Immigration, Children, and America: The Dreams of Hispanic Youngsters

Beginning

In college, my friends and I started an after school pre-k literacy program for Hispanic children.  Because Hispanic children in the United States face major obstacles standing in between them and their own dreams.  Our current immigration laws refuse to give immigrant Hispanic children citizenship and continue to break up Hispanic families.  This economically (and arguably morally) jeopardizes our nation’s promise of opportunity--our American Dream--for any child who works hard.  Here’s why.

Introduction to Academic and Economic Issues Facing Hispanic Children

Compared to all other ethnicities in the US, hispanic children have the highest high school dropout rates in the country¹, and they academically underperform their white peers at every grade K-12².  Consequently, as adults these children can expect to be unemployed, earn low-incomes, and struggle as they straddle the lines between struggling and living^3,4. 

Source of Academic and Economic Gaps

These children’s gaps in academics and economics are the result of their cognitive and noncognitive skills deficits that began in and grew larger since their early childhood⁴.  Their mothers, who raise them and who, on average, come from disadvantaged backgrounds with little formal schooling, know they should invest in developing their children’s skills--but they don’t know how and their children’s skill deficits reflect that lack of knowledge⁶. 

Almost half, 46%, of all Hispanic children in 2010 had mothers who had not graduated from high school (8% for Whites)--and 20% of them had mothers with an education below the 8th grade; and among immigrant Hispanic families, the percent of a Hispanic children with a mother without a high school education rises to 54%; the percent with a mother’s education below 8th grade, up to 29%! 

Unfortunately, these mothers do not read to their children as frequently as more educated mothers do; do not use and expose their children to vibrant, expansive language and vocabularies as frequently; and they do not enroll their children into high quality preschool and early childhood programs that develop their children’s skills where they, the mothers, cannot^5,6.  These children lack these investments, and this lack of investment causes them to develop skills deficits that open up early in their lives, widen over time, and predict academic achievement gaps and adverse life outcomes according to their finances and health.

These children also largely live in immigrant homes where Spanish is the dominant language in the household.  This linguistic isolation makes learning in the American classroom all the more difficult, as English proficiency is a major predictor of academic success for Hispanic children⁵.

NOTE: 

1.  Child defined as child aged between 0 and 8 years of age.

2.  All percentages in following statistics are taken from footnotes 5 and 6

Why Do These Gaps Matter?  The Development of and Interaction Between Cognitive and Noncognitive Skills

The first 5 years of a child’s life are critical for their success as adults in the labor market.  Within these first few years of life (and even before birth), children develop most of their cognitive and noncognitive skills that determine the rate at which they learn and the size of the positive impact that schooling has on their lives.  Cognitive skills are the “smarts” of a child.  Being able to do math problems immediately and solve equations and puzzles.  The non-cognitive skills, also termed their social and emotional skills, are their “soft skills,” their ability to motivate themselves, to be patient, to persevere, and to sit down to study for long periods of time.

According to James Heckman, University Professor at the University of Chicago, children with larger amounts of non-cognitive skills develop their cognitive skills faster.  They learn faster.  When they realize this, they in turn invest more in their non-cognitive skills too because they realize the complementary benefits of investing in both skills. This is dynamic complementarity:  it is a virtuous cycle.  And the more a child already knows, the easier it is to learn new skills!  This is self-productivity.

Simply put, a child that can study for long periods of time and remain motivated to learn is going to learn faster than another child that does not.  And the more the child continues to learn, the more the child will be willing to study longer, making learn even easier over time.  Lastly, the more a child already knows, the easier it is to learn something new!

Most importantly, there is a critical window in time in a child’s life where these skills first develop and are easiest to develop.  These are the years from birth to age 5.

The Future if We Don’t Act

As Hispanic immigration trends remain constant for the foreseeable future, as largely  disadvantaged and uneducated Hispanic mothers and families immigrate from Mexico and Central America to raise their children in the US, these children will continue to drop-out of school at the nation’s highest rates; they will continue to academically underperform;  and they will continue to struggle economically in the labor market⁵. 

This means we’re going to have high rates of poverty, violence, incarceration, high school dropouts, and civil-strife—we’ll have a big chunk of the nation living in horrible conditions; and we’ll have increasing inequality across racial and class lines that will only fuel racial and class violence.

