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Obama orders ‘Dream’ amnesty

June 15, 2012 by

Congress has refused to pass the Dream Act, which would offer a path to citizenship to young illegal immigrants who enroll in college or serve in the military. Today President Obama ordered a quasi-amnesty for young illegal immigrants who’d be protected from deportation and allowed work permits. To qualify, they must have arrived in the U.S. before the age of 16, live in the U.S. for at least five years, be no more than 30 now, have a high school diploma or GED, attend college or serve in the military. Those with criminal records will not be eligible.

If the executive order withstands a legal challenge, the promise of a work permit could motivate more immigrant students to finish high school — or at least earn a GED — and enroll in community college. Apparently, they won’t have to finish a credential.

I predict pressure to waive deportation for young immigrants with minor criminal records and weak academic credentials.

Update:  Obama’s executive order means increased competition for jobs and college places, the Washington Post headlines. The jobs issues will be the biggie.

I don’t know if Obama will gain more Latino votes than he’ll lose in the backlash against adding 800,000 young workers to the above-ground labor force at a time of high unemployment.

Filed Under: College, Education Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Give us your energetic, your geniuses …

June 15, 2012 by

To heck with the tired, poor and huddled. Give Us Your Geniuses, write Adam Ozimek and Noah Smith in The Atlantic. From the earliest days, the U.S. has enjoyed “the ability to attract and retain a huge number of the world’s best and brightest,” they write. We drew smart Scots, “the intellectual and technological elite of the British Empire.” In early 1900s and he Nazi era, a “windfall” of Jewish immigrants yielded scientists and entrepreneurs.

In the late 20th Century, a wave of immigration from Taiwan did the same, giving us (for example) the man who revolutionized AIDS treatment (David Ho), as well as the founders of YouTube, Zappos, Yahoo, and Nvidia. In fact, immigrants or the children of immigrants have founded or co-founded nearly every legendary American technology company, including Google, Intel, Facebook, and of course Apple (you knew that Steve Jobs’ father was named Abdulfattah Jandali, right?).

Taking many more high-skilled immigrants is a no-brainer, they argue.

High-skilled immigrants are not just good at their jobs. They create jobs. . . More than half of the start-ups in Silicon Valley, for instance, were started by immigrants, along with 25% of venture-backed companies that went public between 1990 and 2006.

In addition, high-skilled immigrants are innovators as well. Economists Jennifer Hunt and Marjolaine Gauthier-Loiselle find that a 1% increase in the share of immigrant college graduates in the population increases patents per capita by as much as 9-18%, after accounting for the “positive spillovers” by which HSI boost innovation by native-born inventors.

Living in Silicon Valley, I know many high-tech entrepreneurs from the three I’s, Israel, Ireland and India. These are very smart people with very smart children. My husband, who’s helped start several Silicon Valley companies, has worked with many Indians, quite a few Italians, Chinese, of course, and, well, you name it.

Filed Under: College, Intelligence Tagged With: , , , ,

Republican pushes STARS instead of DREAM

June 7, 2012 by

A Republican alternative to the DREAM Act creates a path to citizenship for children brought illegally to the U.S. — if they complete a bachelor’s degree. But the STARS (Studying Towards Adjusted Residency Status) Act, introduced by Florida Rep. David Rivera, doesn’t have broad Republican support.

Filed Under: College Tagged With: , , , ,

Educating immigrants

May 30, 2012 by

In the U.S., immigrant students outperform natives of similar socioeconomic status, reports the Center on International Education Benchmarking. That’s true in Australia as well.

Canada’s immigrant students match native students’ performance after five years in school, according to Pathways to Success: How Knowledge and Skills at Age 15 Shape Future Lives in Canada.  Sixty-one percent of Canada’s immigrant students go on to university compared to 42 percent of native-born students. I wonder how that correlates to the percentage of immigrants from Asian countries.

Filed Under: Education Tagged With: , ,

Faster exit from English Learner status

April 3, 2012 by

Any “English Learner” who scores proficient in English and earns a B average should be out of the program, argues Assemblyman Chris Norby, R-Fullerton, in an Orange County Register commentary. Norby, who’s taught immigrants as a high school and night school ESL teacher, has introduced a bill to do that. Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Los Angeles, has a bill to change the home language survey, which can place a child in the English Learner program if any adult speaks a language other than English ever.

The California English Language Development Test is difficult to pass, especially for those barely able to read, and there is no statewide standard as to what is a passing grade. School funding is based partly on ELL percentages, so there is a financial incentive to keep kids in the program. Annual testing is costly, time-consuming and takes students away from valuable class time.

Parental petitions to remove their kids from ELL are routinely rejected. Some are told that, while their child may be conversant in English, they don’t yet know “academic English.” Well, what first-grader does?

