ACEVEDO IN THE GUARDIAN: BENCHMARKING THE VALLEY

By Baltazar Acevedo y Arispe. Jr.
www.riograndeguardian.com.
 I retired on August 31st of this year as a tenured professor of educational leadership and research from a university in South Texas.
My 45-year career began in 1967 at Michigan State University and ended on the Frontera del Sur de Tejas y el Norte de México. In between I worked at 17 universities and colleges as well at several government agencies and in the classrooms of several public school districts.
During that time span I can state, unequivocally, that I never experienced a milieu as that presented by the four counties of the Rio Grande Valley of south Texas. This is a region that will test your sense of reality, present you with surrealistic scenarios of a political nature, expose you to crime, both physical and that wrought by the very agencies and elected officials that are suppose to guard your security, welfare and safety.
In the midst of all this chaos are the people; la gente whose work ethic is beyond reproach and whose humility and generosity is given unconditionally as an extension of communidad. It is also a region that requires continuous explanation and reflection, as it is like all global cross-border regions, in flux and in this instance battered about by political and economic forces originating in Austin, Washington, D.C. and Mexico City, D.F.
As an isolated and insulated part of the state of Texas, the Rio Grande Valley stands at a similar juncture as that described by the Texas Coordinating Board in its statement on Closing the Gaps in 2002 when it was observed that, “Texas stands at a crossroads. In one direction lies a future that follows the current course of action...enrollments in colleges and universities do not keep pace with booming population growth...regional workers are not able to support a growing and globally competitive economy that is necessary for a sustainable quality of life.... In the other direction lies a future which follows a new path...Texas accepts the challenge...college and university enrollments and graduations increase...Educational institutions excel through programs of excellence and advancements in research...the economy is advanced by a highly trained and capable workforce and by innovations created through R&D...individuals are challenged, their minds are expanded, and they develop a growing interest in the world around them.” [Adapted from” Closing The Gaps” Texas Higher Education Plan, 2002]
In the coming months I will present an ongoing series of articles that will benchmark how the Rio Grande Valley of south Texas is doing in terms of several key indicators that will provide checkpoints at how this region is responding to:
1.) The capacity of families to both survive and thrive during these harsh economic times,
2.) The public education of its 92 percent plus Mexican-American student population,
3.) The development of health services to meet one of this nation’s most at risk populations,
4.) The expansion of and investment in higher education that must be grounded and linked to the economic needs and future of the region,
5.) Environmental issues that have long-term implications for this region’s quality of life,
6.) The ongoing challenges of responding to the many opportunities for this region to make better use of its assets to be a cornerstone to ground this state’s economic recovery and finally,
7.) The continued challenge to identify and continuously develop a cadre of leaders that will be trained to move the region forward by breaking away from the old “patronismo political model” that still thrives and survives, albeit in a covert way, to corrupt, detract and derail the Rio Grande Valley’s future and to impede the actualization of the potential of its knowledge and intellectual capital.
To fully understand the aforementioned topics, it is necessary to provide a demographic context to ground all social indicators and to project what may happen and to explain, to a degree, what needs to happen. For the benefit of the reader there will be several reference sources accessed so that this series may be coherent.
What can be said is that the future of Texas is contingent on how policy brokers, at all tiers of the public and private sectors, respond to the inordinate growth of the Hispanic population, predominately Mexican-American, in this state.
Both Dr. Steven Murdock of Rice University and Dr. Ray Perryman of the Perryman Group in Waco have presented this admonishment at many different media and research forums and to many gatherings of policy brokers and leadership circles. What is evident is that the demographic growth in South Texas is part and parcel what is happening in Texas.
First, it is necessary to present the demographic context that is present and forever evident in the future of this state.
Secondly, the Rio Grande Valley’s demography must be analyzed in its proper context as it relates to the broader question: Will this region be an asset or a deterrent to the sustainable future of Texas?
The U.S. Census Bureau’s data show that Texas had a population of just over 25 million in 2010 and of that 38 percent or 9,500,000 was Hispanic (this agency uses the term “Latino” but I do not).
The number of Hispanics, again predominately Mexican-American, may be greater due to an under-count or that there is always a number of individuals that may be classified as Hispanics when they are counted in a database with other ethnic groups. This data does not count the undocumented immigrant.
The Office of the Texas State Comptroller projected, in 2008, a net change for each Texas race/ethnicity group between 2000 and 2040 using the U.S. Census Bureau’s data. These projections show that Hispanics will make up 77.6 percent of the state’s demographic net growth during this span. This data also show that the White population will only have a net growth of 4.2 percent and that the African American net growth will be 5.6 percent and the balance of the 12.6 percent net population growth will be from a compilation of other ethnic groups, mostly Asian.
Dr. Murdock, in his seminal 1997 work on this state’s demography, "The Texas Challenge: Population Change and the Future of Texas," stresses that, “for both the private and public sectors of Texas, the need to improve the socioeconomic resources of minorities is of utmost importance. With more than 87 percent of the net increase in the population and two-thirds of the increase in the labor force projected to be due to minority populations it is clear that the future of Texas is directly tied to its minority populations” (notation: primarily Mexican-American).
To Dr. Murdock, the expansion of the educational capacity of this state’s ethnic population is the key to the future of Texas.
The analysis of educational data from the Texas State Comptroller’s Office demonstrates that from the years 2000 to 2040 presents some very revealing enrollment trends. In public schools, Hispanics will comprise 66.3 percent of the enrollment, Whites will be 19.9 percent of this enrollment, African Americans will comprise 8.3 percent of the enrollment and the balance of 5.5 percent will consist of other population groups.
The post-secondary enrollment data show that Hispanics will comprise 50.9 percent of the enrollment, Whites 28.7 percent, African American 12.3 percent and other populations will amount to 8.1 percent of the college and university enrollment.
Workforce projections, using the same database for the same time span, are made by the Texas Data Center at the University of Texas San Antonio. These show that Hispanics will comprise 58.7 percent of the workforce, Whites 25.2 percent, African Americans 7.9 percent and the balance will consist of 8.2 percent from other populations. These data serve to reinforce Dr. Murdock’s perspectives and advice to policy brokers at all levels of government and in the private sector.
This, then, is a brief introduction to this series. There will be an expansion on these topics and more details presented as the data focuses on the Rio Grande Valley. The implications for how policy translates into practice and how fiscal resources are allocated to affect the development of this demography will be woven into the fabric of this dialogue.
If anything may be said from the data, it is that it’s time to reconsider the use of the term “minority” in describing the demographic composition of this state since it has little currency in terms of social reality. If anything, Hispanics are the majority in many elements of the data but unfortunately the minority in the positive outcomes that represent both participation and progress. 

(Baltazar Acevedo y Arispe, Jr., Ph.D., is the founder and managing principal of the Borderlands Consulting Group that is located in both Waco and Houston, Texas. His columns appear regularly in the Guardian, from which this article was taken.)