed Mayor Michael Bloomberg for promising more resources to help these students last year, but said he and the Education Department are trying to ignore those promises.
"The mayor and City Council can do better," she said.
At least one Queens high school student took the podium to demand school improvements.
"We care about education," said Daniel Torreo, a student at Flushing International High School. "Our message to the mayor is keep the promises."
For Jackson Heights resident Matias Calihua, a Mexican immigrant who works on construction jobs, getting funding for English classes is crucial.
"We need to learn to speak English so we can get better jobs," he said, through an interpreter, of the day laborers on Roosevelt Avenue. "I know people who have been on Roosevelt for nine years. Many of them can't progress because they can't speak English."
One in four adult New Yorkers is not proficient in English, according to the immigration coalition,
Some construction bosses take advantage of the language gap to deny day laborers a decent wage, Calihua said. "Some offer us a lot less than we're worth."
Borough elected officials also came out to show their support.
"I, too, am a child of immigrants," said City Councilman Leroy Comrie (D-St. Albans), whose parents came from the Caribbean nation of Jamaica. "If you're working in the city and you're paying taxes, you should have equal rights and protection," he said.
City Councilman John Liu (D-Flushing) emphasized the importance of English language classes. As a child, he said, he had to translate for his Taiwanese parents once he learned the language.
"How many people here want to learn English?" he asked to loud cheers.
City Comptroller William Thompson said 40 percent of the city's population are first-generation immigrants.
"They play an important part in making New York City strong," he said.
Youth commission could face closure, radical change, lawmakers say
This is even more interesting given the previous post "Texas ranks low in child well-being," which shows that the number of incarcerated youths in Texas equaling 7,662. This article shows a total of 2,400 held in TYCs making me question if the other 5,262 are in adult penitentiaries?? -Patricia
As costs spiral, legislators look for more frugal alternative.
By Mike Ward | AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Friday, April 04, 2008
After spending a year trying to reform the Texas Youth Commission, some legislative leaders are discussing a new possibility: a drastic restructuring — and perhaps even shutting it down.
State Sen. John Whitmire, who co-chairs a special legislative committee overseeing the Youth Commission reforms after allegations surfaced last year of sexual abuse of youths, confirmed Thursday that he and several other lawmakers are actively discussing plans to drastically restructure the troubled agency.
One concept under discussion: lock up the most violent, most troubled offenders in a reduced number of lockups, run by a new incarnation of the Youth Commission or perhaps by a new youth division of Texas' adult prison system, and house the rest in locally based treatment and rehabilitation programs.
"We're spending $110,000 a kid now — about $250 million for 2,400 kids — and you could do the new concept for half of what we're spending now, maybe less," Whitmire said. "I've gotten nothing but encouragement from anyone who's been briefed on this so far.
"It makes so much sense, it'll be hard for anyone to argue against this — except maybe the rural counties where the TYC facilities are located."
Most other states have juvenile corrections agencies, though several use them mainly to oversee community-based programs.
Youth Commission Conservator Richard Nedelkoff, who has previously predicted the agency will face changes, said he cannot fathom that the Youth Commission would be abolished, even though it may face drastic restructuring.
"I can't imagine a day that we would not have an agency with authority over troubled youth," he said. "But there is a dialogue going on about what is the ideal juvenile corrections system for Texas, and how to we create that ... what does it look like.
"Dialogue is what we're having at this point. There is no plan yet."
In recent months, some legislative leaders have grown increasingly impatient with the progress of reforms at the Youth Commission, still reeling from the sexual-abuse scandal and subsequent management changes. In addition to frustrations with the slowness of implementing reforms, they have grown tired of perceived administrative miscues — including three shakeups of top management in a year.
Gov. Rick Perry appointed Nedelkoff the latest conservator in December.
State Rep. Jerry Madden, Whitmire's co-chair on the special panel, said he does not favor "shutting anything down or drastically changing anything until we know what we're replacing it with.
"But I think everyone knows the agency may look much different in the future than it does now," he said. "This is a work in progress."
In all, the Youth Commission now holds about 2,400 offenders, about half what it did a year ago. The number of employees: roughly 4,600 approved positions, about the same.
The Youth Commission's top eight or so officials earn $1.8 million a year, a much higher total than a year ago, according to Whitmire.
"Once we got the worst, most violent youth offenders in secure facilities, we could take the rest and let the state funding follow them to programs in their communities, so Houston and San Antonio and the (Dallas-Fort Worth) Metroplex could keep their own kids," Whitmire said.
"This concept is in the initial stages of discussion now, but I think you'll see something coming together on it pretty soon. Where we've been going with this agency makes no sense in the long run."
One big criticism of the agency is that lockups are in remote, rural areas of the state, far from the major cities that most of the youths call home.
On Wednesday, Whitmire said he asked Nedelkoff during a Wednesday meeting to come up with a conceptual plan for the alternatives. Nedelkoff said he is working on several concepts about what the agency could look like in coming years.
Whitmire, Madden and others familiar with the discussions said the possible changes would emphasize community-based programs rather than the institutionalization of troubled youths who are doing time for relatively minor crimes. They might also pay for many of the programs through counties rather than through the Youth Commission — a change that California has recently embraced.
"We have high schools with more kids in one place than what TYC has locked up in a dozen or so facilities, several (of) which we're going to have to spend a lot of additional money on to bring them up to standard," Whitmire said.
"Why spend money like that when there's a less expensive, smarter way to do this?"
As costs spiral, legislators look for more frugal alternative.
By Mike Ward | AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Friday, April 04, 2008
After spending a year trying to reform the Texas Youth Commission, some legislative leaders are discussing a new possibility: a drastic restructuring — and perhaps even shutting it down.
State Sen. John Whitmire, who co-chairs a special legislative committee overseeing the Youth Commission reforms after allegations surfaced last year of sexual abuse of youths, confirmed Thursday that he and several other lawmakers are actively discussing plans to drastically restructure the troubled agency.
One concept under discussion: lock up the most violent, most troubled offenders in a reduced number of lockups, run by a new incarnation of the Youth Commission or perhaps by a new youth division of Texas' adult prison system, and house the rest in locally based treatment and rehabilitation programs.
"We're spending $110,000 a kid now — about $250 million for 2,400 kids — and you could do the new concept for half of what we're spending now, maybe less," Whitmire said. "I've gotten nothing but encouragement from anyone who's been briefed on this so far.
"It makes so much sense, it'll be hard for anyone to argue against this — except maybe the rural counties where the TYC facilities are located."
Most other states have juvenile corrections agencies, though several use them mainly to oversee community-based programs.
Youth Commission Conservator Richard Nedelkoff, who has previously predicted the agency will face changes, said he cannot fathom that the Youth Commission would be abolished, even though it may face drastic restructuring.
"I can't imagine a day that we would not have an agency with authority over troubled youth," he said. "But there is a dialogue going on about what is the ideal juvenile corrections system for Texas, and how to we create that ... what does it look like.
"Dialogue is what we're having at this point. There is no plan yet."
In recent months, some legislative leaders have grown increasingly impatient with the progress of reforms at the Youth Commission, still reeling from the sexual-abuse scandal and subsequent management changes. In addition to frustrations with the slowness of implementing reforms, they have grown tired of perceived administrative miscues — including three shakeups of top management in a year.
Gov. Rick Perry appointed Nedelkoff the latest conservator in December.
State Rep. Jerry Madden, Whitmire's co-chair on the special panel, said he does not favor "shutting anything down or drastically changing anything until we know what we're replacing it with.
"But I think everyone knows the agency may look much different in the future than it does now," he said. "This is a work in progress."
In all, the Youth Commission now holds about 2,400 offenders, about half what it did a year ago. The number of employees: roughly 4,600 approved positions, about the same.
The Youth Commission's top eight or so officials earn $1.8 million a year, a much higher total than a year ago, according to Whitmire.