Poorly educated parents don’t know how to get their kids out of ELL status, Norby writes. In Santa Ana, where 11 percent of the K-12 students are foreign-born, 55 percent are classified as ELL. In wealthier Irvine,  19 percent of the students are born abroad – mostly from Asia and the Middle East — yet only 13 percent are ELL.

“In a globalized economy, California’s bilingual kids are an asset to our state and should not be placed in academic dumping grounds,” Norby writes.

Filed Under: Education Tagged With: , , ,

Technology will help students succeed — but not yet

January 18, 2012 by

Technology will help college students succeed, but we’re years away from linking new tools to teaching and learning.

Also on Community College Spotlight: How to help immigrant students succeed in college.

Filed Under: College, technology Tagged With: , ,

Women leave workforce for college

January 2, 2012 by

While men tend to take whatever work they can find, more women are choosing college over a bad job. Will the ex-Starbucks barista be able to pay back $200,000 in student loans with a masters in strategic communications?

California’s Dream Act promises undocumented students college aid but no path to citizenship.

Filed Under: Careers, College Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Immigrant blacks outperform natives

December 20, 2011 by

Africans outperform African-Americans in Seattle schools: Even the children of destitute Somali refugees do better.

The district compared blacks who speak English at home with those who speak other languages at home but aren’t considered English Language Learners.

Amharic-speaking students from Ethiopia scored the highest, nearly reaching the district average in reading. Somalis did worse than other African immigrants, but much better than English-only blacks.

• Only 36 percent of black students who speak English at home passed their grade’s math test, while 47 percent of Somali-speaking students passed. Other black ethnic groups did even better, although still lower than the district average of 70 percent.

• In reading, 56 percent of black students who speak English passed, while 67 percent of Somali-speaking students passed. Again, other black ethnic groups did better, though still lower than the district average of 78 percent.

Black immigrants attend college at a much higher rate than U.S.-born blacks or whites, concluded a John Hopkins study in 2009. The immigrants were educated, successful people in their home countries, researchers said.

However, that’s not true of the very poor Somalis who found refuge in Seattle.

Seattle School Board member Betty Patu, who has worked for decades with community groups serving students of color, said she has noticed that all immigrant families, regardless of socioeconomic status, place high value on education.

“Their motivation is different,” she said. “When you leave your country, you come here to do something. You don’t come here just to sit around and do nothing.”

In short, it’s the culture, stupid.

However, Marty McLaren, a board member and former teacher, blames “a culture of low expectations . . .  dating back to the days of slavery” for American blacks’ poor performance. Faced with institutionalized racism, students give up, she said.

 

 

Filed Under: Culture, Education, Family Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Immigrants seek education, but hit wait lists

November 22, 2011 by

Second-generation Hispanic women are leading a surge in college enrollment, but graduation rates remain low for Hispanics from immigrant families.

Few immigrants succeed without learning English, but many are on wait lists to get classes, writes Gail Mellow, president of LaGuardia Community College.

New York City’s community colleges will work with museums to teach immigrants English through art.

Filed Under: College, Education Tagged With: , , , , ,

Permanent record: 1920′s report cards

September 23, 2011 by

After finding 1920s report cards and employment records from the Manhattan Trade School for Girls, Paul Lukas traced the former students to see how their lives turned out. The series on Slate includes a gallery of photos with links to reports.

Girls attended Manhattan Trade in lieu of high school, usually beginning when they were 14 or 15, and were expected to finish by the time they turned 17. The school . . . offered one- and two-year programs in a variety of disciplines, primarily in the “needle trades” (dressmaking, sewing machine operation, millinery) and, to a lesser extent, the “brush and glue trades” (sample catalog mounting, novelty box making, lampshade making). The curriculum also stressed thrift, home economics, personal presentation, and other life skills that would help the students survive in the labor marketplace.

Manhattan Trade, started by “wealthy progressives”  (“reformie” types!) in 1902, placed students in jobs for years after they left the school.

. . . the majority of the students had been born to immigrant parents—Italians, mostly, but also lots of Eastern European Jews, some Russians, and a smattering of others. Many of their families appeared to have been desperately poor, with lots of bad luck to boot. Here was a girl whose mother had ended up in an insane asylum and whose father was “paralyzed and a drunkard.” Here was one who needed dental work but couldn’t afford the dentist’s $3 fee, so the school’s secretary gave her $1.50 to have the work started. Here was one who said she had received $3.50 for three days’ work and had then been forced to leave the job because the work site was so cold “your hands almost freeze off of you.”

But there were also tales of success, triumph, and joy—stories of striving and pride, of the American Dream taking shape.

One graduate started a business making stuffed animals and toys that’s still around.

Today, girls from low-income immigrant families are urged to go to college with little guidance on what they might do there to reach their real goal, a decent job. Most will start in remedial classes, give up on a degree and work low-skilled, low-paying jobs forever.

Filed Under: Careers, Education Tagged With: , , , , ,
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