Goals 2000: The New Millennium

President Clinton's newest budget sets forth a $500 million plan to target the education of Hispanics, as a new study shows the dropout rate of Latinos remains alarmingly high and has eclipsed those of blacks and whites.

The plan was unveiled in February by Vice President Al Gore and Education Secretary Richard Riley. Gore said Clinton's program "will offer Latino students a better chance to develop their full academic potential so they can contribute the full force of their talent to the success of America."

The administration's proposal also includes $66 million over five years to train 20,000 teachers on teaching English more effectively to Hispanic students and adults; $30 million to reform failing schools, with special emphasis on schools with high dropout rates; and $69 million for programs that give disadvantaged students a boost toward college.

One such program, Upward Bound, has been found especially helpful to Hispanic youth. That program will receive $40 million of the $69 million. Other college-preparatory programs for the disadvantaged will receive $13 million, and $16 million will go toward strengthening colleges with large Latino populations. It is hoped that adults will improve their English language skills through the Crossroads Cafe television program.

In addition, Clinton is proposing $60 million for migrant education. This includes $50 million for the Migrant Education Program, $2.4 million for the High School Equivalency Program, $2.9 million for the College Assistance Migrant Program and $5 million for the Migrant Youth Job Training Demonstration.

The largest amount of money, $393 million, is devoted to increasing funding for Title I programs, which seek to improve reading and math skills of disadvantaged students. Latinos make up 32 percent of students served by Title I programs.

The flow of resources comes in response to the final report of the Hispanic Dropout Project. The report said the Latino dropout rate of 30 percent is 2.5 times the rate for blacks and 3.5 times the rate for whites. And, while Hispanics are 56 percent of all U.S. immigrants, they make up nearly 90 percent of all immigrant dropouts.

"If our country stays on its current path, the low rate of Hispanic school completion means that a large segment of the country's soon-to-be largest minority group will be underprepared for employment, for making personal choices, and for engagement in civic life," the report said.

Senator Jeff Bingaman, (Democrat-New Mexico), co-chair of the Senate Hispanic Working Group, said targeted intervention is necessary because the high dropout rates persist, in spite of efforts to address earlier diagnoses of the problem.

"This is not explainable by the fact that these are first generation students, because the problem continues and, in fact, gets worse in the second generation," Bingaman said. "Limited English proficiency is not the only determinant, because it's a serious problem among those who are proficient in English."

President Clinton himself emphasized the need for students to learn English as quickly and as effectively as possible. "The real issue is... you want all these children whose first language is not English to be able to learn everything they need to learn on time as much as possible, and to be English-proficient if they're going to live in this country," the President said in January. Clinton went on to say that second language education was a "complicated issue" and that while criticism of bilingual education, especially from Hispanic parents, was understandable, he felt that the issue needed to be examined in greater detail before decisions to dismantle it, as the current ballot initiative in California proposes, are carried out.

Researchers have said there are schools that have found ways to successfully educate Hispanics, but "the nation has failed to put this knowledge to work" on a larger scale. They also said educators must look beyond "misinformation and myths about Hispanic dropouts" and work diligently to remove language and cultural barriers that hinder their education.

Other recommendations were:

• Treating language and culture as resources in the classroom.
• Making schools in tough neighborhoods safer, and providing "positive and appealing alternatives" to keep Latino students out of gangs.
• Recruit parents and extended families to reinforce the importance of staying in school. l Encouraging teachers to become more familiar with their students backgrounds and daily lives.
• Adopting programs and services shown effective among Hispanic students.
• Improve the content of curricula to keep students engaged.

"I take the recommendations of this report seriously, and we are responding to them immediately," Secretary of State for Education, Richard Riley, said.

Despite these plans for the future, students with limited English language abilities may not be getting the education that they are entitled to because the Department of Education's current approach to civil rights enforcement is flawed.

According to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, in its report released in January, the Department's Office for Civil Rights (OCR) has adequately enforced laws ensuring that Limited English Proficient (LEP) students receive equal educational opportunities, but it has not provided clear guidance on such subjects as qualifications for bilingual teachers, nor has it properly defined what "limited English proficient" actually means. The report also claimed that the Department of Education has failed to give specific and research-backed remedies explaining how to serve students lacking English language skills.

Grade- and high-schoolers with limited English should enjoy equal access to education under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, reinforced by the 1974 Supreme Court decision in Lau v. Nichols which ruled that the needs of LEP students must be met, either by teaching them English or through native-language instruction. According to the report, the legal requirement ensuring that equal access is, in fact, a reality "has become one of the most important civil rights issues facing the United States in the 1990s." The report goes on to warn, "The urgency of assuring this growing minority of American children that they have equal access to the nation's educational system likely will continue unabated into the next century."

The report makes a number of recommendations, including:

• Using "neutral and nondiscriminatory" assessments to determine the abilities and needs of LEP students;
• Grouping students of differing language skills "in regular classes" where practical and adjusting their placements regularly;
• Dedicating equal shares of money, teachers, and facilities to LEP students;
• Helping states recruit teachers trained to teach English as a Second Language and bilingual teachers.

One particular area of concern highlighted in the report concerns the kind of second-language skills or other training that bilingual educators should possess. "Without this specificity, the quality of instruction received by students with limited English proficiency may vary," the report said.

Although he welcomed the report's emphasis on the need to enforce the legal rights of LEP students, James Lyons, Director of the National Association for Bilingual Education, felt that the report was overly critical of the current situation. "It makes the case that the problem is going to grow unless the federal government acts," he said. "Given the (OCR's) budget, they're doing a very good job."

The Civil Rights Commission recommends that, whatever its budget, the OCR needs to formulate policies on issues such as standardized testing. The report also criticized the OCR for relying on vague language including phrases such as "effective participation" and "meaningful access" without providing practical definitions for these terms for the guidance of school districts.

In turn, James Lyons accused the report of employing similarly vague terminology such as "neutral and nondiscriminatory" assessment without explaining how such tests are to be selected.

The report, currently under study by the Education Department, is indicative of the unease that is felt in some quarters, over the performance of the Department in recent years. Many teachers' organizations believe that the federal mechanism is overly bureaucratic and too slow in its response to the needs of the fast-growing numbers of immigrants in the country. Solutions that work on a local level appear to work better than those mandated from Washington. President Clinton's grandiose plans for education in the 21st century are to be applauded but doubts remain as to whether throwing more money at bilingual education without proper monitoring and evaluation of projects, will actually make a difference.