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ARTICLES POSTED MAY 1998
More articles on page 2... 100 Years Of United States Colonialism In Puerto Rico, (posted 5/29/98) Presented by El Comité Puerto Rico '98-Chicano and the Center for Latino Research at DePaul University. Keynote speaker: Rafael Cancel Miranda. This year, July 25, 1998, will mark the 100th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Puerto Rico led by General Nelson Miles. Under the colonial rule of the United States, the Puerto Rican people have suffered countless acts of physical and cultural genocide, are among the poorest of the poor in this country today, and have repeatedly been denied the human right of self-determination. This symposium will look at how the well-honed tools of colonialism have been used to oppress the Puerto Rican people. Special Guest Performance by Roy Brown. Saturday, April 4, 1998. 8:30am-7:00pm. DePaul University, Cortelyou Commons, 2320 N. Fremont. For more information and to r.s.v.p., please call Mervin Méndez at (773)325-7317. Propositioning America, from the Universal Press Syndicate, (posted 5/26/98)
California leads the nation in voter-driven initiatives that restrict taxes, immigration, affirmative action and bilingual education. While some have already been exported to other states, we thought we might be able to expedite this process by suggesting a few federal voter initiatives that would obviate the need for further state propositions. Proposition 1: The Americanization Initiative. Calls for schools to Americanize immigrant children within one academic school year. Becoming bilingual or failing to Americanize, will result in their immediate deportation. Indians who fail to be Americanized will also be sent back to wherever they came from. Proposition 2: The American Indian Mascot Heritage Preservation Act. Designates Indian mascots as part of America's heritage. The desecration of, or efforts to eliminate, said mascots shall be punishable by 10 years imprisonment. The act does not protect actual Indians or sacred sites. Proposition 3: The Immigrant Anti-Discrimination Initiative. Authorizes the U.S. Border Patrol to detain and deport all south-of-the-border types. This civil rights enforcement measure will ensure that Americans are not tempted to discriminate against them. Proposition 4: The Blame It on El Nino Initiative. Allows corporations to blame one year's worth of business losses on illegal alien children. Special fund will be created for billboards promoting "Blame it on El Nino" sales. Corporations are also eligible to blame La Nina next year. Proposition 5: The Truth in Billboard Advertising Initiative. Makes it a crime to call into question the veracity of billboard advertisers. It specifically protects the right of the California Coalition for Immigration Reform group to put up their billboard proclaiming: "California-The Illegal Immigrant State. Don't Let This Happen to Your State." For info, call 1-800-DUMBER. Proposition 6: The Think Global, Act Loco Initiative. Allows voters nationally to determine what's best for local residents in the areas of health, education, transportation and the environment. Residents who attempt to act locally will be certified as insane and be held criminally liable. Proposition 7: The Operation Jobs Initiative. Authorizes unemployed Americans to claim any job currently being held by illegal aliens. Doing so will cause claimant to forfeit welfare and food-stamp payments ... and to work (very hard). Proposition 8: The Puerto Rico Choice Initiative. Gives U.S. voters the option of choosing statehood or independence for the island, or for sending it back to Mexico. Proposition 9: The Reggie White Family Bonding Initiative. Exempts Latinos from federal housing regulations, allowing 30 to 40 Latinos to live in single family units in federal housing projects. Garages are exempt from occupancy limits. Proposition 10: The No Pinata Initiative. Makes it a crime to create pinatas in the likeness of politicians. Triggered by the proliferation of California Gov. Pete Wilson and Newt Gingrich pinatas, such offense is punishable by getting whacked by a pinata stick. Proposition 11: The Run For the Border University Initiative. This Baylor University-inspired affirmative action recruitment program utilizes sorority and fraternity members nationwide who dress up like bandits, gang members and pregnant Marias in hopes of attracting south-of-the-border types to pursue college. Proposition 12: The White Guys Can't Jump Initiative. Places a limit of three foreign players per major league baseball team. This initiative is in line with the new amateur rule that sets limits of three foreigners from each country competing in U.S. marathons. Proposition 13: The Discriminate and Go To Prison Initiative. Anyone convicted of "reverse" discrimination will be subject to a 10-year prison sentence. Those who engage in "forward" discrimination will be exempt, because they're already exempt. Proposition 14: The English for Animals Initiative. This Dinky-inspired proposition requires that all animals used on television must be certified as fluent in English only and not have a traceable foreign accent. Punishable by hard time at the animal shelter. Proposition H: The Pursuit of Happiness Initiative. Revokes the right to pursue happiness and deletes the phrase from the U.S. constitution. Assumes that Americans are already happy and authorizes the Border Patrol to track down red-brown individuals who are engaged in said pursuit. For those individuals who are still unhappy, it also authorizes a free lifetime supply of Preparation H. COPYRIGHT 1998 UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE Both writers are authors of Gonzales/Rodriguez: Uncut & Uncensored (ISBN 0-918520-22-3 UC Berkeley, Ethnic Studies Library, Publications Unit. Rodriguez is the author of Justice: A Question of Race (Cloth ISBN 0-927534-69-X paper ISBN 0-927534-68-1 Bilingual Review Press) and the antibook, The X in La Raza II. They can be reached at PO BOX 7905, Albq NM 87194-7904, 505-247-3888 or XColumn@aol.com Comments On Language Arts Standards For California Schools, (posted 5/26/98) BY JACK D. FORBES, Ph.D. Legal Requirements All proposed language arts standards must meet the requirements of the California State Constitution which, at Article I, Section 7b, states: A citizen or class of citizens may not be granted privileges or immunities not granted on the same terms to all citizens. Clearly, this means that the culture and history of all citizens must be recognized in the schools, on the same terms, and that no single class of citizens may have their culture and history enshrined above that of everyone else. The latter would, of course, constitute a privilege of immense value and one giving a distinct advantage to the favored class of citizens. Similarly, Article I, Section 31a mandates that the state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, and public contracting.... Public education must, of course, include the curricula pursued in the schools and thus no curricula can be adopted which discriminates against any ethnic or national group, or either gender, or which gives a preference to any ethnic or national group, or either gender. Preference is essentially the same as advantage, and discrimination is essentially the same as disadvantage. Thus no language arts standards may be legally adopted which provide an advantage to Anglo-Americans, Caucasians, European-Americans, Chinese-Americans, males, females, or any other gender or racial/ethnic/national/color group, nor may the standards provide any disadvantage to any such groups. English as a Multi-Ethnic World Language Certain it is, then, that the teaching of English and English-language literature must be multi-ethnic, multi-racial, and bi-gender. Since English (or "Englatino," as I term its modern descendant) is a world language spoken not only in many dialects in its home areas along the North Sea but also in Scotland, Ireland, Wales, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, India, and many other countries as an official or co-official language, it follows that the teaching of English as a world language is properly a multi-ethnic and multi-national subject. On the other hand, English can also be taught in a narrow, single-dialect and single-ethnic manner which ignores its international character. It can also be taught as if only one dialect exists, in spite of the tremendous dialectical vitality of English within North America as well as in the world as a whole. By focusing on English as an international language one avoids some of the problems posed by Article I, Section 31(a) since the global approach immediately provides a multi-ethnic and multi-national dimension. One, for example, avoids discrimination against some Black Americans, Jamaican-Americans, Southern Whites, etc. if one follows a multi-dialectical approach to English since the dialects spoken by many Jamaicans and others of West Indian origin, for example, are very legitimate ways of interpreting English. I do not wish, however, to dwell at this point on the teaching of the mechanics of the language as such but on the content to be used in that instruction. Reading: Vocabulary and Concept Development On page 4, for grades 5, 7, and 8 reference is made to "vocabulary and concept development" by studying "abstract Greek and Latin derived roots...," "use knowledge of Greek, Anglo-Saxon and Latin roots to understand content area vocabulary" and "understand the history of English language and use word origins to determine the historical influences on English word meanings." This is an excellent opportunity to bring in the many thousands of Native American words used in English, as well as Asian, African, and Pacific Island terms. A term such as "enchilada," for example, allows students to see how "chile" from a Native American language has been incorporated with Spanish prefix and suffix to produce a modern English food term (which most school cafeterias serve regularly I should think). The American contribution to ethnobotanical terms is phenomenal, as well as to the names of animals, medicines, and pharmaceuticals. One can easily show how American terms become incorporated with Latin or Greek to produce scientific names. My book AMERICAN WORDS (1979) lists almost 1,000 Native terms in English, not including any geographical names. Such words as totem, manito, cajun, caucus, chum, gee, okay, wow, hammock, maraca, mackinaw, parka, chocolate, guacamole, hominy, jerky, tamale, bayou, savannah, pampa, coumarin, guanine, mescaline, quinine, canoe, kayak, toboggan, buccaneer, hike, hobo, condor, jaguar, iguana, coyote, barracuda, sisal, cigar, papaya, potato, tomato, and many others are of American origin and have served to give our dialects part of their unique and distinctive character. Some of these words also link English with American Spanish and can serve to help bring Spanish-speaking students into the dialogue in important ways. On p. 5 the proposed standards state for grades 9/10: "1.3. identify and use knowledge of the origins of ...words...derived from Greek, Roman, and Norse mythology to understand the meaning of new words...." I believe that it is ethnically biased to neglect Native American mythology whether derived from Mexico, Guatemala, Canada, or the United States. Coyote stories are very important and such texts as the Popol Vuh yield many concepts of significance. Similarly, the literatures of Asia and Africa are immense in this area. It is far more important to relate traditional stories to California students' actual backgrounds than it is to develop an entire curricular unit around words such as "narcissistic" drawn from a myth which virtually no one in the society is conversant. It is sheer pedantry, and biased pedantry at that, to reach back into certain European cultures only for somewhat obscure word origins when we possess rich American heritages which are being ignored, not to mention those of Africa and Asia. Also on p.5, for grades 11/12 we have" 1.2. apply knowledge of Anglo-Saxon, Greek and Latin roots and affixes to draw inferences concerning the meaning of scientific and mathematical terminology." Again, one sees here a bias, since a high percentage of names of animals, plants, medicines, and pharmaceuticals are derived from Native American, African, West Asiatic, Asiatic, and other languages. The Arabic language is noteworthy in relation to the evolution of science and mathematics, for example. The teaching of the Latin element within modern English ( which I call Englatino in any case) is certainly crucial but it should be taught as a living part of our creole idiom, not as an exotic and separate element. More on that later. Reading On p.8 the "California Reading List" is referred to. I have not seen a copy of this list, but to meet the legal requirements of the California Constitution it clearly must be completely multi-racial, multi-ethnic, multi-national, and bi-gender. No ethnicity or sex can possess a position of advantage on that list. On p.9 for Grade 3 at 3.2 the proposal states: "comprehend basic plots of classic fairy tales, myths, folktales, legends, and fables