From the Editor’s Desk

Bienvenidos!

Welcome to Volume 21, Number 3 of the Journal of Latinos and Education.With your support, the journal has continued to increase its stature and influence as the premiere research publication that examines the educational conditions of Latina/o communities in and outside of the United States.

Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic has been devastating for many communities considered to be economically and socially vulnerable, including Latinos. Low-income communities of color are also more likely to die of the COVID virus due to a host of factors, which are compounded by poverty, employment as “essential workers,” and inequitable access to health care. As the nation experienced the pandemic, the adverse impact on students and families at all levels became increasingly clear and inequities in education continue to be a stark reminder of uneven opportunities to learn. Latino families in particular struggled with access to technology, virtual learning, supplies, and community support to complement educational service delivery. Educational inequity was compounded by the fact that many Latino parents occupy lower wage jobs and many considered in the “essential workforce” category (Dubay et al., 2020). These challenges, coupled with health disparities, have set the stage for deepening inequities, teacher turnover in impoverished regions, demand for social services and unprecedented loss.

Nationally, Latinos represented and continue to represent a disproportional number of COVID-19 cases. The number of cases of Latinos with COVID-19 undoubtedly affects Latino families and communities. As noted, many Latinos are classified as essential workers leaving them to navigate a virtual educational experience for their children. In April 2020, Latinos represented 56% of cases (n = 41,386) in California and 39% of deaths – the highest rate of deaths across the state. As of December 29, 2020, Latinos represented 57% of cases (n = 887,580) and over 47% (n = 11,575) of deaths in the state. Educational equity was a challenge for Latinos before the pandemic and became an even greater challenge as the pandemic has spanned over 2 years. Table 1 shows the COVID cases in December 2020, when the rates were among the highest nationally, and prior to access to a vaccine.

Table 1. Percentage of COVID cases vs. Proportion of population, December 2020

Location	White % of Cases	White % of Population	Black % of Cases	Black % of Population	Latino % of Cases	Latino % of Population
New Mexico	0.2	0.37	0.02	0.02	0.55	0.49
Texas	0.35	0.41	0.19	0.12	0.45	0.40
California	0.2	0.37	0.04	0.05	0.56	0.39
Arizona	0.43	0.54	0.04	0.04	0.39	0.32
Nevada	0.35	0.49	0.07	0.09	0.38	0.29
Florida	0.38	0.53	0.15	0.15	0.38	0.26
Colorado	0.51	0.68	0.04	0.04	0.4	0.22
New Jersey	0.38	0.55	0.12	0.13	0.28	0.21
New York	NR	0.55	NR	0.14	NR	0.19
Connecticut	0.48	0.66	0.13	0.1	0.27	0.17
Illinois	0.51	0.61	0.13	0.14	0.27	0.17
Rhode Island	0.5	0.72	0.09	0.06	0.37	0.16
Utah	0.66	0.78	0.02	0.01	0.26	0.14
Idaho	0.83	0.9	<.01	<.01	0.22	0.13
Oregon	0.56	0.84	0.03	0.02	0.38	0.13
Washington	0.45	0.68	0.06	0.04	0.35	0.13
Kansas	0.84	0.84	0.06	0.06	0.2	0.12

Source: KFF analysis of The COVID Tracking Project, COVID Racial Data Tracker. Data extracted from state websites on December 20, 2020. Total State Population Distribution by Race/Ethnicity based on KFF analysis of 2018 American Community Survey.

The large number of cases among Latinos, disproportionality within states, and high number of fatalities have undoubtedly impacted Latino communities in ways we are just starting to fully comprehend. In addition, students in public schools and their parents are struggling to meet the demands of schooling, meeting “grade level” standards, at a time when parents were critical partners and carried the majority of responsibility for educating their child using multiple media online platforms.

The digital divide was clear from day one for communities of color. According to the Pew Hispanic Research Center, broadband has always been an issue for the Latino community. In a survey, they conducted in January/February 2021, only 65% of Latinos had access to broadband compared to 80% of whites, and 71% of African Americans in the United States (Atske & Perrin, 2021). In addition, Latinos are far less likely to own a computer at home, with only 67% reporting to own a laptop or desktop, compared to 80% of whites (Atske & Perrin, 2021). In fact, this survey found that approximately 25% of Latinos had “smartphone only” access to the internet and lacked traditional broadband resources or services in the home (Atske & Perrin, 2021). This limited access to technology presents numerous challenges for interfacing with schools and teachers.

According to a survey by the Parent Institute for Quality Education (PIQE) in 2020 of Latino parents (n = 1332), 29% of Latino parents in Central California and 20% statewide did not have access to an e-mail address. E-Mail has been the primary mode of communication for parents with teachers. Not having access to an e-mail is one data point further conveying the reality of the digital divide between Latino and Spanish-speaking parents with public schools.

