More than half of Texas’s 5.1 million public school students are Hispanic. And, fittingly, now half of the state’s 20 largest cities have Latino supes.
With the recent appointment of Richard Carranza (below) as superintendent of Houston, Texas is making education headlines. The Houston Independent School District is, after all, the largest in the state and the seventh largest in the nation. As expected, this news makes a lot of Texans happy.
The following excerpt about Latino supes in Texas, for example, is from a recent article in KERA News. KERA is North Texas’s public broadcasting network.
From KERA News
“I would say that this is a milestone in the history of Texas,” said Stan Paz, executive director of the Texas Association of Latino Administrators and Superintendents, or TALAS.
It’s not just speaking the same language that can make a difference. Paz said understanding someone’s culture can create a classroom students can thrive in.
“It has a very significant impact and that’s based on research over the years on identifying effective competencies necessary to educate Latino children well…you have to have cultural competency.”
Marla Guerra, superintendent of the South Texas Independent School District in the Rio Grande Valley, has been at the helm there for 15 years. She is also one of the few Latina superintendents in Texas.
“I think education is so complex now that it requires someone with that sensitivity and with that background,” she said.
You can read the full article here.