Education

Mexicans Walk Across the Border to Go to School

By Mary Ann Zehr — May 20, 2009 1 min read
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CNN features today a Methodist preparatory school in El Paso, Texas, that enrolls a significant number of students who live in Juarez, Mexico, and walk across the border each day to go to school. The article says that 70 percent of the 459 students at the Methodist high school, the Lydia Patterson Institute, live in Juarez.

This caught my attention because I just wrote on this blog about how Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne wants the Arizona legislature to pass a law barring charter schools from enrolling students who live in Mexico and walk across the border to go to school.

The CNN article, of course, is about Texas, not Arizona. In addition, it’s about a private school, which I presume can enroll whoever it wants. But it does make me wonder if U.S. schools near the border, whether private or public, are educating a significant number of students who actually live in Mexico. And I have another question: Do a lot of people really care?

A version of this news article first appeared in the Learning the Language blog.