Impact on Latinos in higher education

One of the groups that we find has stepped up to support siblings and their respective families has been the college age population. College students continue to play a critical role during this pandemic, helping to financially support families as they returned home for online instruction. Latinx college students are dealing with this crisis in ways that we have yet to fully understand and comprehend. Many undergraduates have returned home to engage in online instruction themselves while shouldering additional responsibilities within their family units. They have also faced the harsh reality of an unpredictable economic climate, and many have sought jobs as shoppers, in construction, and as essential workers (e.g., Costco, grocery stores) to help offset the economic losses of their families.

Many parents and students noted the inequities they witnessed with their younger siblings not having timely access to technology or lack of connectivity in the home, leaving little support for online instruction (PIQE, 2020). Thus, this responsibility overwhelmingly fell on college students who often had access to hot spots from their campuses and/or devices. These data are more than anecdotal. As the articles in this issue document for the reader, Latino students and their families experienced challenges with accessing educational services, technology, and culturally relevant pedagogy, which set the stage for inequitable access to education across P-20 systems.

Relevant context & literature

California is home to the largest number of Hispanic Serving Institutions in the country, with over 176 public colleges, HSIs and 46 emerging HSIs (Ed Excelencia, 2020). Ninety-five community colleges, 21 out of 23 CSUs, and 6 out of 9 (undergraduate degree granting) UCs are now Hispanic Serving Institutions (Contreras, 2019). And with the K-12 system now comprising over 55% Latino students, all public systems of public education are now HSI systems, yet few have clearly articulated approaches and strategic objectives to respond to the needs of their Latinx students (Contreras, 2019). Since California is the bell whether state for the nation on many critical education policy frameworks including higher education, it is important to understand how the state is responding to its largest ethnic group that will make up the workforce in the very near future. The Public Policy Institute of California projects a workforce shortage in highly skilled workers by 2030, particularly in STEM fields (Meija, M & Bohn, 2015). How states like California have addressed the education of Latinos during the pandemic offers a critical reflection of the challenges that lie ahead.

Latinos are already 19% of the nation’s population (U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey 2021) and 40% of the California population, and are expected to be over half of the state’s population in the next decade (California Department of Finance, 2020). The impact of COVID-19 on the broader Latino community is clear, given the high poverty rates among Latinos in California. Education has long been the answer to mitigating poverty and ensuring social mobility (Contreras, 2011; Gandara, 1994; Gandara & Contreras, 2009). Therefore, examining the impact of the pandemic on Latino students across the P-20 continuum provides important insight into interventions and responsive policy to ensure Latino students are afforded equitable solutions and educational opportunities. This issue also documents the multifaceted impact on Latino students and their families as they attempted to navigate educational spaces, institutions, and systems. This special issue of the Journal of Latinos in Education seeks to answer the following:

1. How are Latino students, parents, and communities responding to the demands of education while balancing the adverse effect of COVID-19 on their families and community?

2. How are IHEs responding to the needs of their diverse students? Are they providing broader supports to their first-generation, low-income, or immigrant students?

3. What role does education policy have in ensuring broader Latinx access and opportunity, and ultimately impacting a rebound strategy at the local, state, and national level?

Because Latino students are more likely to be first-generation or the children of immigrants in many states, it is critical for public education systems to provide academic infrastructure that is asset-based, culturally and resource responsive, and committed to equity. The COVID pandemic has revealed the gross inequities that exist for Latino students with respect to access to quality technology, highly qualified and culturally competent teachers, bilingual or multilingual information for parents, and printed materials and support for students and their parents as they move to online formats. This issue provides an important account of the varied experiences of Latino students at all levels across the educational continuum during the COVID 19 pandemic.

Focus of the Special Issue

This Special Issue focuses on the impact of COVID-19 on Latino/a/e/x students, families, and communities across the educational continuum to better understand the challenges faced by Latino students and their families during this unprecedented historical moment. Several scholars have been researching the real-time impact of COVID-19 on our Latinx students, ranging from family demands and economic uncertainty, online education, college transitions that have stalled, to college students taking on additional family roles and economic responsibility. This issue seeks to also inform state and national policy, and offer mechanisms to respond to the needs of Latino students.

The first set of articles in this Special Issue on Latinos and Education at the time of COVID-19 present the role and experience of Latina/o/x parents had in securing educational services for their children during the pandemic. In these three articles, Latina mothers share their challenges and views during the transition to online learning. It is evident that Latino families value education. The COVID-19 did not impede Latino families to care, provide and/or seek support for their children academic success.

The first article by Katherine Zambrana and Katie Hart titled “Riesgo Y Resilienca: Exploring the Role of Parenting Stress and Self-efficacy on Young Latino Children’s Well-being and Home Learning Experiences during COVID-19,” examines the role of parental involvement with young Latino children and the relationship between parental stress, self-efficacy, home learning, and children’s socio-emotional functioning. Zambrana & Hart provide recommendations for policymakers and teachers that can better help Latino parents and their children during a health crisis.

