By Chad Aldeman

Congratulations, Democrats, we made it through the nominating process without hearing much about what our nominee, Hillary Clinton, will do on education. Aside from a passing mention of tuition — and debt-free college for the middle class — Clinton’s historic acceptance speech last night continued the two-week convention trend of little to no discussion of education’s role in fueling our country’s future.

Conventions are mostly about rallying the base; the time for rolling out new policy positions has mostly passed.

Smart people who I admire and respect keep telling me this is fine. With the way this crazy election is going, it’s easy to understand why people aren’t anxious to have education thrown into the political scrum.

Others tell me voters don’t care about education anyway. There was a $60 million campaign to inject education into the 2008 campaign, and it mostly failed.

• Read the full live blog: The 74 and Bellwether Education Partners partnered to cover both the Republican and Democratic National Conventions.

But I believe this thinking assumes too much linearity, from voters to candidates to governance. If we care about education, we should want our politicians to speak up. Candidates don’t just reflect voter priorities; candidates also shape how voters see the world. We know this about political parties — partisans tend to view new events through the lens of people they already trust — and we’ve seen specific examples where leadership from a politician directly influences voters.

My personal favorite anecdote about this comes from the 2000 election. That year, George W. Bush made education one of his primary campaign themes. Half of his ads mentioned education in some way (more than Democrat Al Gore’s ads did), and the most frequently-run ad throughout the 2000 cycle was a Bush ad calling for higher standards for our schools.

Agree with Bush’s ideas or not, it had an effect. In 2000, voters selected education as one of the top issues facing the country, and Bush used the education issue to signal his “compassionate conservatism” —  earning female and minority voters in numbers that Republicans typically aren’t able to. Besides helping get him elected, he now had a mandate for policy, and Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act was a direct consequence of the way he ran his campaign.

Again, you don’t have to like Bush’s particular policy prescriptions to appreciate the chain of events here. The point is that education can matter if politicians decide it does. And if politicians campaign on an issue, they can then govern behind a mandate.

It’s not clear that Donald Trump has spent much time thinking about our nation’s public schools, so it’s no surprise he hasn’t spent much time talking about it.

But Hillary Clinton is another story. She’s devoted large portions of her life to fighting for kids who depend on our public schools. We heard Bill recount this history on Wednesday night. The reason Clinton hasn’t spoken up about education this year isn’t because she doesn’t care or doesn’t have ideas; it’s because the politics within the Democratic Party don’t encourage it. As Kate Pennington and I pointed out last month, Clinton relied on a coalition of union workers and black and Hispanic families to win the nomination. Those groups are opposed to a range of education issues, including charter schools and the role of testing and school reform efforts.

Why should Clinton risk Democratic Party unity to speak out on education?

For starters, it would be the right thing to do. No one can reasonably assert our public schools are as good as they could or should be, especially for students with disabilities and low-income, black, and Hispanic students who depend on them the most.

But more importantly, Clinton should have laid out her education policies so she’ll have legitimacy to act on education once she becomes president. In particular, Clinton declined to speak out during last year’s debate over the Every Student Succeeds Act. Now that the law’s signed, there are significant implementation issues left to be addressed. The law leans on vague phrases like “significant progress,” “meaningful differentiation,” and “consistently underperforming,” and the federal government is currently soliciting feedback on what exactly these phrases should mean.

What do these phrases mean to Clinton, and how aggressive would she be in defining them? Does she support equalizing funding in low-income schools, even if it means some districts would have to change their funding structures? What kind of leader would she put in place to oversee regulations and implementation of the new law?

We don’t know the answer to these questions, but they matter. Without signaling what she prefers, Clinton won’t have as much leeway once she’s elected. Silence, too, has consequences.

We may not have heard much substantive conversation about education from the podiums in Cleveland and Philadelphia, but that shouldn’t discourage us from pushing the dialogue forward. If you care about education or the direction of education policy in this country, you should want your politicians to speak up about it too.

This article was published in partnership with The74Million.org.

Chelsea Clinton at her 1997 graduation from Sidwell Friends Academy in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Getty Images)

The year was 1993.

President Bill Clinton had just beat Republican incumbent George H. Bush and the first family was facing an early political test: Where would they send Chelsea Clinton, their 12-year-old daughter and only child, to school?

