Editor's note: ¡Si se puede!
By:
Managing Editor Brian Taylor
Published: September 1, 2011
Migrant scholars” might sound like an oxymoronic mash-up—a contradiction in terms, such as virtual reality or real estate investment. Don’t tell Carol Brydolf that. California Schools’ senior staff writer opens her story “Summer Harvest: The Time Is Ripe for Reaching Migrant Students” on the first day of the Migrant Scholars Program at California State University, Fresno.
“The federally funded program buses more than 200 middle- and high school students from eight local school districts to the college campus for two weeks of math and language arts instruction, physical and nutritional education, and creative activities,” Brydolf writes.
“Migrant Scholars strenuously encourages migrant students to begin planning now for college. Bringing them to local state and community colleges—either for two-week sessions or daylong field trips—gets students comfortable navigating the wonders of a modern college campus.”
Who’d have thought? After all, as Brydolf reports, migrant students generally trail their classmates on statewide standards tests and are less likely to take the a-g classes required for admission to state colleges or university. They drop out at higher rates and face many other obstacles. They’re destined to follow in their migrant parents’ footsteps, right?
Don’t tell that to anyone who knew Joe Serna. The California-born child of immigrant farm workers, Joe grew up picking crops himself. He went on to become an invaluable aide to migrant advocate César Chávez—and when he died in 1999, he was not just a college graduate, but a respected professor of political science at California State University, Sacramento, and in his second term as the capital city’s mayor; Sacramento-based Los Angeles Times columnist George Skelton called Joe the first Hispanic mayor of a major California city.
Other promising migrant students are out there and, as Brydolf reports, there are resources available to help them reach their potential, thanks to a federal Migrant Education Program grant that brought $135 million to California—the most of any state—in 2010 alone. It’s a much-needed windfall in these cash-strapped times, and Brydolf’s story explains how it’s being put to good use.
Of course, all students—of every background—deserve the kind of high-quality education that can prepare them for college or careers. In “Making the L-EAP,” frequent California Schools contributor Scott LaFee takes a look at the Early Assessment Program, an approach California pioneered to help ensure that high school students who want to go to college are going to be ready for the academic rigor they will face.
Initiated by the California Department of Education and the State Board of Education in 2004 and now in use in more than a quarter of the state’s 1,400 public high schools, “the EAP is a voluntary test taken by 11th graders … to measure their college readiness, with the idea being that students who are less than fully prepared for higher education will have their senior year to get up to speed,” LaFee reports.
It’s a work in progress, with room for improvement, as everyone LaFee talked to readily agreed. But it’s a start. As with so much in education, the seeds of college readiness must be sown long before students enter ninth grade—something that Long Beach Unified School District board member Mary Stanton recognizes, and which her district has integrated into the “Long Beach College Promise,” a commitment between Long Beach Unified and the area’s public institutions of higher learning.
“Our goal is to prepare students throughout K–12 for college,” Stanton told LaFee. “Beginning with prekindergarten, we have coordinated the curriculum to have a consistent approach to reading and math. For students who are with us for the entire 13 years, we continually assess and correct to prevent the ‘oops factor’ of nearing graduation unprepared.”
This issue also marks the first few months of Vernon M. Billy’s tenure as CSBA’s executive director, both with an interview and in the debut of Billy’s own column. Among other “profiles in courage” Billy cites there is César Chávez—the migrant mentor who helped set Joe Serna on a path from the fields to City Hall. See what Billy has to say for yourself—and thanks for reading!
Brian Taylor ( btaylor@csba.org ) is the managing editor of California Schools.