by Billy Blackwell II

­Mission High School, built in 1926, was declared a landmark in June 7, 2006

Even as stan­dardized test scores across the board rise, Latinos, along with African- North Americans, students have been consistently underperforming white and Asian students in reading and math tests. This gap in achievement, which has been going on for decades, is now the focus of statewide and national concern.

“In a state with 6.3 million public school students — nearly half of whom are Hispanic, 25 percent still learning the English language and 40 percent struggling against poverty — closing the achievement gap is essential to a secure future,” California’s State Superintendent of Public Education Jack O’Connell said.

A new report tackles the issue and O’Connell invited San Francisco Unified School District Superintendent Carlos García as one of the educators, community and business leaders to speak to an estimated 4,000 attendees at a two-day summit this week to discuss the issue.

­According to O’Connell, his is a complicated and controversial issue that won’t be solved overnight or even during his administration.

Jennie Oakes

The achievement gap has often been discussed as a culture issue that lays the problem back at the feet of the under-performing communities, which caused  researchers at UCLA to respond.

“So many people seem to respond to this discussion as if there was a cultural problem, as if there much be something wrong with African-North American and Latino communities that makes them score lower on standardized tests,” said Professor Jeannie Oakes, Director of UC ACCORD and Co-Director of UCLA’s Institute for Democracy, Education and Access, co-author of the 2007 Education Opportunity Report. “California’s white students also score far lower than white students throughout the state, although nobody seems to be asking why white students are scoring so low.”

The problem started almost 30 years ago when Californians voted in Proposition 13, which capped property taxes, according to Professor John Rogers, co-director of UCLA’s IDEA and co-author of the report.

Carlos García

“California is spending less money on its students that most states and the results are that all students are falling behind,” Rogers said.

The 2007 Education Opportunity Report examined unequal educational achievement in light of the conditions in public schools. Supplemental reports show that throughout the public school system Latino and African-North American communities suffer disproportionately from lack of school funding, leaving them with more overcrowded classrooms, fewer qualified teachers and not enough college preparatory courses.

“The achievement gap is mirrored by an opportunity gap for Latinos and African Americans,” researchers said. When they looked at the data throughout the state, drops in test scores by Latino were mirrored lack of basic fundamental educational resources. Low-test scores in Latino and African American communities happened in areas in school where they received fewer resources, according to the reseachers.

• 35 percent of Latino students attend overcrowded high schools, which is almost twice as many as white high school student.
• Latino students are two and a half times more likely than white students and three times more likely than Asian students to experience serious shortages of qualified teachers.
• 65 percent of Latino students attend high schools with too few college preparatory courses for all students to enroll in college preparatory curriculum.

“These research results demonstrate that closing the opportunities gap faced by African American and Latino students will have tremendous benefits for the state as a whole,” Oakes said.

The two-day Achievement Gap Summit in Sacramento this week marks the first time a comprehensive statewide effort has been made to focus on why the gap exists and develop sustainable, systematic solutions for closing it.

The Summit is part of a yearlong effort by O’Connell, in partnership with the California Department of Education, educators, researchers and community leaders through the  state and nation to focus on this controversial issue.

SFUSD Superintendent García spoke on a panel of Latino and African-North American school superintendents to discuss this controversial issue. He is a member of O’Connell’s P-16 council, a statewide assembly of education, business, and community leaders charged with developing strategies to better coordinate, integrate, and improve education for preschool through college students.­

García told El Report­ero that several programs have been put in place to provide additional resources to underperforming schools in his district. And even though performance among SFUSD students improved overall, the achievement gap keeps widening. For example, in 2001, 15 percent of Latino students in SFUSD were profi cient and 33 percent of all students were profi cient in the district overall. In 2007, 28 percent of Latino students were profi cient and 49 percent of all students were profi cient, García said.

by the El Reportero news services

Felipe Calderón

The final state elections of the year on 11 November produced a win for the leftwing Partido de la Revolución Democrática in the most important of them, Michoacán.

The result is another blow for the Partido Acción Nacional which has now won only one (Baja California) of the five gubernatorial elections since President Felipe Calderón won the presidential elections in July 2006.

The PAN’s series of poor performances raises the fear that it will suffer big losses in then mid-term congressional elections in 2009: if this happens, Calderón, with his weak mandate, would become a lame duck.

In the municipal and state congress elections, which have also been held this year, the PAN has been walloped, most by the Partido Revolucionario Institucional which still governs the majority of Mexican states, but also, in some places, by the PRD.

Castro cheer Chávez for his latest outburst

HAVANA — Fidel Castro broke two weeks of silence Sunday, applauding his close friend Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez for having ‘’leveled devastating criticisms at Europe’’ during a summit of leaders from Latin America, Spain and Portugal.