from around the world." In order to include traditional American literature chants, stories, songs, and poems should be added. Navajo chants, California tribal stories and songs, and Aztec poems and songs all will have rich meanings for California students. Also the term "classic" must not be a hidden marker for "European." I believe also that in grades 1 through 4 songs and poetry should be included along with prose. Song and poetry is part of the heritage of many California ethnic groups and can be analyzed in the same manner as prose. Moreover, poetry may well open up the creative abilities of students who might have difficulty with prose. On p.10 for Grade 7 the text states (3.1) that students should "articulate the expressed purposes... of different forms of prose (short story, novel, novella, essay)." This should be broadened to include autobiography, story, speeches and historical accounts, as many early Native American writers use the latter forms. Also on p.10 for Grade 8 at 3.1 the different forms of poetry should not be limited to primarily European patterns ("ballad, lyric, couplet, epic, elegy, ode, and sonnet") but must be expanded to include free verse, chant, haiku, improvisational, jazz, and other poetic forms. Such an expansion will allow for consideration of First American, Asian, African, and other non-European poetry including contemporary ethnic, street, political, and social poetry. This can make poetry relevant to, and belong to, the lives of California students. On p.11 at 3.3 mention is made of "man vs. nature" as a conflict. But this is a European dualism not always found among other traditions. It should say "humans vs. nature or humans as part of nature." It is vital that First American philosophies be represented, along with those of other indigenous peoples. Reading: Literary Response and Analysis On p.12 at 3.5 students are asked to compare works that express a "universal theme" and two examples are given, specific books by Russell Baker and Ed McClanahan. I would argue that if examples are to be given, then a female author should be included (such as Leslie Silko's Ceremony) and works should be by Asian-Americans, African-Americans, etc., and not solely by two Caucasian males. On p.12 for grades 11/12 at 3.2 reference is made to Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn and Kipling's Kim, two works written by Caucasian males (again) and both rather controversial. It should certainly be possible to find works by a woman or by an African-American, Native American, or an Indian. I doubt personally that the harm done to Native American students by the portrayal of "injun Joe" can be undone even by balancing Twain with a positive text. 3.5 states "analyze recognized works of American literature representing a variety of genres and traditions, including...." It then goes on to two subsections which raise questions about the meaning of "recognized" and "American." "Recognized" is a loaded word since very often Anglo-American male literary scholars have tended to ignore works by women, First Americans, Asian-Americans, Mexican-Americans and other groups. The word "recognized" should be removed and American literature should be pluralized since we possess more than one body of literature or literary tradition. The term "American" must be used in a non-discriminatory way, that is, to refer to all peoples who have a legitimate right to be Americans, including both North and South Americans. If the objective is to confine literary study to only works by United States authors, then that should be made explicitly clear (although I think that that would be a mistake). Also, the United States must be seen as a country (a physical space or area) extending from Hawaii, Samoa, Guam, and Micronesia (and during the period >from 1898-1902 through the post-World War II period including also the Philippines) eastward to Puerto Rico and Maine, and not simply as the westward-shifting home of migrating Anglo-Americans. Treating the United States as a country or region on the Earth allows Native American, Mexican-American, Spanish colonial, French colonial, Russian-Alaskan and other non-Anglo literatures to be considered. This is especially important because it allows California's age-old oral and written literatures to be placed at center-stage. Under 3.5 it states in the first subsection: "1) tracing the development of American literature from the Colonial period forward." Clearly, this is an illegal attempt to discriminate against Original Americans since the above language excludes all pre-colonial and non-colonial literatures. That is, all of the literature of Americans living away from European colonial territory or prior to European colonization are excluded. Moreover, this type of language is probably designed to also exclude French-American, Spanish-American, Russian-American, and Mexican literature, since Anglo-American ethnic bias has heretofore interpreted "American literature from the Colonial period" as including English-born newcomers or visitors (such as William Bradford or John Smith) but excluding all non-English colonizers, as well as all Africans and all First Nations peoples. The capitalization of the word "Colonial" tends to confirm that a single colonial group is being considered. To meet the law the standard must read something like: "tracing the development of American literatures (relevant to the modern cultures of the United States) from earliest times forward and including all geographic areas and all ethnic groups." The parenthetical insert is appropriate if one is focusing on the United States rather than upon America, north and south. 3.5, point 3 states: "analyzing the philosophical, religious, ethical and/or social influences...." This should, I believe, be modified by adding racial, ethnic, sexual, and social class to the list. 3.6 refers to the use of "archetypes" and refers to one from Macbeth. Although I respect Shakespeare very much, I would think that it would be better to refer to an African-American play or a Mexican-American novel, in this instance. In any case, I find the supposed archetype rather debatable, since Macbeth, for me, has to do with the all-too-frequent corruption caused by the lust for power by political leaders. 3.7 at 1) asks students to contrast literary forms, etc., in major literary periods and states "(e.g., Homeric Greece, Medieval Period, Romantic, Neoclassic, Modern)." These categories are blatantly eurocentric and have nothing whatsoever to do with the literary periods of North America, Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and so on. Our students will very soon be living in California at the year 2,000 on the edge of the Pacific Rim, and their backgrounds are highly diverse, but by the year 2010 the majority will possess some degree of First American ancestry. That is, their ancestry will extend back on this land of America to when the great ice age blocked off Canada and when most of our indigenous ancestors lived south of the ice and tundra in Meso-America and South America. A great proportion of the rest of our peoples will be derived from Asia, Africa and the Pacific, or from areas of Europe long left out of the curriculum. We must, therefore, respond creatively to the exciting challenge of developing curricular standards suitable for California and for all Californians. We can no longer look at literary periods through the eyes of northwestern Europe, both morally and legally. Teaching English as a Living World Language Modern English (or Englatino) is a very exciting language because of its mixed and creole character. It developed its modern form while in a state of colonial subordination to French after the Franco-Norman conquest of England (1066) and the subsequent Franco-Norman conquests or invasions of Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. Thus English, under the hammer of Franco-Latin domination, became a creolized tongue with an immense capacity for change and for the absorption of foreign elements. This colonialized quality and hybrid character makes English extremely suitable for use in California and in the California schools, because many of our youth come >from groups which have also experienced colonial subordination and many of their cultural experiences are typified by mixture, diversity, and hybridization. In order, however, to make the teaching of Evolving, Living English relevant and comprehensible to California youth there are a few principles which should be adhered to, in my judgment: (1) the language should be taught as if it belongs to the students in the sense that they, along with other English-speaking peoples, possess ultimate control over what the English of the future will be like; i.e., they must be actors in the development of English, not simply passive learners of a dead English controlled by a non-existent "royal academy." (2) English should be taught as a multi-dialectical language and students should be trained to be bi-dialectical, that is, to be able to readily speak and decode several dialects, none of which is more correct than the other, but some of which may confer higher social status. Moreover, this bi-dialectical approach should include learning how to accent English in several different ways, so as to acquire better skill in phonetics in order to facilitate both competency in English dialects and in non-English languages. Phonetic skills are vital for understanding how dialects differ >from each other and for true fluency in new languages. Students should be encouraged to game-play with accents (phonetics) so as to overcome any reluctance at pronouncing things "differently." In addition, instruction should deal with the tendency of some persons to mispronounce names such as MartÌnez, Villaraigosa, and Vanderhoef because of a lack of phonetic skill. Finally, the ethnic and class significance of accent variations should be explored. (3) The "latino" part of modern English should become a living part of the language and should serve as a bridge to speaking other "Romance" tongues (e.g., the "ject" in subject, object, reject, inject etc. should become a living tool so that we can also coin "outject" and "upject" because we know that "ject" means "to throw or propel;" or the verb facere, to do or make, in sacrifice (sacra-facere), in manufacture (manual doing ), and in factor (doer) becomes a living part of the idiom, so that we can say "autofacture" (self-making) if we wish, et cetera). It is not advantageous when words making up over half of our vocabulary have lost their ability to serve as tools for new expression. Moreover, it is useful, given our tremendous number of Latin-based speakers (American Spanish, Portuguese, Italian etc.) to teach English in such a way as to make it relevant to them. (4) Special attention should be given to the First American influences upon English, and also to African and other influences. African and Asian influences upon ancient Greek need to be noted, since the Greeks were highly influenced by the Egyptians, and various West Asiatic and Semitic peoples. (5) Students should, at an appropriate age, be encouraged to participate in alternative spelling systems for English, including student attempts to develop a phonetic alphabet for English (¦ la George Bernard Shaw and others). They must understand that the spelling "though" instead of "tho" is not only an artifact of history but that it makes it difficult for learners to master a word such as "rough." In either case, what we have is a kind of a pictograph to be recognized visually rather than a phonetic form of writing. Many believe that the time has come to reform English spelling, but whatever we believe, students can better understand their language if they are able to game-play with different ways of spelling and to understand that there is no right or wrong, only making thoughts comprehensible. It is also important to acquaint students specifically with Canadian and British spellings. Needless to state, this is a vital section in relation to students who are of non-English-speaking backgrounds. (6) Above all, the teaching of language arts should be designed to create a critical consciousness on the part of students and to give them the tools to deconstruct and to criticize what may be presented to them in advertising, political discourse, propaganda, or in any other form. Part of this process is to give them control over their own common language, as discussed above, so that it does not remain a "foreign" and imposed idiom. But this process also involves being absolutely honest and truthful about the evolution of English and how language is often used as a means of control and subordination. Thus, for example, specialized jargons and elite vocabularies may be used as screening devices and as gate-keeping mechanisms and all of our students need to understand that. In short, we will want the teaching of literature and English to be a liberating and self-empowering experience for all of our California students and not only for the few. The teaching of English must be grounded in the reality of the racial, ethnic, social and economic condition of California society and it must serve all students equally well. It is