When the results came back from her group’s study of third-grade reading scores in Chicago’s public schools, Mary Lou Gonzalez called a press conference and directed her wrath at the Board of Education.
School officials have a different explanation for the test-score results. “I don’t think it’s fair or accurate to blame the school system for those test results,” says Bob Saigh, the board’s director of information. “There are a number of different factors, not the least of which is a testing bias. There have been a good deal of studies for years on the cultural bias in standardized tests.
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“Apart from culture, you have to consider language. Many Hispanic students come from low-income homes where English is not the first language. There’s also the question of mobility. About 30 percent of the school population moves from one school to another each year. Statewide the average is 20.5 percent. That transience upsets the education process.”
UNO leaders counter that some of the schools surveyed in their study are in neighborhoods–like the southeast side–where Hispanics have lived for up to 30 years. But does that mean that students in the southeast side’s public schools are the grandchildren of Mexican immigrants from the late 40s? Or are the students living there now recent arrivals who moved into neighborhoods that the first generation of Mexican Americans abandoned years ago for the suburbs?
Solis would like to see at least ten new schools built in overcrowded Hispanic communities, most of them on the near south side. But board officials say there’s no money to build new schools, and there’s no sign that the federal government–which used to be a major backer of public education–will provide any money either. “It costs anywhere from five to six million dollars to build a new elementary school,” says Saigh. “I don’t know where that’s going to come from.”
UNO hopes that its emerging political power can be used to persuade politicians to give Hispanics a bigger chunk of the existing urban-education pie. That would mean redirecting cash away from programs for blacks and integrated schools. “This is not a black-Hispanic or a Hispanic-white conflict,” says Solis. “But the fact is that we are not well served by the system. Look at the magnet schools. Blacks are represented very well there. So are whites. But Hispanics are only 2 percent of these schools.
