The Binational Migrant Education Program - Policies for immigrant transfer students

The Binational Migrant Education Program helps students, teachers, school administration, and parents through several programs. The two central components are the Binational Transfer Document and the Binational Teacher Exchange. The program also offers free textbooks from the Mexican curriculum. Currently, 27 U.S. states and 31 Mexican states (all states except for the Yucatan) participate at some level in one or more parts of the binational program. The program helps all students who go back and forth between Mexico and the U.S, whereas the migrant education program set up in the United States works only with students who qualify under the U.S. Department of Education’s guidelines for migrants (primarily that the student’s parents make a qualifying move for migrant work).

The challenge is that currently in many states including North Carolina most binational work is done through the migrant education office because it is the best equipped and has funding and staff. It does a good job with the students who qualify as migrants, but unfortunately it cannot directly help the large number of students who could be helped by the Binational program but are not considered migrants. The state of North Carolina and individual schools need to think how they can participate in the program not only through the migrant office but also on their own to help all Mexican students, not just those who are classified as migrants. The following information briefly explains the program and how a school can get involved.

The transfer document

For reference, see the scanned images of the front and reverse of a sample transfer document.

The transfer document helps schools in the U.S. and Mexico more quickly and more effectively enroll Mexican students who move between the two countries by providing an official record of the student’s school history. When a student comes directly from Mexico and enrolls in school in North Carolina, the school must determine in which grade to place the student without much information on the student’s educational background. The schools face burdens trying to place the students, and the students are burdened by often being placed in an inappropriate grade. When a student in a North Carolina school returns to Mexico, the Mexican school has difficulty knowing where to place the student without records from the North Carolina school. The transfer document helps the new school with the often difficult process of determining the student’s age, grade level, schooling background and courses enrolled in. Whenever a student enrolls mid-year, schools have difficulties tracking down records from the prior school, and the process is made even more difficult when the former school is in another country.

Before leaving for the U.S., a Mexican student requests the document from his or her school and carries it in-hand to the American school where the student will enroll. When a Mexican student leaves a North Carolina school to return to Mexico, the student can request a transfer document from the North Carolina school.

How to get a transfer document

Anyone at a school can get one (it is usually filled out by the school secretary and the student’s teacher)
Parents can request one from a North Carolina school before leaving for Mexico
They are distributed by the Mexican consulate
Each document has a unique number, so you cannot just print it out online or copy it
School should try to get a certain amount from the consulate at a time, so you are not scrambling for them when a family asks for one at the last second
Migrant recruiters usually also have them, but a student need not qualify as a migrant to have one — any Mexican student can get one
A test program currently in the state of Washington allows schools to download the document online, and North Carolina should try to bring this online program here

When the student returns to Mexico, he or she can take the transfer document to the local Mexican school to be immediately enrolled in the grade indicated, because the form is considered a legal document officially recognized by the Mexican government. Schools in the U.S. are not required to accept the document, but the federal government encouraged its use and schools have found it to be an essential document for enrolling new students from Mexico. The idea is to minimize any missed time away from school during the student’s move and to make the transition as smooth as possible for both the student and school.

The transfer document is a fairly short form printed both in English and Spanish, and contains the following information:

The student’s current grade level
The current school year
Exact date at the moment of transfer out of Mexican school
The official name of the school in Mexico
The address of the school
The complete student’s name, copied from a legal document
Mexican registration number (Clave Única de Registro de Población or CURP)
Student’s date of birth
Sex of the student
Complete name of the student’s father or guardian
Complete name of the student’s mother or guardian
Name and telephone number of the person who can give information about health or special education requirements of the student
The complete name and signature of the person responsible of issuing the document at the moment of handing it to the parents.
The grades by subject taken according to the grade scale in the transfer document
Observations about the student’s learning
The teacher’s suggestions to teacher who receives student and to his/her
parents in order to improve his/her learning

The transfer document is an important component in ensuring the success of Mexican students in North Carolina schools. It is the first step in quickly and properly enrolling and placing a new student, which studies have shown increases the chances that student will not drop out of school and will have academic success. In addition, the transfer document can help reduce the burden schools face when enrolling and placing students from foreign countries like Mexico, and helps ensure students in our schools get credit for school here when they return to Mexico. Also, the document is free and the time to fill it out is short (there is a rumor that this document takes a long time to fill out, but people in several states that are actively involved in using the document say it takes only a short time to fill it out).

It is important to try to increase the number of transfer documents entering North Carolina. The state needs to promote acceptance of transfer document in NC schools and help promote, with the Mexican consulate, filling out the document in Mexico. The Mexican government has made a strong effort to send transfer documents to all Mexican states, but they sometimes are not reaching remote towns. Some Mexicans in North Carolina come from these towns so everyone involved in the program should think of ways to ensure that students can get a transfer document when coming from these regions.

