ACLU: Rhode Island Suspends Latino Students at High Rates

Posted on June 10, 2013 by Katherine Leal Unmuth

A new report by the ACLU of Rhode Island finds that Latino and black students are being suspended at much higher rates than white students, relative to their student population size.

The report is based on an analysis of data from the Rhode Island Department of Education, between 2004 and 2012.

In “Blacklisted: Racial Bias in School Suspensions in Rhode Island,” the ACLU says that the racial disparity begins as early as elementary school. A Hispanic elementary students is three times as likely to be suspended as a white students, the report says. The suspensions also often result from minor behavioral issues, often characterized as “disorderly conduct” or “insubordination/disrespect.”

“Out-of-school suspensions are used too often to punish infractions that in no way justify the long-term consequences that suspensions can carry,” said ACLU Policy Associate Hillary Davis, the report’s author. “For minority students, reconsideration of the use of out-of-school suspensions is particularly critical.”

Eight of the school districts analyzed disproportionately suspended Hispanic students for all eight years in which they were studied. According to the report, Hispanic students made up 18 percent of students and 28 percent of those suspended; black students made up 9 percent of students, and 18 percent of suspensions; and white students made up 69 percent of students and half of those suspended.

According to an article in the Boston Globe, the ACLU is backing legislation that would require school districts in Rhode Island to look for disparities in their disciplinary data annually and then develop plans as to how to eliminate any that exist.

‘‘I look forward to reading the full report that the ACLU has developed,” Rhode Island Education Commissioner Deborah Gist said in a statement, the Globe reported. ‘‘I will discuss with my team and with school leaders across the state any steps we might take to ensure equity and fairness regarding school discipline.’’

Earlier in May, similar concerns about Latino and black students being suspended at high rates prompted the Los Angeles Unified School District to stop using “willful defiance” as a justification for suspension. Defiance tended to include misbehavior such as swearing and not following a teacher’s orders. At the time, school board president Monica Garcia said she was hoping to stop the “school-to-prison pipeline.”

- “ACLU Report Says Black and Hispanic Youth Bear Brunt of School Suspensions in Rhode Island,” ACLU.

- “Los Angeles Schools Ban ‘Willful Defiance’ Suspensions,” Latino Ed Beat.

Harvard Criticized Over Dissertation on Hispanics’ IQ

Posted on May 21, 2013 by Katherine Leal Unmuth

Harvard University students have gathered 1,200 signatures protesting the John F. Kennedy School of Government’s approval of a dissertation asserting that Latinos have low IQs.

The Boston Globe reports that the petition calls on the university to investigate how the dissertation by doctoral candidate Jason Richwine was approved. ”Academic freedom and a reasoned debate are essential to our academic community,” the petition said. “However, the Harvard Kennedy School cannot ethically stand behind academic work advocating a national policy of exclusion and advancing an agenda of discrimination.”

Richwine’s thesis argued that Hispanic children attending U.S. schools will not improve past their immigrant parents. “No one knows whether Hispanics will ever reach IQ parity with whites, but the prediction that new Hispanic immigrants will have low IQ children and grandchildren is difficult to argue against,” Richwine wrote in the paper.

He also called the average IQ of Hispanics “effectively permanent.”

Richwine’s thesis, “IQ and Immigration Policy,” came to light and stirred controversy this month after he co-authored a Heritage Foundation report asserting that the effective cost of immigration reform would be $6.3 trillion. Richwine has since resigned from his position at the foundation.

George Borjas, chair of the Kennedy School’s Standing Committee on Public Policy, which accepted the work, said the dissertation was sound. Borjas, who was born in Cuba, is an economist and professor who also has promoted reducing immigration to the United States.

So far, Richwine has stood by his conclusions, in which he says immigration policy should be based on IQ. ”The dissertation shows that recent immigrants score lower than U.S.-born whites on many different types of IQ tests,” he wrote in the National Review online. “Using statistical analysis, it suggests that the test-score differential is due primarily to a real cognitive gap rather than to culture or language bias.”

Petition spokesman Berdion Del Valle, who is Hispanic, said that it is important that research be academically rigorous and ethical.“If Harvard doesn’t apply rigorous academic standards for its research, how can we guarantee our policy discussions are not affected by irresponsible scholarship?” he told NBC Latino.

This debate reminds me of difficult issues that we have faced since the implementation of No Child Left Behind testing began. Speaking in support of the passage of that law, President Bush referred to the “soft bigotry in low expectations” that blocks progress in closing achievement gaps from happening. This debate exposes the unfortunate truth that there are many people out there, even those with advanced degrees, who still do not expect much of minority children.