with this goal in mind that I submit these comments. Fewer Blacks, Hispanics to Enter University of California Next Fall, (posted 5/22/98) May 21, 1998 By ETHAN BRONNER, New York Times LOS ANGELES-Far fewer black and Hispanic students will enroll as freshmen at the University of California's most prestigious schools this fall, although their numbers will drop only slightly throughout the state system and some campuses will actually experience an increase, officials said Wednesday. The freshmen class of 1998 is the first to be admitted since California banned consideration of race in college admissions in 1996. The release of the new figures Wednesday follows by seven weeks an announcement that minority applications at Berkeley and Los Angeles had dropped significantly. University officials said Wednesday that they were heartened that the drop at the top two campuses had not been steeper. But they expressed concerns that the numbers foreshadow a racially divided system. "The real danger-our biggest concern-is that the University of California system will become a segregated system," Theodore R. Mitchell, vice chancellor of UCLA, said Wednesday in an interview. "If this trend continues over the next five or six years, the diversity on this campus will be seriously compromised and, with it, our greatness." Ward Connerly, the University of California regent who co-sponsored the anti-affirmative action measure, said the increase at some campuses and decrease at others was nothing more than a redistribution. As for the small number of black and Hispanic students at the most competitive campuses, Connerly said, 'I tell people, 'You don't like those numbers. Well I don't like those numbers either. But to solve the problem you have to deal with the problems in kindergarten through 12th grade. Don't blame the university." According to new data released Wednesday, at the University of California at Berkeley, now the nation's most selective public university, overall representation of non-Asian minorities in the freshman class will be 10.54 percent, compared with 21.92 percent last year, a decrease of just over half. There will be 98 blacks among them, far fewer than the 260 black freshmen in the fall of 1997. At the University of California at Los Angeles, non-Asian minority groups will make up 14.1 percent of the class compared with 21.8 percent last year. Of them, 131 will be black, compared with 219 blacks last fall. The numbers, a reflection of which students have signed up to attend in the fall, follow admission data released by the campuses in early April. Across the university's eight campuses, minority representation of non-Asians will be down only 2.4 percent from 17.6 percent in 1997 to 15.2 percent for next year because less prestigious campuses like those at Riverside, Santa Barbara and Santa Cruz increased the numbers of black and Hispanic students accepted. Officials stressed that students at those campuses get an excellent undergraduate education, in some cases receiving more individual attention than at the flagship campuses. The overall makeup of the student body at all University of California campuses reflects the burgeoning presence of non-whites in the state. For next fall, Asian Americans make up 35.4 percent of students planning to enroll, those classified as "whites and others" 35.3 percent, Chicanos 8.7 percent, Latinos 2.9 percent, African-Americans 2.8 percent and Indians 0.7 percent. Those declining to state their ethnicity make up 14.1 percent, a huge increase over previous years but officials say they are nearly all whites and Asians. Robert Berdahl, Berkeley's chancellor, said in an interview that the numbers for blacks and Hispanic freshmen were "grim" and added, "It isn't easy to put a positive light on this." But he and others did say that their worst fears had not been realized: of the small numbers of minority students admitted, a sizable portion of them are in fact choosing to attend. After the university announced its low admission figures for minorities early last month, there was much talk about whether those blacks and Hispanic students let in would choose to come or would go elsewhere either because they had more desirable offers or because of concerns that Berkeley and UCLA were now seen as hostile environments for them. So officials at both campuses launched intensive recruitment drives. The chancellors held receptions for those admitted and called many students personally to urge them to attend. Those efforts were somewhat successful. The percent of black students accepted at Berkeley and UCLA who have chosen to attend-the so-called yield-is slightly up over previous years, at Berkeley from 41.6 percent to 42.3 percent and at UCLA from 40.6 percent to 44.3 percent. Richard Atkinson, president of the University of California system, said in a statement, "We are proud that efforts to encourage students to enroll at one of our campuses have helped maintain diversity in the university and hope for greater success in the years ahead." Despite such efforts, there were students who said they had chosen not to attend because of the change in admissions procedures as a result of the 1996 ballot initiative known as Proposition 209, which barred the consideration of race, ethnicity or sex in public employment, contracting and admissions to public colleges and universities in California. Aaliyah Richmond, 17, a senior at Bishop O'Dowd High School, a private Catholic school in Oakland, said that despite being accepted at Berkeley, she would attend the University of Pennsylvania. "OK, they don't want me, I don't want to go there," she said. "Their commitment to affirmative action is not there. I feel my enrollment at Berkeley would have been totally politicized whereas at Penn I'm just another freshman." On the other hand, her classmate, Aden Allen, 17, who was also admitted to Berkeley, said he had chosen to go to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology not for political but for academic reasons-he thought the engineering department was better. But he acknowledged that when he thought about the small number of blacks that would be in his Berkeley class, he was concerned. "I didn't think it would be that diverse or that inclusive," said Allen, the kind of minority student colleges fight over because he has a grade point average above 4.0 and a combined SAT score of 1380. "But I don't think that's what made my decision." Proposition 209 was sponsored by those who felt that affirmative action or special preferences in hiring and admissions for so-called underrepresented minorities- Asian-Americans are not considered in that group in California-was discriminating against whites and bringing down state standards in employment and academics. But the dilemma of how to make sure such minorities gain access to good jobs and university spots-an expressed goal of both sides in that debate-has not been solved. Elsewhere, there are similar concerns. In Texas, for example, a federal court barred state universities from considering race or sex in admissions. The state legislature responded by mandating that the top 10 percent of all high school seniors be admitted to the University of Texas system. Data were released Wednesday for Texas, showing a slight increase in the number of black and Hispanic students slated to be in the fall, 1998 freshman class of the University of Texas. The new figures show that 11 more blacks and 51 more Hispanic students will attend the university than in the fall of 1997. In total, 174 blacks, or about 3 percent of the total, and 858 Hispanics, about 14 percent, will be part of the freshmen class. Facts of 1998 Dia de La Mujer Conference, (posted 5/22/98) The Dia de la Mujer overall conference evaluation survey summary revealed the following:
Bilingual Classes: A Knotty Issue, Los Angeles Times, (posted 5/21/98) Monday, May 18, 1998 Dispute: Schools at opposite poles in the debate show that neither the bilingual approach nor English-only instruction is succeeding very well in moving students into English fluency. By NICK ANDERSON and AMY PYLE, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers The idea took hold just as a new wave of immigration was taking off. Experts proposed, activists insisted, politicians consented: Children who spoke little or no English could be taught in Spanish, Chinese or whatever tongue they had learned at home, and at the same time become fluent in America's dominant language. But almost a quarter century after California began its experiment in bilingual education, tens of thousands of schoolchildren, tagged by the system as "limited English proficient," are languishing for years without mastering the language they need for a chance at a well-paying job or a college degree. Last year, more than 5,800 schools statewide had at least 20 students with limited English skills. Of those schools, 1,150 did not move a single student into English fluency, according to a Times analysis of state records. For more than half of those schools, it was the second year in a row of complete futility. Overall, fewer than 7% of limited-English students are becoming fluent each year. Those figures might sound like an indictment of bilingual education;an umbrella term for an array of programs that teach children in two languages, often with long spans solely in their native language. The truth, however, is that one-third of the schools that failed last year to move any students into English fluency were teaching only in English. And many of the rest teach mostly in English. "Despite relatively substantial efforts in a wide variety of places to wrestle with this problem, we don't know how to solve it," said Douglas E. Mitchell, an education professor at UC Riverside who heads a research cooperative of 28 school districts. "This is a huge problem. The system is swamped. . . . People have strong beliefs about what should work, but they don't have strong evidence on what does work." California's response to the enormous wave of immigration of the last two decades has polarized the public schools. At one extreme are campuses with entrenched dual-language programs. Here, many students wind up in bilingual classes even if they speak a fair amount of English and were born in the United States. And often they are placed there without much discussion with parents and, in a few cases, despite parents' objections. At the other pole are the many school districts offering little help to those struggling to learn English. Some students are left to sink or swim, much as earlier immigrants did in an era when most of the foreign-born were expected to take a job before they finished high school. The state's lack of success in making all its children fluent in English has generated a bitter public debate, which now focuses on an initiative appearing on the June ballot that would eliminate most bilingual programs. But regardless of what policy the voters choose, the challenge is only going to get tougher. The number of students in the state who are not fluent in English soared from 520,000 in 1985 to 1.4 million in 1997, or one quarter of the public school enrollment. Half are in Los Angeles and Orange counties and many are in deep poverty, making them hard to educate under the best of circumstances. To put the numbers in perspective, California's population of limited-English students exceeds the total public school population of at least 38 states. How California deals with that challenge affects even children who never set foot in a bilingual classroom. Consider how would-be teachers were being trained recently in a "methods" class at Cal State Long Beach. The exercise explored how students might create "me" books, mini-autobiographies. Many of the teachers-in-training came up with elaborate posters, some with no words at all. They were praised for seeking such a "total physical response," meaning that students would mostly cut, color and paste. Why? Because the teachers-to-be will probably wind up in classrooms with a large number of students not fluent in English. So they were encouraged to find ways to avoid writing, instead of emphasizing it. State Policy Works Against Fluency The failure of schools to make children fluent in English should not be a surprise. California policy actually works against the transition. School districts receive extra state aid based in part on their count of students with limited English. And they face no penalty if those students fail to advance. Explaining why many schools statewide year after year fail to move any students into English fluency, Lois Tinson, president of the California Teachers Assn., said: "School districts see the bucks coming in." Indeed, an extensive bureaucracy has sunk roots in California's school system since the state's first major bilingual education law was enacted in 1976. Los Angeles schools pay bilingual teachers as much as $5,000 extra per year, reflecting the scarce supply of qualified specialists. Statewide, school districts also employ thousands of bilingual teaching assistants, bilingual school coordinators and other staff to track limited-English students, administer English proficiency tests, apply for grants and do the thousand and one tasks