"Once we got the worst, most violent youth offenders in secure facilities, we could take the rest and let the state funding follow them to programs in their communities, so Houston and San Antonio and the (Dallas-Fort Worth) Metroplex could keep their own kids," Whitmire said.
"This concept is in the initial stages of discussion now, but I think you'll see something coming together on it pretty soon. Where we've been going with this agency makes no sense in the long run."
One big criticism of the agency is that lockups are in remote, rural areas of the state, far from the major cities that most of the youths call home.
On Wednesday, Whitmire said he asked Nedelkoff during a Wednesday meeting to come up with a conceptual plan for the alternatives. Nedelkoff said he is working on several concepts about what the agency could look like in coming years.
Whitmire, Madden and others familiar with the discussions said the possible changes would emphasize community-based programs rather than the institutionalization of troubled youths who are doing time for relatively minor crimes. They might also pay for many of the programs through counties rather than through the Youth Commission — a change that California has recently embraced.
"We have high schools with more kids in one place than what TYC has locked up in a dozen or so facilities, several (of) which we're going to have to spend a lot of additional money on to bring them up to standard," Whitmire said.
"Why spend money like that when there's a less expensive, smarter way to do this?"
Steve Wiegand: Legislature's Republicans play blame-the-illegal-immigrant
By Steve Wiegand - Sacramento Bee
April 3, 2008
Story appeared in MAIN NEWS section, Page A3
Republican legislators trotted out the first parts of their anti-illegal immigration package of bills Tuesday, and things went about as well as could be expected.
Which is to say, not well at all.
In case you missed it, the Reeps have determined that illegal immigrants are to blame for most of the state's gaping budget deficit. (Democrats are to blame for the rest of it.)
To remedy this problem (the illegal problem, not the Democrat problem), GOP lawmakers put together what they call a "border security" package of "20 common-sense measures" they said "would help the state secure the border and better protect Californians."
Two of the "common-sense" measures went toe to toe with reality, in the form of the Assembly Public Safety Committee.
One of the bills was AB 1882, by Assemblyman Martin Garrick, R-Solana Beach.
What the bill would do is require cops who arrest a drunken driver, after an accident that involves an injury or does more than $600 worth of property damage, to determine whether the drunk is legally in the United States.
If the drunk couldn't prove to the cop's satisfaction his legal right to be on U.S. soil, the cop would be obligated to contact federal immigration officials about it.
Garrick asserted that his bill would "dramatically reduce the number of unnecessary DUI deaths and injuries in California." (I don't think he meant to imply that there are necessary DUI deaths and injuries.)
But he didn't produce any statistical data that show illegal-immigrant drunken drivers are any more of a problem than legal resident drunken drivers. And the idea of asking cops to determine citizenship status without resorting to racial profiling is a pretty tall order.
Plus, a committee analysis raised a host of constitutional questions about the state's limited role in enforcing federal immigration laws.
So Democrats on the committee killed the bill on a party-line vote, although they did extend Garrick the courtesy of having his bill reconsidered, which means he will have the opportunity to have it killed again at a later date.
They also killed, and granted reconsideration to, a bill by Assemblyman Van Tran, R-Garden Grove, that would require state prison officials to determine the immigration status of any new prisoner.
The apparent purpose of AB 2141 is to give the state a firm illegal immigrant inmate count so it can seek reimbursement from the feds for housing illegals.
But prison officials already count illegals, and the state already demands the feds pay up, and the feds already ignore the demands.
These two bills not only exemplify the likely fate of the rest of the GOP package, but what's wrong with it.
There are some questions related to illegal immigration and California on which legislators could and should spend some time and energy.
Should, for example, a person who comes to California illegally at the age of 2 or 3 be allowed to pay the same tuition rates at state colleges as the person who comes here legally at the age of, say, 16?
Are we better off giving illegals driver's licenses if they learn the driving laws, pass the tests and get insurance, or refusing to grant them licenses until they obtain legal residency?
Those kinds of issues strike me as legitimate areas for debate.
It seems like Reeps could accomplish more in this area if they focused more on real problems and less on trying to score political points with the faithful by demonizing illegal immigrants.
Of course, accentuating the negative is what GOP legislators are pretty much relegated to these days.
Maybe they're just sticking with what they're good at.
April 3, 2008
Story appeared in MAIN NEWS section, Page A3
Republican legislators trotted out the first parts of their anti-illegal immigration package of bills Tuesday, and things went about as well as could be expected.
Which is to say, not well at all.
In case you missed it, the Reeps have determined that illegal immigrants are to blame for most of the state's gaping budget deficit. (Democrats are to blame for the rest of it.)
To remedy this problem (the illegal problem, not the Democrat problem), GOP lawmakers put together what they call a "border security" package of "20 common-sense measures" they said "would help the state secure the border and better protect Californians."
Two of the "common-sense" measures went toe to toe with reality, in the form of the Assembly Public Safety Committee.
One of the bills was AB 1882, by Assemblyman Martin Garrick, R-Solana Beach.
What the bill would do is require cops who arrest a drunken driver, after an accident that involves an injury or does more than $600 worth of property damage, to determine whether the drunk is legally in the United States.
If the drunk couldn't prove to the cop's satisfaction his legal right to be on U.S. soil, the cop would be obligated to contact federal immigration officials about it.
Garrick asserted that his bill would "dramatically reduce the number of unnecessary DUI deaths and injuries in California." (I don't think he meant to imply that there are necessary DUI deaths and injuries.)
But he didn't produce any statistical data that show illegal-immigrant drunken drivers are any more of a problem than legal resident drunken drivers. And the idea of asking cops to determine citizenship status without resorting to racial profiling is a pretty tall order.
Plus, a committee analysis raised a host of constitutional questions about the state's limited role in enforcing federal immigration laws.
So Democrats on the committee killed the bill on a party-line vote, although they did extend Garrick the courtesy of having his bill reconsidered, which means he will have the opportunity to have it killed again at a later date.
They also killed, and granted reconsideration to, a bill by Assemblyman Van Tran, R-Garden Grove, that would require state prison officials to determine the immigration status of any new prisoner.
The apparent purpose of AB 2141 is to give the state a firm illegal immigrant inmate count so it can seek reimbursement from the feds for housing illegals.
But prison officials already count illegals, and the state already demands the feds pay up, and the feds already ignore the demands.
These two bills not only exemplify the likely fate of the rest of the GOP package, but what's wrong with it.
There are some questions related to illegal immigration and California on which legislators could and should spend some time and energy.
Should, for example, a person who comes to California illegally at the age of 2 or 3 be allowed to pay the same tuition rates at state colleges as the person who comes here legally at the age of, say, 16?
Are we better off giving illegals driver's licenses if they learn the driving laws, pass the tests and get insurance, or refusing to grant them licenses until they obtain legal residency?
Those kinds of issues strike me as legitimate areas for debate.
It seems like Reeps could accomplish more in this area if they focused more on real problems and less on trying to score political points with the faithful by demonizing illegal immigrants.
Of course, accentuating the negative is what GOP legislators are pretty much relegated to these days.
Maybe they're just sticking with what they're good at.
Texas ranks low in child well-being, report says
This is really sad. Take a look at the full report, it breaks down state rankings across all indicators. Also, look closely at numbers rather than percentages especially in juvenile incarceration where both Texas and California don't rank the lowest but do have the greatest total number of incarcerations. -Patricia
Report by nonprofit evaluates states on 10 indicators
By Suzannah Gonzales
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Thursday, April 03, 2008
Texas ranks 46th among the states in terms of child well-being, according to a report released Wednesday by a nonprofit group that promotes adopting national policies for children, youth and families.
Infant, child and teen deaths were among the 10 indicators considered in the Every Child Matters Education Fund's report, titled "Geography Matters: Child Well-Being in the States."
Texas ranked the worst for births to mothers 15 to 19 years old per 1,000 teen girls, as well as for the percentage of uninsured children. New Hampshire and Rhode Island, respectively, were the top states for those categories.
A combination of poverty, race, education, state tax burdens and declining federal investments in children, among others, explains the differences in child well-being among states, according to the report. The report says there are wide gaps among states.
