Migrant Education Director Alfonso Anaya, right, speaks with students attending the Latino/a Education Achievement Project (LEAP) Conference in Olympia.

Success of Latino
Students Essential for
Success of America,
Says Migrant Director

By Editor Ken Harvey

Hispanic students need to succeed for their own sakes but also for the sake of the United States, says State Migrant Education Director Alfonso Anaya.

“It doesn’t matter what they do with immigration, Hispanics are still going to grow faster than any other group,” Anaya says.

Projections are that out of 1 million students in Washington public schools, Hispanics are going to grow from 15 percent or 150,000 now to 25 percent or 250,000 by the end of 2010.

This Hispanic population in the U.S. is the youngest population because Latino families have more children. There were 46.6 million Latinos in America as of July 2005, but as the country has surpassed the 300 million mark, half of the growth is now coming from the Hispanic community.

“By the year 2050, it is predicted that the Hispanic population will grow to 120 million and represent more than 20 percent of the population,” Anaya says.

“What you are doing here will automatically make a difference,” he tells Hispanic youth. “You are going to be a quarter of the population and also the youngest population.”

The median age of Hispanics is only 24, while the median age of the overall U.S. population is 36, he says. There are 9.5 million Hispanic families, and 63 percent of them have children under 18.

Anaya predicts there will be a Latino or Latina president by 2050.

Hispanics are entrepreneurial, Anaya says. Latino-owned businesses in the U.S. produced $222 billion in revenues in 2002 but just four years later were bringing in $300 billion.

Hispanics tend to have more traditional families that Anglos and other ethnic groups. Most Hispanic adults are married; 46 percent of them are married with children under 18; and 22 percent of them have children under 5.

“We’re one of the few ethnic groups that still emphasize the traditional family,” Anaya says.

So for American to continue to grow and prosper, Latino students need to succeed academically, which means educators need to adapt to the needs of the students.

Educational leaders need to understand that Cubans and Mexicans are not the same, says Anaya. “They call us all ‘Hispanics’ so they can count us.”

But as Latinos become 25 percent of the U.S. population, the nation will have to not just count them but count on them to carry the nation forward.

Already there are 1.1 million Hispanics in the U.S. military, Anaya points out, “and we serve with distinction.” He says Hispanics are the “most decorated group” proportionately in the military.

“It’s your responsibility to take us forward,” Anaya tells the Hispanic youth.

“I’m no smarter than anyone in this room,” he says, as he assures the students that they can be leaders in business, in the arts, in the sciences and in government. But he adds, “It is not easy. It’s a struggle.”

Even teachers and counselors who are supposed to help students succeed sometimes discourage them and hold them down.

“I was a migrant child who traveled in five states, including Washington. We lived in cars. We lived in tents. We lived in barns. We lived without a roof over our heads. And we lived in houses with dirt floors,” says Anaya.

His father came to the U.S. as a cowboy and gradually brought his family to the U.S. Half of the family’s 10 children were born in Mexico and half in the U.S.

Anaya grew up mostly in areas where there were few Hispanics, and his parents insisted he speak Spanish at home. But he learned English so quickly at school that teachers sometimes accused him of cheating, not believing he could do the work he did.

“I learned I wasn’t accepted in this country,” says the state official.

Anaya remembers how his high school counselor refused to sign him up for college prep courses because he didn’t believe Anaya was “college material.” So Anaya decided he would plague the counselor until he gave in. Anaya would be waiting at the counselor’s office when he arrived in the morning, and he would go to his home late at night. After two months the counselor gave in.

“I’m going to put you in university classes to show you that you don’t have what it takes to go to college,” the counselor said.

But after he handed in his first story in the advanced placement English class – a story based on his own life experience – the teacher cried as she told the class: “I’m going to read one of the best stories I’ve read in any of my classes.”

The students also teared up as they heard his story.

“For me, I had a choice,” Anaya says. “I could be what everyone expected of me, or I could work hard and go to college.”

Anaya went on to achieve his bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees and to become a teacher, a principal, one of the first Hispanic school superintendents in California, and now the state director of the Migrant Education Program.

Anaya reminds Hispanic migrant students that their Mayan and Aztec ancestors have been through this before. Spanish was not their first language; their first language was a dialect from one of the earlier American civilizations. And yet their ancestors mastered Spanish as a foreign language and successfully became doctors and lawyers and engineers and government leaders.

Anaya says parents don’t want to lower educational standards; they just want their children to have the help they need to achieve the standards and pass the statewide WASL test.

“You’re telling us you need people who can teach us and guide us and give us the same tools as other students have,” he says.

Anaya notes the creation of an Ambassador program, which will recruit Latino students to be role models to younger students, and spokesmen in front of community, school and government organizations.

Twenty new ambassadors will be chosen every year, he says.

The Migrant Education Program will arrange for the ambassadors to be granted early entrance into college, and will help arrange grants and scholarships so they can continue to act as ambassadors as they proceed through college and beyond.

After they graduate from college, they will be expected to “pay back” the financial assistance to help future students in the program. They will also be asked to continue as mentors to college and high school students.

Anaya says the program will also adopt the “Mormon concept,” referring to the well-known prosperity of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, whose members are expected to pay 10 percent of their earnings to the church as tithing.

The Ambassador program will only expect a 5 percent “tithing” from the students it helps achieve success, he says.

“There are not enough of us in the Legislature. There are not enough of us on school boards,” Anaya says. “Over the next 10 years, these students need to help change that.”

Anaya urges Hispanic parents, however, not to sacrifice their culture for the American Dream.

“English is necessary to battle in this economy,” he says. “But Spanish is a richer language culturally.”