required in programs monitored by federal and state governments. Then there are supply industries. In February, thousands of teachers and advocates traveled to San Jose by bus, plane and car from all points of the state to attend seminars onpedagogy and political survival at the convention of the California Assn. for Bilingual Education. Promoters filled an exhibit hall with new bilingual textbooks, computer software, handicrafts from Mexico and Central America, videotapes, testing materials and such storybooks as "Los Tres Cerdos," described in one brochure as a "nonviolent version of 'The Three Pigs' that takes place in the Southwest." At a rally attended by more than 1,000 educators, Santiago Wood, superintendent of Alum Rock School District in San Jose, exhorted listeners to defend their bilingual programs. He likened their critics to passengers who critique the operation of a jet;in the process displaying a 'we know best' defiance. "I dare any of us who have flown in an airplane to try to tell a pilot how to fly that plane," Wood said. "This is my business. This is my field." Bilingual Approach Run Amok? Opponents of bilingual education point to places like Santa Barbara's Adams Elementary School. Half of the students have limited English skills; half receive subsidized meals; and a tiny fraction each year achieve English fluency. Latino children in Santa Barbara have for years been routinely placed in bilingual classes even though 90% were born in this country, most right at the city's Cottage Hospital. In Adams' kindergarten class this year, only two of the children with limited English skills were born outside the United States. In her bright, airy bilingual kindergarten classroom, Sela Viscarra was teaching upper- and lowercase letters. "D mayuscula, d minuscula," chanted the children surrounding her feet. N was the letter of the day, so it got special treatment, with the chant leading to flash cards of N-words for which no English translation was provided, though they all began with N in English as well;numeros (numbers), nariz (nose), nido (nest), nueces (nuts). One kindergartner finishing an art project at her desk interrupted. "Teacher, I don't know how to do this," she said in clear English. The response came in Spanish. Viscarra was not being stubborn; she was adhering to the educational theory that switching from one language to the other confuses students. She would teach in English on other days, but this day's plan called for Spanish. Principal Jo Ann Caines has pushed her teachers to give more English to their students. She used to work in a middle school, after all, and saw how the kids faltered there without adequate English skills. They were a long way from being ready for Advanced Placement courses. "It's really obvious that they need full exposure to English for three years before middle school in order to get there," she concluded. But the district is planning more drastic changes. During sometimes-bitter meetings over the past year, school board members reviewed the results of bilingual education;and found extensive evidence that it was not working. Last year, for example, Adams fifth-graders;when tested in English;scored at the 12th percentile nationally in reading, at the 17th in math. Even when tested in Spanish, children in the bilingual program districtwide were performing far below grade level. And worst of all was how graduates of the bilingual program performed when they reached high school: abysmally. This was most distressing, because long-term prowess is the strongest claim of bilingual program supporters. The idea is that a solid academic base in another language seamlessly translates by high school into a solid academic base in English. Seeing that didn't happen, Santa Barbara school officials decided in January to do away with the bilingual program. Entirely. As of September. They did promise extra support to limited-English speakers, both in Spanish and English, plus an English summer school. But typical of how the debate has become so heated, the proposal set off a parent boycott;for bilingual education. Community activist Ruben Rey, who is married to a bilingual teacher, mocked the other side for doing away with the program. "Quicker! Quicker! Get these kids into English quicker!" he snarled, snapping his fingers for sarcastic emphasis. His prediction for the English-only approach: "It's doomed to failure." Flailing in a Sea of English For every Santa Barbara, which opponents consider an example of bilingual education run amok, there is a Lone Pine. In this community of 2,100 in the shadow of Mt. Whitney, there are no bilingual classes at the elementary school and few instructors qualified to teach English as a second language. There is no shortage, however, of Spanish-speaking newcomers who need help at Lo-Inyo Elementary;children of factory workers, motel maids and others who are turning the demographics of this rural area upside down. Thirteen-year-old Joel Murillo, a new arrival from the Mexican state of Zacatecas, toils in the afternoons over an English grammar book, surrounded by fifth-graders speaking a language he barely comprehends. His teacher, Shawn Morrison, who speaks what she calls "rusty" Spanish, happened to notice Joel one day at recess with "that glazed look in his eyes." She volunteered to tutor him in English when she could. But that does not amount to much. "Twenty minutes a day," she said. The tutoring has helped;a bilingual teacher from a nearby high school pitches in;but Joel confesses, in Spanish, that the school feels "strange" to him "because there's no one I can talk with here." School officials in Lone Pine, 200 miles north of Los Angeles on U.S. 395, between the High Sierra and Death Valley, say they are trying their best, and improving. But "we're isolated. We don't have the budget to hire specialists," said Nancy Prather, who teaches reading and computer skills at the school. From 1992 to 1997, state records show, Lo-Inyo Elementary did not move one student into English fluency, even as its population of limited-English children swelled from 10 to 33. There are now 42, out of a total enrollment of 284 from kindergarten through eighth grade. California's schools, particularly in rural districts, have lots o= f students who are left to learn English almost entirely on their own. Lone Pine is far from the worst. Its students, like Joel, are at least getting some help. More than 220,000 limited-English students in California last year got none at all. A chronic teacher shortage is largely to blame. As of 1997, California had about one bilingual teacher for every 92 limited-English students. Most of those teachers were Spanish-speaking, not surprisingly, reflecting the dominant position of Latinos among the state's ethnic minorities and the historic importance of bilingual education in Latino politics. But even for Spanish speakers, the state has just one bilingual teacher for every 77 limited-English students. In other languages, the shortage grows to ridiculous proportions. For Vietnamese speakers, the ratio is 535 to 1. For the 20,000 limited-English students who speak Khmer;the language of Cambodia;there are only five certified Khmer-English teachers;a ratio of 4,000 to 1. The sink-or-swim approach has a long history in American schools. Nostalgics often claim that the approach succeeded in moving immigrants into the mainstream. Too often, however, immigrant students never graduated from high school, and others obtained only a rudimentary grasp of English. After years of controversy in a period of growing awareness of immigrant rights, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1974 that schools have a duty to offer students with limited English some form of help. It might surprise the conservative opponents of bilingual education today to learn that mandatory English-only instruction already had been ended in California by then;under Gov. Ronald Reagan. Emotional Topic in California California is hardly alone in grappling with growing numbers of students not fluent in English. But you won't see the same emotion in Miami, say, as in Santa Barbara: Bilingual education has been sold there as making economic sense for all children. To work in a bilingual world, the logic goes, you need to be bilingual. The issue raises such passions in California because it is part of a bigger debate over the status of immigrants in the late 20th century, especially those of Mexican origin. It starts with California having once belonged to Mexico, as activists readily note. And the Latino civil rights movement in California early on married the issues of societal discrimination with English-only instruction in schools. Now attacks on bilingual education are seen as the latest affront: Let them do your menial labor; don't let them speak their language. For the most part, other immigrant groups have not seized on bilingual education as a civil rights cause. At Third Street Elementary School in Los Angeles, Principal Susie Oh would not dare to impose classes taught in Korean on her students;their parents simply would not hear of it. Chinese parents in the San Gabriel Valley want their children to learn Mandarin, sure;on the weekend, in private school. In Westminster's Vietnamese community, you hear about immigrants such as Tony Lam, now 62, who brought six children with him in 1975, none speaking English, yet all graduated from colleges here;without any bilingual education. And as one survey after another has shown, Latinos are hardly of one mind: Among those registered to vote, a recent Times poll found, 50% supported the ballot measure to end most bilingual education. Only 32% of Latino voters opposed the initiative, which would place children with limited English skills into mainstream classes after about one year of special English-language instruction. The bottom line is that most immigrant parents simply want their children to learn English. Still, Ana M. "Cha" Guzman, who recently chaired a White House commission on Latino education, argues that there is something different at play among Latinos. Although immigrants from all parts of the world arrive here to become Americans "all the way through," Latino immigrants;who often come from areas closer to the United States;feel more need "to keep in touch with our roots," she says. That yearning can be seen at Stanford Avenue Elementary, an outpost of the Los Angeles school system in South Gate. Four out of five students at the school have limited English skills. They seem caught between two worlds. Bilingual teachers speak almost entirely in English during physical education, art and music classes and certain other times set aside for what is known as "English language development." Their youngest students get a heavy diet of Spanish in most core subjects. But few students of any age in this school perform at grade level on basic skills tests. English transition rates have been below the state's own mediocre average for years. At Stanford, even the Pledge of Allegiance is an exercise in bilingual education as a thousand students show one spring morning on the sunlit blacktop. Two classmates lead the group in English and Spanish, concluding, "una naci=F3n, bajo Dios, con libertad y justicia para todos." Then the Stars and Stripes is put away. Red paper flags emblazoned with the black Aztec eagle of the United Farm Workers emerge. A teacher sings a ballad to mark the birthday of the late Mexican American union leader Cesar Chavez, and students join in a round of what was said to be his favorite song, "De Colores." A Clouded Example of Bilingual 'Success', Los Angeles Times, (posted 5/21/98) Monday, May 18, 1998 Instruction: The Calexico district is touted as a shining example of how to teach students facing barriers of language and poverty. But its approach,and its results,are not as clear-cut as some claim. By KEN ELLINGWOOD, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer CALEXICO-It's an unlikely spot to find an educational cause celebre-a poor and sun-scorched farm town on the Mexican border. Yet the school district here has achieved renown far beyond its alfalfa and hay fields. It is touted by supporters of bilingual education as a model for teaching students who speak little English. The acclaim was evident recently in Denver, where the head of the nation's largest Latino organization lauded Calexico Unified School District for keeping its students from dropping out and sending so many -- 80% -- on to college. "Calexico, the poorest school district in California with the highest rate of farm workers and most Latinos, is graduating kids at a higher rate than Beverly Hills!" boasted Raul Yzaguirre, president of the National Council of La Raza. But here at Calexico High School, 120 miles east of San Diego, folks are uneasy with the role-model talk. The schoolyard chatter-in a borderland fusion of Spanish and English-is about the prom, tests coming up and the fate of the Bulldogs baseball team. Not educational miracles. That bit about beating Beverly Hills? People here know better. Calexico's 2.8% dropout rate is an achievement, half the state average for Latinos. But almost no one bails out in Beverly Hills. And while a survey of last year's 