This spring, I got an unexpected tardy pass from the office at my school, telling me that I had been late to my homeroom. As it turned out, I was marked as late because my homeroom had been changed–I was assigned to a sophomore homeroom instead of a junior one. No one had talked to my mom or me about this. I only found about my demotion because I got a tardy.

The switch happened not just to me, but to 67 other juniors in my school who were told we did not have enough credits. However, in my case and many others, we had between 11 and 14.5 credits, which is enough to be a junior and qualify to take the test. Some students did not have enough credits to be juniors in the first place, but that still does not explain why they were promoted to junior year in the fall and then demoted to sophomore status right before the Prairie State test.

Under so much pressure to raise its Prairie State test scores, the administration tried to take advantage of the promotion policy and demote a third of the junior class, just to keep us from taking the test and bringing down the school’s scores. I was having challenges at school but the last thing I would have expected is that my school system would demote me instead of supporting me.

This is not what school systems are supposed to do to students. They are supposed to provide extra support to students like me who don’t do well on tests or who might fall behind. But instead, they tried to make us disappear.

I care about my education. I want to go to college and to study music engineering. But when the future of a school rests on its test scores, students like me get demoted or pushed out. That’s why I joined the more than 100 juniors who boycotted the second day of the PSAE. We boycotted school, and the test, to send a message to Mayor Rahm Emanuel: School closings and student push-out, driven by high-stakes testing, must end.

Many adults disagreed with us, including CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett. Byrd-Bennett even tried to threaten and intimidate us, sending out a parent letter that insinuated that students who didn’t take the test on Wednesday would not be promoted to senior year.

This was a scare tactic that seemed designed to mislead parents. It did not give any information about the state-required make-up test in May or the established CPS practice of promoting juniors who sit for just one of the two days of the test. And what CPS didn’t realize was that these threats had actually already happened to me. CPS was threatening to withhold our promotion to senior year, but I had already been demoted in March as a direct result of Mayor Emanuel’s pressure on schools to raise test scores or face closure.

When these scare tactics did not prevent us from boycotting, CEO Byrd-Bennett scolded us, saying that “the only place that students should be during the school day is in the classroom with their teachers getting the education they need to be successful in life.” I agree with this statement, but does Mayor Emanuel? CPS pressure on schools to raise test scores actually leads to students getting pushed out of school. Many of the juniors who were demoted at my school started talking about dropping out because it was such a discouraging experience.

If CEO Byrd-Bennett and her boss, Mayor Emanuel, actually want every student to receive a good education every day, they should limit high-stakes tests, not use them to justify school closings in mainly African-American communities. The announcement that they are ending just one of a number of CPS tests given to kindergarteners is like the promise to give air-conditioning to students whose schools get closed. It’s a token effort given to us in the hopes that we will go away.

We want our boycott to be a wake-up call to Mayor Emanuel and CPS. We demand and end to testing-driven school closings, under-resourced schools, and student push-out. And we’re not going away.

Timothy Anderson is a student leader with Chicago Students Organizing to Save Our Schools (CSOSOS) and Voices of Youth in Chicago Education (VOYCE).

The report states that one of the driving factors behind this trend is the fact that many international students and parents believe that earning a bachelor’s degree in the U.S. will be a sound investment in their future.

“The Chinese are going to invest in anything that gives them an edge, and having a U.S. degree certainly gives them that edge back home,” Peggy Blumenthal, a vice president at the Institute of International Education, told The New York Times in 2010.

Blumenthal added that by attending an American college, many Chinese students feel they will develop important skills, such as fluency in English, real-world knowledge in their field and the ability to get a job with an international organization or government agency.

Because of this, many Chinese students are willing to do whatever it takes to study in the U.S., including coming to the nation early to enroll at an American high school.

Citing data from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the Times recently reported that 638 Chinese students with visas attended high school in New York City alone in 2012, up from 114 only five years earlier.

