hispanic students

PHILADELPHIA – For some Hispanic students, complete the application process at universities can be doubly troublesome: they are required to balance the tasks of the secondary essays and interviews, and then translate everything for her parents who do not speak English.

Some universities venerable East Coast trying to alleviate that burden and attract a growing number of Hispanic students “by offering Spanish translations of their material on admissions and financial aid.

The Bryn Mawr College, an establishment elite liberal arts near Philadelphia, recently launched a Spanish version of its Web site and the prestigious University of Pennsylvania has begun to conduct some sessions in Spanish admission.

“These initiatives are really geared for families … to subtract some of the pressure on students,” said Jennifer Rickard, director of enrollment at Bryn Mawr.

The comfort level of the family is extremely important in the Hispanic community, where ties with parents are strong and where many feel uneasy with the idea of sending their children to a distant college, said Deborah Santiago, vice president for policy and Research Excellence in Education, based in Washington DC.

“Parents play a critical role at least in educational aspirations,” said Santiago. “My parents have not gone to college, but I said I would.”

Nationally, only 25% of Hispanics aged 18 to 24 years were in college in 2006. The figure is less than 32% of blacks, 44% of whites and 61% of Asian Americans, according to a report by the American Council on Education, but the same report found that Hispanic enrollment rose college 66% between 1995 and 2005.

New York – Students and parents will struggle this week against the closure of a secondary school in the Bronx with a large Hispanic population.

The Alfred E. Smith High School is the only school designated as Career and Technical Education in the South Bronx.

The center offers courses in technical studies such as automobiles, construction and carpentry for their students, most of them Hispanic.

In the city, only 30 schools with CTE designation.

The Alfred E. Smith has 1.086 pupils of whom 91% are men. 61% of students are Hispanic and 35% are African American, according to the latest data on the website of the Department of Education.

The city has announced the closure of 20 schools for their poor academic performance. The city announced its plan to close Smith last week along with two other schools, the Monroe Academy for Business / Law in the Bronx and the School of Business, Computer Applications and Entrepreneurship in Queens.

The department did not respond to calls from this newspaper. However, an email distributed among reporters for the department said Alfred A. Smith has had a graduation rate below 50% in recent years.

In the email, the department also noted that the attendance rate was very low at this school (77% last year) and has not been high demand for school.

The school received a grade of “C” in its annual assessment of the city during the past three years.

Denver, (EFE) .- The Hispanic and other minority groups were disproportionately punished in public schools in Colorado, despite the measures implemented five years ago to reverse the situation, says a new report.

According to figures released by the Colorado Department of Education during the academic year 2008-2009, of 818,000 students in local schools, 8.5 percent, or nearly 70,000, was suspended, expelled or reprimanded for misconduct, from possession of drugs or firearms to cause disruptions in class or disobeying teachers.

According to the same report, Latinos accounted for 28.4 percent of the student population in Colorado, but were involved in 37 percent of discipline cases.
By comparison, African American students are 5.9 percent of all students, but 12.7 of those convicted. At the same time, 61 percent of students are Anglo, and 46.8 percent of those who were sanctioned belong to that group.

Put another way, 6.5 of every 100 white students, 11 out of 100 Latino students and 18 out of 100 African American students received some form of discipline. The racial disparity also is higher for minority males than whites, as 23 percent of African American men and 15 percent of Latino men were punished, but only 9 percent of whites it was.
Janelle Krueger, Division of Safe Schools and Drug Free the Colorado Department of Education, these statistics “alarming” because it revealed “an institutionalized attitude and behavior” toward students of certain races or ethnic groups.

That means, the official explained that while minority students are punished for “disobedience” or “misconduct”, i.e., behaviors that are left to whom the sanction applies, other students are disciplined for conduct more objective, as carrying weapons.

However, although the state of Colorado requires us to report the ethnicity of the students punished, that information is included in the totals only, and does not specify or in any particular case or for each type of conduct sanctioned.

The report also indicates that since 2000 to date decreased the percentage of students punished in Colorado from 11.1 percent at the beginning of the decade to 8.5 percent today. But according to Judith Martinez, in charge of the Prevention Initiative Colorado Department of Education, the decrease was due to schools replaced the policy of “zero tolerance” for the “promotion of a system of positive behavior.” EFE