380 graduates did find an impressive 271 planning to continue their studies, fewer than 40 were headed to four-year colleges. In most cases, higher education here means the local community college. Still, it's easy to see why Calexico has become a provocative talking point in the debate over bilingual education. For its schools defy the popular notion that what's most important is moving kids quickly into English fluency. The measure of success here is simpler-how kids turn out in the end. This is a place where a corps of dedicated teachers and concerned parents and the closeness of a small town help legions of children surmount the hurdles of language and poverty that seem to trip up their counterparts elsewhere. Here you find teachers such as Juan Orduna, who holds extra calculus classes every Saturday and gets local groups to pay for students' Advanced Placement exams. "What you try to do is create a culture where everybody supports everybody," said Orduna, who-like nearly half the school's faculty-is a product of Calexico schools. Support can mean early morning tutoring or a simple endearment-mijo, "my son"-in Spanish. Poverty Is Prevalent Though sprawling Mexicali is just over the border, rural Calexico seems distant from urban ills. The town has responded quickly to sporadic gang outbreaks. A dress code means no bare midriffs for the 1,425 high school students. Graffiti are next to unknown. Yet poverty is as near as the fields. Almost a fourth of the students are the sons and daughters of migrant farm workers, many immigrants from Mexico. The average family makes less than $12,000 a year. Unemployment runs above 25%. What's most significant for the schools, though, is this: Hardly anyone enters kindergarten speaking English. Three-fourths of the district's 7,180 students are classified as having limited English skills. Nearly 30 years ago, Calexico was one of the first districts in America to take advantage of federal bilingual education money. Students usually start kindergarten being taught in Spanish and get more instruction in English as they proceed through the grades. The goal is to make the full transition to English in about four years. But bilingual help is offered all the way through high school for students who enter the system late. Even so, getting the children to master English has proved tricky. Calexico students trail the state average for achieving English fluency (4.7% a year compared with 6.7% statewide) and score below average on the verbal SAT(422 compared with 490 statewide). Supt. Roberto Moreno insists that it is more important to ask whether students are staying in school-and going on to the next level. But those who reach college often face a struggle. Of 25 Calexico graduates entering the elite University of California system last year, 20 required remedial writing classes. And while some local kids go on to Yale, Stanford and Berkeley, the lion's share pursue their education at the two-year Imperial Valley College. Many attend because there are few alternatives in the area-job prospects are dim. "They stay one year and a lot of them just stop," said calculus teacher Orduna. He's not the only one who gives a measured appraisal of the district's touted results. "Calexico is a fair argument in favor of bilingual education," said Gary Watts, who teaches Advanced Placement English. "We do a good job of protecting students who are disadvantaged by language." Even in a senior college-prep English class, though, Spanish is in the air as students in small groups hunt literary features in a Blake poem. "Tenemos syntax?" one girl asks her group. "Que es motif, eso?" inquires a classmate. Watts said many students lack the proficiency to tackle sophisticated literary concepts, such as spotting metaphors. Maricruz Acevedo, 17, a senior in Watts' class, said she will sit out the Advanced Placement test-she fears that her writing is weak. She hopes to attend Imperial Valley and later transfer to a UC campus. But it's clear there's a culture of learning at Calexico, nourished by care. About 400 parents showed up at a recent high school open house. They picked up report cards, addressing teachers as maestro and maestra in respectful Spanish. Jesus Santillanes made the rounds with his wife, Francisca, and their 17-year-old daughter, Fabiola. With a son at San Diego State, Santillanes has high hopes for Fabiola, a budding poet. She is uncomfortable, however, writing in English. That worries her father, who speaks halting English learned on his delivery job. He frets that he has hindered Fabiola's progress by insisting that she speak proper Spanish or proper English-not the hybrid "Spanglish" favored by her friends. "We need to know the language," Santillanes said. "Why are we in this country?" An assistant principal, Mario Martinez, recalled the similar proddings of his father, an appliance repairman, as he grew up here en route to UC Berkeley. "He said, 'With an education you don't have to do this kind of work. You can hire someone to do it.' " To some on campus, the challenge for Calexico is to not lose sight of that culture, and the real gains, even as the schools endure streams of visitors drawn by the they-beat-Beverly Hills hype. Acclaim is nice, Orduna said. So would be replacing two dozen outdated computers lining his classroom. "We've done some good things," the calculus teacher said. "But we have to keep our feet planted on the ground." Seeking Causes and Solutions at Seven California Campuses - Lower Standards, Money, Changing Student Body Are the Challenges, (posted 5/21/98)
If a majority of students are failing," a young teacher agonizes aloud, "is it their fault, or is it mine?" It's Monday morning, 8:05 a.m. Another week is just beginning in California's public schools. But already the frustration is building in a dusty, bare-walled classroom, Room 173, at Los Angeles' Manual Arts High School, where a dozen teachers are hashing out school goals. "It's not about us failing the kids," a second teacher retorts. 'They're failing themselves." A third launches into a rant about students who play hooky, students who sleep in class and students who only want to get to their jobs at fast-food restaurants. "You can't blame teachers," she says. "It's a failure of the entire system." How bad are our schools? Who is to blame? How do we fix them? Such questions rumble throughout the state's system of public education. For good reason. At Manual Arts, teachers routinely help students take tests,actually sit beside them and walk them through each question,because 80% read below grade level. At Anaheim's Katella High, tattoo magazines and superhero comics pass as acceptable material for the ritual "silent reading" at the start of class. At Kern County's Taft Union High, teachers have students copy lessons off the blackboard because they won't study at home. Even at Arcadia High School, an academic star in the San Gabriel Valley, the English department is ordering grammar books because too many students stumble over the mechanics of good writing. These are the daily realities behind the dismal numbers that produce front-page headlines every few months: California's fourth-graders tie for last, with Louisiana, in reading. In math, they surpass only the fourth-graders of Mississippi. In science, eighth-graders lag a full year behind counterparts nationally. High school students? Half of those who go on to California State University,meaning they are among the top third of all graduates,require remedial help in math or English. PacBell has to screen seven applicants to find one high school graduate with the math and reading skills needed to be a telephone operator. And California's teachers? More than 31,000 classrooms are presided over by men and women who do not have a teaching certificate,who are still learning their craft. Almost half of high school math classes are led by teachers who never even minored in the subject. Given all that, not many people are shocked when California's main gubernatorial contenders admit,at least one, proudly,that they send their own children to private schools. Education has risen high on the public's agenda. According to a Times poll, nearly one out of three Californians see it as the state's most important problem,ahead of immigration and just behind crime. Thirty years ago, California was fifth in the nation in per-pupil spending, and its schools were admired for their innovations. Although it was never quite the "golden age" some graybeards recall, even the Los Angeles Unified School District once provided free summer school for all who wanted it, and 300,000 students signed up. Since the tax-cutting crusades of the late 1970s, however, California's per-student expenditures have remained stagnant at best, while nearly every other state's has grown by double digits. So there's a bookcase in Room 173 at Manual Arts High,with hardly any books in it. But perhaps the greatest failure of California's officials has been their mishandling of the demographic tide that swept over the state's schools. California now has 45% of the nation's immigrant students. The number of youngsters not proficient in English exceeds the total enrollment in the public schools of 38 other states. Yet more than 1,000 schools did not advance a single such child to English fluency last year. Meanwhile, achievement has flagged across the board,not only, as stereotypes suggest, among minorities, the poor and immigrants. Whites and the children of college graduates, long thought immune to bad schooling, trail their counterparts across the country as well. "No one population or school setting is responsible for the problem in California," says Marshall S. Smith, acting deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Education. In California, Smith concludes, "there is a problem with the overall quality of schools." Seeking answers to the perplexing questions fueling the current debate over public education, The Times spent six months peering inside California's schools. A three-pronged Times poll explored the perceptions and experiences of students, teachers and parents statewide. UCLA education experts and Times computer specialists analyzed dozens of databases,test scores, teacher qualifications, course-taking patterns, student backgrounds and much more,covering all 8,000 public schools in the state. Finally, a crew of reporters was sent to education's front lines, observing a week in the life of seven high schools, from one in a middle-class white suburb of Sacramento <underlineto an immigrant-rich, inner-city campus in San Diego</underline. To be sure, there's much good news in an education system that again produced the nation's Academic Decathlon champion, the runner-up in the Science Bowl and hundreds of "AP scholars," students who ace eight or more Advanced Placement exams. One encouraging trend is how many more poor and minority students are taking tests like that, along with the classes,English literature to calculus,required for college admissions. But even that raises a troubling question: If students are completing rigorous high school work, why are so many found lacking when they reach college? At some high schools, all the graduates who went on to the elite University of California system failed a basic writing exam. Of course, there is no single reality in California's "system" of elementary and secondary schools. A week at seven high schools finds a mind-boggling diversity of cultures, communities and values. At Oakmont High in Roseville, outside Sacramento, two sisters carry backpacks bulging with texts, one weighing 20 pounds. At Hoover High in San Diego, scores of children show up daily bearing not a single book. At Katella High, in the shadow of Disneyland, administrators struggle to keep students from dropping out, enticing them with a panoply of clubs and electives in animation. But at Arcadia High, the challenge is to keep the students from taking too many of the honors and Advanced Placement classes that make college applications shine. Something binds all these schools together, however: an undertow of concern, a recurrent self-doubt, self-examination. At Arcadia, the worry is about competition from the private schooling offered all over suburbia. So the faculty churns out new courses,25 in a single year, like Mandarin 5 or virtual geography,to make sure they 'keep kids at Arcadia High." A world away, at inner-city Manual Arts, all of Monday has been set aside for the staff to talk things over, as at the gathering in Room 173, where teacher Ady Sukkar drops the question "is it me or is it them?" Even as the Manual Arts crew lets off steam, much the same is going on south in San Diego. What gets the juices flowing at Monday's teachers meeting at Hoover High is an offer by a millionaire philanthropist, the founder of the Price Club, to bring in university experts to boost test scores. "We've had too many new ideas and programs imposed on us over the years," special ed teacher Alan Marshall complains to colleagues, "so many things that last two years,and then are discontinued." His reaction to this latest plan to overhaul the school? "Skeptical." It's a wobbly start for another week in the trenches of California schools.