What this all means if we do nothing:

Simply put, Hispanic families tend to be, on average, poor, uneducated, and linguistically isolated.  Families expressing these characteristics, unfortunately, provide suboptimal early childhood environments for their children causing their skills deficits which lead to adverse life outcomes, including lower educational attainment and poverty.  It is also well documented that families expressing these characteristics also express higher fertility rates: this leads to a vicious cycle of intergenerational, adverse early childhood environments and therefore intergenerational poverty.

Immigration, Children, and America

These children have dreams.  They live in the United States; they grow up under the American flag; they make friends with American children--and they are American in every way except for their parents’ immigration status (or their own). 

And 70% of them end up in only 10% of our schools, and usually they’re the worst we have. 

Instead of giving them our immigrant Founding Fathers’ promise of opportunity, we stack the odds against them.  Instead of helping their mothers get an education, we send them back to their native countries--leaving their child to grow up without a parent, without an advocate, without someone to invest in their human capital--their cognitive and noncognitive skills.

We exacerbate their skills gaps and then deride them for their poor performance in our schools and their performance in our labor markets--even though they pick our vegetables, fruits, and crops at dirt-cheap wages so we can eat them at dirt-cheap prices.

We endanger our country’s promise of opportunity for the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free.

Why My Friends Decided to Teach

If we actually invested in our Hispanic children, kept their families together, provided education to their mothers, these children would go to college, earn higher incomes, raise their employment rates, and--instead of allegedly draining our economy--would make our economy and nation grow faster, grow more resilient, and grow closer to our Founding Fathers’ vision of our nation as the home of opportunity.

That’s why my Hispanic friends decided to teach.  Because everyday that we focused on investing in these children’s human capital--in their cognitive and noncognitive skills--the closer we get to tearing down one obstacle in front of them: their skills gap.  If we could at least tear this obstacle down, we have then gotten these children one step closer to their American Dream.  Whatever that may be for them.  To be a doctor, a mechanic, a teacher--anything. 

Because they deserve the same shot, like every child in America, at their own American Dream.

References

1.  United States. Institute of Education Sciences (IES), National Center for Education Statistics, US 

Department of Education. Fast Facts: Dropout Rates. US Department of Education, 

2013. Web. <http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=16>.

2.  Reardon, S. F., & Galindo, C. (2006). Patterns of Hispanic students’ math and English literacy test 

scores in the early elementary grades: A report to the National Task Force on Early 

Childhood Education for Hispanics. Tempe, AZ: National Task Force on Early Childhood 

Education for Hispanics. Retrieved November 28, 2007, from 

http://www.ecehispanic.org/work/patterns.pdf.

3.  United States. Bureau of Labor Statistics, US Department of Labor. Employment Projections:

Education and employment rates by educational attainment. Washington, DC: BLS, 2013. 

Web. <http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_chart_001.htm>.

4.  Heckman, James (2008), “Schools, Skills, and Synapses,” Economic Inquiry, 46(3): 289-324.

5.  Understanding the language development and Early Education of Hispanic Children.  Eugene

Garcia and Erminda, 2012.

6.  Risley, Todd, and Betty Hart. Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young

American Children.  York, Pennsylvania: Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co, 1995.

The Case for Early Childhood Education Programs for Latino Migrant Students

[All quoted text--the indented text--come from this research paper, Latinos and Early Education: An Account of Diversity and Family Involvement by Cuellar, Rodriquez, and Garcia of Arizona State University (Word Document).  Highlighted text are other references of information.]

Latino immigration brings the United States both amazing economic benefits, like complementing our labor force and creating jobs for Americans, and tricky public policy problems, especially within  the American public education system that struggles to appropriately respond to a new, rapid influx of non-English proficient students and their academic struggles and large (yet decreasing) high school drop out rates.

States like California are finding it difficult to cope and adapt with this influx of immigrant children, whose households are generally low-income (58%) and uneducated with "only 9.5% of young Hispanic children had a mother with a college degree."  But our public education system has to adapt and change according to these children's needs simply because

Latino children are the fastest growing segment of the U.S. population; their families vary greatly, they often attend poor quality schools, and are likely to not achieve educationally as much as children from other ethnic groups.  This is in part related to the poor quality of the schools that Latino children often attend.

