Latinos Invited to Stay Home for College : Program Hopes to Steer the Family-Oriented to Local Opportunities

There is a plethora of research on the topic, but eighth-grade English teacher Quality Quinn Sharp needs look no further than the raised hands of her own students for similar findings:

Of the 31 ethnic minority students in her classes at San Marcos Junior High School--virtually all of them Latino--24 say they want to go to college. But of those, 21 don’t want to leave home in their pursuit of higher education. Their attitude, shared by many Latino students according to studies about why so few attend four-year universities, will seriously limit their scholastic opportunities.

Moreover, educators know that, despite the best intentions of idealistic 13-year-olds, most of them--and the great bulk of minorities--will not graduate directly from high school to a university when the time comes.

Some will not qualify scholastically. Others will lack the encouragement of parents or peers to pursue higher education. Some will have insufficient money for tuition or books. Some will be sidetracked by marriages or jobs. Some won’t have the self-esteem necessary to see themselves as college material.

Cultural Decision

And many won’t go to a university because there is none near their home, and they don’t want to pull up stakes from familiar surroundings and strong family ties in order to move to a strange place. That decision to stay put is made by many students, but is especially prevalent within the Latino culture, studies indicate. And Sharp’s own classroom polls validate the finding.

Given that reality, Sharp is starting a program in San Marcos intent on shepherding as many of San Marcos’ minority students as possible to college, without leaving home.

Of anywhere in North County, Sharp figures the potentially college-bound eighth-graders in San Marcos should have an advantage, what with the coming of San Marcos State University in 1991, and the opening of the freshman class in 1995.

In San Marcos, a child can attend junior high, graduate down the road to high school and, upon graduation, attend the new university immediately or, depending on circumstances, attend Palomar Community College--also in San Marcos--for a year or two before moving on to the state university.

Without leaving home.

All these students need, Sharp says, is the proper catalyst, a matchmaker of sorts to unite student with school.

With that notion, Sharp is spearheading a program called “Ready, Set, Go,” funded by $23,000 from a La Jolla-based foundation that wants to remain anonymous but which is intent on seeing more Latino children set their sights on a college diploma without having to leave home if they don’t want to.

“We have an opportunity here we need to capitalize on,” Sharp said. “College doesn’t need to be--and shouldn’t be--a missed opportunity for culturally diverse students, especially in this city.”

Facets of Program

The multifaceted program is designed to identify students--especially Latinos--who as early as seventh-grade start showing interest in post-secondary schooling but aren’t sure how to channel it or keep that desire alive in the coming years.

Once the students are identified--and Sharp is hoping that 40 seventh- and eighth-graders will enlist in the program before the end of the current school year--a number of activities will begin, designed to mentally, socially and emotionally escort them all the way through college graduation.

* Study skill classes will be held before and after school, and during the summer vacation, so students can learn how to learn and to improve grades.

* Professional tutorial support will be provided, free, to those students needing special attention and motivational speakers and minority role models will be presented to the students to encourage them to set their sights on a college diploma.

* Special efforts will be made among the teachers and counselors in junior high, high school, Palomar College and the state university to ensure that the students take the appropriate courses for advancement.

* Field trips will be taken to Palomar College and the new San Marcos State University campus--even before the first buildings are constructed--to familiarize the students and their parents with the college settings and to remove some of the mystery and fear of such places.

* Special aid and instruction will be offered on such technical matters as how to fill out applications for financial aid and job placement, and special activities will be planned to improve school-parent communication, ranging from newsletters to group picnics, to enlisting parental support in encouraging their children to pursue a college education.

One of the built-in benefits of the program, Sharp notes, is the development of a group of students who will identify with and support one another as they share their aspirations to go on to college.

Support Crucial

Indeed, winning student support may be the least of the challenges, Sharp said: “Convincing students that they should want to go to college is sometimes as easy as tapping them on the shoulder and saying, ‘Do you want to think about college? I want to show you how you can get there.’ You can see the gleam in their eye that they’d like to.

“But getting the parents to buy into this will be a harder sell. We’re going to have to show them that 50% of all new jobs being created will require post-secondary education, and that, if they want their children to do well, they’re going to have to be supportive about college.”

Other professionals, including university recruiting and outreach officials, echo Sharp’s belief that, more often than not, especially in the Latino home, it is the parent who has to philosophically buy into the notion of the child attending college.

If the college is away from home, the job is even more difficult.

“Students from the Imperial Valley have a hard time making the break from home to come here,” said George Hutchinson, director of student outreach services at San Diego State University.

“We have to visit the home and spend time with the parents, especially in Hispanic households, and let them know that college is safe. Many of them haven’t had their own experience of going to college, and it’s especially hard if it’s their first child who wants to go to college,” he said.

Sharp hopes that her job will be easier because, in San Marcos, the student won’t have to leave home but simply needs the motivation, the grades and parental support to attend a four-year college just a mile away.

Programs like “Ready, Set, Go” are not unusual. The county Department of Education sponsors a program it calls AVID (Advancement Via Individual Determination) in which more than 2,000 students countywide, primarily blacks and Latinos, receive a wide variety of services and support intended to see them into college. The students participate in AVID as an elective course starting in seventh-grade and continuing through high school.

More than 500 teachers in 10 school districts--including San Diego, Oceanside, Vista and Escondido--are trained in an AVID curriculum designed to motivate and prepare their charges for college. The program also provides such services as tutorial help from college students assigned to the very high schools from which they themselves graduated. The student tutors are paid $6 an hour--a tab picked up by the host school district as part of its cost of participating in AVID.

Indication of Success

Mary C. Swanson, one of the program coordinators, said the success of AVID is clear: 90% of its participants over the past two years graduated immediately into four-year colleges. During their high school years, they raised their grade point average from 2.2, a low C, to 3.2, a low B. AVID graduates who attend SDSU have an average GPA of 2.46, compared to the average GPA of freshmen at SDSU of 1.9.

Swanson says she is disappointed that the San Marcos Unified School District does not participate in AVID and suggests that the district is trying to “reinvent the wheel.”

But San Marcos officials say they respect AVID and may indeed plug into it as a component of “Ready, Set, Go.” They don’t now participate in AVID, said Supt. Mac Bernd, “because of economics.”

“We think our program will accomplish the same thing, and be more cost-effective, because we have a private foundation that will foot the entire bill,” he said. “With AVID, we’d have to commit district resources--teachers and tutorial money--that are in short supply.”

Universities offer their own programs as well to encourage minorities to attend their schools. Besides a general outreach program, for instance, SDSU “adopted” Granger Junior High School in National City three years ago. The university provides tutorial help, support groups and other activities for the students through high school with the hope that, by the time they graduate, they will be ready to move on to college.

Ed DeRoche, dean of education at the University of San Diego, says there can never be too many programs to encourage minority students to attend a four-year college.

“Most kids need support and encouragement to go to college, but minorities need it more,” he said. “Most (non-minority) kids receive encouragement already to go to school, in such subtle ways as their own peers saying things like, ‘We’re going to college. How about you?’ But most minority kids don’t have peers saying that to them. They need to get that support somewhere else.”