Many Chinese students and their parents feel that by attending an American high school – particularly a private institution – they will be more likely to receive an acceptance letter from a prestigious college. Additionally, many find that by enrolling at a high school in the U.S., they will have more time to participate in extracurricular activities than they would in China, which could give them a leg up on the competition during the admissions process, the Timesreports.

In New York City in particular, many Chinese students attend the Léman Manhattan Preparatory School. Last fall, the school hosted 27 students from China, meaning these youths made up about one-fifth of the high school student body, the Times states. These students frequently live in studio apartments on Wall Street and are supervised by houseparents who ensure they are safe, happy and transitioning well into life in their new city.

In total, Chinese parents spend about $68,000 per year for tuition and boarding at Léman. However, if it benefits their children’s education, many wealthy Chinese families feel this is a small price to pay.

If the headline caught your eye, here’s more good news.

Seven in 10 Latino high school graduates in the class of 2012 went to college, according to a recent report by the Pew Hispanic Center.

That’s a record-high college enrollment rate for Latinos, and it’s the first time Latinos have surpassed white and black students, even as they lag behind Asian-Americans. The Latino high school dropout rate has fallen by half over the past decade — from 28 percent in 2000 to 14 percent in 2011.

The Pew report did not get into exactly why more Latino students are enrolling in college. But its co-authors, Richard Fry and Paul Taylor, note that the recession may have spurred more young Latinos to stay in school and delay entering the job market.

A more compelling theory may be a generational shift within the Latino population, says Marcelo Suarez-Orozco, dean of UCLA’s Graduate School of Education and Information Studies. Suarez-Orozco, who studies immigration and education issues, sees the increase of Latinos entering college as part of a natural cycle of the American immigration story.

“I think the story here is really the story of the maturing of the second generation,” he says. “These are U.S.-born kids, and these are kids who have higher ambitions. They want to do better than their parents. And they’re connecting with colleges.”

Dreaming Beyond High School

Jackeline Lizama, 18, is planning to connect with a local community college near her home in Silver Spring, Md. Lizama, who was born in the U.S. to parents originally from El Salvador, will graduate from high school in a few weeks.

“I’m happy to get out of the daily routine and move on to something bigger and better,” she says.

Bigger and better for Lizama will be first, two years of community college, followed by a transfer to a state university and eventually, she hopes, a career in law enforcement. Lizama says not all of her Latino classmates feel that they can afford a similar financial investment.

“They want to get a better education, but they’re thinking about the money,” she explains. “They’re thinking, ‘Oh, my parents can barely do it now. How am I going to pay off a loan if I get a loan? How am I going to do it?’ ”

Lizama’s college-funding plan includes working after school at a Maryland branch of the Latin American Youth Center, a nonprofit that offers classes and training programs mainly for young Latinos. Her supervisor Sandra Martinez, 30, is also a working student, studying for a degree in social work. Between hitting the books and raising her teenage daughter, Martinez works at the community center, encouraging Latino youths to set a college degree in their sights earlier than she did.

“I think most of us Latinos think that [college is] not for us,” Martinez says. “For me, when I was younger growing up, that was never mentioned. There was no higher dream after high school. And I think that now, with the generation improving or the kids becoming more Americanized and what not, it’s helping.”

Remaining Gaps

The Pew Hispanic Center’s report also includes stark reminders of how Latino students fall behind once they’re in college. A little under half of Latino students are enrolled in community colleges. For those who do go on to four-year colleges, they’re more likely to drop out than other students.

Fry, who co-wrote the report, says of students in today’s competitive, global economy, “We’ve ratcheted [our expectations for educational completion] up as the rest of the world’s youth has ratcheted up as well.”

Suarez-Orozco of UCLA says a more important sign of Latino student success would be an increase in the college completion rate, currently at 11 percent. (The overall rate is 21 percent for 22- to 24-years-olds.)

He’s troubled by the remaining college achievement gaps faced by young Latinos.

“They are the future of our country,” he says. “This is not a narrow demographic question pertinent to only one group in the American mosaic. This is fundamental to all of us.”

