Thread: Feds Seek System to Track Migrant Students

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 00242.html


Feds Seek System to Track Migrant Students

By REBECCA BOONE
The Associated Press
Friday, June 3, 2005; 4:15 AM

BOISE, Idaho -- Some Caldwell School District students arrive here in the middle of the year, with dust from California's farmland still clinging to their shoes.

Others leave before the year ends, headed south to hoe beets or change sprinkler lines.

Jesus de Leon, a federal program administrator for the Caldwell, Idaho School District, stands in front of the district's headquarters in downtown Caldwell, May 27, 2005. A proposal before the U.S. Department of Education would track students from families of migrant farm workers to ensure that school records follow them wherever they go. De Leon says that had he not gone to school he would be working in the fields right now.

For many children in migrant families, school is more like a way station than a final destination. Now, a proposal from the U.S. Department of Education would track those students as they travel along traditional migrant routes, ensuring that school records follow them wherever they may go.

"The challenge with migrant children, because they are so mobile, there is no consistency in terms of their education," said Albert Pacheco, executive director of the Idaho Migrant Council.

Jesus de Leon, a federal programs administrator for the Caldwell schools and a child of migrant workers, knows firsthand how difficult it is for migrant children to accrue the credits needed to graduate.

"We went to school from November to March," said de Leon, who credits his education for helping him escape a life in the fields. "We left from south Texas in March and followed a big loop _ in Idaho we'd do hops, beets, corn, then to Utah and Colorado for tomatoes. In west Texas we'd pick cotton and be back home by November."

The federal government's last attempt at such a program grew so unwieldy over time that it was ultimately canned in 1995, and most states now have their own such tracking programs _ which may or may not be compatible with a federal system.

"With the passage of No Child Left Behind, Congress required that the department _ for the purpose of electronically exchanging health and education information _ link the existing state migrant student information systems," said Alex Goniprow with the federal Office of Migrant Education.

The effort, officials hope, will allow schools to immediately access students' test scores, class credits and even immunization records.

"There was a tendency for schools to say, 'Well, I don't know if we're going to test them because they're going to leave in three weeks,'" said Irene Chavolla, Idaho's migrant education coordinator. "But right now, with all the testing under the No Child Left Behind Act, it's really important for the schools to know where those students were getting help."

Roughly 11,300 of Idaho's nearly 250,000 students are migrants, their families moving at least once in three years across district lines to find agricultural or other seasonal work. Many move every season, and some move every two or three weeks.

Idaho attempts to track those children from school district to school district through a password-protected Web site. Schools are prohibited from sharing the information with other agencies, including the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, Chavolla said. She added that many parents have embraced the program.

"There are concerns that students are over-immunized and over-tested because these families may lose their immunization cards when they move around so much. This allows them another way of proving that students have been immunized," she said.

State officials will soon travel to Washington D.C. to explain Idaho's system to federal officials, Chavolla said.

The U.S. Department of Education hopes to award a contract to develop the national system by the end of this summer, Goniprow said. For now, he said, it is tough to estimate how much a system may cost or how it would be paid for.

We don't need anymore SYSTEMS

WE NEED THESE PEOPLE GONE!!! GONE

Every new SYSTEM costs TAXPAYERS MONEY!!!!

MONEY AND MORE MONEY!!