UT Study: Inner-City Latino Children’s Needs are Different

You can put this in the trying-to-stop-a-fire-with-a-flamethrower file.
The University of Texas at Austin, funded in large part by state funds, has released data of a study that argues that higer expenditures and smaller classes benefit inner-city Latino students. At the same time the state legislature, in charge of state funding levels, is coyly talking about cutting state education funds to make up for a huge budget shortfall.
The news comes to us from physorg.com.

The study, conducted by Dr. Julian Heilig, looked at the effects of financial expenditures, student demographics and teacher quality on Latina/o student achievement in large, urban, Texas elementary schools with primarily Latina/o student populations. Heilig used statistical models of Austin, Dallas and Houston schools to examine what “input changes” were associated with TAKS test score improvement for Latina/o students. In this context, “inputs” refers to contributing factors such as how much money a school spends on each student or the student-teacher ratio.

Heilig and his team found:

• That increasing operating expenditures and decreasing the student-teacher ratio are associated with higher TAKS math achievement scores.
• That increasing the percentage of bilingual certified teachers and decreasing student-teacher ratio is positively associated with TAKS reading achievement in urban schools with large Latina/o student populations.

What’s important about these findings is that it seems to confirm the idea that children of poverty learn differently and should be taught differently than the other, non-poverty, children. Classrooms should look different, time should be managed different, lessons should be tailored specifically to the different learning style. It matters more now that the state legislatures across the country are battling budget shortfalls and looking for savings in education expenditures.

To quote Dr. Heilig,

“These findings may not hold true for schools and students of all types, but ’boutiqued’ finance policy solutions for urban, majority Latina/o elementary schools may yield better results than the current one-size-fits-all school finance environment in Texas.”

You can include every state in the union as well.