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Sunday, June 17, 2001
'Typical Latina journey' to top begins with local struggle
City native Leslie Sanchez leads Hispanic education effort
By Tara Copp
Scripps Howard News Service
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| Scripps Howard News Service |
| Corpus Christi native Leslie Sanchez was recently tapped to lead the White House’s program on Hispanic education, topping what she calls a ‘typical Latina journey’ to be an educated woman. |
WASHINGTON - When President Bush tapped Corpus Christi native Leslie Sanchez to lead his White House initiative on Hispanic education last month, it topped what she calls a "typical Latina journey" to become an educated woman.
Now as executive director of the Hispanic initiative at the Department of Education, Sanchez is using her parents and her own experiences in school to make Hispanic kids' journey today less "typical."
Sanchez will advise President Bush on the educational needs of Hispanic students and work with dozens of federal agencies on shaping grants and programs that will improve educational opportunities.
"I am not far from the past," said Sanchez, 32. "I think that's what reminds me that we have to make it easier for Latino students to succeed."
Sanchez's journey started with her grandfather's emigration from Mexico in 1906, as his family escaped Pancho Villa's revolution. He became a ranch hand in rural South Texas, where he met Sanchez's grandmother.
Language barriers
When the two started having children, they decided to move to the bigger town of Corpus Christi, so their children would have better access to education. But language barriers set them back.
"My mother ended up dropping out of school in the seventh grade, because she did not have a very good command of the English language," Sanchez said. "But my father was very capable athletically, he played football. So he managed to get through high school."
Now, under the Bush administration, Sanchez will be pushing "bilingual plus."
"We believe education is the language of opportunity," Sanchez said. "At the same time, we believe in bilingual plus - English plus. It allows us to celebrate our culture, and in the Hispanic community that's the Spanish language."
Another focus will be improving resources in under-performing schools, she said.
'Excellent avenue'
When Sanchez was about 8, the family moved to Houston. There, her parents separated and Sanchez began to work to help her mother provide for the family. She graduated from high school in 1987, and started selling encyclopedias for Macmillan Publishers door-to-door to earn money for college. "I started in community college, like most Hispanic students," Sanchez said.
"It's really an excellent avenue - it's close to home, it's affordable. But I put myself through college, and when people talk about higher education - I was the one filling out my financial aid forms. As it is so much the case with Hispanic teen-agers, often we don't have the mechanisms in place, we don't have parents who know how to help because we are often the first in our family to attend college."
"Unfortunately, in the Latino community, there are a disproportionate number of under-performing schools," Sanchez said.
"To ensure no child is left behind, we have to raise our expectations. In the past a lot of people would look at Latino kids and say, 'Well, they are just not capable of learning that much. Their parents don't work with them. They are disadvantaged, they have limited English proficiency,'" she said.
"We need to look at these children and say, 'These are the future doctors, lawyers, professionals and technical engineers,' instead of looking at them and saying, 'This is the bottom rung.'"
Scripps Howard correspondent Tara Copp can be reached at coppt@shns.com
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