Believe It or Not: Mexico Sending Aid to Los Angeles School District
by Jim Brown
April 5, 2004
(AgapePress) - A conservative group is concerned about a new partnership between the Los Angeles Unified School District and the Mexican government aimed at improving educational achievement among Latino students.The government of Mexico has agreed to provide Spanish-language textbooks, cultural awareness programs, and even more teachers to school children and their parent in Los Angeles. It is part of Mexican President Vicente Fox's program to reach out to Mexicans living abroad.
K.C. McAlpin with the group ProEnglish says it is somewhat unprecedented for a foreign government to be involved in the public schools of a major U.S. city.
"The Mexican government, if it's truly concerned about helping children in their education, might want to focus its attention more on its own children in its own country, rather than on Hispanic students in Los Angeles, not all of whom are of Mexican origin," McAlpin suggests.
The executive director for the English-advocacy group also has a suggestion for the L.A. Unified School District: focus on implementing English-immersion program, which he says have shown good results.
"There's been tremendous change in California," the Texas native says, "and the results are providing hard evidence that even the educators out there who were opposed to doing away with bilingual education cannot deny [and] cannot explain the tremendous improvement in grade scores among kids taking the test on English competency and English fluency."
The Mexican government says it intends to offer similar programs in other U.S. cities. But McAlpin says it should be more concerned about improving its own failed education system -- which is far worse than L.A. schools.
