Pacific News Service/Vida En El Valle

News Report, Juan Esparza Loera,
Vida en el Valle
Jul 05, 2005

Joe Coto, the son of a copper miner, knew early on that his father's occupation was not the best job in the world. His father, who only completed the fifth grade, shared that opinion.

"He practically drove me out of my home and said, 'You get out of here and go to where you can go to college,'" recalls Coto, who went on to graduate from San Diego State University and pursue a career in education before being elected to the California Assembly last year.

"I focused on education because I recognized what my father told me about the importance of education," said Coto, vice chair of the Latino Legislative Caucus. He represents San Jose's 23rd Assembly District.

Coto's story is not unique among Latino leaders in the state.

Assemblymember Juan Arámbula, D-Fresno, the son of farmworkers in Delano, went to Harvard directly out of high school. He also earned degrees from Stanford and UC Berkeley.

Lt. Gov. Cruz M. Bustamante earned his bacherlor's degree two years ago from California State University, Fresno, after dropping out to focus on political work.

State Sen. Denise Moreno Ducheny, whose mother attended some community college, was the first in her family to graduate from college.

Their stories about going to and graduating from college are rare among Latinos in California, especially in the San Joaquin Valley, according to a recent study by the Public Policy Institute of California. Those findings were reinforced in a two-part report released last week by the Campaign for College Opportunity.

Greater numbers of Latinos are graduating from high school, attending college and earning college degrees, but those rates remain the lowest among all ethnic groups and need to improve dramatically to meet California's future needs, according to the 319-page institute report.

"Although Latino youths have registered some progress in educational outcomes of the past decades, much more needs to be done," said report editors Ellen Hanak and Mark Baldassare. "To ensure a better future for California, we will need to significantly improve the educational outcome of the Latino youth who will be the state's workers in the future. Otherwise, many second-generation Californians will face low-skill, low-pay jobs or chronic unemployment."

The most recent studies underline the problem of getting enough Latinos into school and college. Latinos have the highest dropout rates, the lowest college participation rate and the lowest percentage of adults with a college degree among racial groups. Only 22 percent of young Latinos enroll in college (compared to 32 percent for blacks, 60 percent for Asians and 43 percent for whites), and only 8 percent of adult Latinos have a college degree (compared to18 percent for blacks, 45 percent for Asians and 37 percent for whites).

The Campaign for College Opportunity is lobbying for increased educational funding, greater efficiency, and a long-term tuition and financial aid policy to provide college access to Latino and other ethnic groups.

According to the campaign's report, the state faces a future shortfall of educated workers unless California raises educational achievement and college participation, mostly for Latinos.

"In this state, we don't do well in getting students to finish college," said Dr. Nancy Shulock, director of the Institute for Higher Education Leadership and Policy, which conducted the research. California, she said, ranks 48th nationally in degrees and certificates awarded per 100 enrolled students.

California Latinos and blacks, she said, make up 48 percent of the population, but represent only 25 percent of those with college degrees or certificates and rank last in the country.

The statistics for Latinos are worse in the San Joaquin Valley, where many newly arrived immigrants are forced to work in the fields and fail to see the value of an education.

"I'm not surprised by the study at all," said Francisco Estrada, director of public policy for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF). "I'm well aware of how bad the statistics are when you have only 8 percent of Latinos having finished (college), when income is one of the best predictors of whether one is going on to higher education, and knowing that Latinos as a group have the lowest median family income."

The number of college-educated Latinos needs to increase dramatically to keep pace with California's population growth, said Estrada and other Latino leaders. Latinos represent about 40 percent of the state's estimated 35 million residents.

Latinos are enrolling in college in larger numbers, said Estrada, but many are stuck in a community college where transfer rates into a college or university are very low. "Unfortunately, we are losing kids there," he said.

But Coto, who was named California superintendent of the year in 2003 when he worked at the East Side Union High School District in San Jose, says the statistics are not as bad if the number of foreign-born Latinos are removed.

"Because those students who are foreign-born and arrive here are English-limited learners, they are dropping out at 50 percent," said Coto. "That is the big challenge. We have to come up with more creative ways of strengthening their English-language skills as rapidly as we can and re-directing the curriculum so that they can get a better chance of graduating from high school."

Getting more native-born Latinos into college is another great challenge. Though Latino parents are interested in sending their kids to college, many of them are not familiar with the process of applying to schools.

"The dilemma is (the parents) have not gone there themselves," said Coto. "Because they never graduated from high school, they don't have the experience to guide their kids through the difficult process of graduating from high school, meeting the graduation requirements, meeting the A-through-Z requirements, much less guide them (to college) because they have never been there. Their knowledge of how to navigate through our system is simply not there."

Money should not be an issue for the state to remedy that, said Estrada.

"The investment doesn't have to be extraordinary to increase the number of Latinos that go on to college and graduate," he said.

Institutions need to do more outreach, Estrada said, in teaching Latino parents about the college admission process. They can also increase financial aid so that Latino students won't have to depend on loans.

For Bustamante, the solution is simple: locate the under-performing schools, pump more money into their programs and provide incentives for top teachers to go there.

"I have gone to school after school and seen science classrooms that have no Bunson burners, no beakers, and have no trained teachers able to teach science and math," said Bustamante.

"You cannot teach kids without good facilities, good teachers, good instructional material," said Bustamante. "Let's forget about all the reforms for a moment. Let's get off our high horse. Let's give kids the basics they need in the schools that need it the most. Then we'll see a turnaround in the low-performing schools."

That is easier said than done, said Arámbula, a former Fresno school board member who is serving his first year in the state Assembly.

"Some of us are trying to do that, but given the rules that we have to work with, given that we need a two-thirds vote to get any tax increase or any new revenue passed, the best way may be to let the voters decide that themselves," said Arámbula, pointing to public opinion polls that show a majority of Californians support increased taxes for education.

"It's clear to me that the pipeline of students, starting from elementary school, needs to be improved because we are losing students at every stage," said Arámbula. "Many of our students have to work. As a result, many wind up going to community colleges or getting sidetracked before they get a degree."

Ducheny, who represents the San Diego area, sees some improvement.

"Latino graduation rates have increased, but we have a long way to go to catch up to where our population is," said Ducheny.

Ducheny has introduced legislation to provide $20 million to help students with supplemental instruction in passing the high school exit exam. She has written other bills to provide more books for English learners and to allow a greater degree of testing in Spanish "to see what they actually know."

Estrada remains optimistic.

"More and more people are recognizing the need that we do something about the education of Latino kids now because the future of the state depends on it," he said.

Send e-mail to: jesparza@vidaenelvalle.com

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