Program for Migrant Students Earns Teachers’ Praise

Mexican and California educators at a binational education conference applauded progress in helping the children of migrant workers with their unique schooling problems, but said they must do more to make sure the students stay in school.

Because the children’s lives follow the agricultural season, they are in U.S. schools from September to November, then attend Mexican schools until May, when they return to the United States for the last two months of school.

Nearly 22,000 migrant children were enrolled in California schools last year, a 39% increase from three years ago, according to the San Diego County Office of Education. In San Diego and Orange counties, 2,050 migrant students attended schools last year, an increase of 56% in one year.

Because the children are less proficient in Spanish, and because the Mexican system of promoting children is different from the California system, Mexican teachers sometimes place children in lower grade levels, exacerbating the problems caused by moving between two cultures.

California and two Mexican states have tried in recent years to alleviate the problem by establishing an “international transfer” that gives teachers in both countries common ground on which to evaluate migrant students.

“The biggest triumph of this program has been the continuation of the children’s education, without interruption,” said Jose Rubio, a representative from the elementary schools of Michoacan, at the Second Annual Binational Evaluation Meeting in San Diego.

“More than 800 students from Michoacan used the international transfer last year, up from about 500 the year before,” Rubio said through an interpreter.

Baja California and Michoacan are the only Mexican states involved in the program, although Sonora’s representative to the conference said his state would soon join the program. Students from the three states represent 40% of the migrant students that came to California last year.

The international transfer guarantees the child entrance to Mexican schools and placement in the same grade level that they studied in California.

“We want to make sure that the kids stay in school,” said Socorro Barron, migrant education specialist at the county office of education.

The conference is being held to evaluate the effects of the program and to try to extend it to other states in Mexico.

“It seems like it’s been positive, we still have things to do, though,” said Sonnia Duffoo, director of the county’s migrant education program. “Our biggest problem is that sometimes the parents take the kids and leave overnight and we don’t know about it. If they don’t have the international transfer document, they’ve got to get one.”

Duffoo hopes that the conference, which ends today, will result in a binational parent’s pamphlet with information about the program.