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Educating Latinos: An NPR Special Report
A Texas Program Helps Latinas Reach Their Potential
The audio for this story will be available online after 9PM ET, 6PM PT.
 Listen to Part 4 of the series, reported by NPR's Jennifer Ludden.
Desiray and Grace Hernandez, participants in the Mother Daughter Program, at a rally. Photo: Marisa Penaloza, NPR News
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Rally at Bill Childress Elementary School. Photo: Marisa Penaloza, NPR News
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Univ. of Texas at El Paso senior and graduate of the Mother Daughter Program, Angelique Anaya. Photo: Marisa Penaloza, NPR News
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Josefina Tinajero, Dean of Education, Univ. of Texas at El Paso and director of the Mother Daughter Program. Photo courtesy Univ. of Texas at El Paso
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Latina Education Facts:
• Latinas have a lower high school graduation rate than girls in any other group.
• They are less likely to take SAT test than non-Hispanic white and Asian girls, and when they do they score lower.
• Hispanic females are under-enrolled in gifted and talented education courses and in advanced placement courses.
• Latinas are least likely than any group of women to complete a bachelor’s degree.
Latinas, however, perform better than their male peers on many measures. Hispanic females outnumber their male counterparts in taking the SAT exam, yet score lower than Hispanic males who do take the exam on both the math and verbal section.
Source: American Association of University Women
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"When you have the critical mass of a population that is undereducated, it really has some very negative implications for an entire community and entire states."
Josefina Tinajero, Dean of Education, University of Texas at El Paso
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Dec. 16, 2002 -- Hispanics compose the largest minority group in American schools, and those numbers are growing quickly. However, among Hispanic girls, it is estimated that one-third drop out of high school, and nearly 90 percent never make it to college -- numbers higher than for any other population. One program in Texas is having great success in keeping Hispanic girls in school. In the fourth part of NPR's Educating Latinos series, Jennifer Ludden reports on the education of Hispanic girls -- Latinas -- from El Paso.
At Canutillo High School, in a rural community outside of El Paso, 16-year-old Araceli Salgado has returned to school from a maternity leave following the birth of her baby. "I didn't want to come to school today. I was at the bus stop and told my sister, 'Well can I go back home?' She goes, 'No you're crazy, you got to go to school.'"
Salgado is worried about how she will support her child -- her father earns the family's only paycheck -- and usually is tired from being awake with her baby overnight. She is unsure about her future -- and she is not alone. Salgado knows about 10 other girls who are pregnant, and at her high school a couple dozen schoolmates are already mothers. Experts say it's doubtful that these girls will graduate from high school, nor is it likely that they will make it through college.
The situation should worry everyone, according to Josefina Tinajero, Associate Dean of Education at the University of Texas at El Paso. "When you have the critical mass of a population that is undereducated, it really has some very negative implications for an entire community and entire states," she says. For Tinajero, teen pregnancy, poverty, lack of role models and low expectations from their schools have created a crisis in Latina self-identity.
Sixteen years ago, Tinajero began the Educational Enhancement for Mothers and Daughters Program to address directly the issue of low expectations with young Latinas in El Paso. The program targets sixth-grade girls and their mothers. Every month 200 to 300 mother-daughter pairs to focus on education, to prepare for college and to become leaders in their schools. Communication is a key element in the program. With the girls on the brink of womanhood, the mothers and daughters learn to confront sensitive topics and to talk to each other about them.
Grace Hernandez, herself a high school dropout, attends the program with her 12-year-old daughter, Desiray. In a school conference room, the two discuss a conversation they had earlier about the sensitive subject of contraception. "You know, I am trying to make her understand that it's OK to come to me," Grace Hernandez says of the talk with her daughter. Desiray says that her mother "tells me not get shy when you want to ask me something. So she helps me open up a little bit, more than I used to."
While the Latina dropout rate continues to rise nationally, in El Paso the Mother and Daughter Program is producing success stories. Angelique Anaya is one of them. The 22-year-old is a cheerleader at the University of Texas at El Paso, studying to be a pharmacist. She also attended the Mother and Daughter Program as a sixth grader. Anaya says she did not really appreciate the program until her best friend got pregnant in high school. "It made me see like, oh my God, it really is happening to people."
The majority of students in the Mother and Daughter Program finish high school and go on to college, according to the program's organizers. And the daughters are not the only ones benefitting. When the program took Suki Ramos and her daughter to the university campus, Ramos looked around and said to her daughter, "We can have the same thing, and we can do the same thing." So they started college together. Her daughter now teaches fifth grade, and Ramos hopes to get her associate's degree next year.
In Depth
 Browse for other NPR stories about Hispanics in the United States.
Browse for other NPR stories about bilingual education in the United States.
Resources for Part 4 and the entire series.
Learn about all the stories in this series.
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