Binational Teacher Exchange Program

North Carolina does not participate in the Binational Teacher Exchange Program. Currently, some individual schools hire Spanish-speaking teachers through the Business International Faculty program (BIF) to teach Spanish or English as a Second Language for up to three years, but this is not connected to the Binational program. The BIF program is limited in addressing the particular problem of helping Mexican students in North Carolina because most of the teachers come from Spain and South America, but not from Mexico.

The Binational Teacher Exchange Program involves over two hundred teachers per year between the U.S. and Mexico. Teachers from the U.S. who teach Mexican children go to Mexico for one to two weeks, while teachers in Mexico come to the U.S. for four to eight weeks in the summer. The exchange program would help North Carolina teachers who have Mexican students in their classrooms better understand the Mexican culture and norms so they can better understand their students’ behaviors and better communicate with them. In addition, teachers learn about the Mexican educational system to understand effective teaching methods used there and how their students learned prior to moving to the U.S. Teachers in the U.S. often participate in an exchange in the town or region where one or more of their students come from, to truly understand the lives of their new students.

Teachers from Mexico participate in summer programs at U.S. schools to learn about teaching methods in U.S. schools and how Mexican children learn here. This knowledge can help Mexican teachers improve the transition of migrant students going to the U.S. or returning from the U.S., and can help Mexican students learning in U.S. schools. In addition, Mexican teachers usually work with Mexican parents in the U.S. to explain expectations of parent involvement in U.S. schools, and these parents tend to open up more to these teachers who share their Mexican background, according to experience in other states.

Some of the requirements for a U.S teacher to participate in the exchange:

Teacher of bilingual or migrant programs
Knowledge of the educational problems of Hispanic children in the U.S.
Willingness to cooperate with Mexico in exchanging teaching methods and educational technology
A level of Spanish that allows verbal communication without a translator
Experience as a teacher of Hispanic children and young people
Ability to explain the American educational system and local district system
Interest in learning about the communities of origin of the Mexican migrants and understanding of the Mexican child’s behavior in U.S. schools

For a Mexican teacher to participate, he or she must have:

Bachelor’s degree in the area of pedagogy/certificate-diploma from the Normal School or Upper Normal School
Minimum three years of classroom experience as a group teacher
Certain mastery of the English language that permits verbal communication
Knowledge of the educational problems of the Mexican rural environment
General knowledge of the Mexican educational system
Knowledge of Mexico’s history, traditions, and culture
Experience in designing educational programs and materials

Currently the Office of Migrant Education promotes the program to schools with migrant students, but schools have not yet participated because they believe it is too costly, and too burdensome to obtain required visas. Based on information from other states that participate, the schools pay only a weekly stipend of roughly $150 to $200 per teacher. In addition, the school arranges a local host where the teacher will live and eat during the four to eight weeks in the state. Some schools find Mexican families in the area to host, or teachers or staff at the school. Sometimes the hosting duties are split between two families, so each does hosting for only a few weeks. The Mexican government pays for the teacher’s salary during the program and pays for the travel costs to and from Mexico. The burden of obtaining a short-term visa for a teacher is small, and takes little time, especially if the state creates a close relationship with the Mexican consulate.

Based on surveys conducted with states that have participated in the teacher exchange, the benefits far outweigh the costs:

100 percent of respondents said the teacher exchange increased the school staff’s knowledge about Mexico’s school system.
90 percent said it increased students’ content achievement, language/cultural identity, and self esteem.
80 percent said it increased students’ motivation toward school.
70 percent said the program increased parent involvement.

To send a U.S. teacher to Mexico, the U.S. school pays the teacher’s salary, transportation to and from Mexico, and usually the cost of a hotel in Mexico, because few teachers stay with local families. The U.S. teachers benefit by learning about the culture of their Mexican students and better understanding their lifestyle, but often there are fewer overall benefits because teachers go to Mexico for only a few weeks and usually are not working in a classroom. Schools in the survey rated the U.S.-to-Mexico program lower than the Mexico-to-U.S. program.

Textbook Distribution Program

The Mexican Secretary of Public Education provides textbooks in Spanish, used in the current standard curriculum in Mexican school for free to schools in the U.S. Recently 13 states participated in this program and received a total of 52,450 books. Schools often then distribute textbooks to local migrant education programs as a learning tool for migrant students, use the books in class to promote literacy in Spanish, give parents the textbooks to read to their children at home, or have parents read the textbooks to children in school libraries. In addition, Mexican teachers participating in the teachers exchange sometimes use the texts to provide instruction in U.S. classrooms.

Summary

The components of Binational Migrant Education Program help states and schools with various aspects of teaching newly immigrant children. The transfer document provides vital information to help U.S. schools enroll migrating students and the teacher exchange is a valuable source to help teachers understand in more depth the children they work with every day. The additional program that offers free textbooks may help the education of newly migrating students. Parents can learn how to participate in their children’s schools through informational sessions with Mexican teacher exchange participants and can help their children by reading to them from the Mexican textbooks. As the Hispanic student population grows in North Carolina, it is vital that area schools take advantage of the useful and essential components of the Binational Migrant Education Program.