Vanessa Dabovich

The Alliance for Political Asylum Seekers is kicking off its official status with an event next weekend designed to inform the community about the process of seeking political asylum in the U.S as well as to recruit interested community members in the organization.

The event is a screening of the film “A better Life” which depicts the daily struggle of an immigrant father and his son.

The event will also have a panel discussion featuring Las Cruces City Councilor Olga Pedroza and Carlos Marentes from the Border Agricultural Workers Project.

Latinos are the largest ethnic minority group in the Southwest and the fastest-growing nationally.  More than one-third of Latino students are English Language Learners and, according to Department of Education data, they consistently perform poorly on state tests and have lower graduation rates than whites and Asians.  On today’s program we focus on the Latino achievement gap in our region and explore how states are looking beyond federal guidelines and assistance to come up with some possible solutions to close the gap in the Southwest.

New Mexico is becoming the latest state to be freed from the No Child Left Behind grading system. As KRWG’s Vanessa Dabovich reports the state may be free of the federal system, but the recently implemented state A to F grading system left Las Cruces schools with less than stellar marks.