The states where children live shouldn't adversely affect them, said the report's author and Every Child Matters founder Michael Petit, "but they do."
sgonzales @statesman.com; 445-3616
The 10 bottom states for child well-being, according to an Every Child Matters Education Fund report:
41. Arizona
42. South Dakota
43. Nevada
44. Arkansas
45. South Carolina
46. Texas
47. Oklahoma
48. New Mexico
49. Mississippi
50. Louisiana
The 10 top states:
1. Vermont
2. Massachusetts
3. Connecticut
4. Rhode Island
5. New Hampshire
6. Hawaii
7. Iowa
8. Minnesota
9. Washington
10. Maine
Report by nonprofit evaluates states on 10 indicators
By Suzannah Gonzales
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Thursday, April 03, 2008
Texas ranks 46th among the states in terms of child well-being, according to a report released Wednesday by a nonprofit group that promotes adopting national policies for children, youth and families.
Infant, child and teen deaths were among the 10 indicators considered in the Every Child Matters Education Fund's report, titled "Geography Matters: Child Well-Being in the States."
Texas ranked the worst for births to mothers 15 to 19 years old per 1,000 teen girls, as well as for the percentage of uninsured children. New Hampshire and Rhode Island, respectively, were the top states for those categories.
A combination of poverty, race, education, state tax burdens and declining federal investments in children, among others, explains the differences in child well-being among states, according to the report. The report says there are wide gaps among states.
The states where children live shouldn't adversely affect them, said the report's author and Every Child Matters founder Michael Petit, "but they do."
sgonzales @statesman.com; 445-3616
The 10 bottom states for child well-being, according to an Every Child Matters Education Fund report:
41. Arizona
42. South Dakota
43. Nevada
44. Arkansas
45. South Carolina
46. Texas
47. Oklahoma
48. New Mexico
49. Mississippi
50. Louisiana
The 10 top states:
1. Vermont
2. Massachusetts
3. Connecticut
4. Rhode Island
5. New Hampshire
6. Hawaii
7. Iowa
8. Minnesota
9. Washington
10. Maine
Wednesday, April 02, 2008
Schools Seek to Channel Parent Involvement
In well-to-do districts, high-powered families can bolster schools or be too demanding.
By Bess Keller | Ed Week
April 1, 2008
Schools flush with students’ parents showing up and helping out have long been the envy of those where classrooms echo on back-to-school night. But in recent years, incidents reported in the news media have dabbed shadows on that glowing picture of parent involvement, raising issues about whether demanding adults have made teachers’ jobs harder and compromised learning.
In some cases, that’s true, educators acknowledge. Important cultural shifts that call not only for greater civility but also new understandings between educators and high-powered parents may be occurring.
Read on
By Bess Keller | Ed Week
April 1, 2008
Schools flush with students’ parents showing up and helping out have long been the envy of those where classrooms echo on back-to-school night. But in recent years, incidents reported in the news media have dabbed shadows on that glowing picture of parent involvement, raising issues about whether demanding adults have made teachers’ jobs harder and compromised learning.
In some cases, that’s true, educators acknowledge. Important cultural shifts that call not only for greater civility but also new understandings between educators and high-powered parents may be occurring.
Read on
Tuesday, April 01, 2008
Mexican American integration slow, education stalled, study finds
UCLA report charts Chicano experience over four decades
By Letisia Marquez
3/20/2008
Second-, third- and fourth-generation Mexican Americans speak English fluently, and most prefer American music. They are increasingly Protestant, and some may even vote for a Republican candidate.
However, many Mexican Americans in these later generations do not graduate from college, and they continue to live in majority Hispanic neighborhoods. Most marry other Hispanics and think of themselves as "Mexican" or "Mexican American."
Such are the findings from the most comprehensive sociological report ever produced on the integration of Mexican Americans. The UCLA study, released today in a Russell Sage Foundation book titled "Generations of Exclusion: Mexican Americans, Assimilation, and Race," concludes that, unlike the descendants of European immigrants to the United States, Mexican Americans have not fully integrated by the third and fourth generation. The research spans a period of nearly 40 years.
The study's authors, UCLA sociologists Edward E. Telles and Vilma Ortiz, examined various markers of integration among Mexican Americans in Los Angeles and San Antonio, Texas, including educational attainment, economic advancement, English and Spanish proficiency, residential integration, intermarriage, ethnic identity and political involvement.
"The study contains some encouraging findings, but many more are troubling," said Telles, a UCLA professor of sociology. "Linguistically, Mexican Americans are assimilating into mainstream quite well, and by the second generation, nearly all Mexican Americans achieve English proficiency."
"However," said Ortiz, a UCLA associate professor of sociology, "institutional barriers, persistent discrimination, punitive immigration policies and a reliance on cheap Mexican labor in the Southwestern states have made integration more difficult for Mexican Americans."
"Generations of Exclusions" revisits the 1970 book "The Mexican American People," which was the first in-depth sociological study of Mexican Americans and became a benchmark for future research. It found little assimilation among Mexican Americans, even those who had lived in the United States for several generations.
The earlier study had been conducted at UCLA in the mid-1960s by Leo Grebler, Joan Moore, and Ralph Guzman. In 1992, construction workers retrofitting the UCLA College Library found boxes containing questionnaires from the original study.
Telles and Ortiz pored over the questionnaires and recognized a unique opportunity to examine how the Mexican American experience had evolved in the decades since the first study. The researchers and their team then reinterviewed nearly 700 original respondents and approximately 800 of their children. The vast majority of the original respondents and all the children are U.S. citizens.
In the foreword to "The Mexican American People," researcher Moore had written that she was optimistic that a subsequent study would find much assimilation among Mexican Americans. Telles and Ortiz, like Moore, were surprised to find that the third and fourth generation in this current study had not achieved more gains, particularly in the educational arena.
Key findings from "Generations of Exclusion" include:
* The educational levels of second-generation Mexican Americans improved dramatically. But the third and fourth generations failed to surpass, and to some extent fell behind, the educational level of the second generation. Moreover, the educational levels of all Mexican Americans still lag behind the national average.
* Mexican Americans attained higher levels of education when they knew professionals as children, when their parents were more educated and when their parents were more involved in school and church activities. Those who attended
Catholic schools were much better educated than those who attended public schools.
* Economic status improved from the first to second generation but stalled in the third and fourth generation. Earnings, occupational status and homeownership were still alarmingly low for later generations. Low levels of schooling among Mexican Americans were the main reason for lower income, occupational status and other indicators of socioeconomic status.
* All Mexican Americans were English-proficient by the second generation. Spanish proficiency declined from the first to the fourth generation, showing that the loss of Spanish was inevitable. However, Spanish declined only gradually, and approximately 36 percent of the fourth generation spoke Spanish fluently.
* First-generation Mexican Americans were about 90 percent Catholic. By the fourth generation, only 58 percent were Catholic.
* Intermarriage increased with each generation. Only 10 percent of immigrants were intermarried. In the third generation, 17 percent were married to non-Hispanics, as were 38 percent in the fourth generation.
* Adult Mexican Americans in the third and fourth generation lived in more segregated neighborhoods than they did as youths. This was due to the high number of Latinos and immigrants moving into these neighborhoods, the researchers said.
* Most Mexican Americans identified as "Mexican" or "Mexican American," even into the fourth generation. Only about 10 percent identified as "American." Moreover, many Mexican Americans felt their ethnicity was very important and many said they would like to pass it along to their children.
* Third- and fourth-generation Mexican Americans supported less restrictive immigration policies than the general population and generally supported bilingual education and affirmative action.
* In the 1996 presidential election, 93 percent of first-generation Mexican Americans voted Democratic. The percentage of Democratic voters declined in each subsequent generation. By the fourth generation, 74 percent voted Democratic.