What is being done to change these attitudes?

- “Harvard students demand investigation into Jason Richwine immigration thesis,” NBC Latino.

- “IQ and Immigration Policy,” Jason Richwine.

Judge: Group Can’t Block DC School Closures

Posted on May 16, 2013 by Katherine Leal Unmuth

A federal judge has ruled against a community group that sought to block Washington, D.C., public school closures by arguing that they disproportionately hurt black and Latino children.

The Washington Post reports that U.S. District Judge James Boasberg wrote that school officials were not intentionally discriminating against the students.

“In this case, there is no evidence whatsoever of any intent to discriminate on the part of defendants, who are actually transferring children out of weaker, more segregated, and under-enrolled schools,” the judge wrote. “The remedy plaintiffs seek — i.e., to remain in such schools — seems curious, given that these are the conditions most people typically endeavor to escape.”

According to the Washington, D.C., public schools web site this year about 69 percent of students enrolled are black and 16 percent are Hispanic. Additionally, about 77 percent of D.C. students qualify for free or reduced lunch.

According to the Post, the schools the district wants to close in June would affect only two children who are not black or Hispanic out of 2,700 children. According to the ruling, the schools on the closure list are about 94 percent black and 6 percent Hispanic.

Similar charges of school closures hurting minority children have been risen in Chicago.

The judge also noted that community members were given enough notice of the plan. The suit was brought by the group Empower DC.

- “Activists file lawsuit to stop D.C. school closures,” The Washington Post.

- Court opinion on D.C. School Closures

L.A. Teacher Led Walkouts of Mexican American Students

Posted on April 18, 2013 by Katherine Leal Unmuth

Sal Castro, a Mexican American Los Angeles high school social studies teacher who played a pivotal role in the walkouts of Latino students demanding better educational opportunities, died Monday at age 79.

In Castro’s obituary, The Los Angeles Times noted that students at five high schools walked out in 1968 “in a dramatic bid to remedy overcrowded and run-down schools, soaring dropout rates, poorly trained teachers, and counselors who steered Latino students into auto shop instead of college-prep classes.”

The Times went on to note that Castro once said that the conditions were “like American education forgot the Latino kid.”

For his role in the protests that became known as the “blowouts” he was arrested, then fired and then later rehired but placed at first in schools where there were few Latino students.

University of California Santa Barbara Chicano studies professor Mario T. Garcia wrote in The Huffington Post that “what the walkouts really changed was the consciousness of the students. They recognized that it was within their power to produce social change.”

Despite his punishment at the time, eventually the Los Angeles Unified School District appreciated his legacy. This week, the district posted a tribute to Castro online. The district later named a middle school after him.

Superintendent John Deasy said, “Sal Castro held a mirror up to our district that showed the need for a youths’ rights agenda more than 45 years ago. Graduation rates, access to college-prep courses, allocation of resources—all of these issues needed fixing and that is why we have spent every day striving to provide the education each and every one of our students deserves.”

- “Sal Castro and Chicano Educational Justice,” The Huffington Post.

- “Sal Castro Dead: Chicago Rights Activist and Educator Dies of Thyroid Cancer,” Associated Press.

- “Latino Educator and Activist Salvador (Sal) Castro Remembered,” Los Angeles Unified School District.

Report Cards Grade California School Districts on Latino Achievement

Posted on April 6, 2013 by Katherine Leal Unmuth

States grade their school districts each year based on accountability tests and other factors. In California, The Education Trust-West has created its own report cards for the state’s largest 148 school districts. The group proved to be a pretty tough grader.

The report noted that the highest overall grade of a B was earned by Baldwin Park Unified school district. Most districts received grades of Cs and Ds, leaving plenty of room for improvement.

The group’s evaluation focuses on the academic achievement and graduation rates of three targeted groups: Latinos, African-Americans, and low-income students. The four categories are performance, academic improvement over five years, the size of the achievement gap, and college readiness.

The Education Trust makes a number of recommendations to the state based on its findings:

- Report data on achievements gaps between groups, so the public is better informed on the issue.

- Analyze district, school, and subgroup improvement scores, therefore showing progress made over time.

- Focus more on college readiness

The report also noted that successful districts tended to use data to make decisions, zeroing in down to the classroom teacher, grade level, school and district level. In addition, successful districts tended to focus on parent involvement.

- California District Report Cards.

- “Sanger Unified’s grad rates lauded in education report,” The Fresno Bee.

- “Many Bay Area districts fail to adequately education low-income and minority students, report finds,” Contra Costa Times.

