Thread: SOB Students finish year, graduation, plans for future

Adamson students finish year with TAKS results, graduation, plans for the future

11:20 PM CDT on Wednesday, June 11, 2008
By MACARENA HERNANDEZ and GARY JACOBSON / The Dallas Morning News
mhernandez@dallasnews.com
gjacobson@dallasnews.com

It wasn't very long ago that Juan and Elias shared the same path. The recent immigrants from rural central Mexico both came to Dallas mainly to work. School was an afterthought.




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But now, in mid-May, just a couple of weeks before classes will end at Adamson High School, it's clear their paths have diverged.

Elias, 17, the tattooed kid from Ocampo who quit Adamson earlier in the year, is back in Oak Cliff after working two months in the coalfields of North Dakota.

He is more determined than ever to work.

He has a new ride, a 1999 Ford Expedition, and some impressive pay stubs. One in particular, for $1,700, caught Juan's eye. It was a week's take-home pay, counting overtime and a stipend for expenses.

"Damn, bro," Juan recalls telling his friend. "I'd settle for $700."

Students like Juan and Elias who come to the U.S. as teens are among those most at risk of dropping out of high school. Many feel strong motivation to work, especially if their parents are struggling financially or have little education themselves.

Even though Juan and Elias grew up just a few miles apart in Ocampo, a region of Mexico that sends many immigrants to Dallas, they didn't meet until this school year at Adamson.

Juan, 16, wants to make some money, too, for clothes and a car. But after finishing a stint at Dallas ISD's Village Fair alternative school because of fighting, he's back at Adamson and on the verge of completing his first full year of school in America.

One of his Adamson teachers, Marcia Niemann, had worried that doing time in alternative school would drive him to quit.

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But Juan says a teacher at Village Fair gave him encouragement and told him he could eventually go to college, echoing Ms. Niemann's confidence.

Juan is starting to believe that the teachers are right: He can beat the odds.

"The truth is, when I first started at Adamson, I didn't even think about graduating," he says. "But this year, I saw that I can do more. Work or no work, I'm going to start school next year."

A job still comes first for Elias, who came to the United States in early 2007 and worked for a mining company in Arizona and an electric company in Texas, as a welder's assistant, before enrolling at Adamson in November.

He improved his English and left school in February, first for a job in San Antonio and then North Dakota.

His father is in a Mexican jail for dealing drugs, Elias says. So he helps provide for his mom and two sisters, one of whom attends high school in Mexico.

"My mother has never demanded anything of me," says Elias, who uses formal language unusual for a teenager. "On the contrary, she's encouraged me to continue studying. But because I'm the only man in my house, I've grown up feeling responsible."

His mother works at a grocery store in Ocampo. She earns the equivalent of about $90 a week. "The only thing Elias had on his mind was to help us," says his mother, Lucy.

In the few months since leaving Adamson, Elias says, he saved $13,000 and spent $6,000 of that on the Expedition.

Now he's waiting for another temporary contract job, somewhere, anywhere.


Staying realistic

In her four years of teaching English to recent immigrants at Adamson, Ms. Niemann has remained hopeful but realistic about the prospects of graduating kids. Her students arrive speaking little English, so they must master a new language before they can master academics.

Part of her strategy is to keep them in school as long as possible, even if their chances of finishing are slim. She preaches lifelong learning.

"It helps me deal with my frustration when they're dropping out," she says.

From her first class of 17 English as a second language students four years ago, Ms. Niemann says, seven stayed in school, and seven quit before graduating. She's lost track of the other three.

"We're doing pretty well if we can graduate 50 percent," she says, then quickly adds: "I absolutely think we have a lot of room for improvement."

Among the 61 kids who attended English as a second language classes that she and Laurie Gonzalez taught this year, 10, including Elias, left before the end of the year. Eight told the school they were returning to Mexico, but at least three of them remained in the U.S. and began working instead.

Two other students said they were going to other school districts. One moved to Richardson, but the other still lives just a few blocks from Adamson.