Telles and Ortiz noted that some Mexican Americans were able to move into the mainstream more easily than other minorities. Mexican immigrants who came to the United States as children and the children of immigrants tended to show the most progress, perhaps spurred by optimism and an untainted view of the American Dream.
"A disproportionate number, though, continue to occupy the lower ranks of the American class structure," the sociologists said. "Certainly, later-generation Mexican Americans and European Americans overlap in their class distributions. The difference is that the bulk of Mexican Americans are in lower class sectors but only a relatively small part of the European American population is similarly positioned."
More than any other factor, Telles and Ortiz said, education accounted for the slow assimilation of Mexican Americans in most social dimensions. The low educational levels of Mexican Americans have impeded most other types of integration.
"Their limited schooling locks many of them into a future of low socioeconomic status," they said. "Low levels of education also predict lower rates of intermarriage, a weaker American identity, and a lower likelihood of registering to vote and voting."
Telles and Ortiz believe that a "Marshall Plan" that invests heavily in public school education will address the issues that disadvantage many Mexican American students.
"For Mexican Americans, the payoff can only come by giving them the same quality and quantity of education as whites receive," they said. "The problem is not the unwillingness of Mexican Americans to adopt Americans values and culture but the failure of societal institutions, particularly public schools, to successfully integrate them as they did the descendants of European immigrants."
The research was funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development; the Ford, Rockefeller, Russell Sage, and Haynes foundations; the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center; and various UC and UCLA sources.
The book can be ordered by calling the Russell Sage Foundation at (800) 524-6401 or visiting www.rsage.org.
By Letisia Marquez
3/20/2008
Second-, third- and fourth-generation Mexican Americans speak English fluently, and most prefer American music. They are increasingly Protestant, and some may even vote for a Republican candidate.
However, many Mexican Americans in these later generations do not graduate from college, and they continue to live in majority Hispanic neighborhoods. Most marry other Hispanics and think of themselves as "Mexican" or "Mexican American."
Such are the findings from the most comprehensive sociological report ever produced on the integration of Mexican Americans. The UCLA study, released today in a Russell Sage Foundation book titled "Generations of Exclusion: Mexican Americans, Assimilation, and Race," concludes that, unlike the descendants of European immigrants to the United States, Mexican Americans have not fully integrated by the third and fourth generation. The research spans a period of nearly 40 years.
The study's authors, UCLA sociologists Edward E. Telles and Vilma Ortiz, examined various markers of integration among Mexican Americans in Los Angeles and San Antonio, Texas, including educational attainment, economic advancement, English and Spanish proficiency, residential integration, intermarriage, ethnic identity and political involvement.
"The study contains some encouraging findings, but many more are troubling," said Telles, a UCLA professor of sociology. "Linguistically, Mexican Americans are assimilating into mainstream quite well, and by the second generation, nearly all Mexican Americans achieve English proficiency."
"However," said Ortiz, a UCLA associate professor of sociology, "institutional barriers, persistent discrimination, punitive immigration policies and a reliance on cheap Mexican labor in the Southwestern states have made integration more difficult for Mexican Americans."
"Generations of Exclusions" revisits the 1970 book "The Mexican American People," which was the first in-depth sociological study of Mexican Americans and became a benchmark for future research. It found little assimilation among Mexican Americans, even those who had lived in the United States for several generations.
The earlier study had been conducted at UCLA in the mid-1960s by Leo Grebler, Joan Moore, and Ralph Guzman. In 1992, construction workers retrofitting the UCLA College Library found boxes containing questionnaires from the original study.
Telles and Ortiz pored over the questionnaires and recognized a unique opportunity to examine how the Mexican American experience had evolved in the decades since the first study. The researchers and their team then reinterviewed nearly 700 original respondents and approximately 800 of their children. The vast majority of the original respondents and all the children are U.S. citizens.
In the foreword to "The Mexican American People," researcher Moore had written that she was optimistic that a subsequent study would find much assimilation among Mexican Americans. Telles and Ortiz, like Moore, were surprised to find that the third and fourth generation in this current study had not achieved more gains, particularly in the educational arena.
Key findings from "Generations of Exclusion" include:
* The educational levels of second-generation Mexican Americans improved dramatically. But the third and fourth generations failed to surpass, and to some extent fell behind, the educational level of the second generation. Moreover, the educational levels of all Mexican Americans still lag behind the national average.
* Mexican Americans attained higher levels of education when they knew professionals as children, when their parents were more educated and when their parents were more involved in school and church activities. Those who attended
Catholic schools were much better educated than those who attended public schools.
* Economic status improved from the first to second generation but stalled in the third and fourth generation. Earnings, occupational status and homeownership were still alarmingly low for later generations. Low levels of schooling among Mexican Americans were the main reason for lower income, occupational status and other indicators of socioeconomic status.
* All Mexican Americans were English-proficient by the second generation. Spanish proficiency declined from the first to the fourth generation, showing that the loss of Spanish was inevitable. However, Spanish declined only gradually, and approximately 36 percent of the fourth generation spoke Spanish fluently.
* First-generation Mexican Americans were about 90 percent Catholic. By the fourth generation, only 58 percent were Catholic.
* Intermarriage increased with each generation. Only 10 percent of immigrants were intermarried. In the third generation, 17 percent were married to non-Hispanics, as were 38 percent in the fourth generation.
* Adult Mexican Americans in the third and fourth generation lived in more segregated neighborhoods than they did as youths. This was due to the high number of Latinos and immigrants moving into these neighborhoods, the researchers said.
* Most Mexican Americans identified as "Mexican" or "Mexican American," even into the fourth generation. Only about 10 percent identified as "American." Moreover, many Mexican Americans felt their ethnicity was very important and many said they would like to pass it along to their children.
* Third- and fourth-generation Mexican Americans supported less restrictive immigration policies than the general population and generally supported bilingual education and affirmative action.
* In the 1996 presidential election, 93 percent of first-generation Mexican Americans voted Democratic. The percentage of Democratic voters declined in each subsequent generation. By the fourth generation, 74 percent voted Democratic.
Telles and Ortiz noted that some Mexican Americans were able to move into the mainstream more easily than other minorities. Mexican immigrants who came to the United States as children and the children of immigrants tended to show the most progress, perhaps spurred by optimism and an untainted view of the American Dream.
"A disproportionate number, though, continue to occupy the lower ranks of the American class structure," the sociologists said. "Certainly, later-generation Mexican Americans and European Americans overlap in their class distributions. The difference is that the bulk of Mexican Americans are in lower class sectors but only a relatively small part of the European American population is similarly positioned."
More than any other factor, Telles and Ortiz said, education accounted for the slow assimilation of Mexican Americans in most social dimensions. The low educational levels of Mexican Americans have impeded most other types of integration.
"Their limited schooling locks many of them into a future of low socioeconomic status," they said. "Low levels of education also predict lower rates of intermarriage, a weaker American identity, and a lower likelihood of registering to vote and voting."
Telles and Ortiz believe that a "Marshall Plan" that invests heavily in public school education will address the issues that disadvantage many Mexican American students.
"For Mexican Americans, the payoff can only come by giving them the same quality and quantity of education as whites receive," they said. "The problem is not the unwillingness of Mexican Americans to adopt Americans values and culture but the failure of societal institutions, particularly public schools, to successfully integrate them as they did the descendants of European immigrants."
The research was funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development; the Ford, Rockefeller, Russell Sage, and Haynes foundations; the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center; and various UC and UCLA sources.
The book can be ordered by calling the Russell Sage Foundation at (800) 524-6401 or visiting www.rsage.org.
In N.Va., a Latino Community Unravels
Reading this made me think of the following comments made by Obama during the Texas primaries:
"it is absolutely critical that we tone down the rhetoric when it comes to the immigration debate, because there has been an undertone that has been ugly. Oftentimes it has been directed at the Hispanic community. We have seen hate crimes skyrocket in the wake of the immigration debate, as it’s been conducted in Washington, and that is unacceptable."