I am 21 years old and a full-time student at LaGuardia Community College, working toward a degree in writing and literature. I am a writer for Represent magazine and I work as a research analyst for an international company.

I sound like I’ve got it all figured it out, right? Well, I kind of do, but I’m still homeless.

Three months before my 21st birthday, I applied to NYCHA but they closed my case because I didn’t have a job and I couldn’t pay my share of the rent. I was supposed to be receiving Social Security Supplemental Security Income (SSI) because I have a condition called short bowel syndrome that requires me to go to the hospital fairly often. (If you are getting SSI, NYCHA counts that as income. See p. 25 for more on getting SSI.) I showed a letter from my caseworker saying I would be getting SSI, but I never did get it, so NYCHA took me off the list. I later got a job, but I couldn’t reapply for another six months.

I also applied for an apartment through NY/NY III one month before my 21st birthday. I got accepted and all I was doing was waiting for the landlord to call to tell me when I could move in. The director of the program told me it could be a day or a month or longer, depending on when someone moved out. I figured I was set, because I had two options.

The Same Mistake Twice

But when I turned 21, a spot hadn’t opened up with NY/NYIII. So my agency sent me to live with my mother even though I did not belong at my mother’s house. I hadn’t lived with my mom since I was 15 and she’d put me in foster care when I was 17. My mother agreed that I could stay with her temporarily as long as I paid the monthly cable TV/Internet/phone bill and contributed some food as well.

Things were all right at my mother’s for the first month. I got a job as a research analyst, conducting surveys over the phone. I made $7.25 an hour and worked about 30 hours a week, so after taxes were taken out I brought home less than $200 a week. Because we didn’t know when I’d get into the NY/NY III program, my mother helped me look for a room to rent and found one nearby in the Bronx.

I checked out the apartment, and I loved it. I planned to save up from my salary for the security deposit and first month’s rent, but my mother harassed me for the $152 cable bill, even though I was never in the house and only watched television for about four hours during the month. She constantly asked me when I got paid, and how much I got paid, and it made me upset. The television that I had to pay for was on all the time, even when I got home from work at 1 or 2 a.m., and still on when I left at 6:30 a.m. for school. I was bringing food into the house, but still it was a constant money issue with her and that kept me from being able to take the apartment.

My mother was also calling me messy. I was sleeping in the living room, and there was no place to put my clothes away. Finally, she kicked me out, and I went to my brother’s house. He’d just been fired, though, so I only stayed with him for two nights. I then moved in with a friend of mine. Her mother wanted me to pay her $200 a month, but when it came time, I didn’t have that much after paying for my MetroCard, food, and other necessary items.

Abandoned

I went back to my mom’s, but then she said I could only sleep there on weekdays. On weekends, I had to find somewhere else to sleep. So that first weekend, I decided to sleep on the subway, riding several train lines from end to end. I had to work that weekend, so I tried to figure out where I could take a shower.

I felt abandoned and like no one loved me. I did not want to tell my three best friends because I didn’t want them to worry, so I just ate my feelings and wrote in my notebooks about my experience.

When you turn 21 you are on your own. Not having a place to sleep creates suicidal thoughts. What if you cannot handle sleeping on trains or buses or in the streets? I didn’t want to be looked down on. I started sleeping on the trains because I didn’t want to deal with anyone else. I found out the reason I was forced to ride trains all weekend was so that my mother could have her ex-boyfriend stay with her. I never went back to her house after that.

One of my friends began worrying about me and found a place for me to stay with a friend’s mom. The girl’s mother asked me to pay $25 a week to stay. I thought I could swing that, but then the mother said I could no longer stay because she didn’t like her daughter having to let me out the door in the morning and stay up late to answer it at night. In addition, my friend’s grandfather said he didn’t want me there because of my sexual orientation (I’m an out lesbian). I was only there five days.

image by YC-Art Dept

 

Into a Shelter

I packed up everything I could and went to The Door, a drop-in center that helps youth who are in care, aged out, or homeless who need a place to hang out and feel safe. I told them I was homeless and they referred me to a couple of shelters and programs. I had more options than most because I had a job and was going to college.

