Posted on 10/29/2009 7:51:50 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
A forthcoming study on Hispanic children’s cognitive skills underlines the challenges the country faces in aspiring to close the achievement gap between these children and their white and Asian counterparts. Hispanic “children fall behind their peers in mental development by the time they reach grade school, and the gap tends to widen as they get older,” reports the New York Times. “The drop-off in the cognitive scores of Hispanic toddlers, especially those from Mexican backgrounds, was steeper than for other [low-income] groups and could not be explained by economic status alone. . . . From 24 to 36 months, the Hispanic children fell about six months behind their white peers on measures like word comprehension, more complex speech and working with their mothers on simple tasks.”
This new study, from the University of California–Berkeley, may be unusually blunt in its assessment of Hispanic cognitive development, but it is hardly unprecedented. A 2004 study by the California Legislative Analyst’s Office found a similar decline in Hispanic students’ ability to keep up with their peers in learning English. Children from Mandarin- and Spanish-speaking households begin kindergarten with similar levels of English proficiency, but their paths quickly diverge. The Mandarin-speaking students make continuing progress in mastering English, while the Hispanic students’ advance stalls out in the second and third grades as the demands of California’s English-proficiency test grow more difficult. Mandarin kindergartners establish oral skills in English in one year, the legislative analyst found, and by the beginning of second grade, they have begun developing a mastery of reading and writing, unlike Hispanics. The widening English-proficiency gap between Asian and Hispanic students may reflect parental willingness to expose children to English at home, but the gap occurs in math as well.
This summer in Southern California, I observed Hispanic students who had been taught in English throughout their school careers, yet who possessed very weak formal language ability. An in-class reading assignment at Locke High School in Watts asked students to answer the question: “Why is it important to use all your skills during your teen years?” A ninth-grader wrote in response: “To make it better.” Another question, “What sudden insight came to the engineer?” elicited the answer: “How to put the little mirrors.” While diagnosing the student-written sentence, “The pigs squealed loudly because the’re [sic] bored at the barn,” a high-school English teacher in Santa Ana asked his class: “Why does the dependent clause need to be in the past tense?” A student answered: “Because you’re talking about a lot of people.”
The Berkeley researchers speculate that the early decline in Hispanic students’ language and reasoning skills may reflect inadequate maternal stimulation in the home. And indeed, a Santa Ana elementary-school principal recounted to me her largely unsuccessful efforts to get parents to teach their children such basic kindergarten-survival tools as cutting with scissors and the words for colors. “Kids come in not knowing the alphabet in Spanish or the sounds of Spanish,” she said. “They use three-word sentences; they come in without oral-language ability.”
The Berkeley study will inevitably be used to buttress the Obama administration’s plans to pour billions of federal taxpayer dollars into early-education programs. As a matter of education policy, such efforts represent wishful thinking. Head Start has been repeatedly shown to have no lasting effect on students’ academic performance. Even the most successful and lavishly-funded of such early-intervention programs — the iconic Perry Preschool Project from the early 1960s in Ypsilanti, Mich. — explained only 3 percent of the earnings of its participants at age 40, and about 4 percent of their educational-attainment levels, wrote John J. Miller in NR in 2007. Replicating the Perry Project’s services on a national scale for Hispanic children would be extraordinarily expensive and produce only modest results. Many children who receive early intervention provide inferior intellectual stimulation for their own children, whether for innate cognitive or for cultural reasons.
But the more interesting implications of the study and others like it are for immigration policy. Our de facto immigration policy is currently weighted to a population that appears to require massive additional government education spending — even before formal schooling begins — to be made academically competitive. This choice would not seem to be economically rational, at least so long as we aspire to universal college-going. If the country remains committed to sending a far greater number of students to college, as even many conservatives continue to be, we better get ourselves a different mix of immigrants if we don’t want to bankrupt our education budgets. Alternatively, if the open-borders lobby prevails and Latin American migration continues to dominate our immigration flows, it’s time to acknowledge that many students never will be college material, nor do they need to be to lead productive, fulfilling lives.
