Like most complex subjects, no single label will ever suffice to describe Dove Springs, the Southeast Austin neighborhood where I grew up, but here are a few: Mexican-American, working-class, poor, overlooked, humble, proud, violent, peaceful, ugly, beautiful. Among the labels that are least likely to come up: affluent, privileged.
One of the challenges facing the neighborhood is literacy. Dove Springs' Consuelo Mendez Middle School is on the Texas Education Agency's 2015 list of schools where "improvement is required." The number of AISD students who performed at "Satisfactory Standard or Above" in State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR) testing for reading was 79%. The number of Mendez students who met that standard was 62%. In writing, the AISD number was 71%, while Mendez's was 44%. The number of AISD students who tested at the "Advanced Standard" was 22%. The number for Mendez students was 4%.
I put little to no store in standardized testing. If not for corroboration by residents and local educators, I would be skeptical at how much these results really tell us. It may make more sense to see STAAR scores as demographic indicators, rather than measures of teaching success or failure, much less student potential. In this case, the test results appear to shore up what student population numbers would suggest: A little more than 40% of students are English language learners, and 93.5% are "economically disadvantaged." Dove Springs is largely an immigrant population; it is also largely impoverished. Mendez reflects these realities.
[For more of this story, written by Sam Anderson-Ramos, go to http://www.austinchronicle.com...-a-path-to-literacy/]
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