“We have to dig deeper and ask, ‘What does the child know?’ and ‘What do their parents know?’” Tijerina said.
Immigrant students’ cultural backgrounds also inform what education level they wish to obtain, Tijerina said. In 2008, some families still believe that that teenagers should be starting families and not thinking about higher education, he said.
Finucane went on to note that tests required by The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) also hinder students because the act punishes schools that aren’t meeting testing standards. In turn, many of these schools want to remove students, who they feel are causing them to fail NCLB-related tests — many of them ELL students with poor language skills.
Finucane and other educators who attended the session lamented the decline in federal support of immigrant student education.
In 2002, the federal government granted $770 million in language acquisition grants to U.S. states and territories. According to U.S. Department of Education numbers, funds decreased by 13.1 percent in 2007, when the government granted states and territories $669 million instead.
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