With Hispanic enrollment surging in schools, many Spanish-speaking parents are having trouble helping their children with homework or communicating with teachers as English-immersion classes proliferate in US schools.
An Associated Press-Univision poll highlights the language and cultural obstacles for US Latinos, the largest and fastest-growing minority group, which lags behind others when it comes to graduating from high school.
The findings also raise questions whether English-immersion does more to assimilate or isolate — a heated debate that has divided states, academics and even the US Supreme Court. Arizona recently ordered its schools to remove teachers with heavy foreign accents from English-language instruction, while US President Barack Obama’s administration is seeking to push more multilingual teaching in classrooms.
“The language barrier is still a serious risk factor for Hispanics,” said Michael Kirst, a Stanford University professor emeritus of education who helped analyze the survey.
Even with many schools replacing Spanish with English in classrooms, for a student evaluated as learning English, “the odds of completing high school, and particularly college, significantly drops,” he said.
The nationwide poll, also sponsored by The Nielsen Company and Stanford University, found the vast majority of Hispanics — 78 percent — had children enrolled in K-12 classes that were taught mostly in English, compared with 3 percent in Spanish.
Just 20 percent of mainly Spanish-speaking parents said they were able to communicate “extremely well” with their child’s school, compared with 35 percent of Hispanics who speak English fluently.
About 42 percent of the Spanish speakers said it was easy for them to help with their children’s schoolwork, compared with 59 percent of the Hispanics who speak English well.
Children of Spanish-dominant parents were also less likely to seek help with homework from their families. Fifty-seven percent of those parents said their children came to them with school questions. That’s compared with 80 percent for mainly English-speaking Hispanic parents, who were also more likely to send their children to relatives or friends for answers.
The hardships often center on language for Latino parents, who value a high school diploma more than the general population and want to support their children, according to the poll. However, educators say the problems can be cultural, too, if some Hispanic parents feel less comfortable acting as vocal advocates for education, such as meeting with teachers or lobbying for an extra honors class.
Under federal law, if the parents’ English is limited, schools must provide notices and information about student activities in a language they can understand. The US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights is now reviewing some school districts to see if students are being denied a fair education.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS