Teachers from across the United States met in Texas' Lower Rio Grande Valley the week of April 22, for the 1996 National Migrant Education Conference. They met to discuss the problems and challenges associated with educating migrant students. A migrant student is a child whose family is involved in the pursuit of migratory agricultural work.
Depending on the season and the crop harvested migrant agricultural workers must move from county to county, state to state, or even from country to country to find employment. The child, following his/her parents, moves with them attending several school districts in one academic year. Unfortunately this results in an educational disadvantage for the children in school and traps some of these migrant children in a cycle of poverty due to their lack of education. The challenge at this conference and for these students results from their attendance patterns.
Jay Cummings, the associate commissioner of the Texas Education Agency's Department of Special Populations and Adults believes "the challenges [to the students] are associated with not being in any one place all of the time and having to concentrate on the economic side of life in addition to the educational side." Roy Jackson, program director for migrant education in seven Rio Grande Valley counties from Brownsville to Laredo, claimed that the "Texas migration pattern usually starts after Easter, when northern crops are ready for harvest, and ends in the fall. The fact is that they[migrant students] entertain a shorter school year. What these kids are trying to do in six months is what their peers take nine months to do."
According to statistics presented at the conference, there are an estimated 500,000 migrant school children in the United States. Texas schools have 140,000 of these students and about 1/3 of those attend schools in the Lower Rio Grande Valley. For example, the La Joya Independent School District , 15 miles west of McAllen, Texas on the U.S.-Mexico border, estimates about 52 percent of the school districts 13,400 students come from migrant families. Assistant superintendent Judy de la Garza summed up the conference's goal by stating "we're really trying to have a shared vision, so that our practices can be similar, and there's a [common] philosophy toward migrant education."
Source: Associated Press