|
For Public Comments to the Commission, please click here
58
1 get embraced to get on board.
2 And it's everything from the traditional
3 groups which you would think of, which are colleges and
4 universities and the public ed system, but it's also a
5 week from Friday they're going to have a meeting with
6 150 community based organizations from the YMCA to the
7 Boys and Girls Clubs, to any group you can think of, and
8 they're bringing them all to Austin to sit down and say
9 we want to get you on board and we want your help on
10 this because we know you come in contact with these
11 students and we know you support the outcomes that we're
12 looking for.
13 We're going to churches. These people are
14 maintaining a database of contacts that is just
15 absolutely phenomenal and there is no part of this state
16 that they won't go to and nobody they will not talk to.
17 But we decided that our resources needed to
18 concentrate on how we developed those partnerships. The
19 capacity compacts, which are a very interesting fairly
20 new approach on many of our university and college
21 campuses which says that service link is very important
22 and the students in the colleges and universities should
23 get out into the public schools, and they've embraced
24 this.
25 So we're really looking at any kind of
59
1 different way you find.
2 MR. MURDOCK: I want to add one thing. The
3 business community of Texas has been the forefront of
4 many of these activities. The governor's business
5 council, for example, have several members who are among
6 the main supers of the program, proceeding T Back, which
7 is a business group that has long been interested in
8 education, and they started their focus at elementary
9 and secondary education, and I think it makes a big
10 difference and they're now very actively participating
11 in issues related to this particular program.
12 So I think the business community in fact was
13 -- had some of the foresight in Texas to see that the
14 future needed to change from the standpoint of their own
15 labor forces and their own markets for goods and
16 services.
17 MR. HANNA: Grace.
18 MS. RAMOS: Yes. One of the things I was
19 interested in -- and I didn't really hear -- you talked
20 in general about how you're trying to get the
21 population, and the demographics show Hispanics are the
22 fastest growing, but I didn't do what you're doing to
23 narrow the group and help the Hispanic, which what I see
24 the focus is of this commission and what we're looking
25 for.
60
1 And it seemed again what I heard and I think
2 you mentioned that this is some of the Anglos, some of
3 the African-Americans, which is great, but where -- what
4 plan do you have to actually target the Hispanic
5 population?
6 Have you got some specific plan that maybe
7 some of the others would look at and find, you know,
8 helpful in the work that we're doing? Because, again,
9 part of the problem that we're looking at is why
10 Hispanics are not enrolled, why they're not taking
11 advantage of those opportunities. And I didn't really
12 hear anything in this plan that would target that or
13 look at that.
14 The second part of my question, you have this
15 commission that's looking at all this and coming from a
16 civil rights background. I just wonder how many of
17 those commissioners, decision makers are Hispanic.
18 MS. FLACK: The coordinating board, I would
19 have to -- it's a 18-member board, and I believe we have
20 -- I probably could add them up. I think we have three
21 Hispanic members at the moment out of the 18.
22 The planning committee that actually created
23 the original plan included was balanced across race,
24 ethnicity, gender and region of the state. So it was
25 probably -- I would say it was probably about a quarter
61
1 to a third Hispanic.
2 But the notion -- to get back to the first
3 part of your question which was how are we doing this,
4 the research component in this is so critical because we
5 did not presume to know what it would take to motivate
6 students and how to reach different segments of the
7 Hispanic audience. So what we're doing right now is the
8 research that will identify that.
9 And that is one of the reasons that the
10 principal grant recipients of this was a research firm
11 because we wanted them to get in and look and see, you
12 know, why are the students not going and what is it that
13 we could do to persuade them to go. But we don't have
14 the answers yet because the research isn't completed
15 yet.
16 We also have a strategy in the plan, the
17 retention strategies, and each university and college
18 has to have one that targets the regions, if you will,
19 of the state they serve; so that if you're in Houston,
20 for instance, where you have a pretty huge Hispanic
21 population, then you need to target Hispanics as part of
22 your recruitment and retention strategy.
23 Right now in terms of the campaign we are
24 still in the process of identifying what it will be that
25 we will do.
62
1 MR. MURDOCK: I think the other part of this
2 is I think everybody involved in this is pretty aware of
3 the demographics we just talked about. Obviously in the
4 state where higher education is still under the bounds
5 of Hobnell, many of the things we do are going to be
6 characterized in a different way than might be the most
7 focused or most fair way.
8 It's a reality that we work in, and
9 particularly higher education, the coordinating board
10 for example, we have a Texas grant program that's going
11 to be a program for all poor kids, because that passes
12 Hobnell measure.
13 If we talk about specific groups, it doesn't
14 pass the Hobnell measure. I think the demographics are
15 clear to the people involved in this. I think sometimes
16 you won't see the specificity because of other
17 dimensions.
18 MR. HANNA: Charlie.
19 MR. GARCIA: I have a question for Steve.
20 In the democracy it usually takes a large
21 crisis to get politicians to act or you have to be able
22 to show as I guess you did in Texas by not making a
23 decision you're taking an action and that action is
24 going to cost the state X and you show them why it's
25 going to cost X.
63
1 So it would be very helpful for this
2 commission if we knew, we had the numbers for each state
3 and for the nation where we could say if we do not act,
4 it's going to cost our state or our nation X by having a
5 less educated population.
6 Are those numbers readily available through
7 your research.
8 MR. MURDOCK: We did have research that we
9 did in the 1990s and in the process of updating to the
10 2000 census. We did work at the national level, not
11 state by state, because the amount of work necessary to
12 do that is not inconsequential. In other words, we had
13 about an 18-month study to do the Texas part.