This article touches on the ugliness. -Patricia
Job Losses and Pr. William Law Hit Illegal Immigrants and Others
By N.C. Aizenman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 27, 2008; Page A01
A vibrant Latino subculture built in Prince William County over more than a decade is starting to come undone in a matter of months.
With Latinos fleeing the combined effects of the construction downturn, the mortgage crisis and new local laws aimed at catching illegal immigrants, Latino shops are on the brink of bankruptcy, church groups are hemorrhaging members, neighborhoods are dotted with for-sale signs, and once-busy strip malls have been transformed into ghost towns.
County officials who have campaigned for months to drive out illegal immigrants say they would be unhappy to see businesses suffer or legal immigrants forced out in the process.
"But I believe the benefits will far outweigh the drawbacks," said Corey A. Stewart (R-At Large), chairman of the Board of County Supervisors and a leading advocate of the new policy allowing police to check the immigration status of people stopped for other violations. "And there will continue to be . . . a thriving Latino community in the county into the future."
At least for the moment, however, to travel through Prince William's Latino enclaves is to witness scene after scene of a community's transformation.
It was just past noon, a time when dozens of Latino construction workers used to troop into Doris Sorto's Dale City restaurant.
Yet on this recent weekday, the only occupied table was the one where Sorto, 54, sat with the restaurant's disc jockey, sipping chicken soup as she worked up the nerve to tell him she would need to let him go. She had already laid off one cook and three waitresses.
A U.S. citizen, Sorto moved to Prince William from El Salvador in 1986, opening a mini-mart in 2001 when a construction boom and cheap housing were luring Latinos to the county. As their share of the population in Prince William grew from 4 percent to nearly 20 percent, so did Sorto's ambitions.
In 2006, she opened the restaurant, naming it El Rinconcito Latino, or Little Latino Corner. By last March, Sorto was doing so well she decided to sign a 10-year, $18,000-a-month lease on a cavernous mall space where she hoped to open a Latin American-themed supermarket.
But since October, she said, business at the restaurant has dropped by 60 percent. Last month, after Sorto had spent more than $100,000 on cabinets for the new market, her banker informed her that he could no longer approve the $950,000 loan they had been finalizing.
"If things keep going this way, I don't know how I'm going to survive," said Sorto, massaging a sore arm her doctor blames on stress.
The choir at Our Lady of Angels Catholic Church in Woodbridge broke into a final, spirited chorus signaling the conclusion of the Easter Sunday Spanish Mass. A 28-year-old Salvadoran woman named Nury Fuentes pulled a set of rosary beads from her purse and waved them at a woman a few pews back.
"To work!" Fuentes whispered with a grin.
As coordinator of the church's Spanish charismatic prayer group, Fuentes was in charge of rounding up members for a post-Mass recitation of the novena for divine mercy, a devotion modeled on the nine days of prayers said by the Apostles after Jesus's ascension to heaven.
Until recently, Fuentes said, she could have counted on nearly 40 people to join her at the front of the church. Members of the group call each other "brother" and "sister" and rarely miss a meeting.
But since October, more than two dozen have moved away.
Now only four women and seven men trickled forward.
As Fuentes watched them take their places beside her, she said afterward, she thought sadly of those not there: Brother William, the young Salvadoran carpet layer with a knack for guitar playing, who used to keep them all in tune; Sister Marta, the motherly Mexican who still had time to pray over everyone else's problems after she lost her job as a house cleaner.
"You feel their absence like a deep pain because we are like a family," she said. "Each one has their role."
The sun gleamed over Manassas out of a cloudless sky. A Guatemalan woman named Silda pulled a curtain across her living room window to block the glare on the television. Her 3-year-old daughter, Cynthia, careened past on a scooter, crashing into the couch.
Normally, Silda would have spent a day like this walking around the mall, or chatting on the stoop with her Salvadoran friend next door while Cynthia played with the Mexican children across the street.
But those neighbors are gone now, their homes vacant like so many others in the subdivision. And Silda, who is in the United States illegally, is too nervous to venture out for casual strolls.
"What if a policeman were to stop me and ask for identification?" said Silda, who asked that her surname not be published.
She checked the time on her TV screen: 3:30 p.m. -- the hour Silda used to start preparing dinner for her husband, his two brothers and two cousins, all likely to be hungry after a day erecting frames for houses. But that was before such work dried up in Prince William. Two weeks ago, all five men moved to take jobs in Pennsylvania.
Silda said her husband plans to send for her and the children as soon as he can find a suitable home, even though it will probably mean abandoning their current house to the bank. "There's no way we can sell it," she said.
She checked the TV clock again. Time to walk to the bus stop, where her 5-year-old son, Denilson, would be dropped off from kindergarten. Silda and Cynthia stepped into the eerie quiet of the street. They walked past several small houses with "For Sale" signs in front. In the driveway of another, a pickup truck was piled with chairs and a grill.
"Looks like they'll be the next to go," Silda murmured.
A police car drove by, and Silda quickly pulled Cynthia toward her body.
At last, the bus arrived. When school started last fall, she said, a dozen Latino kids used to get off. On this afternoon, Denilson was the only one. Silda let him and Cynthia race back to the house. The more energy they expended, the less they would complain about spending the rest of the day inside.
Once back in the living room, Silda handed her son the remote.
"Here," she said. "Why don't you watch some cartoons?"
The bell by the door to the 99 Cent Plus store in Woodbridge jingled as a stocky Latino man walked in.
Safi Ullah, the Bangladesh-born owner, perked up at the rare sight of a shopper.
"¿Hola, amigo!" he said encouragingly.
The man was a longtime customer who normally was accompanied by his wife and three children. This time, only his eldest daughter was with him.
"Excuse me," the girl asked Ullah in English. "Where is the candles?"
"You mean like birthday candles?"
"No. Candles for the light," she said.
Ullah pointed to a shelf, and the man returned with a box of 12 tapered candles and a plastic lighter.
The man, whose name is Mauricio and who is Salvadoran, zipped his jacket against the wind whipping across the dark, vacant parking lot as he walked out of the store toward a borrowed car.
That morning, his electricity had been cut off. The next day, he and 11-year-old Erica would be moving into the basement of a neighbor's house. On this night, they would make do with candles.
It was the latest blow in a year of calamities: In April, the interest rate on Mauricio's ill-advised mortgage suddenly spiked, more than doubling his monthly payments. In May, he lost his job as a house painter. In June, he had to sell his van. In July, his third child was born, and with no insurance, he started skipping mortgage payments to cover the hospital bills. In October, the bank began foreclosure proceedings. In November, he sent his wife and two U.S.-born children to El Salvador.
December brought the worst setback yet: Mauricio bounced a $460 check he had sent the Department of Homeland Security to renew his temporary legal status, transforming him from legal to illegal immigrant.
In January, he received notice to vacate his house. Two weeks ago, the water was cut off. A week ago, his Virginia driver's license expired, and without legal status, he can no longer renew it.
Mauricio and Erica turned onto a side street pocked with darkened, empty houses and pulled up to a brick house with mustard shutters. A plastic barrel stood under the gutter spout. Mauricio had been using it to collect rainwater to heat so Erica could take baths.
Inside, it was cold and pitch black. Mauricio lit a candle and handed it to Erica. She dripped the wax onto the kitchen table to make a candle holder.
Next, they went into Erica's bedroom. She hugged a stuffed dog to her chest as she watched her father stand a candle on her dresser.
Finally, they walked into Mauricio's bedroom. As he lit his candle, it illuminated a large, framed photograph of him and his wife embracing the children. Mauricio stood for a moment, looking up at their grinning faces, before walking out of the room.
"it is absolutely critical that we tone down the rhetoric when it comes to the immigration debate, because there has been an undertone that has been ugly. Oftentimes it has been directed at the Hispanic community. We have seen hate crimes skyrocket in the wake of the immigration debate, as it’s been conducted in Washington, and that is unacceptable."
This article touches on the ugliness. -Patricia
Job Losses and Pr. William Law Hit Illegal Immigrants and Others
By N.C. Aizenman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 27, 2008; Page A01
A vibrant Latino subculture built in Prince William County over more than a decade is starting to come undone in a matter of months.