On the campaign trail, Bill Clinton had portrayed himself as an ardent supporter of public education. He even sent his daughter to Horace Mann Magnet Middle School, a public school in Little Rock, Arkansas where 59 percent of the students were black and 41 percent white.  (Today, out of some 760 students, 58 percent are black, 26.5 percent are white, 11.7 are Hispanic and 1.7 percent are Asian.)

Local Washington, D.C. officials invited the first family to choose a city school as a show of good faith. But days before Clinton’s inauguration, the family announced that Chelsea would be attending one of the region’s most exclusive private institutions: Sidwell Friends School.

“It’s an academically challenging school,” Clinton spokesman George Stephanopoulos said at the time. “And it’s a school that Chelsea and her parents feel that she’ll be challenged and productive and happy in.”

• Read more on the live blog: The 74 and Bellwether Education Partners are partnering to cover both the Republican and Democratic National Conventions.

Chelsea Clinton would join an elite group of students that included the children of  Washington Post publisher Donald E. Graham, former New Mexico Sen. Jeff Bingaman, and New Jersey Sen. Bill Bradley.

Criticism of the Clintons’ school choice was swift and broad.

Michael Casserly, the executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools, a Washington, D.C.-based coalition of city public school systems, called the Clintons’ decision an “unfortunate vote of no confidence in urban education.”

Enrolling Chelsea in a public school “would have been an excellent opportunity to spur greater parental involvement in urban public schools and to work hand in glove with the public schools from both a political and personal standpoint” he said.

Former D.C. school board member Sandra Butler-Truesdale told The Washington Post that if Clinton had picked a public school, “it would have boosted the morale of educators in this city. It would have made such a big difference in the way education is delivered.”

Rebuke also came from national political figures. Then-Secretary of Education and now U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander told CBS Morning News that the first family made a wise choice for their daughter — Alexander’s son had just graduated from Sidwell Friends — but were being hypocritical because Clinton opposed Republican calls for school vouchers that would have helped needy parents make a similar choice.

Bill Clinton had argued that vouchers would drain money from public schools; Hillary Clinton also opposes the policy.

With tuition at Sidwell Friends back then more than $10,000 a year, some 27 percent of its 1,030 students were minorities when Chelsea Clinton was admitted. Sidwell Friends remains  popular among Washington’s powerful families, most famously President Barack Obama’s daughters, Malia and Sasha. The school’s tuition has risen to $39,360, with only 23 percent of students receiving any kind of financial aid, according to the its website. The school was founded in 1883 by Thomas W. Sidwell to uphold the Quaker principles of peace and justice.

Even former president Jimmy Carter, who was the first president in 71 years to send a child to a D.C. public school while in office, said he was “disappointed.” His daughter, Amy, attended public schools throughout her four years in Washington, including Stevens Elementary School and Hardy Middle School, a predominantly black school. Amy Carter went onto Brown University but was asked to leave her sophomore year. She finished at Memphis College of Art and then got her master’s at Tulane University.

Chelsea went onto Stanford University (and Columbia and Oxford); Malia will enter Harvard in fall 2017 after taking a gap year. The Bush daughters, Jenna and Barbara, had both graduated from Austin High School in 2000, the spring before their father took office. Jenna went onto the University of Texas and Barbara became the fourth-generation Bush to attend Yale.

Amid the Sidwell storm, the Clinton family defended the choice saying, “we believe this decision is best for our daughter at this time in her life based on our changing circumstances.” Hillary Clinton added later that a private school would allow the family to better maintain Chelsea’s privacy—a sentiment she reiterated in her 2003 memoir, “Living History.”

“Our decision about where to send Chelsea to school had inspired passionate debate inside and outside the Beltway, largely because of its symbolic significance. I understood the disappointment felt by advocates of public education when we chose Sidwell Friends, a private Quaker school, particularly when Chelsea attended public schools in Arkansas. But the decision for Bill and me rested on one simple fact: private schools were private property, hence off limits to news media. Public schools were not. The last thing we wanted was television cameras and news reporters following our daughter throughout the school day as they had when President Carter’s daughter, Amy, attended public school.”

The press during Bill Clinton’s administration would, in fact, develop a general no-coverage rule when it came to the First Family’s children.