14 And because each state has somewhat different
15 laws that provide an education and so forth, you really
16 have to do parts of it on a state-by-state basis. We
17 did a national study we called the American Challenge,
18 which came out in '95, and I'll be glad to -- of course,
19 since my mother is probably the only one who bought any
20 copies of this book, I would be glad to help you find
21 ways of getting it.
22 We've done basically Texas and the U.S. as a
23 whole, and in the U.S. as a whole we talk about our
24 needs in terms of federal tax revenues, what it will
25 mean in terms of, you know, the other side of the coin,
64
1 what it might mean in terms of increased need for
2 variety of social services, and we've shown the
3 difference assuming different levels of education and so
4 forth.
5 So we have done that at the national level
6 and we've done that at the Texas level. I don't think
7 anyone has done it for all states because of the -- it's
8 a tremendous research task to do it.
9 California has done some work, I believe. Am
10 I correct?
11 MR. GARCIA: I would like to see maybe not a
12 proposal, but what the study should entail, because the
13 Department of Education has an 800 million dollar R&D
14 facility and probably very few dollars and people
15 working on this issue, but this is an issue that would
16 be tremendously valuable for the nation. If we could
17 serving as a catalyst to get that moving, it would be
18 very helpful.
19 MR. MURDOCK: I would be glad to write a
20 letter to the commission and specify what my thoughts
21 are, but what I would see needed to be done based on our
22 Texas and U.S. experience, but recognizing, of course,
23 it may not be the best thing that could be done for
24 Florida or California or other places.
25 MR. HANNA: Rene.
65
1 MR. VAZQUEZ: (Inaudible question.)
2 MS. FLACK: Personally I don't have any
3 specific information on that, if you're talking about
4 federal dollars to help to close the gap.
5 MR. VAZQUEZ: Yes. How much money is spent.
6 MS. FLACK: I'm sure the Department of Ed
7 people could probably get that for you. I personally
8 don't have that kind of information and have not ever
9 seen any of that sort of specific information, but I
10 think it would be useful to the commission to know how
11 the allocation of resources is going at the federal
12 level.
13 MR. HANNA: Micaela.
14 MS. ALVAREZ: Good morning. Also thank you
15 for your presentation.
16 As far as the specifics, do you have those
17 broken down for students as far as socioeconomic status,
18 how they correlate going on to further education?
19 MR. MURDOCK: We have some information, not
20 in this, but we have done some work in a parity study
21 that was done a few years ago looking at kids from
22 different socioeconomic backgrounds and they're going on
23 to college in Texas. And I can certainly get a copy of
24 that provided to you.
25 MS. ALVAREZ: I think that would be very
66
1 helpful because obviously who we're targeting has an
2 impact. Thank you.
3 MR. HANNA: I think we may have time for one
4 more question before our break. If we have anyone else.
5 Ofelia.
6 MS. BOSCH: Terri, are there any programs now
7 or will there be any programs to encourage Hispanic high
8 school graduates who have already been out in the work
9 force four, five, ten years, for them to go back to
10 school, to college?
11 MS. FLACK: When we characterize a campaign,
12 it's easy to think we're only targeting recent high
13 school graduates, but we believe there are individuals
14 who have been out of high school for some time that may
15 not be aware that coming back to college could be a
16 great thing for them. So we hope to reach that segment
17 of the population as well. And as well as those -- this
18 gentleman spoke about people who were there and left, we
19 would like to get them back to college.
20 Definitely our efforts on this plan are to
21 make sure that educational benefits are clothed
22 throughout the population.
23 MR. HANNA: It is time for us now to take a
24 break. We'll reconvene in 15 minutes. And because the
25 schedule is so tight, if everyone could be here on time.
67
1 I do want to thank Terri Flack and Dr. Steve
2 Murdock.
3 (Applause.)
4 MS. MAZZUCA: Your next guest speaker is
5 Costanza Eggers Pierola, and Costanza is a researcher
6 and educator focusing on reform efforts that directly
7 impact bilingual and minority children, their families
8 and their communities and for more than 20 years she's
9 launched groundbreaking studies and programs that have
10 helped institutions identify different ways to adapt
11 their systems and practices to promote the full
12 participation of diverse population.
13 Currently she is the project director for the
14 Center for Children and Families Education Development
15 Center in Newton, Massachusetts. She oversees a
16 consortium project that address the culture and
17 linguistic needs and has produced a set of publications
18 to support trainers, practitioners and their families,
19 education to Latino children.
20 I would like to introduce our next guest
21 speaker, Costanza Eggers Pierola.
22 MS. EGGERS PIEROLA: Good day. I have a
23 confession to make. My presentation is actually in
24 Spanish. I'll speak in English, but the slides were
25 made for practitioners. I don't know which one of my --
68
1 are they both working? Because I have some
2 old-fashioned technology here on the slides.
3 First of all, I wanted to explain a little
4 bit about EDC and how this whole project got to EDC. I
5 don't know if many of you are familiar with what that
6 organization does, but I also have some pamphlets that I
7 can share with you.
8 Basically this project started many, many
9 years ago and then was brought to EDC specifically for a
10 planning phase for the consortium in the results, which
11 is this product here. So I want to tell you why EDC was
12 chosen, because it's not basically a Latino centered
13 organization, but it's very large nonprofit that has
14 served and created programs and technical assistance
15 throughout the country and also in different parts of
16 the world, including parents and families of young
17 children.
18 It also has the capacity to reach an enormous
19 amount of constituents through Head Start. I don't know
20 if you're familiar with that kind of technical
21 assistance.
22 So the Center for Children and Families which
23 creates programs and technical assistance housed this
24 project that I'm going to tell you about to great length
25 and basically your report -- I don't know if your
Back | Transcripts Home | Continue
|
