In 1994, there were 26.4 million Hispanic Americans living in the Continental United States: 64 percent Mexican Americans, almost 11 percent Puerto Ricans, over 13 percent were from Central and South America and the Caribbean, almost 5 percent were Cuban Americans, 7 percent classified as "other." An additional 3.7 million were Puerto Ricans living on the island of Puerto Rico, bringing the nation's total Hispanic American population to over 30 million. Although Hispanic Americans live in every part of the United States, they are more heavily concentrated in Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, New Mexico, New York, Puerto Rico, and Texas.
Mexican Americans. Today, while the majority of Mexican Americans live in urban areas, significant numbers comprise the three agricultural migrant streams that flow from the south to the north across the country, often twice annually. Historically, Mexican Americans have been both an urban and rural population. Since the 1600s, Mexicans were the first Americans to establish homesteads in the territories that became Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas. Since before the turn of the century, Mexican Americans literally built the great southwestern cities of Los Angeles, San Diego, Tucson, Albuquerque, Dallas, and San Antonio. Also, in the 1800's, Mexican American workers participated significantly in the massive industrial expansion in the midwest, from Kansas to Michigan, by building the railroad systems and steel mills. Few Mexican American families, however, received formal education. As Mexican Americans began to attend public schools in significant numbers, starting early in the 20th Century, students faced discrimination due to language, socio-economic, and cultural barriers.
|
. . . let's not forget that we also have an educational deficit. Education is the fault line in America today; those who have it are doing well in the global economy, those who don't are not doing well. We cannot walk away from this fundamental fact. The American dream will succeed or fail in the 21st century in direct proportion to our commitment to educate every person in the United States of America.
William Jefferson Clinton, April 12, 1995. Remembering Franklin D. Roosevelt, 50th Anniversary Commemorative Services. |
|
Latinos are homologous with the totality of the United States. That is, Latinos can be of any race. What distinguishes them from all other Americans is culture, not race."
Jorge Klor de Alva, 1996 |
Poor Mexican Americans have always faced de facto segregation through attending schools outside of the white system. Even today, Mexican Americans are likely to attend segregated schools. Untold numbers of U.S.-born Mexican American citizens have suffered civil persecution since the 1800s, which continues to this day. The treatment of many Mexican American children in the public education system perpetuates unequal treatment.
No system (not even in the Southwest) comparable to Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) was established for Mexican Americans. Hispanic Serving Institutions or "HSIs" have only recently emerged as a distinct category of postsecondary institutions. In spite of very limited educational opportunity throughout the 20th century, Mexican American individuals have distinguished themselves as statesmen, writers, artists, and professionals. However, there has been minimal educational progress for the majority of Mexican American citizens. Even today, most educational services in urban and rural areas where Mexican Americans go to school lack sufficient resources to provide excellence in education.
Puerto Ricans. Puerto Rico was acquired from Spain as a territory in 1898. Through the Jones Act in 1917, Puerto Ricans became U.S. citizens, able to move freely between the continental United States and their own homeland.* A commonwealth with a "special relationship" status written into law, Puerto Ricans receive lower levels of Federal aid than the states, do not pay Federal taxes and cannot vote for the President on the island. Due to the economic and social challenges within their community, various debates have developed throughout Puerto Rico's history concerning the political status it maintains with the United States. Today, 2.7 million Puerto Ricans are living in the 50 states and more than 3.7 million live on the island. Puerto Rico has the third largest Hispanic population in the country.
Schools on the island use Spanish as their primary language of instruction, with English-as-a-Second-Language classes required from grades 1 through 12. Because islanders frequently move between Puerto Rico and the continent, migration affects children who shift between school systems. Puerto Rican students living on the continent have better high school completion rates, but lower rates of college graduation than do students on the island.
Cuban Americans. A mass exodus from Cuba to the United States followed Castro's Cuban revolution in 1959. In its early stages, this migration was fairly homogenous in its socio-political origins. Immigrants came from the professional, technical, and entrepreneurial sectors of Cuban society. Their educational attainment was high. Indeed, this may have been one of the most highly educated people in American immigration history.
Since the mid-1960s, however, when the Freedom Flights program began, the Cuban immigrant population have come from ever-wider sectors of the population. Cuban immigrants, especially since 1979, have tended to be less well educated than their predecessors. Although higher education institutions catering to Cuban Americans have not emerged, Florida International University and Miami-Dade Community College in Miami have substantial Cuban enrollment and are led by presidents of Cuban descent.
Recent arrivals. Recently, Hispanic immigrants have come primarily from a number of Central and South American countries, including El Salvador, Panama, Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Columbia, Ecuador, Peru, and the Dominican Republic and other Caribbean countries. Many of these people have sought refuge in this country because of political unrest.
The changing judicial and legislative climate surrounding immigration policy at the state and Federal levels introduces a serious challenge to immigrant education. Not since slavery have entire generations of children been held hostage to economic and political considerations as well as sheer animosity and bigotry. Within this climate, the legal persecution implied by such phenomena as California's Proposition 187 is both an intimidating and daunting hurdle to Hispanic Americans.