On Chelsea’s graduation day from Sidwell, though the Clintons did not seem to mind the public attention. During a two-hour outdoor ceremony, President Clinton gave a short, bittersweet talk in which he instructed the high school graduates to “indulge your folks” if they seem sad as they remember all the milestones their children have reached. Obama actually declined an invitation to speak at Malia’s graduation, saying he would be wearing dark glasses and crying.

Hillary Clinton also waxed nostalgic in her syndicated newspaper column that week: “Like parents across the country,” she wrote. “We find ourselves fighting back tears as we contemplate what our days will be like when our daughter leaves the nest to embark on a new stage of life.”

Tonight, it will be Hillary embarking on a new stage of life — and history — when Chelsea introduces her mother, who will make her acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention.

This article was published in partnership with The74Million.org.

By

The DNC kicked off last night with two parallel stories of immigration that are meaningful, especially for those closely watching education issues. Karla Ortiz — a 10-year-old American citizen — spoke along with her mother, Francisca Ortiz, who is undocumented. Another speaker, Astrid Silva — identified on the schedule simply as “DREAMer” — is the organizing director at the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada. She is also undocumented. Although these speakers highlighted the importance education played in their personal stories, it might not be immediately obvious that momentum around immigration reform in the federal executive office is explicitly connected to our schools.

The appearance of these speakers on night one suggests that the Clinton campaign intends to bring renewed energy to passing the DREAM Act, now more than six years old. And while this statute is a federal immigration law, it has enormous implications for state education programs. Since 1982, undocumented students have been entitled to attend a public K-12 school; they also cannot be excluded from public college or university. But what they still can’t do is qualify for in-state tuition or get federal grants or loans to pay for it. Some states have taken up the cause and created their own state funding opportunities — but programs vary wildly with different eligibility requirements and benefits available.

• Read more on the live blog: The 74 and Bellwether Education Partners are partnering to cover both the Republican and Democratic National Conventions.

By leading with two stories that are about both immigration and education, the DNC sets the stage for some high-level ideological and policy friction between the federal government and the states. Immigration policy belongs to the federal government alone (even though we’ve seen lots of states try to assert their power — and lose). Education policy is primarily a state responsibility, even though the federal government can offer incentives for states to adopt preferred policies or practices. But the recent passage of ESSA shifts even more decision-making power to the states, while still providing them with federal dollars.

There’s also the matter of DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals): a separate federal executive action that applies to this same category of undocumented people: young people ages 15-31 who are enrolled in, or recently graduated from, high school. DACA acts as an interim measure while the DREAM Act winds its way through Congress, protecting eligible students’ continued U.S. residency by allowing them to apply for a two-year reprieve from the threat of deportation.

The success of DACA, however, rests on our public K-12 schools.

In order to qualify for DACA protection, students must prove that they are attending (or have graduated from) a U.S. high school. That requirement means more than just gathering the paperwork, it also means that we’re trusting our schools have the capacity to support these students through high school.

Threading the needle — not only on immigration and education, but also state and federal authority — is going to be a tricky task. But the Clinton campaign seems to be gearing up for it. We’ve gotten a lot of the “why,” now I think we’re all ready to hear the “how.”

This article was published in partnership with The74Million.org.

Unlike Trump, Clinton has a substantial education record – during the campaign, she released detailed proposals on home visits and the school-to-prison pipeline. She recently addressed the country’s largest teachers union and was booed for mentioning charter schools; only a few months before she was criticized for suggesting that charters don’t enroll highly disadvantaged children.

In addition to Clinton, other high-profile Democrats who will address the convention have extensive education policies.

• Read more on the live blog: The 74 and Bellwether Education Partners are partnering to cover both the Republican and Democratic National Conventions.

Here are the edu-creds of 14 marquee names set to take the stage in Philly:

Vice President Joe Biden — During his time as vice president, Biden has taken a lead in the effort to reduce sexual assaults at colleges and universities. While a senator, Biden twice sponsored the Campus Sexual Assault Victims’ Bill of Rights Act. He also introduced a bill that would identify top-performing, low-income eighth graders as part of a program to guarantee them Pell Grant funds for college.

