“The goal is to allow students to continue to keep up with the content of their classes in Spanish, while they are going through the process of learning English,” he said.
The program will also help schools evaluate students’ transcripts to place them in the proper grades. Alanis said that even if a student has successfully completed a few years of high school in Mexico, Texas automatically places them in the 9th grade if the student doesn’t speak English.
“This often leads to frustration and extremely high drop out rates,” he said.
Now, students can use the Mexican courses to get credit in algebra, biology, geometry, chemistry, world history, physics and economics. Electives include accounting, sociology, business management, technology applications, and pre-calculus. In addition, some Mexican schools are beginning to allow immigrant students in the U.S. to use these distance courses to earn their high school diplomas in Mexico.
Is the Mexican curriculum is as rigorous as what is taught in the United States? Alanis’s research concluded that Mexican classes usually cover less material but in much greater depth. For example, if a Texas biology class specifies 29 learning objectives, a similar class in Mexico has 19 or 20.
--Paul Ruffins
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