Cycle Being Broken : Texas Battles Illiteracy of Migrant Children

Each year, Gerardo Gamez enrolls in school a month or more late. Each year, he leaves early to help his family harvest sugar beets in Oregon. Six older brothers dropped out of school, and when he takes home his report card, his parents can’t read it.

With all that going against him, young Gerardo will graduate from high school this spring--even though he will be back in Oregon by graduation day. Gamez will be the first in his family to get a diploma, the first to break the cycle of illiteracy that has crippled migrant workers for generations.

“My mom was determined to not have me be a migrant laborer,” the 17-year-old senior at the Pharr-San Juan-Alamo High School said. “That’s what I want to get away from.”

Among Most Illiterate

For decades, migrant laborers have been among the most illiterate people in the United States, experts say, and their children were destined to the same low-paying, back-breaking work because they traveled from school to school, missing classes, losing credits, never advancing, seldom learning.

In Mexico, the term for illiteracy is analfabetismo , which literally means “no alphabet.” For migrant laborers in America, it might as well mean “no chance”--no chance for a steady job, no chance for a better life.

But this school year, the 20th of federally funded migrant education programs in southern Texas, educators armed with a battery of special programs, tracking computers and classroom aides are seeing some slim signs of progress.

“It’s safe to say this is the first generation to break the cycle,” said Jesus Vela Jr., program coordinator for the Texas Migrant Interstate Program.

In 1973, 75% of all migrants dropped out of school, and only 3% went to college, Vela said. Unable to read or write, most returned to the fields. Now, 25% make it to college or technical school, he said.

Less Than 30% Graduated

As recently as 1980, less than 30% of the migrant students in the Pharr-San Juan-Alamo school district finished high school. By 1983, more than 55% were graduating.

Still, the problem remains enormous. The high school graduation rate for Texas’ 94,000 migrant students is about 50%, 30 percentage points lower than the graduation rate for all state students, according to the Texas Education Agency.

Reading levels and test scores for migrants fall short of those for other students, and some who do graduate are functionally illiterate--unable to read an English-language newspaper or fill out a job application, educators say.

It all boils down to movement. Migrant students spend less time in class. They are always trying to make up work, regain last semester’s credits, catch up to classmates.

From Minnesota to Ohio

“We go to Minnesota before school is over, then we go to Ohio after school there has already started,” explained 16-year-old Josie Beltran. “I do the same stuff sometime, and Ohio doesn’t send a grade here because I’m not there long enough, so I have to make that up.”

Josie, a junior, is a solid B student, and an exception.

Those who migrate two and three times a year from their home base have a dropout rate of 90%, said Pharr-San Juan-Alamo High School Principal Felipe Alanis, a former migrant child himself who spent six recent summers in Idaho and Michigan living in labor camps and helping local schools cope with the influx.

“If the migrant student settles in and stops moving, it’s not a problem--it’s erased. For the current migrant, it’s drastic,” Alanis said.

Southern Texas sees much of the migrant population because it is home base to many families, offering winter work in citrus groves. Nationally, the Migrant Student Record Transfer System, based in Little Rock, Ark., counts 750,000 students in migrant programs scattered at any given time across all states but Hawaii.

$260 Million for Programs

But director Joe Miller said that may be only half the migrant student population. “They’re not counted because there’s not the money to serve them all,” he said. The Department of Education’s annual budget for migrant programs is about $260 million.

Alanis has 2,200 students in his high school, half of them migrants. His school district has a peak enrollment each January of 17,300 students, with more migrants than any other Texas district--6,000.

Classes for migrant students can be kept small because of federally funded teachers, and each classroom has a teacher’s aide. Students meet with tutors and special counselors who keep track of tests and grades and chase down credits from other states.

The strategy marks a philosophical shift of sorts for educators, who a decade ago commonly placed migrants in after-school sessions and holiday classes. The result was to make school an even greater burden.

“Frankly, that did not work very well,” said Ramon Billescas Jr., director of migrant programs for the PSJA school district. “Students felt isolated. They got only one day off for Christmas, and they couldn’t work after school.”

Bend to Ease the Burden

Now schools bend as far as they can to ease the burden. In nearby Weslaco, students who attend nine of the 18 weeks in a semester and who pass three of the four exams can get credit for the whole semester.

In some school districts, night classes in reading and writing are held for parents, and school buses pick up parents for required sessions with counselors. In the PSJA district, bimonthly parental education meetings for migrants offer sessions on everything from nutrition to financial planning to communicating with teen-agers.

“A lot of our work is with the parents. By teaching the parents to read and write, we are helping the child,” said Irma Gonzalez, director of federal programs for Weslaco.

The results, measured largely by dropout rates, have been encouraging in the last few years. About 60% of the Texas-based migrants involved in special education programs graduate, compared to only 37% for those not in a migrant program, a TEA study found.

“People don’t realize how good migrant programs are,” said Norma Cantu, an attorney with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, who has pursued equal education lawsuits. “The kids actually have a very coherent, systematic process.”

Progress Threatened

But cutbacks in federal funds, as well as new requirements tied to education reforms in Texas and other states, threaten that progress, educators say.

Class sizes are growing and programs have been weakened, Cantu said. Weslaco, where half the 11,000 students are migrants, had to cut 16 positions from its migrant support staff of 181, Gonzalez said.

“It’s hurt us in clothing and medical services that are so crucial. We’re not going to have tuition for remedial summer school, and all field trips for migrant students have been cut out,” she said.

In Texas, general education reforms have created more problems for migrant students. Core credit requirements were raised, and exit tests are given at times when many students are on the road.

There are other peculiar quirks to the system. Band practice starts two weeks before school opens, so most migrants are ineligible. State football rules say any player not on the team by the fourth day of school has to sit out 30 days. Teachers say popular classes such as driver’s education, photography, typing and bookkeeping are often filled by the time many migrants arrive.

Front Lines of Battle

In a humid, windowless temporary trailer of a classroom, in the front lines of one of the nation’s toughest education battles, a 10th grader named Flora reads aloud:

“Colin looked at me with growing eyes. Uh, glowing eyes?” she says, stumbling through the words. “He disagrees he learned,” she says, only to be corrected, “By degrees he learned.” One student doodles, another chuckles with a chum.

The class of two dozen, all migrants who failed ninth-grade English last year and still made it to the 10th grade, is reading from a third-grade textbook, but few pick up the meaning of the simple passage, said Alanis, the PSJA principal.

“They can read phonetically, but there’s no comprehension,”’ Alanis said. “That’s a subtle sort of illiteracy.”

The students were promoted to avoid “a bottleneck” at the ninth grade, Alanis said, and to keep them encouraged. They are still in school, still trying.

“They don’t want to work in the fields the rest of their life,” said Linda Taormina, a Weslaco High School migrant counselor. “I have yet to find one that wants to leave school and work in the fields. They want out of that system.”