By the People; Standards and Testing; Latino Achievement Gap

Eric's first grade year was an adjustment, me and his father had separated and we kind of all felt like, you know, where do we go? What do we do? And he had a hard time, you know, socializing with other kids. The beginning of the year was rough. Hi guys. Hi mom. Hi kids. You have a good day at school. Hi, Miss Karona. Thank you for all your help. You're welcome. Have a good evening. Good night. He went to an after-school program. It was open to kids in our school because of the probation period that they were on for having lower test scores than other

schools. When I heard that we were on probation, it was kind of disappointing. How was school today? To know that the test scores were low and that our children weren't, you know, at standards. It's just, you know, you wonder why. And I guess it's a disappointing side is that you wonder why aren't we there. So we had the opportunity to, you know, be in this program and because I was concerned about, you know, my son's education. He had one on one time with a tutor. And at this time, he, you know, he had her complete attention. The area that Eric was having trouble in was his reading. Was mostly his reading skills. He was reading below grade level. Having that one-on-one with the teacher, you know, where he felt comfortable asking our questions and and learning just just the two of

them. I mean, I think it made an improvement on, you know, his work. He could sit and do a task from start to finish and do it well. So he made a tremendous turn around. Now that the beginning of the year, we had an open house at school. They explained that we were no longer on a probation period. Our percentages and the student scores had improved so they were no longer able to provide us with the YDI tutoring because we were off of the probation period. So with the increasing test scores, they took this program away from us. And I do, I felt that it is disappointing because, you know, lots of times you just don't pick up where you left off. You need that boost to continue to make better scores. It's very frustrating to me because the kids still, they still need the

tutoring, you know, just because the school performed at a higher level doesn't mean that each individual student performed at a higher level. And so those services should still be available to those students who need them. I'm, you know, I'm hoping that we can get to that point where we're, where I had, or, you know, equal to, to other other states, other districts, other, you know, communities, even here in the city. That's most important thing to me is that we succeed. I don't, I don't want my children to, to be a statistic. There is a lot of discrimination. There is a lot of discrimination against us.

There's so many misunderstood about the students, especially students that came from Mexico. When they come to the system, they, they, they really don't understand what's going on. And there's nobody to tell them. So you lose that kid. People think that because you don't speak English, you're an ignorant, you know, and then when you have two classes and then you, you, you have it in English, it's hard to achieve

what you're supposed to. So, and even when they give the classes, sometimes they don't use the correct Spanish, you know, and then students doesn't feel connected with the system with, with the, with the way they're being teach. They need to learn English. And they need to do it right away, you know, but sometimes they didn't get the help. And then, and then teachers sometimes doesn't have time to do it. So these kids are pushed away from, from the schools. They've been ignored. So they'll get tired and drop out. The achievement gap, it needs to be with parents as well and at schools. I think they need to learn from parents and parents needs to learn from, from schools. But the big problem

is that we don't have that communication. My child, like this in English classes, all the documents that send us are in English. So in my house, my wife speaks, she understands English, but today I'm very little. So sometimes when she comes to work, I'm already, she's tired of what she wants to sleep on. And I have to pay to try to translate the papers or wait another day until she can read them and be able to write them. So even though the classes are in English, it would be good to send papers in Spanish for the parents who don't speak English. To me, I would like to assist more following the meetings of the school. The problem is that when I go today, there is no one who will translate me to Spanish. So I try to understand, but I don't understand everything. If I had a teacher, I would have followed the meetings of the school. The truth is that if we are interested in coming, but

the problem is that we don't understand what they are talking about. They talking about parent participation, but the reality is that when they have that participation, they don't know what to do with it. One of my ideas for the children to learn is preach with the example. That's why we have classes for parents and we do workshops and we do a lot of things with the parents. So they are with the example they are teaching their children, you know, what they can do. The first time that the parents come, it's usually the first worry about is to help their kids because they said, my kid is doing algebra and school and I can help. I don't know what he or she is talking about. But then, after coming to classes, they came to me and said, you know what teacher? I could help my kid yesterday in doing this because he is doing exactly what I'm weird doing.