And most importantly and unfortunately--these students--a high proportion of them are not English proficient:

In a report using ECLS-K—the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Class of 1998-99, a nationally representative database that includes standardized test scores for children starting in kindergarten through the 5^th grade, Galindo & Reardon (2006) found that half of Hispanic kindergarteners are classified as language minority students and that 30% at the beginning of Kindergarten are not considered English proficient.  This is an important fact, because English language proficiency has been documented to be a key determinant of educational success (Gandara, Rumberger, Maxwell-Jolly, & Callahan, 2003; Reardon & Galindo, 2006).

This isn't necessarily surprising considering 

Most young children of Hispanic descent come from immigrant families.  In the year 2000, 64% of these children were either immigrants themselves (first generation Americans) or were US-born children-of-immigrants (second generation American).  Of these 64%, most (88%) fit the latter category (Hernandez, 2006).

How do we continue to change the tide and increase the academic success for our fastest growing population group?  We must continue, as the authors in Cuellar, Rodriquez, and Garcia state, developing programs that teach and prepare immigrant parents not only to become but how to become involved in their children's cognitive, linguistic and therefore academic development from the beginning--between ages 0-3.  And where parents find it extra difficult to provide structure for their children and develop their abilities in the formative years, we need directed and targeted afterschool programs that focus on reading comprehension and English literacy for this relatively poor and weak-English speaking student population (I'll have a post on afterschool programs later, with statistical tables and stuff!  Wuhoo!).

We need programs that integrate the partnership between non-profits, community, and family networks--programs like the following are great:

1.  Project FLAME (Family Literacy:  Aprendiendo, Mejorando, Educando)

Based at the University of Illinois-Chicago, Project FLAME particularly focuses on improving parent involvement and academic achievemnt of "children of limited English proficient parents" teaching parents

what types of books are appropriate for the age of their children, and are encouraged to reach out in the community to access literacy materials and create at home literacy centers.  Parents are also provided with English as a second language courses and encouraged to engage in reading and writing activities with their children. Through workshops in the program parents learn the value of interacting with their children in activities such as talking, singing, and playing.  The program emphasizes on talking with children about books.  In order to improve parent-school communication, parents learn about what schools expect from their children academically and are encouraged to volunteer in their children’s classroom.  

2.  Parent Institute for Quality Education (PIQE)

The fundamental premise of PIQE is that low-income, recently immigrated parents to the United States need information about the dynamics of the U.S. educational system, about how to collaborate with the school and teachers, and about how to assist their children at home (PIQE, 2007).  PIQE offers this information through a program that consists of eight ninety-minute sessions in which a range of topics are discussed, including home–school collaboration, the home, motivation, and self-esteem, communication and discipline, academic standards, how the school functions, and the road to university (Chrispeels & Rivero, 2001; Chrispeels, Gonzales, & Arellano, 2004; Golan & Peterson, 2002).

What's most exciting about this program is

data from a performance evaluation that focused on the children of parents that graduated from the PIQE program in San Diego suggest that PIQE has had a bearing on school persistence, reduced the dropout rate, and increased college enrollment (Chrispeels & González, 2004; Chrispeels, Gonzales, & Arellano, 2004; Vidano & Sahafi, 2004).

3.  Home Instruction for Parents of Preschool Youngsters (HIPPY)

[HIPPY is] a free, 2-year, home-based early intervention program for 4-and 5-year-old children.  In the U.S., it is intended to provide educational enrichment to at-risk children[of limited English proficiency--aka English Language Learners (ELL)] from poor and immigrant families , increase school readiness, and foster parent involvement in their children's education

The 30-week HIPPY curriculum is an explicit, direct, instructional program.  The lessons are designed to develop a child's skills in three major areas: language development, problem solving, and sensory and perceptual discrimination 

Taught with a curriculum administered in Spanish, children enrolled in HIPPY for pre-school and kindergarten outperformed their peers in a study with a control group of students enrolled in an early childhood school that wasn't HIPPY.

Conclusion and Questions:

While we focus on teaching parents how to become involved in their children's education--specifically within the immigrant and Spanish-speaking latino community--as well providing these students the opportunity to attend higher quality schools, we must focus on pushing these children into early childhood education programs.