The second article by María Cioè-Peňa titled, “Computers Secured, Connection Still Needed: Understanding How COVID-19-related Remote Schooling Impacted Spanish-speaking Mothers of Emergent Bilinguals with Dis/abilities,” explores the educational practices and challenges faced by mothers of emergent bilingual children in special education where technological struggles and federal mandated supports for language and disability-related needs were not accounted for during the transition to remote learning. This qualitative study highlights discriminatory practices toward Spanish-speaking mothers that require more than linguistic accommodations and technology support for themselves and their children.

The next article by Laura Alba, Jessica Mercado Anazagasty, Anacary Ramirez, and Austin Johnson titled “Parents’ Perspectives about Special Education Needs during COVID-19: Differences between Spanish and English-Speaking Parents,” examines Spanish-speaking and English-speaking parents of children receiving special education services. Relationships between home language, household income, and parental education were examined to understand communication access to special education services, and to document parents’ perspectives navigating the special education system during COVID-19.

The next group of articles explores the experiences of Latina/o/x college students during the COVID-19 pandemic. Within this group of articles, the experiences of transitioning, navigating, and completing higher education during the pandemic are explored. In the fourth article, Jacqueline Arroyo-Romano, Salome Mshigeni, and Monideepa Becerra, ‘“We don’t all have the privilege of having our own quiet place’: College Students in a Hispanic Serving Institution during the COVID-19 Pandemic,” examine the experiences and challenges that students encountered through online learning. Through survey data, the authors found that Latina/o/x students struggled to gain access to spaces where they could learn, which was coupled with the lack of resources from their university.

The fifth article by Gloria Itzel Montiel, Tatiana Torres-Hernandez, Rosa Vazquez, Adelin Tiburcio and Fatima Zavala, “‘It Wasn’t Only the Pandemic:’ A Collaborative Autoethnography of Latinx Women in Higher Education Navigating the COVID-19 Pandemic in Rapidly Shifting Immigration Contexts,” presents the experiences of Latinx undocumented women during the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors analyzed their experiences through an intersectionality framework to explore the impact of the pandemic and the shifting immigration policy landscape that the authors had to navigate simultaneously. More importantly, the authors remind readers of the continued struggles of undocumented immigrants throughout the pandemic.

The sixth article by Claudia García-Louis, Monica Hernandez, and Mona Aldana-Ramirez, “Latinx Community College Students and the (In)Opportunities Brought by COVID-19 Pandemic,” explores the challenges that Latinx community college students faced during the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors apply Gloria Anzaldua’s borderlands framework to examine the experiences of students in South Texas. Their study highlights the different forms in which students experienced virtual learning and how Latinx student learning during the pandemic was impacted by access to technology, mental health services, and food pantries.

The seventh article by Eligio Martinez Jr., Ever Barraza and Audrey D. Paredes, “Transitioning during a Pandemic: Examining the Institutional Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic for Latina/o/x First Year and New Transfer Students,” explores the experiences of Latina/o/x students who enrolled in an Hispanic Serving Institution during the COVID-19 as either first-time freshman or transfer students. The authors apply Critical Race Theory to examine how the institution responded to students’ needs and the factors that shaped Latina/o/x students’ transition, experience in virtual learning and sense of belonging. The authors highlight the lack of response and support provided by the campus to Latina/o/x students.

The eighth article by Mayra Puente, “A Critical Race Spatial Analysis of Rural Latinx Students’ College (In)Opportunities and Conscious Choices during the COVID-19 Pandemic,” examines the college choice processes among students from rural Latinx communities. Using a rigorous mixed-method research design, which included both CRT and GIS methodologies, this study found that college transition was tenuous with high achievers dealing with digital inequity and limited support for navigating college application processes. Ultimately, many of these rural students were more likely to attend two-year colleges for a host of reasons. Students made college decisions that also considered the needs of their familias. For these high achievers, it was critically important for them to be present for their parents and siblings; rising for these students did not necessarily require separation to achieve their vision of success.

The ninth article, by Vanessa Errisuirz, Alice Villatoro, and Marisol McDaniel, titled “Contextualizing the Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Educational Experiences and Outcomes of Latinx College Students in Texas,” employed data from the COVID-19 Texas College Student Experiences Survey to assess the impact of the pandemic on Latinx students. Regression models revealed how low-income Latinx students experienced greater challenges at the onset of the pandemic, with undergraduate students as a whole experiencing higher adversity compared to their graduate peers.

