Thread: Editorial: Latinos' educational progress affects all Texans

Editorial: Latinos' educational progress affects all Texans

11:04 PM CDT on Saturday, June 7, 2008

We don't doubt that this week's reading of The Dallas Morning News will cause some North Texans to throw down their newspapers in anger. The front-page stories that start today about the struggle Latino children have in progressing through the Dallas school district will lead many readers straight back to the immigration debate.

If we would only deport those kids, goes one side of this argument, our schools wouldn't have so many problems. But deporting hundreds of thousands of kids isn't going to happen. Besides, these children's legal status isn't the issue. The Supreme Court has ruled that states must educate all kids, even children of illegal workers.

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The real issue is how schools in Dallas and across Texas educate so many Hispanic children, whether they are first-, second- or third-generation Latinos. This responsibility starts with Latino families ensuring that their children show up at school, master their classes and ultimately succeed.

But this complicated task is important to all Texans because the state's future is wrapped up with its fast-growing Latino population. Before he left to head the U.S. Census Bureau, University of Texas at San Antonio demographer Steve Murdock warned that the Texas economy will be at risk if Hispanics don't graduate in healthy numbers from high school and college.

Here's why: Latinos will dominate Texas' workforce by 2040. If they lack the skills the global economy demands, the state can forget growing and attracting good-paying jobs. Instead, Texans will count on more demand for Medicaid, prison beds and welfare. Texas will see its middle class shrink.

In other words, all of Texas falls behind if one part of its population fails to advance. That is why focusing on schools with large Latino populations is in every Texan's interest. And why Latino families must take the lead in learning English, assimilating into cities like Dallas and putting a premium upon education.

For these reasons, we suggest each of us take the time to read and think about this series. We can throw down the newspaper. Or we can realize how Texas' future rests in all of us meeting this challenge.

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent ... bef82.html

Here in NC, laws were recently changed to prevent illegals from entering the community college system. I completely agree with this. I wish that more states would do this.

Phyler v. Doe was such a scam!!!

Should honest kids be crowded in schools by dishonest kids? Should poor, by honest taxpayers be forced to pay for the education of children here illegally, while their own children are in class rooms with 50% drop out rates?

Is it time to review the 1982 Supreme Court decision that opens our classrooms to anybody that has parents that can sneak into our nation and violate our laws?

Does anybody believe having close to a majority of students that do not speak English helpful to those here legally? This is a disaster.

Free School for Illegals: Time for a Supreme Court Review?

By William Perry Pendley, townhall.com, 4/1/08

Last year, a senior at Roswell (New Mexico) High School was ticketed for blocking a fire lane outside a middle school and for driving without a license. When the Roswell police officer who stopped her discovered that she had no proof of legal U.S. residency, he notified immigration authorities; rather than fight deportation, she agreed to be sent back to Mexico. Over the past few weeks, newspapers across the country have discovered the tale and used it to lecture Americans on the “rightsâ€