Education and Youth

Pathway Towards Independent Living:
n March 2020, the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 pandemic, leading to a national lockdown in the United States that significantly disrupted social and economic activities for over a year. In Minnesota, the pandemic resulted in the loss of 207,000 jobs in its first year, increased housing insecurity, and forced parents to juggle work with homeschooling. Frontline service workers and health professionals faced heightened risks by continuing to work.

The Leaders of Tomorrow is a leadership camp for Latino teens from the age of 13 to 17. The goal of this 4-day program is to empower
students to become leaders in their
communities. The camp takes place at Macalester College and includes speakers, workshops, and activities to develop leadership qualities and advocacy skills.
In 2019, HACER held two Leaders of Tomorrow camps, each four days long. The first camp had 16 participants and the second camp had 10 participants.

In the fall of 2019, Hispanic Advocacy and Community Empowerment through Research (HACER) put on
a program called Talking it Through, which was aimed at creating a dialogue between police officers and
Latino/a youth. HACER was motivated to create this program to address the hostility between the police and
people of color and the profiling and discrimination from police officers that affect nonwhite people. Since we
are a Latino organization, we chose to focus this project on Latino and Latina youth. The project involved two workshops: One informative session in which the youth participants could learn from police officers, lawyers, psychologists, and other community workers about their rights when interacting with the police and the services and resources that are available to them; as well as one interactive session in which the youth and police officers could talk about their perceptions and experiences in a safe environment. The outreach for this project was
difficult, as getting youth, especially those who have had problems with the police, to attend a workshop and
speak with police officers, is not easy. However, the youth, police officers, and other who attended all came
away with new and valuable knowledge. HACER learned a lot about how to conduct a program such as this and is now looking to replicate and improve on the program.

2018 was the second year of HACER’s Leaders of Tomorrow
LOT) program. This program is a four day summer camp at Macalester College for Latino and Latina teenagers. Through a variety of speakers and activities, the program
aims to increase the participants’ confidence, leadership skills, and college readiness.

At the end of the 2017 Leaders of Tomorrow program, all 17 participants completed an evaluation survey of the program. This report will analyze the results of this survey. The quantitative section of this analysis involves questions 6-11 and 13, since the responses to these questions were given on a numeric scale from 1 to 5, with 1 being the lowest score and 5 being the highest. Each of the activities was a different speaker or presentation.

This report presents the results of research into factors that contribute to successful educational outcomes for Latino students in Minnesota high schools. The Chicano-Latino Affairs Council (CLAC) and the Minnesota Humanities Center (MHC) partnered with Hispanic Advocacy and Community Empowerment through Research (HACER) as part of a larger initiative to more successfully
leverage the potential of Minnesota’s Latino students to contribute to the state’s overall economy and wellbeing. 1 This initiative is based on data showing that Minnesota’s rapidly growing Latino population is poised to support the state’s future success in a globalized economy if we tap into the intercultural knowledge and language skills that have been historically underutilized. Central to
this initiative is the goal of improving high school graduation rates, lowering dropout rates, and
expanding college enrollment of Latino youth, thereby allowing them to develop the skills required
in today’s workforce.

Migrant students are among the most educationally disadvantaged students in the United States public school system. In 2005, the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) contracted Hispanic Advocacy and Community Empowerment through Research (HACER) to conduct a
Comprehensive Needs Assessment (CNA) for migrant students in Minnesota. In an effort to move away from a deficit-based approach to discussing the needs of migrant students, the project was titled Securing the Educational Accomplishments of Migrant Students (SEAMS). The purpose of this project was to describe the particular context of migrant students in Minnesota, identify and prioritize their specific needs, and finally, highlight their unique strengths. This
project also aimed to create recommendations for how the Migrant Education Program (MEP) in
Minnesota can best help migrant students succeed in school. The data and analyses presented here draw on the experience and expertise of service providers working with Minnesota’s migrant population. Most importantly, however, this study foregrounds the voices and insights of migrant parents and migrant students in the state.

Under the Migrant Education Program (MEP), state education departments in the United States receive federal funds to support the education of migrant children. The level of MEP funding dispersed to a particular school district depends on the
number of eligible migrant students identified in that district. In 2005 the
Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) contracted Hispanic Advocacy and Community Empowerment through Research (HACER) to implement a reinterview process to evaluate prior eligibility determinations for MEP. MDE hired
HACER to conduct a similar re-interview process in 2006. Over the summer of 2006, HACER conducted re-interviews with the families of students previously
identified as eligible for the program. This report describes HACER’s research methodology for the 2006 re-interviews, explains the eligibility determination process, and estimates the ineligibility rate (i.e. the “defect rate”) of identified migrant students in Minnesota. The report concludes with a discussion of findings and a series of recommendations to MDE.