In the last article by Katherine Garcia titled, “Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on the Future Generation of Latinx Physicians,” employed a qualitative study, which addressed the ways in which the COVID pandemic influenced the experiences of pre-med students at a research-intensive university as well as their choices to pursue medical school. These students were committed to their communities and engaged in culturally relevant practices and efforts in school. Her findings suggest the need for more robust academic, financial, and emotional support for students on the pathway to entering the medical profession.

Moving beyond COVID-19 and Advancing Educational Equity for Latino/a/e/x Students

As the corpus of articles included in this Special Issue discussed, the COVID 19 pandemic has altered the lives of many Latinx students and has shed light on inequity in educational resources and services throughout the P-20 education continuum. These scholars have documented the critical importance of examining the social, academic, and health concerns of Latinx students and their families as they move beyond the COVID 19 pandemic. We offer a set of recommendations in an effort to move the conversation forward as the nation and world move beyond the pandemic and into a phase of redefining how, what and where students acquire academic knowledge and skills to prepare them for becoming lifelong learners.

1. Wellness. Student mental and physical wellness will be an important area for schools and institutions to address as many families have been affected by the pandemic and Latinx youth have lost family members. The data on cases and deaths in states like California, for example, displayed uneven death rates by race and ethnicity. An awareness of loss and providing ongoing services to students experiencing loss is needed across K-12 and higher education systems. The need for mental health services should be considered as districts, colleges, and universities

2. Access to technology. Access to relevant technology and connectivity remains an issue for Latinx and underrepresented students throughout all segments of education. Not only were connectivity and issue during the pandemic from its inception but access to laptops over ipads or thinkpads also represented technology gaps. Here, the actual technology distributed to students also varied and requires additional examination. Understanding which technological tools were the most user-friendly and the most effective during remote learning, for example, is relatively unknown. In addition, access to hot spots presented challenges for communities, particularly those in rural districts. Hot spots without access to cell towers were less helpful in mitigating the access to Wi-Fi gap.

3. Engaging Parents as Authentic Partners. The challenges presented to families during the pandemic are a reflection of the challenges that existed with formal schooling processes limited in their ability to authentically engage with Latino parents, and treating parents as full partners in the schooling process. Limits to culturally responsive engagement that exists when interacting with bicultural and bilingual Latino parents, in particular, were reflected in e-mail communication (largely in English) or various apps used by the school and teachers. As noted in this volume, Latinx parents are less likely to have e-mail addresses. This cultural disconnect ultimately continues to influence the ability of parents to partner alongside teachers to support learning.

4. Reframing “Learning Loss.” Current discussions place the onus of grade-level achievement that suffered (even further) during the pandemic on students. For Latinx students, and many students throughout the U.S., this moment taught them numerous lessons, with many becoming resilient, improvising, taking on new responsibilities in their family unit. Rather than returning to the high stakes nature of achievement and measurement, perhaps leaders and educators alike need to reflect on how shifting priorities and modes of engagement also unlocked opportunities for investing differently in student learning, including incorporating culturally responsive content and pedagogy.

5. Support for Teachers. Teachers were called on to shift in instructional delivery to remote, provide daily support for students that extended beyond curricular content, and were asked to promote wellness among their classroom community. Yet, targeted investment in the well-being of our teachers has not emerged as a priority in terms of policy or investment. Investing in teachers through additional income, summer support, bonuses, and wellness retreats is critical to mitigating teacher exhaustion and departure. As a number of the studies conveyed, teachers provided college information and support and offered personal counseling beyond the academic content relevant to their classes. They provided mentorship to students and guidance during an uncertain time in the lives of so many youth.

While our recommendations could easily include many more areas for consideration, these systemic and policy recommendations are intended to provide a starting point for moving beyond the COVID 19 pandemic and the inequitable impact experienced by Latino/a/e/x students and their families. Access to ongoing supports, with targeted efforts to invest in wellness while also providing academic support, will be important as students, families, and teachers at all levels attempt to prepare students for new and emerging sectors, fields, and industry shifts. This moment represents a unique opportunity to reframe how systems, schools, districts, colleges, and universities address the needs of their students and key stakeholders to recover, reframe, invest, and ultimately heal from this historic, painful, and often uncertain period.

We invite you to read ahead and enjoy the full value and complexity of the articles presented by Volume 21, Number 3 of the Journal of Latinos and Education. This volume on Latinos and Education in the time of COVID-19 also serves as a historical record of an unprecedented moment where familias and communities came together to persist, as previous generations have done in la lucha (the struggle) for equity. We want to extend our appreciation to the authors for their manuscript submissions and commend them for their contributions to the field of Latinos and Education. The editorial staff looks forward to supporting your continued research and practices that illuminate the myriad circumstances in which Latinas/os and their families continue to struggle for educational excellence and equity. Your support and this volume affirm the importance of scholarship and creative analysis that attempt to give voice to a community of learners that is silent no longer.

Thank You – muchísimas gracias.