With Latinos fleeing the combined effects of the construction downturn, the mortgage crisis and new local laws aimed at catching illegal immigrants, Latino shops are on the brink of bankruptcy, church groups are hemorrhaging members, neighborhoods are dotted with for-sale signs, and once-busy strip malls have been transformed into ghost towns.
County officials who have campaigned for months to drive out illegal immigrants say they would be unhappy to see businesses suffer or legal immigrants forced out in the process.
"But I believe the benefits will far outweigh the drawbacks," said Corey A. Stewart (R-At Large), chairman of the Board of County Supervisors and a leading advocate of the new policy allowing police to check the immigration status of people stopped for other violations. "And there will continue to be . . . a thriving Latino community in the county into the future."
At least for the moment, however, to travel through Prince William's Latino enclaves is to witness scene after scene of a community's transformation.
It was just past noon, a time when dozens of Latino construction workers used to troop into Doris Sorto's Dale City restaurant.
Yet on this recent weekday, the only occupied table was the one where Sorto, 54, sat with the restaurant's disc jockey, sipping chicken soup as she worked up the nerve to tell him she would need to let him go. She had already laid off one cook and three waitresses.
A U.S. citizen, Sorto moved to Prince William from El Salvador in 1986, opening a mini-mart in 2001 when a construction boom and cheap housing were luring Latinos to the county. As their share of the population in Prince William grew from 4 percent to nearly 20 percent, so did Sorto's ambitions.
In 2006, she opened the restaurant, naming it El Rinconcito Latino, or Little Latino Corner. By last March, Sorto was doing so well she decided to sign a 10-year, $18,000-a-month lease on a cavernous mall space where she hoped to open a Latin American-themed supermarket.
But since October, she said, business at the restaurant has dropped by 60 percent. Last month, after Sorto had spent more than $100,000 on cabinets for the new market, her banker informed her that he could no longer approve the $950,000 loan they had been finalizing.
"If things keep going this way, I don't know how I'm going to survive," said Sorto, massaging a sore arm her doctor blames on stress.
The choir at Our Lady of Angels Catholic Church in Woodbridge broke into a final, spirited chorus signaling the conclusion of the Easter Sunday Spanish Mass. A 28-year-old Salvadoran woman named Nury Fuentes pulled a set of rosary beads from her purse and waved them at a woman a few pews back.
"To work!" Fuentes whispered with a grin.
As coordinator of the church's Spanish charismatic prayer group, Fuentes was in charge of rounding up members for a post-Mass recitation of the novena for divine mercy, a devotion modeled on the nine days of prayers said by the Apostles after Jesus's ascension to heaven.
Until recently, Fuentes said, she could have counted on nearly 40 people to join her at the front of the church. Members of the group call each other "brother" and "sister" and rarely miss a meeting.
But since October, more than two dozen have moved away.
Now only four women and seven men trickled forward.
As Fuentes watched them take their places beside her, she said afterward, she thought sadly of those not there: Brother William, the young Salvadoran carpet layer with a knack for guitar playing, who used to keep them all in tune; Sister Marta, the motherly Mexican who still had time to pray over everyone else's problems after she lost her job as a house cleaner.
"You feel their absence like a deep pain because we are like a family," she said. "Each one has their role."
The sun gleamed over Manassas out of a cloudless sky. A Guatemalan woman named Silda pulled a curtain across her living room window to block the glare on the television. Her 3-year-old daughter, Cynthia, careened past on a scooter, crashing into the couch.
Normally, Silda would have spent a day like this walking around the mall, or chatting on the stoop with her Salvadoran friend next door while Cynthia played with the Mexican children across the street.
But those neighbors are gone now, their homes vacant like so many others in the subdivision. And Silda, who is in the United States illegally, is too nervous to venture out for casual strolls.
"What if a policeman were to stop me and ask for identification?" said Silda, who asked that her surname not be published.
She checked the time on her TV screen: 3:30 p.m. -- the hour Silda used to start preparing dinner for her husband, his two brothers and two cousins, all likely to be hungry after a day erecting frames for houses. But that was before such work dried up in Prince William. Two weeks ago, all five men moved to take jobs in Pennsylvania.
Silda said her husband plans to send for her and the children as soon as he can find a suitable home, even though it will probably mean abandoning their current house to the bank. "There's no way we can sell it," she said.
She checked the TV clock again. Time to walk to the bus stop, where her 5-year-old son, Denilson, would be dropped off from kindergarten. Silda and Cynthia stepped into the eerie quiet of the street. They walked past several small houses with "For Sale" signs in front. In the driveway of another, a pickup truck was piled with chairs and a grill.
"Looks like they'll be the next to go," Silda murmured.
A police car drove by, and Silda quickly pulled Cynthia toward her body.
At last, the bus arrived. When school started last fall, she said, a dozen Latino kids used to get off. On this afternoon, Denilson was the only one. Silda let him and Cynthia race back to the house. The more energy they expended, the less they would complain about spending the rest of the day inside.
Once back in the living room, Silda handed her son the remote.
"Here," she said. "Why don't you watch some cartoons?"
The bell by the door to the 99 Cent Plus store in Woodbridge jingled as a stocky Latino man walked in.
Safi Ullah, the Bangladesh-born owner, perked up at the rare sight of a shopper.
"¿Hola, amigo!" he said encouragingly.
The man was a longtime customer who normally was accompanied by his wife and three children. This time, only his eldest daughter was with him.
"Excuse me," the girl asked Ullah in English. "Where is the candles?"
"You mean like birthday candles?"
"No. Candles for the light," she said.
Ullah pointed to a shelf, and the man returned with a box of 12 tapered candles and a plastic lighter.
The man, whose name is Mauricio and who is Salvadoran, zipped his jacket against the wind whipping across the dark, vacant parking lot as he walked out of the store toward a borrowed car.
That morning, his electricity had been cut off. The next day, he and 11-year-old Erica would be moving into the basement of a neighbor's house. On this night, they would make do with candles.
It was the latest blow in a year of calamities: In April, the interest rate on Mauricio's ill-advised mortgage suddenly spiked, more than doubling his monthly payments. In May, he lost his job as a house painter. In June, he had to sell his van. In July, his third child was born, and with no insurance, he started skipping mortgage payments to cover the hospital bills. In October, the bank began foreclosure proceedings. In November, he sent his wife and two U.S.-born children to El Salvador.
December brought the worst setback yet: Mauricio bounced a $460 check he had sent the Department of Homeland Security to renew his temporary legal status, transforming him from legal to illegal immigrant.
In January, he received notice to vacate his house. Two weeks ago, the water was cut off. A week ago, his Virginia driver's license expired, and without legal status, he can no longer renew it.
Mauricio and Erica turned onto a side street pocked with darkened, empty houses and pulled up to a brick house with mustard shutters. A plastic barrel stood under the gutter spout. Mauricio had been using it to collect rainwater to heat so Erica could take baths.
Inside, it was cold and pitch black. Mauricio lit a candle and handed it to Erica. She dripped the wax onto the kitchen table to make a candle holder.
Next, they went into Erica's bedroom. She hugged a stuffed dog to her chest as she watched her father stand a candle on her dresser.
Finally, they walked into Mauricio's bedroom. As he lit his candle, it illuminated a large, framed photograph of him and his wife embracing the children. Mauricio stood for a moment, looking up at their grinning faces, before walking out of the room.
Survey finds state's Latinos see quality of life slipping away
Check out the full Latino Socio-Economic Study -Patricia
Staff Report | The Stamford Times
April 1, 2008
As Connecticut's largest minority group and the fastest-growing segment of the population here and nationwide, Latinos are an important barometer of the state of the state.
According to a comprehensive study released Wednesday, pessimism and concern permeate a population that sees itself as unable to afford the cost of living and are underrepresented in positions of power that lead to change.