Among the 10 who left, one had struggled academically and two were overage for their grade level, making work seem more appealing than repeating a grade in their late teens.

When a kid leaves, the official reason reported by the school is important because it helps determine the school's dropout rate. A kid who says he is returning to Mexico or moving to another school district is not counted as a dropout in official state counts, which must be reported under the federal No Child Left Behind law.

Ms. Niemann says the reasons students give the attendance office for leaving often don't match what they really do, and the school could be more vigorous about following up.


Tears and joy

The all-important state TAKS exams – in math, science, social studies and English language arts – finished up in early May. This year's tests were especially critical to Adamson because in 2007 its math passing rates had dropped across all grades. The school's state rating slipped to "academically unacceptable."

If scores didn't improve, Adamson faced potentially serious consequences, including possible dismissal of staff, under state and No Child Left Behind guidelines.

Preliminary results don't arrive until May 19. Principal Rawly Sanchez is almost giddy at the report.

"Dude, we're pumped," he tells visitors in the hallway outside his office the next morning. "We're pumped."

Two students walk by, late for class. Mr. Sanchez usually has no tolerance for tardiness.

"Today only, they get a free pass, because I'm in such a good mood," he says.

Adamson's passing rates improved in almost all subjects at each grade level compared to 2007. In all but two categories – ninth-grade reading and 11th-grade math – the school performed better than in 2006, meaning it made up ground it lost in 2007.

"You guys have made us proud again," Mr. Sanchez tells students on the school PA system during morning announcements.

Dallas ISD Superintendent Michael Hinojosa calls some aspects of absolute performance measurements, such as TAKS passing rates, "inherently unfair." This is especially true when applied to schools with many students, including recent immigrants, who are learning English as they learn other school subjects.

He advocates using "value added" measurements that give schools credit for improving a student's performance, even if the kid can't yet pass a high-stakes test.

"That way, you don't punish a school that has to do the tough work," Dr. Hinojosa says.

Ms. Niemann is celebrating Adamson's TAKS results, too. One floor down from Mr. Sanchez, on the chalkboard in her ESL classroom, she has written the names of four of her students who passed at least one test. Pedro passed both reading and math.

"I was astonished," Ms. Niemann says. "I only learned last week that he only went to fourth grade in Mexico."

Pedro moved to Dallas when he was 12 and attended sixth through eighth grades here. He struggled at the beginning of his freshman year. He sat at the back of the class, silent. His body language made it clear he didn't want Ms. Niemann to call on him.

But he started to bloom in the second semester. He regularly volunteered in class and participated in discussions. His command of English improved over the course of the year, as it did for many of his classmates.

Ms. Niemann says Pedro is smart, and some of the improvement just comes with time. But she also credits a serious girlfriend, who encouraged him to go to tutoring sessions, and his decision to join football. He began training with the team in the second semester.

As Ms. Niemann talks, one of her former students walks in.

Sara is crying. A junior, she had previously passed two TAKS tests needed for graduation – English and social studies – and had retaken math and science. She has just learned that she passed math but failed science. She was a good student back in Mexico, winning regional math competitions, and had hoped to pass both tests this spring and not have to worry about TAKS next year.

Ms. Niemann reminds Sara not to forget what she has accomplished.

"You have already passed three tests in four years," says the teacher, who also is crying. "That's incredible; that's incredible."

Mr. Sanchez gives credit for this year's improvement to his teachers, who spent more time working one-on-one with students, reviewing their previous performance on the tests, sometimes going back to elementary school.

State ratings won't be official until this summer, but he thinks Adamson will shed its "academically unacceptable" label and become "acceptable" again. Thirty-seven more students received diplomas this year than last year (215 vs. 17, Mr. Sanchez says, while only five more (55 vs. 50) didn't graduate because they failed at least one TAKS test.


Graduation day

On Saturday, May 31, more than 2,500 parents, family members and friends arrive for the Adamson graduation ceremony at the Jesse Owens Memorial Complex.