The New Century's Demographic Context
In the next century, Hispanic Americans will become the largest ethnic group in the United States. Thus far, Hispanic Americans have experienced rapid population growth, nearly doubling in 14 years, from 14.6 million in 1980, to over 30 million in 1994.4 Despite popular misconceptions, most Hispanics are native born or naturalized citizens or have legal residency status. Undocumented immigrants remain a small minority.
Sixty-four percent of Latino Americans are U.S. born citizens residing in the United States. The three largest groups are comprised of Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, and Cuban Americans. Latino immigrants, the vast majority of whom are "legal," arrived from every Spanish-speaking country in the world, but primarily from Mexico and Central and South American countries, and the Caribbean islands. Projections for the year 2050 predict that Hispanic Americans will comprise 25 percent of the total population of this country,5 and will, therefore, be the largest population group in the nation.
Eleven percent of Hispanic Americans are under five years of age, and a third of Hispanic Americans are under age 15. By the year 2030, the U.S. Bureau of the Census projections suggest that Latino students age 5 to 18 will number almost 16 million — 25 percent of the total school population.6 In California, Hispanic students are projected to become the largest ethnic majority of the school population by the 19961997 school year.7 This trend is occurring in all major cities throughout the nation. Obviously, this projected increase in the number of Hispanic children provides critical challenges to the nation's education systems.8
Underlying these data is the hard reality that a significant proportion of Hispanic children will continue to grow up in poor households. Such a reality provides an even greater challenge to policy makers and practitioners to aggressively seek solutions to eliminate poverty and low educational achievement. Unless these related issues are addressed, predictable outcomes with the inherent social and public costs will accrue to the nation as a whole.
By the year 2000, up to 80 percent of jobs in the United States are expected to require cognitive, rather than manual, skills,9 and 52 percent of jobs are expected to require at least some postsecondary education. The shortage of workers with high levels of communication, mathematics, computer, and other technological skills — already a problem for employers10 — will become more severe, if the Hispanic population continues to be deprived of a quality education. Educational attainment has a direct and positive impact on employment, earnings, investments, and savings.
Approximately, 37 percent of employed Hispanic Americans do not have a high school degree, compared to 13 percent of all workers. Those without high school diplomas have more difficulty in the labor market than do those with more education (e.g., unemployment rates for workers with less than four years of high school are twice as high as the rates for high school graduates). Additionally, only 11 percent of the Hispanic American work force is in managerial and professional positions, compared to 27 percent of the non-Hispanic population.11 Unless the rates of educational attainment increase, Hispanics will be unable to acquire such professional positions.12
Currently, Hispanic Americans are disproportionately-represented in such occupations as operators, fabricators, laborers, and service providers. Still, Hispanic American males (16 years and older) have a participation rate of 90.2 percent in the U.S. labor force.13 The Hispanic women's labor force participation rate of 58 percent is expected to increase to 80 percent by the year 2005.
It is important to note that because low-paying jobs in service industries, construction, and agriculture provide few benefits and are known for frequent layoffs, many Hispanics need two jobs to "make ends meet" and their children often work part-time as well.14 For these families, neither time nor funds are available to pursue advanced education. To participate fully in the American economy, these barriers must be addressed.
In 1992, there were approximately 720,000 Hispanic-owned businesses in the United States that employed four million people and had annual revenues of $63 billion per year.15 In 1996, Hispanic-owned businesses had grown to 1.25 million, twice the rate of companies in the general market.16 Additionally, American companies, recognizing the potential of Hispanic markets, engage in aggressive, competitive strategies, to attract, recruit, and hire Hispanic men and women with postsecondary degrees — efforts that have just begun to give Hispanics access to most levels of the corporate work force. However, it is well known that full access to the corporate, executive work force, as well as to entrepreneurship, is enabled by high levels of educational attainment — high levels Hispanics have proven they can achieve, but often denied to them in practice.
If America makes a genuine commitment to improving educational opportunities for Hispanic Americans, individual and social benefits can accrue to the nation. Hispanics will have higher purchasing power, greater self sufficiency, and the needs of the work force will be met. For the nation to continue as a leader in the world economy it must take rigorous, proactive approaches to educate and to train all of its youth.
The nation is already paying the price for significant and intolerable proportions of entire generations of American minority populations who are crowding the criminal justice, corrections, and welfare systems at Federal, state, and local levels — due to educational neglect. This, too, must change.
A social disaster is in the making. The continued denial of the tools of excellence will exact a high economic toll on individual Hispanics, the Hispanic community, and the nation as a whole.17 The question is not whether Hispanic Americans will be an integral part of the American economic enterprise in domestic and global markets, but how well they will be able to compete? Simply put, the United States needs a well-educated Hispanic American population to help the nation reach new heights of prosperity.
|
Long-term economic productivity and global competitiveness are at stake…. Today, a nation needs a very highly skilled segment to produce new knowledge and access knowledge developed elsewhere. It also needs a well educated general population to use knowledge effectively throughout its economy.
Dr. José Jaime Rivera, President |
-###-
State of Education...
