Education as a Path to Employment

We take as a truism in mainstream America that education is a path to employment. People talk about that all the time in mainstream America. We haven't always made a good connection for the Hispanic community that education is a path to employment. And we haven't made it well at all in the Hispanic disability community.

In looking at where we need to go and where we've been, I think it's important for us to examine the sort of truism that exists in the world that education is a path to employment. If one looks at the statistics, this is something that we take for granted but there are actually statistics that say: education, it pays.

This graph begins with, people that have less then a high school degree and moves up to those that have a high school degree, some college and associate degree, bachelors degrees, masters degree, a doctorate and then a professional degree. And as you can see, the salaries keep going steadily higher.

It's true, the more you go to school, the more money you make. Beginning with an average about $20,000 for people who do not have a high school degree and all the way up to an average of $70,000, actually about $73,000 for individuals that have a professional degree. If you recall that this is an average, we know that there are a lot of people who make less in this area; and many people who make more. It pays to have an education and there are some basics that we need to provide individuals with if we're going to support them in full employment to their fullest extent.

Bilingualism Pays

Another piece that's important for those of us who are working with Hispanics, that a lot of people don't know, and that is a truism in the United States, is that bilingualism pays. Bilingualism pays in big ways, and in a study that was done in Miami, what was found was that Hispanics that speak English very well and who also speak Spanish tend to have a higher income then Hispanics that know only English or only Spanish. And that's a treasure, that's a resource that we often tap into when we're speaking of employment, and looking for employment opportunities; it's something that's very important to our culture, specially when it comes to getting the benefits that come from a high salary.

Fastest Growing Minority

Some of you who have heard me speak before, have heard me say, joking in a way, that Hispanics are hot! We've always been hot, but we're even hotter these days because people have been waking up to see that the Hispanic population is certainly not a static population and it's growing in many, many ways. And it's growing because of two sources, because we tend to have larger families - we do have more babies, and because of the immigration rate.

If you look at Latino or Hispanic growth over the last several years, and those of you who paid attention to the census numbers in the papers, by the year 2000 we had become the fastest growing minority group in the Unites States. Our numbers grew by 58% in the 90's and that's pretty amazing, that's in the 90's alone, we went from 2.4 million Hispanics in this country to 35.3 million. Hispanics now make up 12.5% of the US population and we have surpassed Black Americans, so we are the largest minority group in the Unites States.

Why is this important to us? It's important because we need to take advantage of those numbers. We have to take advantage for advocating for our group and who we advocate for, these are numbers that are not going to go away, they're not going to slow down. If you look at future trends you will see that it's going to be more, and more important for us to insure that every Hispanic has full employment because the Hispanic employment rate is going to cause, either support or cause the American income to decline if we're not fully employed.

Looking closely at the growth rate of our cities

It's also interesting to note that the growth in U.S cities is largely due to Hispanic populations growing. Most of the cities, the large cities, that showed any growth in the census, showed growth because of the presence and increase of the number of Hispanics. If you had taken Hispanics out of the population, those cities would have declined. If you think a little more about that, these same cities would be declining right now because both the white population and black population in these cities is declining. So, clearly, the growth of the large cities is because of Hispanics. That's an important fact for us, and an important tool to use as we learn to lobby and advocate.

I pulled out two metropolitan areas just to show how this growth had occurred. I chose Orange County because we're here, and if you look at Orange County, there are over 875,000 Latinos; as a percent of the total population it's 31%. The average growth from 1980 to 2000 in Orange County was 206%. Orange County is good example of the Latino growth.

The numbers of Latinos in Chicago is over 1.4 million, and they are 17% of the total population in Chicago. But look at the percent of growth, 143% growth from 1980 to 2000, that's a tremendous amount of growth and Chicago is one of those cities where the population would have declined if it weren't for the population increase from the Hispanics. And that says a lot.

What Do These Numbers Mean for Students?

My connection, after I look at these numbers is what that means for students. As our pupil schools are experiencing the increase in the number of Hispanic students, we're seeing other implications come to light. The one that is the most important to me is that more and more children in our country who come to school are either not speaking English or not speaking English well enough to access the curriculum. So this is something that has more connection for you, as you are serving more and more Latinos, young Latinos who are going into the work force with the effects of not having good English or well developed English because the public schools did or did not do the job they were suppose to do.

Growing numbers of students with limited English proficiency

In the United States there are over 4.4 million of what we call Limited English Proficient (LEP) students: students who do not know English well enough to access the curriculum in English. This number is actually an old number and we're waiting for the new census figures to come out; we are predicting that the numbers of students that do not speak English well enough in school will be about 6 million right now if you look at the two numbers. This means lots and lots of kids who are going to need special help with their English.

That number has also increased along with the numbers of Hispanics, since 1997, we have had a 30% increase in our school number of children who don't speak English well enough to access the curriculum in English. That has serious implications for someone looking for employment.

