Challenges Faced by Hispanic Students in American Schools and How Schools Can Address Identified Needs
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Abstract The United States Hispanic population continues to increase each year. In turn, school populations of Hispanics increase as well. Hispanics, although improving academically, continue to have high school dropout rates, higher than other racial and ethnic groups and continue to lag behind school peers. The discrepancy between Hispanic students and other students’ achievement is the result of many factors, including acculturalization, language acquisition, poverty, and school factors. Schools
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101). Emergence into a new culture requires courage, toppled with humiliation. Despite the energy or the will, unfamiliar territory/language and events present unrelenting and unavoidable tensions. Hispanic students encounter teachers who fail to support them in maintaining aspects of their cultural identity. For some ELL students honoring and respecting another’s culture may diminish some of the struggles these students face. Unfortunately, students of other cultures are faced with physical consequences for failure to completely adopt with American culture. Conde highlighted some Cuban children’s desire to escape the educational setting. Having experienced painful physical reprimands and comments from teachers for refusing Americanization, many students complied while others were determined to hold onto their culture and language (Conde, p. 126).
Poverty In addition to the problems associated with acculturalization, Hispanics are faced with high levels of poverty. Poverty is correlated to academic and linguistic failure of all races of students. According to the National Education Association (NEA), Hispanic students face unique challenges in student achievement (“Hispanic Students Face Unique Challenges”, 2007). Factors such as poverty directly impact the level of achievement although they have made gains since 1980. Duvall (2011) stated, “Although
While immigrant youth may gain useful knowledge and skills, they miss out significantly on culture resources because they become Americanized. Subtracting schooling occurs in a variety of ways. Classifying ESL (English as a second language) are labeled “limited English proficient rather than as Spanish dominant” (p. 173), faculty and staff linguistically butcher names through mispronunciations, materials such as the school handbook that does not even mention the ELS program are not provided in English, and information is withheld from capable youth which can result in failure. This chapter also addresses the divisions among youth such as Latina female friends, religious immigrant males, immigrant females in trouble, ESL students, mixed generation groups, and U.S. born
Unfortunately, these children cannot complete their education because they have to travel with their family and learn to manage at a young age a life of hard labor. This however does not diminish their dreams of completing high school and some day attending a university so that they will not have to live the life of struggle their parents did to sustain the household. In cities like Detroit, MI there is a large population of low income Hispanic and African American families. The public school system unfortunately cannot potentially promote a high-quality education. The majority of these students do not receive an entrance level education simply because of living standards. Income plays an important role in education opportunities regarding the quality education each student can pertain. Since the minorities in that area are low-income they cannot afford to attend a private high school that can better prepare them for college. According to a research done at the University of Texas-Pan American, “certain racial or ethnicity factors should play a role in the admissions decision.” (Marklein)
Buenrostro emphasized the idea of Latino children being the majority ethnicity population attending K-12th California public schools. Documenting his research process Buenrostro demonstrated many statistics on school enrollment and challenging academic performance that Latino students from grades K-6th are facing. Buenrostro ultimately concludes that the results provided in this factsheet will help school districts and board members take action and come up with an idea on what can be improved in order to help these particular students succeed and obtain necessary resources. Ultimately, this fact sheet represents an important contribution to my research topic because it addresses numerous ideas about the education system in Latino students.
Good, M. E., Masewicz, S., & Vogel, L. (2010). Latino English language learners: Bridging achievement and cultural gaps between schools and families. Journal of Latinos & Education, 9(4), 321-39. doi: 10.1080/15348431.2010.491048
According to Latinos Rebel, undocumented students must stay enrolled in schools to remain in the United States and to contribute as gainfully employed adults, but the schools are not necessarily invested in their success as they are forced to comply with mandates of NCLB and ESSA. The fact is that school attendance and graduation rates occur in the contexts of undocumented young people’s lives, which are fraught with multiple difficulties. Undocumented students may need additional school rates are used against schools and undocumented students lives are full of many difficulties that impact their performance. These difficulties include negotiating the world in a language other than their own, lack of support for ESL, trauma, interrupted formal schooling, legal challenges and poverty. Only 54 percent of undocumented students who arrived at age 14 or older complete high school. For those who arrived before age 14, 72 percent complete. Compare these statistics to authorized
According to Lily Galanis-Olaez (494), she examines Latinos involvements in their Children school have difficult of involving themselves in their children’s education process because the schools do not help them in effective way. She writes that “parents of Latina/o children, who have different cultural linguistic background, find it difficult of involve themselves in the child’s schooling when vehicles do not exist to encourage their participation” (Lily, 2015, p.494).
