Sisters beat odds against Hispanics to earn degrees

By Charlotte Hsu

Sunday, Aug. 3, 2008 | 2 a.m.

When Maria Elizabeth Parra-Hernandez and Maria Luisa Parra-Sandoval became the first members of their family to finish college in May, they and their loved ones were not the only ones to revel in their success.

Peggy Marlow, who chaperoned the sisters on field trips to colleges years ago, was also overjoyed. On a recent morning, she teared up while reading aloud an e-mail she had recently sent Parra-Sandoval.

“You have come a long way, haven’t you?” recited Marlow, director of marketing and community relations for UNLV’s Center for Academic Enrichment and Outreach.

The center operates several federally funded projects — including Educational Talent Search, in which the siblings participated — that prepare young people for college.

The programs target students from poor families and students whose parents did not earn bachelor’s degrees — in short, those whose backgrounds suggest they will be less likely than peers to pursue higher education.

And that’s part of what makes the sisters’ story so remarkable. In finishing college, they bucked a lot of trends.

Examining the March 2007 Current Population Survey, Richard Fry, a senior research associate at the Pew Hispanic Center, found that 12 percent of Hispanics ages 25 to 29 held bachelor’s degrees. Among foreign-born Hispanics in that age group, just 8 percent held bachelor’s degrees, whereas 17 percent of native-born Hispanics did.

Asians and non-Hispanic whites did better, with 59 percent and 35 percent, respectively, carrying four-year degrees. Blacks, too, had more success, with 20 percent holding bachelor’s degrees.

What accounts for these differences?

A common explanation is that Hispanic youths have fewer role models in higher education than do students of other ethnicities.

Language barriers can also be a factor. Adding to the difficulty of learning English, some K-12 teachers “demonize” Spanish, telling Spanish-speaking children that using their native language is bad, said Christine Clark, UNLV’s vice president of diversity and inclusion. That hostility toward students’ first language discourages them from wanting to learn English, which hurts their academic performance, she said.

Many Hispanic students are at a disadvantage because they are low income or from families in which neither parent has a higher education. Mom and Dad are an accessible source of information about college — but only if they attended. For students with little money, paying for a higher education can seem daunting.

Some people believe cultural values are at play as well.

Youths who do well in K-12 have more options when it comes to college. And when the Los Angeles Times asked eight high schoolers to discuss why Asian students, in general, got better marks than their Hispanic counterparts, the young people were blunt, saying Asian parents were more likely to push children in school.

Last summer, in prepared remarks about students’ performance on standardized tests, Jack O’Connell, California’s schools chief, said his state’s achievement gap could not be explained away by poverty: “African-American and Hispanic students who are not poor are achieving at lower levels in math than their white counterparts who are poor.”

Whatever the reasons behind disparities in educational attainment among different groups, students such as Parra-Hernandez and Parra-Sandoval say programs such as Talent Search help level the playing field.

Asked what Talent Search taught her about college, Parra-Hernandez responded, “A lot. Basically everything.” She said without it, she would not have known how to apply for federal financial aid.

The collection of federally funded college access projects that UNLV operates is one of the nation’s largest. Most students in the college preparation programs pursue higher education.

Many staffers at the Center for Academic Enrichment and Outreach know firsthand how difficult getting to college can be.

For a long time after high school Marlow, who now has a master’s degree in educational leadership, didn’t think she was “college material” because she hadn’t taken algebra and other advanced classes.

Her parents had left elementary school to work in cotton and tobacco fields in North Carolina. Later they labored for years at a cotton mill in South Carolina, where Marlow grew up.

They told her to finish high school: “You don’t want to work in a cotton mill, do you?” But they didn’t emphasize college.

Of the center’s students, Marlow said, “It’s like they’re my own kids. You get attached to them, and it just makes you happy. You know the hardships that they’re going through.”