Almost 1.5 million of the children who reside in California have Limited English Proficiency. If you work in a school district like Los Angeles, almost 50% of the students in the L.A. school district need some kind of special language instruction because they do not have sufficient English to access the curriculum well. If you work in the LA area with young adults, and you're looking for jobs for them, this number is going to impact you. Many of these kids come to school in their early teens and don't come to US schools until their late teens and so they don't have sufficient time to get the language skills they need.

In states other than California, you see also rapid growth, and this is what's interesting, it reflects the increase in the demographic trends in states such as New York and Texas... you've always had that. But this graph shows that we also have increase in states like Alabama. In Alabama you have a 26% increase in the number of children who need help in learning English. In Arkansas there is a 35% increase in the number of children who need help in learning English. In Georgia, 45% increase, Idaho 34%, Indiana 43%, North Carolina 45%, Minnesota 67%.
This is an issue that the schools need to deal with and again I'd make the connection for you that if the schools don't deal with it well, the issue ends up at your door when you want to find employment for young adults.

College Education: The American Dream for Latinos

We have talked about the American Dream for a long, long time and the American Dream has different meanings to different people. This statement was found in a poll that was taken by Univision and this statement says a lot about our community, it says "Latinos in the United States see education as the most important issue facing their community." It's always been an important issue for us and we know we need to do something about it.

Another startling idea is that 78 percent of Hispanics feel that the government should spend more on the public school systems to increase teacher pay and reduce class size. So this finding shows we understand what we need. But going back to the American Dream, over 50% of Hispanics in this country see that sending their children to college is achieving the American Dream. This is our version of the American Dream-- that our children will go off to college. I think that that's something we have to keep foremost in our work, that in our communities, people's version of the American Dream is that our children will go to college.

The evolution of US law regarding bilingual education

The education law in the United States has evolved over the years with respect to children who don't speak English. It has evolved in ways that children in Special Education were treated. From the 1920s to the 1960s, we had no law regarding bilingual education, but we did have the "sink or swim" policy that said that if you don't speak English, too bad! Our school system is in English and if you don't get it, you don't get it.

And we had a huge number of dropouts, there were no mandatory remedial programs and consequently, Hispanic drop out rates were tremendous. In many cities, there were no (Hispanic) students graduating from high school. So, this was just something people came to expect.

A Bilingual Education Act strengthened by Supreme Court rulings

In the 1960s along with the rest of the Civil Rights laws, civil rights changed for Hispanics. The Bilingual Education Act, the Title Seven of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act was made. And this established federal policy with regard to children who did not speak English and who needed help with learning English. This law allocated funds and put into law the unique understanding that there were educational disadvantages faced by children who did not speak English.

This was bolstered in 1974 by a law resulting from a Supreme Court ruling and this law didn't have to do with Hispanic students; it had to do with Chinese students in California. Chinese parents brought a lawsuit that said that their children were not receiving access to an equal education because they did not speak English. They said that the school had the responsibilities to provide services to them that would help them achieve an equal education. This became the law of the land and Congress passed the Equal Education Opportunity Act, which extended this vision to all schools and that has had a critical impact for Hispanic students.

In 1978 there were changes to the law, which looked at what bilingual education should be. Bilingual education in this country does not mean children not learning in English, but, rather, it's an additional program aimed at teaching children English. Unfortunately, for those of you from California, you live in a state that the voters did not recognize that, they believed the old stories of bilingual education meaning children being stuck forever in Spanish and never learning English. And those are myths, this never happened, but the California voters believed that and outlawed bilingual education as we know it.

So we do have, under the Federal Law, the ability to tailor the bilingual programs. In 1982 there was another important Supreme Court ruling that had an impact on Hispanics, the Pyler vs. Doe decision. This ruling said that schools could not exclude immigrant children because they were not documented.

Ours schools have the obligation to serve all children whether they're here legally or not. As a matter of fact, our schools have an obligation not to ask children about their legal status because they must serve all children within their jurisdiction. The judges, in my opinion, made a great decision, which subsequently had an impact on the education of Hispanic students.

Child development vs. California Proposition 227

I talked about the California proposition 227 that said that all minority language children should be placed in all-English classrooms after a period of one year. If you know anything about development, you know that very few children can learn a different language in a matter of a year. So this was an awful situation in California for students who did not speak English.

New Support from "No Child Left Behind" Act

In 2002, the new No Child Left Behind Act was reauthorized, which is the only true Secondary Education Act that has provisions to continue bilingual education and increase the funding and have special training for teachers. If you're interested in that, go to the website at http://www.nochildleftbehind.gov/ because there is a lot more about the No Child Left Behind. We have a great deal of laws that support children who don't speak English. We have a great deal of laws that support children with disabilities. Let's use them!

printer friendly format