The fourth Latino Socio-Economic Study in 10 years was presented by the Latino and Puerto Rican Affairs Commission in conjunction with the Center for Research and Public Policy. The study included a survey of 800 adults, 50 students between 13 and 18 years of age, 200 people identified by the LPRAC as leaders in the Latino community, and three focus-group interviews in the state's three largest cities.
Nearly 23 percent of the respondents were from Fairfield County.
"It's very important that we're releasing this study," said LPRAC executive director Fernando Betancourt. "Perhaps even more important is what we're going to do with it."
Another apt question might be where to begin addressing the many aspects of inadequacy highlighted by Connecticut's Latinos. The biggest concerns among adults were taxes, health insurance, poor public education, and the cost of living.
Only 33.4 percent of participants said their quality of life was better now than two years ago, a significant fall-off from the 56.4 percent who said the same in 2002, the last time the study was conducted.
Betancourt said the LPRAC was surprised by the "dramatic drop in the overall quality-of-life perception that is reflected on every single page of that report."
He said health care and the cost of living, especially for housing, were his top priorities.
Just 51.5 percent of those surveyed said they thought housing was affordable, down from 74.5 percent in 2002.
Coming at the onset of talk of economic recession and the subprime mortgage crisis (the study was conducted in October and November of 2007), some of the feelings reflected in the survey might be a measure of discontent in the overall population. The 11.3 percent of the state population that considers itself Latino is more than enough to make it a statistically-significant sample, and Betancourt estimated that there is a further five percent that goes uncounted.
But LPRAC Commissioner Ed Rodríguez said the Latino experience is complicated by many issues, including the group's exclusion from decision-making positions, a phenomenon confirmed by a study released earlier this month by Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz, that showed severe under-representation of Latinos and other minorities on state boards and commissions.
"The implication of the exclusion is an inequality of life and standard of living. What happens when a community starts experiencing a decline in its standard of living and quality of life?" Rodríguez asked rhetorically. "They become more dependent on the state. Health care costs go up, they can't afford insurance, kids experience higher dropout rates from high school."
Rodríguez said the study was only as good as the action taken in its wake. Considering a more than 50-percent high school dropout rate among Latinos, immediate action is imperative, he said.
"We urge our legislators and our governor to please embrace this study," he said. "It lays the foundation to help our community. I know that we in the Latino and Puerto Rican Affairs Commission will be using this as our foundation."
The dropout rate provides a curious juxtaposition with one of the positive results of the study — 88 percent of the middle- and high-school students interviewed said they were somewhat or very likely to attend college. Ninety percent said they were at least somewhat likely to get into the college of their choice.
Of course, getting in and being able to pay are two distinct barriers of tertiary education. Thirty percent of the youth respondents said college would not be affordable for them.
Though immigration status was not a qualifying factor for any of the surveys conducted, 16.7 percent of the youth participants and 23 percent of the adults said they were not U.S. citizens. This does not necessarily mean that they are undocumented, but Betancourt made mention Wednesday of the Dream Act, legislation that would allow students who attend and graduate from Connecticut high schools to receive in-state tuition at public universities regardless of their immigration status.
The bill, with LPRAC support, passed the General Assembly in 2007 but was vetoed by Gov. M. Jodi Rell.
In general, Latino leaders were more pessimistic in their analyses of the Latino community's perspective than the community was itself.
Regarding the state HUSKY health care program, for example, 85.5 percent of the adult respondents offered a positive rating while only 48.5 percent of the leaders said Latinos were satisfied with the program.
The complexity of the health care conundrum was demonstrated repeatedly in the study. The 85.1 percent of respondents who reported having health care coverage was an increase from the 78.2 percent who said the same in 2002. However, it was a decrease from the 87 percent who reported coverage in 1997, the first year of the study.
Respondents also said costs were prohibitive. Nearly 16 percent said there was a time in the past 12 months in which they needed to see a doctor but could not because of the cost, perhaps in part because the 57.9 percent that said they receive employer-based coverage was down from 68.3 percent in 2002.
"This is not hearsay," Rodríguez said. "This is not wishful thinking; this is not agenda-driven; this is not what we as the commission would want you to believe is important based on our understanding of the needs of our community. This is what 95 out of 100 Hispanics in the state are telling you is important to them," he added, in reference to the 95-percent confidence rating of the study sample.
On a positive note, Center for Research and Public Policy president Jerry Lindsley offered improved statistics on mammogram, blood pressure and cholesterol screenings as evidence that education programs on preventive care were working. Smoking was also down significantly, from 23.1 percent in 2002 to 15.9 percent last year.
The most cynical perspectives in the study were directed at the state's judicial court system. Just 41.5 percent of adult respondents offered a "positive trust rating" of the courts. Up from 22.4 percent in 2002, Betancourt said the survey showed there was work to do but also that LPRAC efforts to reach out to the judicial system were slowly taking effect. An increase in the number of trained court interpreters, though still insufficient, was one area of partial improvement, he said.
In reference to the courts, one of the focus group participants said, "I guess they are not fair with everybody, not just Hispanic [sic]," suggesting that the perception was more one of general mistrust than suspected discrimination.
Linguistic confidence was on the rise as well, with 65.5 percent saying they were equally comfortable speaking Spanish as English. Just 49.1 percent said the same in 2002.
Sixty-eight percent said they were registered to vote, a statistic of particular significance in an election year in which the Latino vote has been heavily courted. Almost half - 48 percent - were registered Democrats. The slight increase in unaffiliated voters from 27 percent in 2002 to 28.6 percent 2007 owed in part to a precipitous drop in the number of registered Republicans, from 16.1 percent in 2002 to ten percent in 2007.
There was a 3.5-percent margin for error.
Max Hadler can be reached at mhadler@thehour.com
Staff Report | The Stamford Times
April 1, 2008
As Connecticut's largest minority group and the fastest-growing segment of the population here and nationwide, Latinos are an important barometer of the state of the state.
According to a comprehensive study released Wednesday, pessimism and concern permeate a population that sees itself as unable to afford the cost of living and are underrepresented in positions of power that lead to change.
The fourth Latino Socio-Economic Study in 10 years was presented by the Latino and Puerto Rican Affairs Commission in conjunction with the Center for Research and Public Policy. The study included a survey of 800 adults, 50 students between 13 and 18 years of age, 200 people identified by the LPRAC as leaders in the Latino community, and three focus-group interviews in the state's three largest cities.
Nearly 23 percent of the respondents were from Fairfield County.
"It's very important that we're releasing this study," said LPRAC executive director Fernando Betancourt. "Perhaps even more important is what we're going to do with it."
Another apt question might be where to begin addressing the many aspects of inadequacy highlighted by Connecticut's Latinos. The biggest concerns among adults were taxes, health insurance, poor public education, and the cost of living.
Only 33.4 percent of participants said their quality of life was better now than two years ago, a significant fall-off from the 56.4 percent who said the same in 2002, the last time the study was conducted.
Betancourt said the LPRAC was surprised by the "dramatic drop in the overall quality-of-life perception that is reflected on every single page of that report."
He said health care and the cost of living, especially for housing, were his top priorities.
Just 51.5 percent of those surveyed said they thought housing was affordable, down from 74.5 percent in 2002.
Coming at the onset of talk of economic recession and the subprime mortgage crisis (the study was conducted in October and November of 2007), some of the feelings reflected in the survey might be a measure of discontent in the overall population. The 11.3 percent of the state population that considers itself Latino is more than enough to make it a statistically-significant sample, and Betancourt estimated that there is a further five percent that goes uncounted.
But LPRAC Commissioner Ed Rodríguez said the Latino experience is complicated by many issues, including the group's exclusion from decision-making positions, a phenomenon confirmed by a study released earlier this month by Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz, that showed severe under-representation of Latinos and other minorities on state boards and commissions.
"The implication of the exclusion is an inequality of life and standard of living. What happens when a community starts experiencing a decline in its standard of living and quality of life?" Rodríguez asked rhetorically. "They become more dependent on the state. Health care costs go up, they can't afford insurance, kids experience higher dropout rates from high school."
