In the United States today one out of seven people are Hispanic. Latinos are the largest ethnic group in the United States and the fastest growing, and youngest, segment of the population.  Although within the next four decades Hispanics will make up more than twenty-five percent of the U.S. population, even today entire sectors of the American economy would collapse without the contribution of Hispanics: agriculture, building trades, small businesses, and a vast number of service sectors. 

Hispanic culture values the person above mere utility, social connectedness above individualism, and family values over self-gratification. Hispanics by nature and culture are hospitable, generous, hard-working, family-and-community minded and, as evidenced by having the highest proportion of Congressional Medal of Honor recipients of any ethnic group, patriotic. We live within a context of a cultural heritage deep in faith, traditions, history, industry, and a spirit of entrepreneurship. We represent an unquestionably strong work ethic and we believe deeply in our citizenship and personal responsibilities.

We are a people on the verge: an increasingly significant political, economic, and cultural force in the United States providing essential contributions to our country’s well being. We are the changing face of America.

But all is not well. Even as Hispanics emerge as an increasingly dominant force our country’s current system of education too often segregates us, denigrates our well-being, destroys our youth, deprives us of opportunity, denudes our community of political power, and steals from too many children the dream of opportunity.

This failure of our system threatens to widen the disparities within our American society, deprive our fastest growing population segment of a bright future, and promises destructive and costly social turmoil for our entire nation. Let there be no doubt that our basic constitutional framework of fundamental rights and freedoms is, today, at great risk.

THE STATE OF THE UNION

What does it mean when our country’s largest minority population (and fastest growing) -- a hard-working and talented group -- is 44% functionally illiterate? What does it mean when our system of education produces a Latino high school drop out rate of nearly 50% (a drop out rate more than double that of white students)? How does this reality comport with our founding vision of the land of the free and home of the brave? What does our country guarantee if not the fundamental rights of all citizens? The truth is this: if the right to an adequate education for America’s most vulnerable and largest minority population is denied, everyone’s rights are imperiled. 

In the 21st century it is clear that centralized models of educational governance usurp the rights of communities and parents to control the education of their children; even as those same models pay lip service to democratic principles and professing that they have the best interest of our children at heart. Their actions render our children prey to an oppressive system that too often crushes them, strips them of dignity, and denies their fundamental rights. Latino youth routinely are buffeted and beaten by public policies that devastate their aspirations by a lack of education.

A sad but true part of our State of the Union is the fact that too many Latinos claiming to be our leaders have stood silently by in the interest of “broader agendas” and actually forged partnerships with the very entities whose policies breed public ignorance and grow the industry of state dependency.

We now proclaim it to be abundantly clear that our centralized system of education has utterly failed Hispanic children, the Latino community, and our entire nation. In spite of our diligence and ethic of hard work and self-sufficiency, the truth is that today’s system of conscripted education was designed to accommodate a reality that is now long past. In doing so our country has created, and today nurtures, a system of public education that has become the most effective, and one of the most enduring, segregation mechanisms in the history of the United States.

OUR GRITO: JUSTICE, BY CHOICE

Today the Hispanic Council for Reform and Educational Options (Hispanic “CREO”) joins in solidarity with all parents, other key Hispanic organizations, and corporate and civic leaders. We proclaim a parent’s right to choose the school their child attends to be a basic civil right and a matter of social justice. Hispanic youth deserve to be nurtured rather than processed and to be treated with dignity versus callous consignment by a malfunctioning system that too often is unable to focus on growing our children’s minds.

The Hispanic community, and all of us who profess to represent our Hispanic community, will not sit idly by while what amounts to educational mediocrity is being inflicted upon our children. As Latinos, we will unite and take the responsibility for our own future – for as our future is forged, so goes our country.  

If we are to advance the economic, educational, political, and civil rights of Hispanics, and if we are to reduce poverty and improve life opportunities, we must instill an enthusiasm for democracy rather than inflict an erosion of individual liberties. Therefore, the undersigned join together to proclaim this Grito:

This Grito is a call to all Americans to support the empowerment of families by school choice. We shall, by our collective action led by Hispanic Americans, break the dysfunction in our education system that is throttling poor America so that all children can reach their full potential and claim their rightful place as vested citizens and full participants in this democracy. We call upon all Americans to sign this Grito.

This Grito is a challenge to any organization who speaks out against a child’s civil right to access an adequate and equitable education. Let these organizations step forward to tell the entire country that our children are less important than the interests of their institutions. We challenge these organizations to publicly disclose their commitment, or their opposition, to school choice. We call upon them to sign this Grito.

This Grito is a plea for justice to our leaders in faith to join those who have already stepped forward moving beyond words and pronouncements. This is their time to stand behind and actively support this call to action from the faithful. We call upon faith leaders to sign this Grito.

This Grito is an invitation to our young Latino emerging leaders to step up into community and legislative leadership in a bold and daring fashion and to lead our system of public education into the 21st century. We call upon our emerging leaders to show their strength and to have their voices heard by signing this Grito.

This Grito is a wakeup call to our leaders in industry to take a stand on behalf of tomorrow’s workforce – a workforce that must not fall victim to the bigotry of low expectations for Hispanic children. We call upon all business leaders to sign this Grito.

This Grito is an affirmation to all teachers who work diligently for the cause of children by holding high their expectations. We call upon all teachers to sign this Grito.

This Grito is a warning to all who serve in our legislatures that Hispanic people are tired of public policies designed to prevent open access and equity in education and we warn them to take caution when they support the discriminatory agenda of those who would deny a child’s right to a better education through school choice. We call upon all elected officials to sign this Grito.

By this Grito we seek to redefine our educational system and institutions so as to reflect the values that sustain a diverse democratic society shaped by the American promise. We must not permit the nobility of our collective work ethic to make us subservient, nor our generous gallantry to leave us vulnerable and be taken for granted. Neither shall we continue to allow fellow Latinos to hold us back.

We must not allow the system that is charged with educating our children to turn us into the faceless poor who only then exist as costly casualties of a failed American educational system.

We must not let those whose vested interest in the current system put their interests ahead of the future well being of Hispanic children or our nation.

We must and we will change our response to one that will not permit the continuing infringements upon our dignity and our potential. No longer will we remain invisible in the American economic and political landscape but will rally together, using the force of our numbers, our moral strength, and the guarantees of our Constitution to create a better life for ourselves and our children and in so doing preserve America’s original civic values.

Access and equity to quality education is our creed, our belief, and our Grito. This is our battleground and this is the birth of the American Latino Renaissance for the benefit of all American society – brought about by the right of parents to direct the education of their children. Only then can we truthfully speak of such ideals as the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Justice, by choice – ¡Ahora mismo! (Right now!)

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CREO, which is Spanish for "I believe," was established by Latinos from varied cultural, ethnic and professional backgrounds to improve the educational outcomes of Hispanic children by empowering families through parental choice in education. CREO’s purpose is to be a national voice for the right of Hispanic families to access all educational options and to be an agent for equity and quality in public education.

 

© Copyright 2007 Hispanic Council for Reform and Educational Options.