A varied group of people, including students and Senator Joy Padgett (R-20th District) discuss possible solutions to the education gap of Latin@s in Ohio.

Ohio State served as the gathering place where school superintendents, teachers, Hispanic/Latin@ community and state-wide leaders, as well as public policy makers and educational experts across the country met this past January to find soluciones to the aca-demic achievement gap of Latin@ students in Ohio.

The educational summit was sponsored by the Ohio Commission on Hispanic/Latin@ Affairs (OCHLA), in cooperation with Ohio State and the Ohio Department of Education (ODE). In a roundtable setting, attendees discussed the educational challenges faced by the Latin@ community and the possible ways to address them.

“This summit is a way to begin a discussion to find solutions,” said Raúl Soto, assistant director of administrative field services for the ODE. “We are going to share thoughts, share our ideas, share our concerns and focus on the bottom line.”

Data from the ODE, which breaks up graduation rates by race and ethnicity, shows Latin@s have been making improvements in graduation numbers for the past three years. However, Latin@s are still performing at a rate that is 18 percent below that of the Anglo population.

Although Latin@s constitute a small segment of the Ohio population, they are a group experiencing rapid increases, particularly among the younger age groups. According to the U.S. Census, the Latin@ population grew by 71 percent between the years of 1990 and 2005, and more than half are younger than 25 years of age. Another trend worth noting is that while the general Ohio population under 15 years of age decreased by 4.3 percent from 2000 to 2005, the Latin@ population in that age group increased at a rate of 14.4 percent in that same period.

ODE data also shows that Latin@s also are concentrated in urban areas. Approximately 40 percent of Hispanics/Latin@s students from grades K-12 are enrolled in five urban public school districts in the state of Ohio. These districts are: South-Western City and Columbus City (Franklin County), Toledo City (Lucas County), Lorain City (Lorain County), and Cleveland Municipal City (Cuyahoga County).

The largest school district, Cleveland Municipal City, is classified by the ODE as being in an academic emergency. The other two important areas, Columbus City and Lorain City, are classified by the ODE as being in academic watch.

Source: Ohio Department of Education

Challenges

Following are some of the responses most attendees agreed upon in answer to the question: “What challenges to closing the academic achievement gap for Hispanic/Latin@ students are you facing in your school district?”
• School systems not attuned to Hispanic students
• Lack of engagement from families, school and communities
• Spanish language proficiency not acknowledged as an asset
• Lack of involvement by Latin@ community leaders
• Lack of cultural competencies that result in conscious and unconscious prejudice
•Lack of understanding by teachers of the socio-economic, cultural and language-related backgrounds of the students

“Our kids deserve better of what we are giving them,” said ODE Superintendent Susan Zelman, who gave the opening address and emphasized that to work towards a solution we need to acknowledge the challenges we face.

In an interview with Qué Pasa, Zelman also said her department is “very concerned” about the gap between higher performing and lower performing students, noting that when the ODE received the report from OCHLA, the department developed its own task force focused on closing the achievement gap.

Zelman also noted the need for increasing expectations of what all students should be able to do, designing innovative and rigorous curriculums that address those expectations, and having a more fair and credible system of assessment.

“The Ohio Department of Education has to develop an accountability system to disaggregate the data and measure the progress of our Hispanic students,” Zelman said. “There is still a long way to go in closing the gap.”

She also said that just because a student attends a poor school it does not mean that geography is destination. “In fact, we can have very high achievement particularly with our Hispanic students in our schools of promise.”

ODE data shows that most underperforming students are in schools districts which are in academic emergency.


Solutions and Perspectives

“We need to look at the big picture and not leave students behind,” said Paula Schafer, English as a Second Language (ESL) coordinator from the Akron public schools. “Anything that you can do for one group of students is going to affect all groups of students.”

Rubén Castilla Herrera, who served as moderator of the roundtable discussions, noted both sides of the equation need to be better educated about each other. “Parents need to know that there needs to be parental participations, that they need to engage with their children and help them with their homework,” Castilla Herrera said. “The educational system needs to know that there are cultural differences that are important for the Hispanic group to overcome.”

The keynote speaker, Prof. María Fránquiz from the University of Texas, described newcomer centers in her speech as places that provide orientation to students from other countries before they become enrolled in schools. She also emphasized that Spanish language proficiency should be seen as an asset, not a liability.

“There are a lot of migrant students that come to the Freemont area,” said Lucy Brummet of the Freemont City Schools. “Most of them are not prepared to go to college. Educators, specifically teachers, need to be a little more sensitive to these students needs, because a lot of these kids don’t have that support at home or role models, so they need more mentors”

Soto, who is originally from Puerto Rico but moved to the United States at a young age, talked about his eighth-grade teacher, Mr. Miller, who took the time to work with him and help him so that he would not fall behind in his classes.

“I believe that there is a lot of stress and pressure that teachers have in meeting standards and goals,” Soto said. “However, there are a lot of teachers who are taking the time to help out the kids who may need extra help in their schooling, like Mr. Miller did for me.”


Next Steps

Ezra Escudero, executive director of OCHLA, said the next steps to closing the education gap in Ohio involve different solutions and many people at different levels.

“Parents, students, teachers, administrators and politicians are going to have to do things differently,” said Escudero. “Having the Hispanic/Latin@ community supporting this issue is very important for it to have validity. We want all students to have the best education they can in order to compete globally.”