In a brief essay published on the front pages of state newspapers, the ailing 81- year-old Castro also praised speeches by leftist presidents Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua and Eva Morales of Bolivia during the Ibero-American summit, which wrapped up Saturday in Santiago, Chile.

He blasted conservative leaders at the meeting, singling out El Salvador’s President Tony Saca, a U.S. ally.

Castro did not discuss a phone call he placed to the Venezuelan leader Saturday after the summit closed, but wrote that “Chávez leveled devastating criticisms at Europe, the same Europe that pretended to offer lessons on good governance at this Latin American summit.’’

Nor did he mention that the gathering ended with a heated exchange between Chávez and King Juan Carlos of Spain, who told the Venezuelan president to “shut up.ʼʼ

Nebraska ag industry scores deal with Cuba

Gov. Dave Heineman returned to Nebraska on Tuesday after a successful trade mission to Cuba that resulted in $10 million in agricultural sales.

While in Cuba, Heineman attended the opening of the 25th annual Havana International Trade Fair.

The deal signed on Monday was for $10 million in U.S. wheat that will be sourced from Nebraska. The agreement was signed between Louis Dreyfus and Alimport Chairman­and Chief Executive Officer Pedro Alvarez.

With this latest contract, Heineman said, Nebraska has sold more than $70 million in agricultural products to Cuba since the state’s export relationship was established in 2005.

Heineman said he appreciated the positive reception Nebraska agricultural products have received there.

by Alex Meneses Miyashita

Elected officials of color, regardless of their race or ethnicity, tend to share similar views on a number of national policy 8issues, including immigration, the war in Iraq, the Voting Rights Act and No Child Left Behind.

The majority of them are supportive of the Voting Rights Act and policies 6that benefit immigrants. On the other hand, the large majority is against the Iraq war and in favor of returning the troops as soon as possible. Support for NCLB stands at about a third.

The conclusions were drawn from a survey of 1,354 responses from elected officials of color conducted by the Gender and Multicultural Leadership Project and released Nov. 8 in Washington, D.C.

The survey compares the views of male and female Latino, black, Asian and Native American officials, primarily at the state and local level, on policy issues, making it a first of-its-kind study, according to its investigators.

It also offers a demographic view of the composition of these office holders nationwide.

“Our intention was to look at the emerging leadership of color in public office as elected officials,” Christine Sierra, political science professor at the University of New Mexico, told Weekly Report.

She emphasized the growing role of women in politics. “Women of color often get left out of the story. They are a very important force of this new emerging leadership.

Sierra pointed out that while there are more Latinos holding public office than Latinas, the latter group is growing at a faster rate.

Findings included:

IMMIGRATION: Most elected officials of color favored offering government services to residents in languages other English, 78 percent, and providing public school instruction in other languages for limited-English proficient students, 68 percent.

Less than half supported providing driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants, 41 percent, and allowing legal non-citizen immigrants with children in public school to vote in school board elections, 47 percent.

IRAQ WAR: Black officials were most likely to oppose the war In Iraq, 90 percent, followed by Asians 75 percent, Native Americans, 70 percent and Hispanics 69 percent.

Slightly more than a third, including 35 percent of blacks, Asians and Native Americans, and 34 percent of Hispanics, oppose it “strongly.”

Blacks are also most likely to favor a rapid withdrawal of the troops, 93 percent, followed by Native Americans 87 percent, Hispanics 80 percent, and Asians 76 percent.

­VOTING RIGHTS ACT: Latinos and Native Americans were slightly more likely to favor bilingual ballots, 83, than blacks and Asians, 78. On the overall importance of the VRA’s reauthorization, 96 of Native Americans, 95 percent of blacks, 63 of 7Latinos and 74 percent of Asians supported it.

NCLB: Support for No Child Lefi Behind was below 50 percent. Asians expressed the most support at 37, followed by Latinos and blacks 34, and Native Americans 29.

Differences were more evident along gender lines. Latinas were more likely to oppose it than Latinos, 61 vs 49. Black women 56, black men 47. Asian women 67, Asian men 57. Native American women 40, Native American males 71.

POLITICALAFFILIATION: More than threequanters of the officials, 76, identified themselves as Democrats, 10 as Independents and 6 Republicans.

However, most of them, 34 also Identified themselves as being “middle of the road,’’ 32 as liberal and 29 as conservative.

The survey included the responses of 722 black, 509 Hispanic, 96 Asian and 27 Native American elected officials.

Sierra, who collaborated on the multi-year project with three other political science professors, all women, white, black and Asian, said they will continue to release more findings from the extensive data they have collected.

For more information, visit ­www.gmic.org.

­Hispanic Link.

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