Former President Bill Clinton — In his 1999 State of the Union address, Clinton proposed what could be seen in retrospect as a prototype of No Child Left Behind. In exchange for federal funds, states would have to end social promotion, issue report cards on school performance, hire better-trained teachers, and “shake up failing schools,” as the Los Angeles Times put it. During his tenure as governor of Arkansas in the 1980s, Clinton pushed to direct more money to the state’s schools, set new academic standards, and required competency testing for teachers. Arkansas schools remained among the worst in the country.

President Barack Obama — The president is in some ways the model DFER-style Democrat, promoting education reforms like charter schools and data-driven teacher evaluation despite backlash from traditional allies in labor. His edu-legacy will live in the Race to the Top program (including the Common Core and teacher evaluations tied to student test scores), his push for federal pre-school spending, spotlight on the school-to-prison pipeline and, in higher ed, reforms to student loans, call to make community college free, and a crackdown on for-profit colleges.

Michelle Obama — The First Lady is probably best known for her Let’s Move initiative promoting physical activity and healthy eating to combat childhood obesity. The program set off a conservative backlash around issues of cost and government intrusion, particularly in response to her efforts to incorporate more produce and whole grains and less salt in school lunches. She also launched Let Girls Learn, aimed at helping the 62 million girls currently not in school worldwide to access a quality education.

Sen. Bernie Sanders — Vermont’s progressive sensation focused primarily on higher education during the primary and sometimes stumbled when trying to address K-12 issues, like charter schools. While in Congress he introduced bills to pay for extended school days and years, fund dual college enrollment, promote community schools, and support high school reentry. Sanders voted against No Child Left Behind as a member of the House.

Astrid Silva — Silva is an undocumented immigrant from Mexico. She arrived as a penniless small child but grew up to become a political activist whose story has often been cited by Democratic lawmakers and President Obama in arguing for passage of the DREAM Act, which would allow young people brought to the country illegally to work and go to school legally.

Sen. Cory Booker — Best known for his role in Newark’s state-run schools during his tenure as mayor, Booker pushed to include stronger accountability measures in last year’s Senate rewrite of No Child Left Behind.

Gov. Jerry Brown — The California governor approved a state budget last month that will allow for the expansion of pre-K, help with hiring teachers, boost spending for charter school start-up costs, and increase per-pupil funding. He has also resisted the national trend toward data-based school accountability.

Mayor Bill de Blasio — Improving schools has been central to the first-term agenda of New York City mayor. He has fought to retain mayoral control of the city’s schools while launching a universal preschool initiative and allocating significant extra funds to poor-performing schools. He has had a fraught relationship with charter school operators but says he doesn’t oppose charter schools.

Sen. Al Franken — The former Saturday Night Live star and comedian has focused on combating bullying against LGBT students, education technology and its possible consequences for student data privacy, and the education of Native American students, particularly those in Bureau of Indian Education schools.

Sen. Tom Harkin — The former senator and past chairman of the Senate education committee was long an advocate for early childhood education. He tried to rewrite No Child Left Behind twice and oversaw the release of a key report on wrongdoings by for-profit colleges. He is best known as the author of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Mayor Jim Kenney — Philadelphia’s top official made national news recently for successfully pushing to increase taxes on soda and other sugary drinks to pay for expanded pre-K and the creation of 25 “community schools” in the city.

Sen. Chris Murphy — The Connecticut senator was one of Cory Booker’s partners in the push for increased federal accountability standards in the Every Student Succeeds Act. He has also advocated for stronger federal restrictions on the use of seclusion and restraint for students with special needs.

Gov. Tom Wolf — The first-term governor of Pennsylvania was elected in part because voters saw the deep cuts to schools made by his predecessor as destructive. He has spent much of his time in office battling the Republican-led legislature over the state budget, a fight that had a drastic impact on Keystone State schools — particularly in poor districts — last year.

This article was published in partnership with The74Million.org.

(Photo: C-SPAN)

Democrats added a misleading reference to standardized tests to the party platform over the weekend, requiring they meet a reliability standard that doesn’t actually exist.

“[W]e believe that standardized tests must meet American Statistical Association standards for reliability and validity,” the amendment reads, saying this would “strike a better balance on testing, so that it informs, but does not drive, instruction.”

To most people this would seem like common sense; of course tests should follow statistical best practices and who could sound more authoritative on the controversial subject than the American Statistical Association.