Monday: Room 305 at Hoover High The students pour past El Cajon Boulevard's busy strip malls, tire stores and tamale factory, and by a billboard for "Jammin' Z-90 Nonstop Hip Hop and R & B." Then they go through the metal gates, past the security guards and onto the campus named for the 31st president of the United States, whose face,incredibly white and round and stern,still peers down from a portrait in the library of San Diego's Herbert Hoover High School. Today is a tardy sweep day, so they scurry in before the bell rings, the gate closes and counselors escort stragglers to the cafeteria for punishment,the Andrews Sisters crooning "Want Some Seafood, Mama." Amid the boys in baggy pants and Raiders jackets and T-shirts with outlandish sayings come Somali girls in colorful African gowns, flowing from head to ankle. A boy heads for the principal's office to explain, in Spanish, how he had to go back to Mexico and missed the last three years of school, why he has no transcripts, and why his English,what little he knew,has faded. A Vietnamese teenager treads in his Nikes to the English-as-a-second-language class of Rita El Wardi, who begins looking through students' essays. Most bungle verbs, syntax and other intricacies of English. Then she gets to his paper, and reads aloud his poignant image: "I felt very worried like a blind bird in a jungle." Amazed, El Wardi remarks, "You won't get that kind of language from too many students born in San Diego." Welcome to the new reality in California public education. Now wander to Room 305. Here, 12 seats are occupied by students who are new to the country. Three others hold students with serious learning handicaps. One girl has a mother in prison. She has written a poem to her: 'I hope I can stop hating you soon. . . ." Another has a swelling belly, pregnant by a man almost twice her age. A boy has dozed off, worn out from his after-school job washing cars. "Wake up!" teacher Lee Mongrue admonishes. "Home is for sleeping, not school." When Hoover opened in 1930, the area was nearly all white and middle-class. The jobs were in the military and manufacturing, the early airplane industry. Baseball legend Ted Williams went to school here. Of Hoover's 1,901 students today, roughly 50% are Latino, 20% Asian American, 20% African American. Only about 5% are white. The majority are so poor that they qualify for free school lunches and welfare. Hoover reflects the explosive changes that have challenged California like nowhere else in the country. Between 1988 and 1996, the proportion of the state's high schools that are predominantly minority has increased by more than half, to 16%, according to a UCLA analysis. Today, nearly 60% of all the state's public high schools are at least one-third black and Latino. But far more significant is how the poverty rate among students has more than doubled,to 28%,since 1969. The devastating impact of poverty is well documented. But when researchers at the UCLA-based Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards and Student Testing examined the available data on California's high schools, they were startled by the degree to which students' economic standing, something "outside the control of the school," seemed to dictate their success, whether measured by SAT scores or how many complete college prep classes. It's like the link between smoking and cancer, only stronger,44% of the difference between two schools' scores on the college entrance exams could be explained by the poverty rate of the students. "It's not insurmountable," concludes UCLA researcher Richard Brown, "but it's certainly a steep climb to overcome." Then add in how many students move from school to school: California's students have the highest mobility rate in the country. About 75% change schools at least once before the 12th grade, and 33% change three or more times,for reasons other than normal promotion. And the more a student moves, the lower his or her chance of graduating from high school, according to UC Santa Barbara education professor Russell Rumberger, who analyzed records of 13,000 U.S. students. At Hoover, also add the practical challenge of having students who speak 29 languages, from Tagalog to Swahili. In a nod to such diversity, next month's graduation ceremony will be delivered in 10 languages. The soccer team is mainly black and Latino, the badminton team nearly all Southeast Asian. The swim team has two Africans, a Filipino, a Mexican, a Guatemalan and a white. The football team is a miniature United Nations too, but the victories of earlier eras elude the ragtag crew. "It's hard to compete," a coach says, "when your front line is all named Nguyen." Such signs of change abound in the six other high schools as well. At Katella High in Orange County, so many students return to Mexico or Guatemala or follow parents from job to job, that a third of the 2,000 disappear before the school year is up. Arcadia High, where almost 60% of the student body is Asian, has taken on a new flavor. The cafeteria menu is as likely to feature stir-fried beef as burgers. Not even Granada Hills High in the San Fernando Valley,once Los Angeles' bastion of whiteness,is untouched by currents of change. Filipino and Korean students crouch by the front gate over games of pusoy dos, poker with an Asian twist. And although the school still is nearly 40% white, "white" at Granada Hills doesn't necessarily mean made in the USA. It could mean a student born in Israel, Lebanon or Pakistan. It could mean someone like 17-year-old Amy Hassan, an Egyptian immigrant with olive skin, black hair and deep brown eyes. "We are Caucasians," says Amy, whose parents speak Arabic at home, "but you can't say we're white." Californians are divided as to whether this changing face of public education has been good or bad. One-third of the adults polled by The Times said that immigrants have had a positive impact on schools; 37% said the impact is negative. White parents, whose children represent 39.5% of the state's enrollment from kindergarten through high school, are most pessimistic: 51% said immigrant children have hurt schools, compared with 39% of black parents, 36% of Latinos and 14% of Asian Americans. Clearly, though, the demographic upheaval has changed the way teachers teach. In Lee Mongrue's class at Hoover, today is a big day. Although this is advanced humanities, the ninth-graders are tackling their first test of the school year. In March. Doris Alvarez, Hoover's principal, doubts the validity of traditional paper and pencil tests for immigrants, minorities and low-income students. So her teachers are encouraged to have students create portfolios of their best work. Then they give oral 'exhibitions" and answer questions in a process called portfolio defense. Report cards have been redesigned to grade students not only in traditional subjects, like math and history, but in "inquiry, 'technology," "organization," "communication" and "collaboration." Such innovations helped win Hoover the title New Urban High School by the U.S. Department of Education. And last year Alvarez was national Principal of the Year. But the San Diego Board of Education is not so impressed: It has Hoover on a list of five campuses targeted for closure if test scores don't improve. More than 80% of Hoover's 10th-graders rank below the 50th percentile on a standardized reading test, and more than 50% score that poorly in math. Indeed, the school's philosophy runs against California's current tide. Gov. Pete Wilson has pushed for standardized testing of every student in every school. No exemption for poor children. None for language handicaps. No excuses. "The day for arguing about tests is over," says San Diego school board President Ron Ottinger. He wants Hoover to teach test-taking skills and remedial reading. "Basically, the middle class is bypassing Hoover," says Ottinger, worried that those families,mostly white and Asian American,will continue to flee the area or send their children to private schools. "We've got to change that. We do not want Hoover to be only a school for new immigrants and the poor." Mongrue, the teacher, could have fled too. About 60% of his colleagues have bolted over the past four years, most to suburban schools where for the same pay the challenges are less daunting. One reason he remains is that it's convenient,he lives nearby. But mostly, he says, he feels needed. "I know it sounds trite, but you can make a difference at Hoover." If that means bending the conventions of schooling, he's all for it. So he eases his class into the test. "Listen carefully," he tells them. "I'm going to cut a deal with you,you know what that means?" His part: "I will give you 10 minutes max for you to review with your buddies." Their part: "You do your best on this test." It's an essay question about the sub-Saharan section of Africa. As they scribble, he watches for signs of frustration. After a few minutes, he's encouraged. "They're still engaged," he says. "They haven't quit on me. I'm pleased."