Rodríguez said the study was only as good as the action taken in its wake. Considering a more than 50-percent high school dropout rate among Latinos, immediate action is imperative, he said.
"We urge our legislators and our governor to please embrace this study," he said. "It lays the foundation to help our community. I know that we in the Latino and Puerto Rican Affairs Commission will be using this as our foundation."
The dropout rate provides a curious juxtaposition with one of the positive results of the study — 88 percent of the middle- and high-school students interviewed said they were somewhat or very likely to attend college. Ninety percent said they were at least somewhat likely to get into the college of their choice.
Of course, getting in and being able to pay are two distinct barriers of tertiary education. Thirty percent of the youth respondents said college would not be affordable for them.
Though immigration status was not a qualifying factor for any of the surveys conducted, 16.7 percent of the youth participants and 23 percent of the adults said they were not U.S. citizens. This does not necessarily mean that they are undocumented, but Betancourt made mention Wednesday of the Dream Act, legislation that would allow students who attend and graduate from Connecticut high schools to receive in-state tuition at public universities regardless of their immigration status.
The bill, with LPRAC support, passed the General Assembly in 2007 but was vetoed by Gov. M. Jodi Rell.
In general, Latino leaders were more pessimistic in their analyses of the Latino community's perspective than the community was itself.
Regarding the state HUSKY health care program, for example, 85.5 percent of the adult respondents offered a positive rating while only 48.5 percent of the leaders said Latinos were satisfied with the program.
The complexity of the health care conundrum was demonstrated repeatedly in the study. The 85.1 percent of respondents who reported having health care coverage was an increase from the 78.2 percent who said the same in 2002. However, it was a decrease from the 87 percent who reported coverage in 1997, the first year of the study.
Respondents also said costs were prohibitive. Nearly 16 percent said there was a time in the past 12 months in which they needed to see a doctor but could not because of the cost, perhaps in part because the 57.9 percent that said they receive employer-based coverage was down from 68.3 percent in 2002.
"This is not hearsay," Rodríguez said. "This is not wishful thinking; this is not agenda-driven; this is not what we as the commission would want you to believe is important based on our understanding of the needs of our community. This is what 95 out of 100 Hispanics in the state are telling you is important to them," he added, in reference to the 95-percent confidence rating of the study sample.
On a positive note, Center for Research and Public Policy president Jerry Lindsley offered improved statistics on mammogram, blood pressure and cholesterol screenings as evidence that education programs on preventive care were working. Smoking was also down significantly, from 23.1 percent in 2002 to 15.9 percent last year.
The most cynical perspectives in the study were directed at the state's judicial court system. Just 41.5 percent of adult respondents offered a "positive trust rating" of the courts. Up from 22.4 percent in 2002, Betancourt said the survey showed there was work to do but also that LPRAC efforts to reach out to the judicial system were slowly taking effect. An increase in the number of trained court interpreters, though still insufficient, was one area of partial improvement, he said.
In reference to the courts, one of the focus group participants said, "I guess they are not fair with everybody, not just Hispanic [sic]," suggesting that the perception was more one of general mistrust than suspected discrimination.
Linguistic confidence was on the rise as well, with 65.5 percent saying they were equally comfortable speaking Spanish as English. Just 49.1 percent said the same in 2002.
Sixty-eight percent said they were registered to vote, a statistic of particular significance in an election year in which the Latino vote has been heavily courted. Almost half - 48 percent - were registered Democrats. The slight increase in unaffiliated voters from 27 percent in 2002 to 28.6 percent 2007 owed in part to a precipitous drop in the number of registered Republicans, from 16.1 percent in 2002 to ten percent in 2007.
There was a 3.5-percent margin for error.
Max Hadler can be reached at mhadler@thehour.com
Students return to TAKS preparation
By Zahira Torres / El Paso Times
03/30/2008
After at least a week of sleeping late and watching extra television programs, thousands of public school students, who are returning to school Monday, will begin preparing for next month's TAKS testing.
Students in grades third through 11th, and seniors who have yet to pass the exit level exam, in the county's nine school districts and charter schools will take at least one part of the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills test in April.
"Before we were leaving, we were already doing a lot of TAKS," Denise Gomez, an eighth grader at Clarke Middle School, said. "This past nine weeks, we've just been TAKS, TAKS, TAKS. Our math teacher, Mr. Quijano, he's actually been a lot of help because math is my worst subject, I don't know why, but he's been giving us TAKS practices from last year and he actually gave us a booklet for spring break to do."
Fifth and eighth graders, who will continue preparing for the test when they return to school, will initiate next month's TAKS testing by taking the math part April 8. Both grade levels must pass this part of the exam if they want to move on to sixth grade and ninth grade. If they fail, they will have two more chances to pass.
From April 29 to May 2, students in most grades will take TAKS tests in math, reading, science and social studies. Based on the scores, schools and districts will be rated academically unacceptable, academically acceptable, recognized or exemplary by the state.
Luz Garcia, the mother of two children, including Denise, said TAKS is a simple test and should not be feared by students, teachers or parents.
"It is good that they prepare them for the TAKS test but sometimes I wish they would focus on teaching other things that will be more helpful in real life than the TAKS test," Garcia said.
Canutillo Independent School District is one of many districts that have been vigorously preparing students for the test. Superintendent Pam Padilla said youngsters should have faith in what they have learned.
"Teachers are still working hard with individual students to nail down what their specific preparation needs to be in these last few weeks," Padilla said. "It's important to get the message to the students and the parents that the teachers know what is on this test. They are very adept at preparing the students and no one needs to be stressed at this point."
"You just keep working, and the students have been working all year for this, it's not just these last few weeks," Padilla said. "Everything they've done, the teachers have kept in the back of their minds that this test is coming up. So, it's important to kind of work against the tendency for stress to creep in and have confidence in your teacher and have confidence in what has been done so far."
03/30/2008
After at least a week of sleeping late and watching extra television programs, thousands of public school students, who are returning to school Monday, will begin preparing for next month's TAKS testing.
Students in grades third through 11th, and seniors who have yet to pass the exit level exam, in the county's nine school districts and charter schools will take at least one part of the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills test in April.
"Before we were leaving, we were already doing a lot of TAKS," Denise Gomez, an eighth grader at Clarke Middle School, said. "This past nine weeks, we've just been TAKS, TAKS, TAKS. Our math teacher, Mr. Quijano, he's actually been a lot of help because math is my worst subject, I don't know why, but he's been giving us TAKS practices from last year and he actually gave us a booklet for spring break to do."
Fifth and eighth graders, who will continue preparing for the test when they return to school, will initiate next month's TAKS testing by taking the math part April 8. Both grade levels must pass this part of the exam if they want to move on to sixth grade and ninth grade. If they fail, they will have two more chances to pass.
From April 29 to May 2, students in most grades will take TAKS tests in math, reading, science and social studies. Based on the scores, schools and districts will be rated academically unacceptable, academically acceptable, recognized or exemplary by the state.
Luz Garcia, the mother of two children, including Denise, said TAKS is a simple test and should not be feared by students, teachers or parents.
"It is good that they prepare them for the TAKS test but sometimes I wish they would focus on teaching other things that will be more helpful in real life than the TAKS test," Garcia said.
Canutillo Independent School District is one of many districts that have been vigorously preparing students for the test. Superintendent Pam Padilla said youngsters should have faith in what they have learned.
"Teachers are still working hard with individual students to nail down what their specific preparation needs to be in these last few weeks," Padilla said. "It's important to get the message to the students and the parents that the teachers know what is on this test. They are very adept at preparing the students and no one needs to be stressed at this point."
"You just keep working, and the students have been working all year for this, it's not just these last few weeks," Padilla said. "Everything they've done, the teachers have kept in the back of their minds that this test is coming up. So, it's important to kind of work against the tendency for stress to creep in and have confidence in your teacher and have confidence in what has been done so far."
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