Salutatorian David Palomo begins his speech in Spanish, paying tribute to hardworking Latinos, then switches to English. He came to Dallas from San Luis PotosÃ*, Mexico, when he was 6.

Valedictorian Alejandro Rodriguez Reyes speaks in English, recalling how the senior class gave teachers a hard time. He came to the U.S. when he was 9 from Guanajuato, the Mexican state that includes Ocampo.

After the ceremony, Alejandro explains his motivation throughout school. "My father would show us his hands," he says. "They were always cut up and calloused from working construction. He would tell us, 'I work this hard so you won't have to.' "

Mr. Sanchez also makes remarks, reminding the graduates that they are finishing a journey they started together four years ago, when they were freshmen and he first became principal.

"We start another one tomorrow," he says.

A few minutes later, as the graduates walk across the stage in their blue caps and gowns, Mr. Sanchez shakes hands with all of them and hugs most.

Around this time of year, many graduates who are here illegally worry about what comes next. Most will go to work. Some will end up at community colleges, where they can afford the low tuition while holding down a job. A few, those with scholarship money and high grade-point averages, will end up at four-year universities.

College is a big reach for many illegal immigrants because scholarships often require legal status. For example, the Hispanic Scholarship Fund, which calls itself "the nation's leading organization supporting Latinos in higher education," says on its Web site that applicants must be U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents.

The same goes for jobs students will seek after earning a college degree.


Looking to the future

On June 4, the last day of school for underclassmen, Juan and a few other boys are in Jokasta Maldonado's biology classroom. The last bell of the year just rang.

One of Juan's friends tells Mrs. Maldonado he's not sure he'll return next fall. He worries that he'll have to repeat his freshman year and, at 17, believes he might as well go to work.

Another boy says at least two other classmates told him they'll work full time next fall and won't return to school. One of them, a busboy at a restaurant, is a first-year immigrant from Oaxaca.

No one wants to be a freshman again.

"You're all coming back," says Mrs. Maldonado, switching into preacher mode.

"What was it that King Solomon asked God for?" she asks the boys in Spanish.

"Wisdom," Juan says.

"They can take away your cars, your house," she says. "But even if you're poor, no one can take away your education."

The last day of classes doesn't mean Ms. Niemann stops worrying about her students. This week, she learned that Juan earned enough credits to be classified as a sophomore next year. The same is true for Misael, a cross country and track runner who stopped coming to school for a time early in the second semester, but was talked back by his coach and teammates.

The path ahead won't be easy. Misael, if he returns to Adamson for his third year, will be 18. That means he probably wouldn't graduate until he was 21, at the earliest. Juan will be 17 next school year.

That means both face lots of hard work in the classroom. Juan says he's ready.

A few days after school ends, he has a job working construction with his father, earning $9 an hour. He's pretty optimistic he'll earn a high school diploma but doubts he'll go any further. College, he says, is the family's ambition for his youngest sister, a seventh-grader and a strong student. "If she doesn't want to go, my whole family will make her," he says. "She will go to college . I know she will. "







http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent ... 7591d.html

A 17 year old boy coming here and working for $1700 a week? I don't know any American who would turn that job down.

While the stories may be heart-warming or heart-breaking, the rule of LAW still applies here. They are illegal aliens and MUST be reported and deported. Mexico has excellent schools and universities, IF you apply yourself.

These teens would rather make lots of $$$ than further their education, we don't need that, send them home.

One in particular, for $1,700, caught Juan's eye. It was a week's take-home pay, counting overtime and a stipend for expenses.

An illegals invader takes home $1700 in one week, while we have American citizens who are out of work.

I'm a college graduate and then some who has never taken home $1700 a week. However, I can assure you I have worked many 50+ hour weeks which included all the stress and aggravation one could ever want to experience.

WHERE DO I SIGN UP to make $1700 (take home) a week in the corn fields?