Tuesday: Even White Kids Sing the Blues It's Tuesday, a day like any other on the quad. At Arcadia High, the longhairs loll under the shady trees, cheerleaders near the lawn. At Granada Hills, the black kids fill the benches while a few shaved-head Mexicans in baggy pants hug the area by the mural . . . of a Scottish highlander wearing a kilt. At Katella, early birds cluster by a map of the world, etched in the concrete. Buses pull up minutes before the 8 a.m. bell, disgorging classmates from apartments and motels near Disneyland, home to the work force for the Magic Kingdom. Meanwhile, in the town of Taft, up near Bakersfield, the preppies gather under the old wisteria vines. And the band kids,a smart and outgoing bunch,occupy the loudest table in the cafeteria, knocking the school dress code ("no backless shoes . . . no exposed bellies") and making cracks about the students who slouch on the sidewalk across the street. Those are the stoners or slackers, a ragtag group in leather jackets, flannel shirts, boots, chains and tattoos. Unmotivated? Yes. Anti-school? Almost always. Big goals for the future? Why bother. "Smoke cigarettes, have fun," says one, summing up the stoner life. It's a credo of disengagement, particularly from academics. It's also a fitting metaphor for the general problem at Taft Union, where, in too many classrooms, students doze or doodle. <underlineMany people may want to believe that low expectations,and poor performance,are the scourge only of inner-city schools or of poor, minority youths. But those problems thrive here too, in a small-town high school where 86% of the students are white</underline. Junior Jerry Rowe is repeating sophomore English. Rowe admits that he doesn't care for studying, rarely participates in class, yet somehow expects to attend college and catch up then. "They'll run that through me again,English," he says with alarming nonchalance. California's white students, as a whole, aren't holding their own. Compelling evidence comes from the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Nationally, 33% of white fourth-graders read below the basic level in 1994. In California, 44% tested that poorly,14 points worse than their counterparts in Texas, a state with a similar demographic profile. The proportion of white fourth-graders who read proficiently in California actually shrank from 1992 to 1994, by seven points, to 20%. Even high-end students,those with parents who graduated from college,have lost ground: Only half were reading at or above the basic level in 1994. The students at Taft are not high-end. This isn't Palo Alto or Pacific Palisades. Most are the sons and daughters of roustabouts and roughnecks who work the surrounding oil fields and live in clapboard shanties around the arid San Joaquin Valley community. Many are the descendants of another generation's poor immigrants,the Okies of Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath." Yet at Taft, students don't have to contend with gangs or violence or substandard facilities. "This is like going back to 1950," English teacher Steve Shinn says. "It is a wonderful, clean, quiet place." Here, it's hard to blame educational problems on money. For years, the school was the beneficiary of taxes from the oil beneath the foothills. There are no graffiti or mounds of trash. It has modern classrooms equipped with computers wired to the Internet. Teachers have ample textbooks. Taft also has tight community bonds going for it. Nearly every class has the son or daughter of a teacher. The principal,a refugee from Los Angeles,loans his pickup to students who need a ride. Scholastically, however, Taft is not even average. Reading scores for the ninth through 12th grades range between the 39th and 48th percentile nationally. Math scores are lower. Taft's average SAT was 975 last year; the national average 1016. And of 192 seniors, only 17% even took the college entrance exam. Although 70% go on to higher education, that usually means the two-year variety,Taft Junior College, right next door. Education experts have a hard time explaining exactly why California's students do poorly on measures such as the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Some say that it's all those uncredentialed teachers. Or the acceptance of mediocrity that plagues much of American education: 70% of California parents in The Times poll said their children do at most an hour of homework a night,and that's fine with them. Others blame the state's affection for fads: notably the venture into "whole language," which assumed that students would pick up reading naturally, almost by osmosis, if exposed to good stories. At Taft, a call to read often is ignored. Caroline Schoneweis' basic English class begins with "silent reading," adopted by many schools to make sure students do some reading, even if they won't do it on their own at home. One student pulls out an automotive magazine. Others chatter with classmates. A rebellious-looking girl with a ring in her nose is drawing an intricate design in the web of her thumb. One boy is slumped over his desk. "You want me to stay awake?" he asks Schoneweis, feigning surprise. "I think she does," another student pipes up. "You guys! One more time,get the books out and read!" urges an exasperated Schoneweis. Around the state, such scenes are not hard to find. At Katella High, where the third period includes 18 minutes for independent reading, some students flip through teen magazines. Others go to a classroom magazine rack for a National Geographic, then study the glossy photos, bypassing the text. A few girls pick at their nails or powder their noses. At Manual Arts, teacher Sukkar,now in her second year,tries to launch a discussion of "Macbeth." But her seniors haven't finished Act II, last night's assignment. And one girl says she just doesn't understand it. "Did you try? You've got to try!" Sukkar implores. It sounds eerily similar to a plea Schoneweis makes in her class, when another student bows his head to sleep instead of taking a test on diagraming sentences. "Just guess," she begs, "and you'll get some of these right." On days like this, education seems like a battle to reach one student, any student. When Schoneweis takes her class to the school library late in the day to research periodicals, Kasey Mitchell dutifully gets a Time magazine to read about life in an orphanage. Kasey is the girl with the nose ring. She hangs with the stoners. 'I don't fit in anywhere else," she explains. But she is trying to distance herself from the influence of that crowd or other "low-life people." In fact, after several years of drifting,she was kicked out of junior high for fighting and ran away from home,she has begun to turn around. Her GPA is up to 3.9, and she made honor roll this year. She has a purpose. She wants to keep her grades above 3.0 'so I can save enough money to get out of here and go to beauty school." When the last bell rings, the campus empties in minutes. Some students head to work. A few pick up their babies at a campus child-care center. Jerry Rowe plans to "go home and sit around." And many, like David Keyes, go cruising. For 30 minutes, he and two Taft pals, Simon and Puni Maui, drive along streets lined by Depression-era bungalows, hungry for action. They try Snob Hill,nothing. Then the main drag,bingo. A classmate in a pickup pulls beside them. Keyes floors his $400 Oldsmobile. Engines roar. In moments, it's over. The pickup speeds ahead, victorious. "We ate it really bad," Simon Maui says. The school week is two days through.
Wednesday: Progress and Illusion at Manual Arts The boys are decked out in tuxedos, the girls in floor-length satin gowns. And the 36 members of the Taft Union concert band are facing down the jitters,they're about to enter their first competition, at Wasco High, 45 miles away. Just past 9 a.m., they bow their heads . . . and pray. At Arcadia, it's a big day too,900 sophomores have to choose next year's classes. Counselor Peggy Bott trundles boxes of transcripts from one classroom to another, patiently answering questions like, "Why can't I take four Advanced Placement classes?" Up at Oakmont, the thermometer has reached the mid-60s, and snow caps the Sierra Nevada. But the daily bulletin brings bad news: Two Mr. Viking contestants have been suspended, so the contest,for male bathing beauties,is postponed. And the basketball team? Trounced in last night's playoffs. In Los Angeles, students at Manual Arts have basketball on their minds too. But, unlike at Oakmont, their team is still alive. "Go hard, go hard, pick it up!" coach Randolph Simpson yells to senior Ricky Duff, 6-foot-6 with the bulging muscles of a stevedore. Each time he jams the ball, the gym fills with a "Yeah!" On Friday, the Toilers face Westchester for the city title. But it's not only in athletics that Westchester is a threat. Located in a middle-class neighborhood near the airport, it snares many of Manual Arts' black students, who regard it as a better school. These days, Manual Arts is trying to overcome a history of low academic performance, and,like Hoover,reconcile two clashing distinctions. One is captured in a banner in the main hall. "California Distinguished School," it reads. That honor, bestowed by the state in 1996, recognized its improvements: suspensions down; attendance most improved of all Los Angeles Unified's 49 high schools; and grants for a raft of new computers and to start "academies" in finance and the humanities. It's a safe campus too, contrary to horror stories about the inner-city. Principal Wendell Greer Jr. boasts that no student has been killed at or on the way to school since he took over four years ago. He posts deans near the gates every morning to clamp down on any attire that could be remotely gang-inspired,monkey face insignias, even hair ribbons dyed blue, the Crips' color. But Manual Arts also is on the list drawn up by Supt. Ruben Zacarias,of Los Angeles' 100 worst schools. It's 17th from the bottom. The reason: test scores. Its ninth-graders are in the 17th percentile in reading and the 20th in math. The average SAT score is about 700, 300 points below the national average. Being on the dubious list naturally irks many here. "We're making some major moves at this school," protests English teacher C.C. Ryder, Manual's union chair. "That's why it's such a contradiction for us to be on the 100 schools list." Its contradictions, though, make Manual Arts typical of much of what is happening in California. On the one hand, schools are doing many of the things policymakers want. Dropout rates are scandalous? They're now tracking down the bodies. Wood shops are out of date? Everyone offers computer animation. Students need to learn problem-solving in groups? Bring on team projects. Students need literature about people like them? Everyone's reading Toni Morrison and RudolfoAnaya. And minority students aren't taking enough demanding courses? Well, look at the numbers now. Statewide, the percentage of black students who have completed the roster of college prep courses has soared, increasing 56% just since the 1994-95 school year. And Manual Arts, 80% Latino, is among the top 30 schools in California in graduating students who complete the course work recommended for admission to the state colleges, a Times analysis showed. An impressive 68% of Manual Arts' graduates finish the college prep program, placing it in the same league as elite suburban schools such as San Marino. On the other hand, here's what happens when Manual students arrive at college: Five graduates enrolled at University of California campuses last fall. All failed UC's basic writing exam. The school sent 18 graduates to Cal State campuses: 17 had to take remedial math and 16 remedial English. Clearly, taking the college prep courses has not adequately prepared these students for the rigors of college. It's similar around the state. At eight other Los Angeles County high schools, every one of the graduates entering UC also failed the writing exam. And 54% of all the high school graduates entering the CSU system need remedial help in math, 47% in English. Nor have those college prep classes paid off another way: in higher SAT scores. In fact, SAT scores dropped in the last decade among what should be California's best students,those getting A's on the college prep courses. And in the era of grade inflation, there are plenty of such students. The percentage of test-takers with A grades rose 3 to 4 points. What is going on? How can more students be completing and getting A's in college prep programs,which typically require them to read more books, write more essays and absorb more difficult concepts,yet founder on basic skills tests after they finally begin their university careers? The answer is really not a secret. Visit the schools and the teachers tell you: Too many college prep classes in California are college prep in name only. They are watered down to accommodate the marginal skills of the students. Take a look at Wilson Yee's biology course or Rich Moody's advanced physical science class at Manual Arts. Either would bolster a UC or Cal State application. But Yee figures most of his students cannot comprehend a 10th-grade text's discussion of parasitic nematodes, so he simplifies the main points on the chalkboard. Then they copy the notes. 'We're using class time for instruction that should be done at home," he says. The students might point out that there aren't enough texts for them to take home. Yee assumes that even if there were, they wouldn't do the work. As for Moody, his advanced science class,beginning a three week unit on fossils,was meant for students who could handle trigonometry. But most of his 11th-graders are still trying to pass algebra. So the former petroleum engineer avoids lab experiments that require too much math. Usually it comes back to reading and writing. That's why Sukkar,the "is it their fault, or is it mine?" teacher,has her students run through five drafts of autobiographical essays until the spelling and grammar are right. And why she sits with them while they take tests to help them understand the questions. She figures they read at fourth- or fifth-grade level. "My objective is that they learn," she says. "It's not to trip them up on a test question." Is it wrong to lower standards for students whose skills are lacking? Are these bad teachers for doing so? To answer no, as many at Manual would, goes against the tide today, when the mantra is standards, standards, standards,setting the same high requirements for learning math, English and science for all students, regardless of background. It also runs against public opinion. The Times poll found that almost two-thirds of Californians believe that raising academic standards, rather than increased funding, is the best way to improve schools. "I don't frankly care if students come to us poor or dysfunctional or in wheelchairs," state Supt. of Public Instruction Delaine Eastin said in a recent address to Pasadena teachers. "We set one standard for them all." The issue is complex, though, and wrenching. At Manual Arts, some ponder whether high schools should teach basic phonics that should have been covered in the first grade. But it's hard to forget how students at a school like this, which opened in 1910 to help youths learn a trade, would have been routinely relegated to dead-end remedial classes. Why not instead place then in classes labeled college prep and at least expose them to "Siddhartha" or "Of Mice and Men"? "We're kind of fooling ourselves," says English teacher Curt Ullman. So the meetings continue: over whether to require vocabulary drills or have all teachers file course descriptions on the school's Internet site. The principal, Greer, wants the latter so parents can sign on to see what the school expects their children to learn. He also wants to determine if the school is teaching the material covered on the SAT and Los Angeles' new standardized exam. You can't raise scores if students aren't learning what the tests demand. But this idea runs into choppy waters at an English teachers gathering. "It's busy work!" veteran Josephine Zarro declares. "The day they start telling me what to teach, and how, is the day I quit." Los Angeles Times series on Education (posted 5/21/98)
