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About Portland observer. (Portland, Or.) 1970-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 18, 2010)
Page 6 il!‘^.ìortlanò (lOhseruer August 18. 2010 D iv e Language a Barrier for Latinos in Schools Families struggle to maintain their culture (AP) With Hispanic enroll ment surging in schools, many Spanish-speaking parents are having trouble helping their chil dren with homework or com mu nicating with U.S. teachers as English-immersion classes pro liferate in K-12. An A s s o c ia te d P re s s - Univision poll highlights the lan guage and cultural obstacles for the nation's Latinos, who lag b eh in d o th e rs w hen it com es to graduating from high school. The findings also raise ques tions about whether English-im mersion does more to assimilate or isolate — a heated debate that has divided states, academ ics and even the U.S. Supreme Court. Arizona recently ordered its schools to remove teachers with heavy foreign accents from English-language instruction, while the Obama administration is seeking to push more multilin gual teaching in K-12 class rooms. The nationwide poll, also spon sored by The Nielsen Company and Stanford University, found the vast majority o f Hispanics — 78 percent — had children enrolled in K -12 classes that were taught mostly in English, com pared with 3 percent in Spanish. Just 20 percent o f m ainly Spanish-speaking parents say they were able to communicate "extremely well" with their child's school, compared with 35 per cent o f Hispanics who speak English fluently. Under federal law, if the par ents' English is limited, schools must provide notices and infor mation about student activities in a language they can understand. The Education D epartm ent's Office for Civil Rights is now reviewing some school districts to see if students are being de nied a fair education. Roxana Montoya, an El Sal vador native in Miami who is learning to speak English, says she often struggled to help her 12-year-old son with school. Montoya said she would check the Internet to translate her ques tions for teachers and spend hours going through his middle- school coursework. "He'd get out at 3 and at 9, we still wouldn't be done with the homework," she said. The educational stakes are high. Roughly 1 in 5 people in the U.S. speaks a language other than English at home, with His panics representing the largest share, according to 2009 census b Doris Chiquito and her children Jonathan, 11, and Ariana Gonzalez, 8. Born in the U.S. to Ecuadorian parents, Chiquito is among those who hope their children will maintain the Hispanic culture. She enrolled her son and daughter in bilingual classes so they would also speak Spanish and not 'feel ashamed o f being Hispanic. (AP Photo) data. Hispanics also now make up one-fourth ofthe nation's kin dergartners, part o f a historic trend in which minorities are pro jected to become the new U.S. majority by midcentury. Still, H ispanics are nearly three times as likely than the general U.S. population to drop out o f high school, and half as likely to earn a bachelor's de gree. Other AP-Univision poll find ings: M any H ispanics lack confi dence in the quality o f educa tion at their local public schools. A bout 47 percent said they believed the K -12 schools were excellent or good, com pared w ith 48 percent who described them as "fair," "poor" or "very poor." About 63 percent o f Hispan ics believe it would help the U.S. economy "a lot" if more students completed high school, compared with 40 percent for the general population. Citing some o f the racial gaps, E d u c a tio n S e c re ta ry A rne Duncan is urging parents to take more responsibility. He said the government will require districts to get input from communities on w ay s to im p ro v e underperforming schools before receiving federal money. The Education Department also wants to devote an addi tional $50 million next year to promote English learning. Part o f that will be used for research and development o f "dual-lan guage immersion," a bilingual approach gaining favor among many linguists. Dual-immersion is a shift from the direction o f states such as California, Arizona and M assa chusetts, w here voters have largely banned bilingual classes. On a broader level, some 30 states and numerous localities have passed laws making En glish the official language, a move that critics say will lead to more cuts in bilingual programs. The debate has splintered the Supreme Court, which sided 5-4 with Arizona last year in saying the federal government should not supervise the state's spend ing for teaching students who don't speak English. Doris Chiquito, 30, o f Miami, who was bom in the U.S. to Ecuadorean parents, is among those who would like their chil dren to value Hispanic culture. Chiquito, fluent in English, says she enrolled her 11 -year-old son and 8-year-old daughter in bilin gual classes so they would also speak Spanish and not "feel ashamed o f being Hispanic." H er d a u g h te r, A ria n a Gonzalez, says she likes having classes in both languages.