— Heather Mac Donald is the John M. Olin fellow at the Manhattan Institute and co-author of The Immigration Solution.
It’s the Culture Stupid!
Anybody really shocked this is happening considering we are importing the bottom of the rung from 3rd World cesspits. Lots of these parents are illiterate in their own language and if see the type of programming on Spanish language TV there is a disntinct lack of anything of educational value. I visited Guatemala City and was shocked at the total lack of bookstores or libraries.
My guess is that one major reason is the attitude of the respective parents toward education. Asians highly value education and go a long way to encourage their children to do well and to prepare for higher education. Hispanics do not value education as highly and would rather see their children leave high school and enter the work force. Many Hispanics are holding onto their native language more.
Yet another survey that proves common sense right.
It’s very likely that the Mandarin speaking Chinese kids are forced by parents to learn English because classes are not provided in Mandarin.
It’s equally likely that Spanish speaking Mexican kids are not forced by parents to learn English because classes are provided in Spanish.
The problem is not lack of funding. The problem is that bi-lingual education creates the exact situation it was founded to remove. By giving the kids and parents the safety net of not having to learn English, bi-lingual education keeps kids learning in Spanish.
I wouldn’t be too quick to chalk this up to race/ethnicity. The parents usually speak less English than the kids do, and because they often can’t understand the kids’ homework assignments, it’s hard for them to get fully involved in their kids’ education. It isn’t necessarily for lack of trying.
Learn ENGLISH as soon as possible
Ok, I’ll be the one to say it. Maybe it’s genetic.
Why do people dance around that issue so much? If it’s common knowledge that “white men can’t jump”, then why can’t other racial characteristics be mentioned?
It’s not merely “the Culture.”
The USA has set up a perverse system whereby we incentivize not the “best and the brightest” but the “worst and the dullest” to come to the USA. We have created a system where we are seeking to recruit Mexico’s lowest strata for our own welfare class.
It like the Mariel Boatlift all over again, but instead, US policy is asking for it.
There is NO Hispanic race.
There are only native Americans, and the descendants of Spanish colonizers.
‘lack of bookstores’
Same in Mexico, no bookstores, very few public libraries and those that exist are in terrible shape w/ few books, I don’t get it, in Mexico people just don’t read except local newspapers with big horrible pictures of the latest machetero attack, apparently the public loves big bloody fotos
When I was in first grade we had a new classmate who was a recent immigrant. He came from a family where no English was spoken (only Spanish). We had no bilingual education back then (late 1970s) in my home town.
By the time this kid was in third grade his English was perfect -- and I mean PERFECT to the point where you never would have known that Spanish was his native language.
Years later, he told me that he learned English himself as a young kid by watching Sesame Street every day after school. This kid was 6-7 years old, mind you.
Agreed. If solid efforts were made to make sure native Spanish speakers learned English as early as possible, they could actually have an intellectual leg-up on their monolingual peers, because learning languages helps the brain develop connections that are hard to make later in life. The prime time to learn new languages is early childhood. It’s bogus that most American kids don’t get to study foreign languages in-depth until middle or even high school.
Studies like this are killing the Libertarian’s Magic Borders theories.
I was going to write a comment on this but words fail me. The common sense solution is so apparent that I will just leave it alone.
I guess the English speaking people know what it is.
how do we know if they fell behind if they were behind to begin with
they are behind in their native land too
look who runs Mexico
Why do people dance around that issue so much? If it’s common knowledge that “white men can’t jump”, then why can’t other racial characteristics be mentioned?
Because only white people can be tagged with negative qualities.
Also interesting is the fact that Mexico as a whole continues to do poorly compared to other nations, always has. The same can be said with many African countries.
The liberal answer? Just throw more of our money towards the problem.
The naked truth? There is only so much that can be done to bump up educational scores. It is what it is.
Behaviors that work in one society do not necessarily work in another.
Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)
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