When Arcadia High School sophomore Johnson Lee gets home, his mother has vegetable sushi and eggrolls waiting on the kitchen table. When he stays up late before a big exam-say, to cram with friends over the Internet-she brews a pot of coffee to keep him going. And when there's just no room in his backpack for a hefty Advanced Placement biology textbook, no problem- she copies the chapters he needs on the machine outside his bedroom. In this household, failure is spelled B. Up in Kern County, Taft Union High School student Dusty Watkins, the son of a petroleum company worker, wants to be a police officer or game warden. Watkins, though, seldom does his homework-"It's boring." Sure, his father will ground him for nine weeks if he gets a shoddy grade. But what's a bad grade in this family? Down at San Diego's Hoover High School, there's a group that calls itself the Crazy Brown Ladies. They wear heavy makeup-"ghetto paint," they call it-and loathe carrying schoolbooks. For their academically inclined sisters, they've reserved a special slur: "School Girls." What gives Lee his drive? Why does Watkins shrug off schoolwork? Why do the Crazy Brown Ladies eschew all things academic? The answer may be culture. What goes on in students' lives outside the classroom often does more to shape school performance than what transpires inside it. One of the strongest outside influences is the mix of attitudes, beliefs and expectations about education that can mold motivation-and may underlie startlingly persistent differences in academic achievement among white, Asian, black and Latino students. Of course, averages for large, diverse racial or ethnic groups do not account for individual achievements. At Katella High School in Anaheim, there's Karina Valenzuela. The Tijuana-born senior has hopscotched through 10 schools since her arrival in the United States 12 years ago. For a while she and her family of six lived in a van. In spite of such hardships-usually a formula for academic disaster-Karina has a 3.8 grade-point average and is bound for college. Yet despite such examples, in one measure of academic fitness after another-dropout rates, grades, enrollment in advanced courses-the patterns shout: Asians generally come out on top in California's schools, whites second, blacks third, Latinos last. A Search for Causes What's going on? Race or ethnicity by itself does not explain these differences. Social scientists have widely discredited the notion that one ethnic group is innately smarter or works harder than another. Nor does immigration status fully account for the performance gap. Indeed, contrary to some stereotypes that criticize immigrants as a source of trouble in the state's schools, repeated studies have found that immigrant children of almost any origin tend to do better in school than ethnic peers who have been in the United States longer. The problem is that subsequent generations do worse than the first-suggesting that exposure to American culture weakens immigrants drive, rather than the other way around. Nor does money fully account for the distinctions. Yes, Asian Americans and whites are richer on average than Latinos and blacks. With greater income comes greater access to the tools of success-computers, books, museum trips and a quiet place to study-making money a major factor. And of course, racial definitions always over-generalize, particularly in a population as large and varied as California's. Racial categories lump together many people of different heritages who often have little in common culturally or socially. But still ethnic differences remain, even after accounting for income, parent education or the language a student speaks at home. The accomplishments of Asian American students are one of "the most consistent findings" of studies on school achievement in America, according to Temple University researcher Laurence Steinberg, who writes about ethnic differences in academic performance in his 1996 book "Beyond the Classroom." "It is more advantageous to be Asian than to be wealthy, to have non-divorced parents or to have a mother who is able to stay home full-time," he writes. Why? And what are the implications for schools? UC Berkeley anthropologist John Ogbu offers one possibility: that years of workplace discrimination have discouraged blacks and Latinos from investing time and effort in school. Ogbu, an African American social scientist, was one of the first to describe "the burden of acting white," a theory that suggests that many black students resist schooling to protect their self-image and distinguish themselves from a majority culture that too often devalues their abilities. Ana M. "Cha" Guzman, a Texas community college administrator who recently headed a presidential commission on Latino education issues, cites another factor: Many Latinos face intense pressure to join the work force and "see the pursuit of a college degree as a selfish choice" that puts their own welfare ahead of their family's. Nationwide, Latino men have the highest work force participation of any ethnic group. But Latinos also drop out of school at the highest rate-about 30%, according to federal estimates-and attend college at the lowest. "Latino students, perhaps because of a cultural issue, tend to take themselves out of the [education] game prematurely," says UC Davis education professor Patricia Gandara, "whereas other groups gut it out more." As far back as 1986, education researcher Harold Hodgkinson, in a report "California: The State and Its Educational System," urged state officials to "think of ways in which the motivations and achievements" of Asian Americans "could be transferred to others." That would include striking at the complacency that hampers so many of California's white students, who have shown a sharper drop on reading scores in California in this decade than either blacks or Latinos. Or it may mean trying to change the habits that immigrants can carry over from impoverished countries like Mexico or El Salvador. In some Los Angeles schools, for example, officials find that attendance drops sharply on rainy days-a phenomenon they attribute in part to immigrants who come from places where schools simply shut down when it rains. The Latino superintendent of the San Francisco Unified School District sees the role of culture in low achievement. What is needed, says Waldemar Rojas, is to "eliminate the disparity that is there because of despair -- [the attitude that] school is never for me. . . ." Consider attendance, how three-quarters of the Chinese and Japanese students in San Francisco are present for virtually all- more than 90% of-their classes. Only 29% of the black students -- and 54% of the whites-attend class that regularly. "Certainly, we have to transfer that disposition to learn-and that work ethic"-of Asian Americans to others, he says. "Intelligence is modifiable. But if you're not in class, it's less modifiable." More educators are beginning to favor a frontal assault on cultural issues. Already, for example, 18 California high schools with large numbers of underachieving Latino students are participating in the Puente program. Puente is designed to prepare them for college through small classes, extensive counseling, exposure to successful Latino professionals, and an intense focus on writing and the literature of Mexican American authors. Ethnic Trends The persistence of ethnic gaps in school success is a key finding of a months-long examination of the state's public schools by The Times, which analyzed school records and trailed students from a variety of backgrounds around California. Analyses conducted for The Times by UCLA, for example, show that proportionally twice as many Asians as whites take the high school courses required for admission to the University of California. In certain areas, the gap is even more stark: Asians enroll in advanced math and chemistry classes, for instance, at as much as three times the rate of whites. In a separate study by Times computer data analysts, students in Asian- and Latino-majority high schools were found to be quite similar in two key factors. In both types of schools, 24% to 30% of students spoke limited English and about 20% were from families on welfare. Yet 45% of the seniors in the majority-Asian schools completed the college preparatory courses recommended for admission to the University of California, compared with 30% in the mostly Latino schools. Research provided to The Times by the College Board, the New York-based organization that sponsors the SAT, also shows marked disparities in performance despite common group traits. Similar percentages of Asian and Latino SAT-takers last year spoke a language other than English at home, for example, and proportionally more whites than Asians are from families earning $40,000 or more annually. Yet the Asians had the highest grade-point averages. As an example of how even low-income groups of Asian American immigrants have achieved educational success, consider the Hmong. Originally refugees from Laos who immigrated to the United States in the 1970s after the end of Indochina's wars, the Hmong have the highest poverty rates of all immigrant groups in California. Yet according to Michigan State University sociologist Ruben Rumbaut, who tracked 2,000 immigrant students in San Diego over five years, Hmong students put in more homework time than anyone -- as many as four hours a night. Lia Thao, a senior at Hoover High, immigrated when she was 5 years old after spending a few years in a Thai refugee camp. When she started first grade in the United States, she spoke no English. Now she lives in a three-bedroom apartment near Hoover with her parents and five siblings. To help her family make ends meet, she works at a middle school as a classroom aide and at a taco restaurant. Despite those demands, she spends four to six hours on homework each night. With the second-highest grade-point average among Hoover graduates this year-a 4.3 -- she plans to attend UC San Diego as a premed. She gives much of the credit to her father, who fought the communists in Laos and who now delivers produce. "One of the things he tells me is, a pen is heavier than a sword." Of course, not all Asians perform at the same levels. Rumbaut found that San Diego's Hmong, despite all their homework, had a 2.9 grade-point average as 10th-graders, lower than Filipino and Vietnamese students-but still higher than Mexican immigrants. At Arcadia High, it escapes no one's notice the astonishing degree to which Asians dominate academically. You can measure it simply by walking through classrooms-the tougher the course, the more seats they fill. The numbers also tell the story. Of 902 Advanced Placement exams last year that earned a passing score of 3 or better at the school, 713, or 79%, belonged to Asian students, who make up 56% of Arcadia's 3,000 students. Whites, 34% of the students, accounted for only 95, or 10%, of the passing exams. The school's Pathways program for failing students, by contrast, enrolls mainly whites and Latinos. One is James White, a friendly sophomore with shoulder-length blond locks who attended about a dozen different schools before landing at Arcadia. Although James completes assignments much of the time and enjoys reading Shakespeare on his own, his highest grade last term was in auto shop. "I really don't like school," he says. He rarely spends more than 20 minutes on homework, and if it is too hard, "I just don't do it." A veteran teacher at Arcadia says: "[Asian parents] say, =91We're going to go here and you will perform.' They'll sacrifice everything to move here for the education. White families I don't think have that attitude." Findings from a Times poll back that up. Among Asian parents of school-age children in California, 22% said some students achieve more than others because they work harder. By contrast, only 14% of Latinos, 8% of blacks and 5% of whites cited working hard. Members of those ethnic groups were more likely to cite parental involvement or a stable home life. Asian parents were also most likely to report that their children spend a hefty chunk of time on homework. Almost 50% of Asian parents reported two hours or more on homework every night, compared with 33% of blacks, 27% of whites and 18% of Latinos. "There is nothing magical going on here," says Temple University's Steinberg. "Asian youngsters and their parents are more likely to believe that hard work pays off." That belief is rooted, at least in part, in Confucianism, the ancient philosophy that people can improve themselves through effort and instruction. Perhaps even more important, Steinberg found, is that Asians also strongly believe that failing to work hard in school will bring negative consequences. Whites and other non-Asians, on the other hand, are "far more cavalier" about the downsides of sloughing off, he says. At nearly all-white Taft Union High near Bakersfield, the anti-work ethic seems widespread. Many students, like aspiring game warden Dusty Watkins, admit they just don't try hard. Moreover, the school doesn't expect them to. Many students don't do their homework, so teachers often don't bother giving it. It's a vicious cycle, one that makes some Taft teachers throw up their hands in defeat. "If you assign them to read a story and two-thirds haven't read it, where are you?" En |