But there’s a problem: The American Statistical Association (ASA) has never published guidelines pertaining to the reliability and validity of standardized tests.

“There are no such standards,” said Jill Talley, a spokesperson for the ASA.

The language referring to the imaginary ASA standards was adopted Saturday as an amendment by the Democratic platform committee meeting in Orlando, Fla., according to a C-SPAN video (transcribed by Democrats for Education Reform) and an American Federation of Teachers press release. AFT President Randi Weingarten advocated for the amendment, saying it would help make testing “more fulsome” and schools “places of joy for children again.” An AFT spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

It was one of several changes to the platform pertaining to standardized tests and charter schools that have created a flurry of recent discussion: sharp criticism by some and cheers of support by others.

• Read more: Democrats rewrite education platform behind closed doors, abandon core party values

The draft platform on the Democratic National Convention (DNC) website and scheduled to be voted on during the July 25-28 convention in Philadelphia doesn’t yet reflect such amendments. DNC spokeswoman Dana Vickers Shelley would not comment on the apparently mistaken reference to ASA testing standards.

“At this point we’re not speaking on specific language because the document is being updated to reflect the amendments and changes approved by the platform committee,” she said.

While the ASA “standards for reliability and validity” pertaining to standardized testing are not real, the amendment may have been referring to a 2014 statement from the ASA  regarding value-added measures, a method for evaluating teachers based on their impact on student test scores. Teachers unions have generally fought tying student test scores to teacher performance.

The ASA urged caution in using value-added measures when evaluating teachers but did not specify validity or reliability standards for assessments.

In fact, Talley said, “The statement does not at all address the reliability or validity of standardized tests.”

It’s also possible that the amendment meant to refer to assessment standards jointly developed by the American Educational Research Association, American Psychological Association, and National Council on Measurement in Education.

The Democratic platform amendment also states, “We oppose … the use of student test scores in teacher and principal evaluations, a practice which has been repeatedly rejected by researchers.” This would mark a sharp departure from the Obama administration which incentivized states to use test scores to evaluate teachers through its Race to the Top program and federal waivers from No Child Left Behind.

Catherine Brown of the Center For American Progress, a progressive think tank, said the amendments reflected growing concerns about over-testing. “This platform is one more piece of evidence that we need to move to better, fairer, and fewer tests,” she said.

But, she said, “The platform has no force of law or policy.”

Amendment #76 was offered by Chuck Pascal, a platform committee member from Pennsylvania, who, according to the C-SPAN video, said, “We should only be using standardized tests that are statistically valid. The current standardized testing for the most part only indicates that a student is in poverty.”

Neither Pascal nor Weingarten discussed what was meant by the “American Statistical Association standards for reliability and validity,” and no one asked.

The amendment passed unanimously.

This article was published in partnership with The74Million.org.

By Peter Cunningham

The Democratic Party has always stood for one thing: we fight for the little guy. In the field of education, the little guy is the student. He can’t vote. He doesn’t have much say about his school. He mostly has to do what he’s told. And he is trusting us to do right by him and set him on a path to success.

That should mean that we are giving him a good school filled with hard-working adults who set high expectations and hold themselves accountable for results. It should mean that when the student isn’t learning the adults in his school don’t blame factors outside the classroom. Instead, they make the most of things under their control – like time, curriculum, technology, parents and the trusted relationship between teacher and student.

It should mean giving him and his guardian the freedom to find the right school for his unique needs, whether he is gifted or struggling, non-English speaking, poor, gay, straight, trans, athletic, artistic, emotionally stable or vulnerable. It should mean that we don’t allow adult rules about governance or working conditions to inhibit the child’s right to a quality public school and an effective teacher. The needs of the student come first.

Unfortunately, the new Democratic platform does not fully commit to any of these things. Instead, the one adopted behind closed doors in Orlando last weekend affirms an education system that denies its shortcomings and is unwilling to address them.

For example, Democrats are now against “high-stakes standardized tests that falsely and unfairly label students of color, students with disabilities, and English language learners as failing.” No argument here, but what about standardized tests that truthfully and fairly identify underperforming schools and struggling students? The platform is silent.

Democrats are also against “the use of standardized test scores as a basis for refusing to fund schools or to close schools.” OK, but are there any circumstances when Democrats support closing schools? What if those schools show little to no growth? What if parents stop choosing those schools? Would we keep them open anyway? Again, the platform is silent.