How do we provide these extra bilingual services at a reasonable cost?  And should we propose afterschool academic enrichment programs specifically targeted to children of lower socioeconomic statuses (SES)?  I think so.  But where do we find the funding if we don't already have it?  And what programs exist now that provide these services, and what are their affects?

I'll look into it.  This is a developing issue that I'm just beginning to explore.  But I have a somewhat personal stake in this, considering I myself am latino.  I was just fortunate enough to have two educated, motivated immigrant parents from Nicaragua who came to the United States with nothing but a dream to succeed--and ultimately for me to succeed.

I've seen the dearth of ambition caused by a dearth of opportunity within the latino-community ghettos--and I've even temporarily attended the poor quality and overcrowded schools many latino children from low SES attend.

I see myself in a lot of these latino children, I do.  And I see my parents in them as well.  If it weren't for my mother who pushed me to read when I was younger, who read to me every night, who ensured my English proficiency was high; if it weren't for the quality pre-k and kindergarten I attended in a private school in Minnesota; if it weren't for the successful acculturation to the "American" way of life and belief and pursuit of education; if it weren't for teachers who took time afterschool until 4pm to help me go over math problems and homework when I almost failed---I would never have been able to attend the University of Chicago, one of the nation's premier universities.

These children deserve better from us as a nation of collective gratitude and paying-it-forward.  They deserve to know they can do not what I've been able to do...but better.

Children and Health Focus

With the advice from my economics mentor, Anya Samak, I'm going to focus this blog into a Health Economics blog with a particular emphasis on children, education, and their health.

I'm also going to translate health economics literature/research into digestible and quotable blog posts, while providing the public quick references, evidence, and new knowledge gained from the most recent research--or research I find really interesting.

I'll also try to post interesting and up to date news articles I come across relating to health, youth development and education, as well as asking questions and expressing my own opinion and ideas.

Let's see what happens.

Thanks Anya, for the recommendation.  I think this could be something really cool.

Family Income and the Health of Children: The Poor Get Sicker and Sicker

If there was any question whether income and education affect health outcomes...well, there isn't one now.  Or at least there shouldn't be, after the hallmark study "Economic Status and Health in Childhood: The Origins of the Gradient" by Case et al.

She and her team of researchers found:

Immediately apparent in the left panel of Figure 3.1 (graph shown below) is the inverse relationship between family income and children’s health status for children of all ages. The correlation becomes progressively more negative with age—a phenomenon that holds throughout childhood and adulthood (note the change in scale between the panels). This steepening of the gradient with age is observed until roughly age 65, a result consistent with the findings of other researchers. The results for the PSID [Panel Study of Income Dynamics] are similar to those for the NHIS [National Health Interview Survey].

...on average, children’s health becomes poorer with age and...the differences in the health of wealthier and poorer children become more pronounced with age. 

Family income is not only a strong predictor of a child's health status at any given age, but it also seems to determine whether children face negative health outcomes that increase in severity as they age.

Being poor means that as children grow older, not only do they experience higher percentages of worse health outcomes, but their health status worsen over time--meaning the health gap between wealthier and poorer children only grows over time.

Family income really determines a child's health from beginning to end.  Income's protective power over children's health cannot be underestimated.

As Case et al conclude:

...income is itself protective of children’s health, or is correlated with things that are protective of children’s health. Perhaps both.

But what about parental education?  That has to have some positive effect on children's health outcomes, considering that education tends to lead to higher incomes, right?

The addition of parents’ educational attainment to the set of controls has a large effect on the estimated income coefficients, reducing them by roughly a third for all ages relative to results using Controls 1. However, the gradients remain large and highly significant. Even with controls for parents’ educations, a doubling of household income is associated with an increase in the probability that a child is in excellent or very good health of 4.0 percent (for ages 0-3), 4.9 percent (ages 4-8), 5.9 percent (ages 9-12) and 7.2 percent (ages 13-17).

... 

Although adding controls for education does not eliminate the effects of income, the coefficients on parents’ educations are large and significant. Children living with a mother with a high school degree are reported to be in better health than those whose mothers have not finished high school (the omitted category here). Children whose mothers have more than a high school degree are reported to be in even better health. A similar pattern is seen with respect to fathers’educations.

So while parental education does improve the health of children, income still dominates when it comes to improving a child's health outcomes.

(Click to enlarge the graphs!)

I have more to expand upon.  The paper also covers children and chronic conditions.