Later this year, President Obama will sign an executive order detailing his administration’s plan of how to increase academic performance among Latino students.

The ideas of Cicero residents will have helped shaped those new policies.

Cicero was one of 33 cities visited by representatives from the administration’s White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans. Juan Sepulveda, initiatives director, said the goal of the 18-state tour is to meet with local leaders to identify programs and policies that have successfully improved academic achievement for Latino students.

“We want to hear from them, what (they think) the priorities should be and what do (they) think the Obama administration should emphasize and put its resources toward,” Sepulveda said.

In two 45-minutes sessions, about 200 students, educators and residents gathered July 31 at Morton College to share their ideas and frustrations. Increasing bilingual education, encouraging parental involvement, and educating Latinos about the financial and educational opportunities available to them topped the list of concerns presented by the forum’s participants.

Berwyn resident Sergio Quintana pointed to experiences in his own family to illustrate the need for parental involvement. The recent Morton West High School graduate will attend Morton College this year and said his parents’ involvement helped him excel academically. But one of his relatives, who didn’t have a lot of parental involvement, struggled.

“His mother wasn’t very involved. Whereas, my parents were always involved and always wondering what I was doing in school,” Quintana said. “I always did better than him in school because my parents were involved.”

The White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans was created under former President George W. Bush as a way to identify programs and policies that have successfully improved educational opportunities and graduation rates for Latino students, said Jose Rico, senior adviser to the assistant secretary for the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education. Recently, the Obama administration kicked the initiative into high gear, sending out a team to 33 cities in 18 states and Puerto Rico to gain input from leaders and educators.

Sepulveda said Obama has already given him some heady goals to achieve, including reaching a 100 percent graduation rate for Latinos. At 40 percent, Latinos have the highest dropout rate.
To help reach that goal, the federal government is putting an increased emphasis on early childhood education program such as HeadStart. Nearly 30 percent of all students in early childhood programs are Latinos.

“Anything that we do here that’s an investment in early childhood education is a huge investment in the Latino community,” Sepulveda said.

The administration has also pushed to revamp the government’s financial aid system to make it more navigable and increase the number of students eligible for Pell Grants from 6 million to 7 million.

Once Sepulveda and his group finish their 33-state tour, the ideas gathered will be compiled to help formulate the executive order outlining the administration’s plan to increase academic achievement.

The final goal of the tour is to create a grass-roots network of educators and leaders who can implement the plans and help teach each other what programs are working. Sepulveda said the administration does not want it to seem as though it is controlling the policies.

“The goal is pretty straightforward. How we get there, we really don’t care,” Sepulveda said. “We know what it’s going to take to get it done here in Chicago is going to be different than what it takes in Laredo, Texas, and is going to be different than what it takes in Los Angeles or what it takes in Kansas City.”