Democrats are also against “the use of student test scores in teacher and principal evaluations.” Obviously, they didn’t check with America’s most-prominent Democrat, President Barack Obama. He thinks test scores, along with other measures like classroom observations, examples of classroom work, and feedback from peers, parents and even students, should inform evaluations.

Democrats are also against the “test and punish version of accountability that does no more than reveal the academic gaps created before they reach school.” Nothing about accountability that reveals gaps after they reach school. Are we for that?

And, we are now officially supporting parents who “opt their children out of standardized tests without penalty for either the student or the school.” The fact is, there are no penalties for opting out of tests, despite the occasional threat from Washington.

Nevertheless, it’s troubling to see Democrats buying into a local control argument that puts at risk disadvantaged students. Doesn’t that belong in the political platform where local control “Trumps” equity for people of color?

Next, we support only “democratically governed great neighborhood public schools.” That excludes all schools in cities without elected school boards and will be unwelcome news to leading Democratic mayors like Bill de Blasio of New York and Rahm Emanuel of Chicago.

To its credit, the Democratic Party supports “high-quality public charter schools,” as long as they don’t “replace or destabilize traditional public schools.” That’s a pretty extreme condition, since we have a limited number of children in America and they may choose to attend charters instead of neighborhood schools. Will we deny them that choice simply because a school with fewer students will receive less funding?

Moreover, according to the draft platform, the charter schools “are required to accept and retain proportionate numbers of students of color, students with disabilities and English language learners in relation to their neighborhood public schools.” But, what if the parents of those children do not choose the charters? What if those children don’t thrive in charters? Again the platform is silent.

The amendments adopted by the Democratic Platform Committee are a step backwards at a time when America can’t afford to stand still, let alone retreat. Improving public education for low-income black and Hispanic children shouldn’t be a matter of debate or a political football. It’s an economic and a moral imperative.

Every year, we graduate some 3 million young people from public high schools all across America. Another million or so don’t even make it that far. The social costs of under-educated Americans run into the trillions. The moral cost of condemning young people to a second-class existence is incalculable.

Education should be a voting issue, but Democrats should at least make sure that we are asking people to vote the right way. Accountability and public school choice are core values of the last two Democratic administrations. The last thing we should do is abandon them. The littlest guys are counting on us.

Peter Cunningham served as the Assistant Secretary for Communications and Outreach in the U.S. Department of Education during the first term of the Obama Administration. He is a lifelong Democrat.

This article was published in partnership with The74Million.org. 

Teachers unions’ alliance with Democratic Party frays LA Times: Teachers unions have been the Democratic Party’s foot soldiers for more than half a century, but this relationship is fraying, and the deterioration was evident Monday as Democrats gathered in Charlotte, North Carolina for their national convention. [Also:  HuffPo has a similar piece that focuses on the new film, “Won’t Back Down,” based on the new Parent Trigger law.]

LA schools moving away from zero tolerance policies Los Angeles Times: The move away from punitive law enforcement actions and toward support services reflects a growing awareness, grounded in research, that treating minor offenses with police actions did not necessarily make campuses safer or students more accountable.

Educator Wants to ‘Revolutionize’ LAUSD Schools LA Sentinel: Educator Daphne Bradford, who helped a group of Crenshaw High School students get certifications in digital media, publish a book and get invited to the Democratic National Convention, is offering a free training to all Los Angeles Unified teachers beginning September 1, on how to apply innovative classroom techniques and bring students here into the 21st century, she said.

At Least Fun in the Sun Isn’t Banned. For Now… NY Times: The recent LAUSD ban on styrofoam trays was only the latest in a myriad of Southern California bans, which include bonfires on the beach, napping in libraries, porn without condoms, and (not mentioned in the article) kosher Coca-Cola.

Some top charter school organizations eye Washington AP: Rocketship Education, which runs some of the top performing elementary schools in California’s low-income areas, would love to expand to Washington state, said Kristoffer Haines, vice president of national development for the seven-school organization started in San Jose, Calif., in 2006.

Summer program gives farmworkers’ children a taste of college LA Times: The program at the University of La Verne provides counseling and English and math courses to teenage children of migrant workers who have been in the U.S. less than three years.