Leaving Latino Students Behind
Accountability should provide the means for educators to provide equal opportunity for students, said Ana Martinez Aleman of Boston College. Yet today’s accountability movement--with its policies of high expectations coupled with low funding--is ironically increasing the disparities that it was meant to alleviate.
High-stakes tests have disproportionately affected students who are from poor and minority families, Aleman asserted in her comments at the John Dewey Society Memorial Lecture. Schools in high-poverty areas are narrowing the curriculum as they focus on test prep, and the dropout rate for Latino students in Texas is rising.
If their potential is not tapped, Latino youth will become "unused resources in our democracy," destined to low-paying service-sector jobs, Aleman warned. The growing Latino population could become a large underclass if their power and creativity are restricted, rather than enhanced, by our education system. "The consequences for Latino students are very significant," she said.
- Listen to a brief audio highlight of Aleman's presentation.
- Read about what happens when assessment defies best practice.
- How effective are bilingual education programs for improving the English reading skills and general content knowledge of English language learners (ELL)? Find out in ResearchBrief.
- Explore the issues involved in Multicultural Education.
- Anica Diaz Rivera Urges: Don't Treat All Latino Students the Same Way
- Read about adapting practice to address changes in demographics and culture.
- How do educators in countries outside the United States teach about other cultures? Find out how conference attendees from outside the Unites States answered this.
- Join ASCD's Hispanic/Latino-American Critical Issues network.
posted by ASCD @ 5:21 PM
3 comments
3 Comments:
I agree that Latino students are being left behind. However, the loss of their potential can not be totally credited to high stake tests. The tests are an additional obstical for students who come from homes in which both the educational and income levels are low. Their parents lack the understanding of the educational system to provide the support that their children need, and the school system does not fill the gap. This can be true for both native and foreign born Hispanics. Middle and upper middle income HIspanic students do much better because their parents understand the system and provide the needed support. Foreign born Spanish speaking students whose families come with strong educational back-grounds move into the educational system and succeed. This is a simplification of one of my many personal observations over thirty-seven years as an educator in Texas.
Perdón, porque el español no es primer idioma, pero quiero responder al señor Samuel Caraballo en el idioma mismo. Don Caraballo discute un punto muy importante: Cada estudiante merece un profesor experto que ofrece su atención y guia a cada uno de ellos.
ASCD tiene posiciones pertinentes a esto tópico: Equal Access to Excellence y Teacher Quality amid Educator Shortages.
Aleman, in response to G. Montalvo's comment, writes:
I don't think that we are in disagreement. As I stated in my presentation, the children in most danger are those in poverty attending poor, underfunded schools. My comments about my sons' schooling, for example, made this point. If anything, I did not "simplify" the demographics of Latino students; rather, tried to get at the complexity of demography as a function of such things as immigration, SES, and parental education.
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