Latino Students in Virginia Often Attend Segregated Schools

Posted on March 19, 2013 by Katherine Leal Unmuth

A new study finds that Latino students are becoming more segregated in Virginia schools–particularly in the northern part of the state where they are the largest minority group.

According to the study by The Civil Rights Project at UCLA, Northern Virginia is the only part of the state where Latino students are more segregated than black students.

“Despite Virginia’s long history with school desegregation, little political attention has been paid to the growing multi-racial diversity of the state’s enrollment and rising levels of isolation for its black and Latino students,” the report says.

The report examined data from the National Center for Education Statistics between 1989 and 2010, and found the following about school enrollments in 2010:

- About 6% of the state’s Latino students attended schools where white students make up less than 10% of the enrollment.

- Despite segregation, schools are also becoming increasingly diverse as well. In 2010, more than 60% of Latino students attended a multiracial school where three or more racial groups made up at least 10% of the enrollment. It was a dramatic increase from 1989, when the rate was 10%.

- The typical Latino student attended a school where low-income students made up about 41% of students.

The study breaks out numbers depending on the region of the state- Norfolk-Virginia Beach-Newport News, Richmond-Petersburg and Northern Virginia. The report makes various suggestions as to how the state can increase integration, including using magnet schools to promote more racial integration and avoiding rezoning policies that increase racial isolation.

Gary Orfield, co-director of the Civil Rights Project, called attention to the need for the state to adjust to its changing demographics.

“Though many racial issues remain unsettled for black students, Virginia now faces another kind of change as it becomes a truly multiracial state, which poses a different set of risks and opportunities,” Orfield said. “Leaders need the vision to renew efforts to achieve justice and integration for blacks and to be sure that the growing Latino communities are not locked into segregation and inequality.”

- “UCLA Report Finds Virginia’s African American Students Face Increasing Racial Segregation and Poverty in School,” The Civil Rights Project at UCLA.

Latinos Underrepresented in New York City Gifted Programs

Posted on March 5, 2013 by Katherine Leal Unmuth

While Latino children make up the largest racial or ethnic group enrolled in New York City’s public elementary schools, they occupy the smallest percentage of the gifted and talented program’s enrollment.

Data obtained by The Wall Street Journal shows that Latino children are dramatically underrepresented in the program, making up just 12% of the city’s 14,266 gifted elementary school students this school year. Yet Latino children make up about 41% of the 489,911 elementary students.

The Journal reports that white and Asian children make up about 70% of students enrolled in the city’s 110 gifted and talented elementary programs. Children who are Latino, black or of other races make up about 29%. The newspaper asked the city’s chief academic officer, Shael Polakow-Suransky, whether he thought the racial imblance was a problem.

“I wouldn’t say that we set a goal for ourselves on diversity,” he told the newspaper. “We set a goal for ourselves on having a high standards that we want to push our kids and our families to meet.”

The newspaper is shining a light on the disparity, as the city prepares to change the exam it uses to screen for gifted children. The new test will be the Naglieri Nonverbal Ability Test, relying on abstract thinking.

A large part of the racial and ethnic disparity is that low-income, minority parents don’t know about the gifted program or test. Nor do they have the resources to prepare for it, as tutoring can be expensive. Critics say that the city should not solely rely on standardized test for admission to the program.

According to the Journal, only about 13% (39,300) of children kindergarten through third grade were even tested for gifted programs in 2012, and the city does not believe in screening all students.

In a follow-up story, the Journal reported that the school system’s Chancellor ,Dennis Walcott, said the low enrollment of black and Hispanic children “is what it is.”

“It’s unfair to [black and Hispanic students] if they just need to be put in a program to satisfy some type of percentage,” he told the newspaper.

The lack of diversity among elementary schoolchildren is just the tip of the iceberg. The New York school system has also come under fire for the lack of diversity at the city’s most elite magnet high schools, including Stuyvesant and Bronx Science .

Last September, the NAACP filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education (with the support of Latino Justice PRLDEF), saying that the city’s magnet admission exam discriminated against black and Latino students.

At the time, Reuters reported that in the 2011-12 school year Latinos only made up about 2.4% of Stuyvesant students, and black students made up 1.2 percent.

Admissions standards for gifted programs can vary widely. Make sure to compare your school district’s racial and ethnic composition against the gifted population. Does your district use an exam, or include other factors?

- “City Defends Gifted Policy,” The Wall Street Journal.

- “NAACP says entry exam bars Blacks, Latinos from Top N.Y. Schools,” Latino Ed Beat.

- “Gifted, Talented and Separated.” The New York Times.