When one thinks about Hispanics, all too often the image of a field full of migrant workers picking fruit or vegetables in the hot sun comes to mind. This has become the stereotypical picture of a people whose determination and character are as strong or stronger than that of the Polish, Jewish, Greek, or Italian who arrived in the United States in the early 1900's. Then, the center of the new beginning for each immigrant family was an education. An education was the "ladder by which the children of immigrants climbed out of poverty into the mainstream." (Calderon & Slavin, 2001, p. iv) That ideal has not changed, as the Hispanic population has grown in the United States to large numbers very quickly and with little fanfare. Now, the
Hispanic girls often must face another classification because of their race, that they do not want or are not motivated to do well in school. In the past the common stereotype has been that Mexicans do not have the desire or encouragement to succeed in the academic world of school. Motivation in school is influenced by three main things, first how much a group of friends values doing well in school, second the achievement goals set by parents, and third the independence and responsibility one takes upon herself(Goodenow 61, Menchaca 971). In the border region Hispanic
The worst three plights that are discussed in Valencia’s Chicano School Failure and Success are language/cultural exclusion, teacher student interaction, and Chicano teaching force. Valencia discusses how “Chicano students have experienced persistent and persuasive language suppression and cultural exclusion” in the public-school system (8). These laws and policies were instated, with one purpose, “to ensure the dominance of the English language and Anglo culture” (Valencia 8). White culture enforced this belief, that being bilingual and bicultural will create a threat to the dominant white English-speaking population. In addition, another adversity Chicano students faced is the “limited use of bilingual education” (Valencia 9).
They face many difficulties like stressor, playing in a disadvantageous field. The American educational system does not have many programs to help the students assimilate into the culture without losing their own culture. …case study where three groups of immigrants (Asia, Caribbean, and Latin America) where the Latinos were exposed to more stressors, which resulted in a decrease of grades and academics success (122-124). 10% of the participant responded to the stressors by dropping out of the course because of the lack of help. “Latina America face unique risk and deserve intervention efforts focused on sociocontextual stressors that may prevent these students from achieving their full academic potential” (Plata-Potter, Sandra and Maria Rosario T. de Guzman,
Sociologists have been studying the effects of education on Latino Americans and to their findings there are physical and conceptual issues which include: language barriers, issues with educators and peers which cause issues within their identity development and ultimately creating this separation of cultures which can effect Latino Americans success in school. While there are other factors that may be
According to Marta Tienda and Faith Mitchell in the book “Hispanics and the future of America” another problem may be teacher’s perceptions of their student’s abilities.
Every classroom in America is made up of multiple cultures with many different believes; however, regardless of culture or beliefs all students should receive the best education possible without losing their identities while in the process. Culture is a way of life of a group. Culture and learning are connected in significant ways and for this reason having an understanding of different cultures and learning processes should provide an outline for instructional decisions (Guild, 2001). The first step a teacher must take is to gain an understanding of each child culture. This paper will examine the Hispanic culture, discuss how a teacher could build global awareness and understanding, and incorporate diverse social and cultural views to create innovative methods to solving problems in his or her classroom.
The Latinos education crisis is a prevalent issue in the United States. More and more research has uncovered magnanimous evidence that our education system is failing the students and thus creating a pipeline away from success and higher education and into gangs, prison and poverty. From 2011-12 alone Latinos made up almost a quarter of the enrolled students in public schools, Hispanic status dropout rate was 13% (higher than both African Americans at 8% and Whites at 4%), and 5% of all doctoral degrees conferred were earned by Latinos. (NCES, Digest of Education Statistics 2013). The crisis is a result of compounding failures and the perpetuation of stigmas within the educational, governmental and societal systems. As each of these systems are complex and composed of countless factors, addressing the issues the Latino population face, specifically within schools, is often overlooked and underaddressed. In light of the problems Latinos must compete against, this paper will address the potential for change and how it can be wrought, beginning on the microlevel of the educational system, by mandating and introducing culturally responsive teaching (CRT) into classrooms and school districts nationwide in an effort to counteract the lack of educational support and to decrease tracking of students onto the school to prison pipeline.. This paper will strive to answer the question of how culturally responsive teaching can address the educational deficits of the Latino/a
I decided to write about the influence of race and ethnicity on a person’s educational level. I was born and raised in the Dominican Republic where, within my social group, schooling and education was deemed as an essential part of life. In the United States, however, there exist a greater number of racial and ethnic groups, and it is evident that an achievement gap exists among these groups. Here, Dominicans are marginalized as part of a Hispanic minority group that does not achieve the educational status of other groups, such as Whites or Jewish. I chose to write about the disparity of education within races and seek to answer how race affects a person’s educational level.