On September 22, I spent my first night in a homeless shelter, a women-only place in the Bronx called Franklin Shelter. I saw a metal detector, security guards, and an office for signing in. There were four floors, and on each floor were several dormitories. Each big dorm room holds about 20 beds, with a locker next to each bed. There’s a gymnasium, library, laundry room, basketball court, bathroom, and cafeteria on one floor.

The hallways are narrow and long, with security on each floor making sure the women are in their beds, monitoring what beds were open and were taken, and breaking up fights or other disturbances. Bathrooms have tissue all over the floors, and the shower curtains look like half-sheets. Hypodermic needles lie on the floor of the shower.

The shelter serves breakfast from 6:30 to 7:30 a.m.; lunch is from noon to 1 p.m.; and dinner is from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. They do bed checks every night at 10 p.m. If you are not in your bed by that time you lose it to the next person checking in. The only way you can come after that hour and not lose your bed is if you have a late pass. I got a late pass because my job doesn’t end until 11 p.m.

Everyone entering the shelter system has to get a TB (tuberculosis) test and a psychological exam. Everybody is assigned a caseworker when they come into the shelter. They help you find ways to progress and get you longer-term housing. Franklin is an assessment shelter and you can only stay for 21 days, though some people can stay for longer in special circumstances.

Dog Eat Dog

The residents told me, “They will take things out of your pockets while you’re sleeping.” So, the first night, I slept with nothing in my pockets and a pen in my hand in case I needed it as a weapon. The fact that shelter staff woke me up at 6 a.m. and served breakfast at 6:30 a.m. helped me get to psychology class on time, so that was good. My late pass meant I always had a bed when I went back there.

I really didn’t have emotion when I got there. I just kept reminding myself that it was a bed and a shower. People did yell all hours of the night, and fought almost every night. There was a four-person fight one night over a phone charger. People will steal your underwear, your jackets, anything. It’s a dog eat dog world and I got a full night of sleep only about half the time.

Guys were out in front of the shelter in big cars, waiting to persuade girls to participate in sexual acts for money. I think those men know that women in the shelter have no money, no way of getting around, are alone, are on drugs, or have children. A lady in the shelter pointed out another lady who was a prostitute—she was outside every day around the same time in heels and make-up. She would get into a car, disappear and then come back, like on a schedule.

Some of the guys out front and some of the females in the shelter were drug dealing to support themselves. Women were even selling women: Lesbian couples and aggressive lesbians were selling straight and gay women.

Because I am working, after 18 days I was transferred to Creston, a better shelter, also in the Bronx. I had heard it was horrible, but I like it. The front looks like an institution, but inside, the doors have a doorknob, keyhole, doorbell, peephole, and a number, just like an apartment. The rooms are smaller, with only three people living in them and you can bring food and drinks in. I can stay here till I find an apartment. The shelter workers still help with housing, saving money, jobs, and everything else. I like my roommate and it’s not that bad, but I would like more freedom. The shelter takes half of your paycheck, and gives it back when you leave, to put toward permanent housing. As if we can’t save money for ourselves.

Now, I’m looking for an apartment on Craigslist and I’m also exploring far-away colleges. I recently got my learner’s permit and will soon get a driver’s license in preparation for living somewhere else. I’ve always wanted to go away to school; I’ve lived in New York City my whole life, and I’d like a change. I’d like a new life.

WASHINGTON (NNPA) – Fewer Black males were enrolled in the first year of medical schools last year than 32 years ago, a trend that, if left uncorrected, could hamper efforts to provide quality health care to underserved communities, according to a top officer in the American Association of Medical Colleges.

Marc Nivet, chief diversity officer at the Association of American Medical Colleges, made that startling disclosure at the recent Howard University Symposium on Unites States Healthcare.