Latino Students Need Help to Overcome “Stereotype Threat”

Posted on February 27, 2013 by Katherine Leal Unmuth

Teachers can use positive intervention strategies to help overcome the “stereotype threat” that Latino students often feel, a recent Stanford University study found.

The study was published in February in the Journal of Personality and School Psychology.

The researchers found that positive affirmations can help battle the “stereotype threat” of feeling stigmatized as a member of an ethnic group that is perceived as inferior. Past research has found that the stress of this threat can hurt students’ academic performance.

The Latino middle school students participating in the study practiced certain affirmative activities. They were given a list of values such as being good at art, religious, or being humorous. They were then asked to writes about the values they viewed as the most important.

In another assignment, they were asked to reflect on the things in their lives that were most important. In yet another, they wrote a brief essay about how the things they valued would play a role in the coming months.

Students worked on such exercises through the year during important moments that can prove stressful, such as before taking tests and right as they were starting the school year.

According to the researchers, Latino students who went through the affirmative activities had higher grades than those in the control group, and that the positive impact lasted for three year. The activities did not appear to impact white students.

“Self-affirmation exercises provide adolescents from minority groups with a psychological time out,” Stanford professor Geoffrey Cohen said, according to a new release. “Latino Americans are under a more consistent and chronic sense of psychological threat in the educational setting than their white counterparts on average. They constantly face negative stereotypes about their ability to succeed, so they are the ones to benefit the most from affirmations that help them to maintain a positive self-image.”

- “Interventions Help Latino Students Beat ‘Stereotype Threat,” Study Says,” Learning the Language Blog, Education Week.

- “Study finds intervention can close achievement gap,” The Bakersfield Californian.

Tucson Schools Ordered to Offer “Culturally Relevant” Courses

Posted on February 7, 2013 by Katherine Leal Unmuth

A federal judge on Wednesday ordered the Tucson Unified School District to offer “culturally relevant” courses that reflect the lives and history of Latino and black students. The ruling is part of the district’s desegregation plan, reports the Arizona Daily Star.

The decision is significant because the district was previously forced to eliminate its Mexican American Studies program because it violated Arizona state law banning ethnic studies.

However, in January, the TUSD board by a 3-2 vote approved offering the courses for credit beginning next year.

The courses are a part of the Unitary Status Plan, which the judge approved.

“The plan focuses on eliminating vestiges of past discrimination to the extent practicable in the areas of discipline, student assignment, school operations–which includes faculty, staff, transportation, extracurricular activities and facilities–and the quality of education being offered to minority students,” the Daily Star reports.

The newspaper reported that Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne, the former state superintendent of public instruction who led opposition to the MAS program and determined it was unlawful, was not supportive of the latest decision. He called it “erroneous.”

However, leaders of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund have previously stressed that the coursework could play a role in increasing graduation rates and closing achievement gaps.

- “TUSD backs core credit for ‘culturally relevant’ work,” Arizona Daily Star.

- “New TUSD Board members re-energize MAS debate,” KVOA News.

- “Will Tucson’s Desegregation Plan Bring Ethnic Studies Back?”

Latino High School Graduation Rate Sees Large Increase

Posted on January 23, 2013 by Katherine Leal Unmuth

The National Center for Education Statistics has released a new report showing a huge increase in Latino high school graduation rates. The rate increased to 71.4% in 2010, up from 61.4% in 2006.

The report shows more positive outcomes for all students. About 78.2% of students graduated on time within four years in 2010. The report also breaks out data by state.

Jack Buckley, director of the NCES, told The Huffington Post that the last time the country had a similarly high graduation rate was in 1968. The NCES put out its first such report in 2005, but made estimates dating back to the 1970s.

“This is the highest estimated rate of on-time graduation,” Buckley said.

Despite those gains, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, said while there has been much progress, still more is needed.

“…Our high school dropout rate is still unsustainably high for a knowledge-based economy and still unacceptably high in our African-American, Latino and Native American communities,” he said in a statement.

Nevada reported the worst rate for Latinos in 2010, at 47.2%. Meanwhile among the states with the nation’s two largest Latino populations, Texas reported a significantly higher graduation rate than California. Texas reported 77.4%, and California, 71.7%.

Some of the 2010 rates for Latinos in other states with large Latino populations included Arizona, 70.6%; Colorado, 65.9%; Florida, 71.1%; Illinois, 76%; New Mexico, 65.3%; and New York, 60.7%.

- “Public School Graduates and Dropouts from the Common Core of Data: School Year 2009-10,” National Center for Education Statistics.

- “Latino High School Graduation Rates up 10%,” Fox News Latino.

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