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.
DOUBLE-MURDER CASE: The officer told the dispatcher he would check the locations of the callers, but instead headed to a pizzeria, remaining there for about an hour A New Jersey officer has been charged with misconduct after prosecutors said he did not quickly respond to and properly investigate reports of a shooting that turned out to be a double murder, instead allegedly stopping at an ATM and pizzeria. Franklin Township Police Sergeant Kevin Bollaro was the on-duty officer on the evening of Aug. 1, when police received 911 calls reporting gunshots and screaming in Pittstown, about 96km from Manhattan in central New Jersey, Hunterdon County Prosecutor Renee Robeson’s office said. However, rather than responding immediately, prosecutors said GPS data and surveillance video showed Bollaro drove about 3km
‘MOTHER’ OF THAILAND: In her glamorous heyday in the 1960s, former Thai queen Sirikit mingled with US presidents and superstars such as Elvis Presley The year-long funeral ceremony of former Thai queen Sirikit started yesterday, with grieving royalists set to salute the procession bringing her body to lie in state at Bangkok’s Grand Palace. Members of the royal family are venerated in Thailand, treated by many as semi-divine figures, and lavished with glowing media coverage and gold-adorned portraits hanging in public spaces and private homes nationwide. Sirikit, the mother of Thai King Vajiralongkorn and widow of the nation’s longest-reigning monarch, died late on Friday at the age of 93. Black-and-white tributes to the royal matriarch are being beamed onto towering digital advertizing billboards, on
Tens of thousands of people on Saturday took to the streets of Spain’s eastern city of Valencia to mark the first anniversary of floods that killed 229 people and to denounce the handling of the disaster. Demonstrators, many carrying photos of the victims, called on regional government head Carlos Mazon to resign over what they said was the slow response to one of Europe’s deadliest natural disasters in decades. “People are still really angry,” said Rosa Cerros, a 42-year-old government worker who took part with her husband and two young daughters. “Why weren’t people evacuated? Its incomprehensible,” she said. Mazon’s
POWER ABUSE WORRY: Some people warned that the broad language of the treaty could lead to overreach by authorities and enable the repression of government critics Countries signed their first UN treaty targeting cybercrime in Hanoi yesterday, despite opposition from an unlikely band of tech companies and rights groups warning of expanded state surveillance. The new global legal framework aims to bolster international cooperation to fight digital crimes, from child pornography to transnational cyberscams and money laundering. More than 60 countries signed the declaration, which means it would go into force once ratified by those states. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described the signing as an “important milestone,” and that it was “only the beginning.” “Every day, sophisticated scams destroy families, steal migrants and drain billions of dollars from our economy...
RSS