“We don’t have the luxury of waiting 10 years 15 years 20 years to intervene in effective ways to insure that we have the talent necessary to come to our institutions,” Nivet said. “If we don’t effectively intervene in this pipeline and hold our institutions and ourselves accountable for finding the talent that we know exists than we have failed those 32 million people soon to be enfranchised and we have failed ourselves.”

The conference brought together health professionals, students and educators to develop strategies to improving the pipeline for people of color in healthcare.

According to a diversity study by the Association of American Medical Colleges, Black women account for nearly two-thirds of the students entering the first year of medical school.

“This positive trend for racial and ethnic minority women is not mirrored in their male counterparts: Black or African American males are applying to, being accepted to, and matriculating into medical school in diminishing numbers, which speaks to the increasing need for medical schools to institute plans and initiatives aimed at strengthening the pipeline,”  the report stated.

Kendra McDow, 28, entered one of those pipeline programs, Minority Access to Research Careers, the summer after her freshman year at Benjamin Banneker Academic High School in Washington, D.C.

“I knew that I wanted to be a doctor and felt like that program would provide me the opportunity to achieve my goal,” said McDow, who is currently a pediatric resident at the University of Maryland Children’s Hospital in Baltimore.

The Minority Access to Research Careers (MARC) program was offered through a partnership with Temple University in Philadelphia.  High school students who participated in MARC were given the opportunity to perform research and present their findings in professional journals and science conferences. MARC also put those students on a track to earn a Ph.D. or M.D.

“It was an amazing experience for me, and honestly changed my life,” said McDow.

According to McDow, the MARC program at Benjamin Banneker Academic High School lost its funding, and now she wonders what will happen to students like her that want to pursue science or medical careers and don’t have the same opportunity she had.

With states and the federal government planning deeper cuts in higher education, more of those pipelines may get shutdown permanently.

Without access to pipeline programs, Black enrollment at medical schools may continue to decline. In 2011, Blacks accounted for 7.3 percent of medical school applicants, compared to 54.6 percent for Whites. Despite comprising 5.6 percent of the U.S. population, Asians accounted for 20.4 percent of medical school applicants that year.

Applying is only the first step.

The number of Blacks accepted to medical schools fell from 40 percent in 2010 to 38.3 percent in 2011. Meanwhile, the percentage of Whites accepted to medical schools increased from 47.9 percent in 2010 to 48.3 percent in 2011.

The numbers show that once Blacks were accepted to medical schools, they struggled to earn degrees. The percentage of Black medical students who matriculated fell from 6.3 percent in 2010 to 6.1 percent in 2011. The percentage of White students grew from 57.1 percent to 57.5 percent.

Even as researchers continue to address pipeline issues, the cost of medical school continues to be prohibitive for Black students who often show up at medical school already burdened with thousands of dollars in debt.

“Black or African American matriculants have higher rates of premedical debt than other racial or ethnic groups and among all students carrying premedical debt, most of it exceeds $25,000,” noted the AAMC report.

That’s nothing compared to the cost of earning a medical degree.

The Association of American Medical Colleges estimates that the average cost of for four years at a public medical school, including living expenses and books, is $207,868. That bill balloons to $278,455 for private institutions.

“There is increasing recognition that we need to look at new ways to deliver that education in a more costs benefit way,” said Mark Johnson, dean of the College of Medicine at Howard University. “There’s a lot of initiatives being looked at right now, expansion of technology and using more resources in the community to see if we can bring some of these costs down.”

Johnson said that ultimately it’s up to parents and students to look at the education as a long-term investment. Johnson said that he tells students who are weighing their options, that they’re worth it.

In 2012, Medscape, an online resource for physicians produced by WebMD, reported that doctors earn between $156,000 and $315,000 on average. Pediatricians reported the lowest earnings for specialists and radiologists and orthopedic surgeons topped the list at $315,000.

Dean Johnson said, “The cost is an issue. Though it is expensive, it’s worth it, because if you are going to make an investment in yourself and that investment is going to allow you to double or even triple your earnings over the next 20 or 30 years, you’re making an investment in yourself. So, I would tell students not to be deterred by the costs, because they are worth it.”