After a 74 investigation discovered new arrivals routinely turned away. Some lengthy for what they may have achieved with a H.S. diploma and others are grateful for theirs.
Melvin Martinez was practically 23 years previous when he enrolled within the twelfth grade at Rudsdale Excessive Faculty in Oakland, California.
Initially from El Salvador, he tried college years earlier, getting into the ninth grade at age 17. However he dropped out two and a half years later: Already a father or mother, he struggled with managing his research and fatherhood.
“I didn’t give it some thought, if it was a great resolution or a nasty one,” Martinez mentioned. However after toiling away at a neighborhood Mexican restaurant for years, not making any actual progress in life, he got here to remorse the transfer.
Three years after he stop college, his former math instructor got here to his office by likelihood and requested Martinez how he was doing. When the younger man mentioned he lamented his resolution to surrender on his schooling, the instructor advised him it wasn’t too late to re-enroll.
Now 24, he’s chipping away at enterprise lessons on the School of Alameda and encourages excessive colleges throughout the nation to open their doorways to older, new arrivals like him.
“There are lots of people who’re very, very good however don’t have the chance to proceed college,” he mentioned. “If we may help these guys who’re very motivated to proceed, let’s do it. It will likely be good for the nation, too.”
However a 16-month-long undercover investigation of enrollment practices at 630 excessive colleges throughout the nation — through which The 74 tried to register a 19-year-old Venezuelan newcomer who spoke little English and whose schooling had been interrupted after ninth grade — revealed rampant refusals.
Our take a look at teen, “Hector Guerrero,” was denied greater than 300 occasions, together with by 204 colleges within the 35 states and the District of Columbia the place highschool attendance goes as much as not less than age 20. State schooling officers in most of these places individually confirmed to The 74 {that a} 19-year-old couldn’t be turned away due to his age.
Not one of the 35 California excessive colleges queried by The 74 accepted Hector: The state gives no safety for common schooling college students who want to enroll previous 18, making Martinez’s expertise all of the extra outstanding.
The younger man mentioned he’ll always remember the instructor who inspired him to re-register.
“Chances are you’ll suppose these are little issues that aren’t vital, however in these little issues, you’ll be able to change folks’s future,” he mentioned.
Javier
Martinez’s brother, Javier, understands that lesson properly. Now 28 years previous, he didn’t know he might have enrolled in highschool when he got here to the US greater than a decade in the past. The community of latest immigrants who helped him safe work upon his arrival at 17 by no means talked about the likelihood, he mentioned. He needs somebody had.
![Immigrant student school admissions: R Latino men with black hair and beards in black t-shirts stand with arms across each others' shoulders and a pre-teen Latino boy with black hair in white t-shirt stands between them](https://youthtoday.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/13/2024/06/NEWS_2024.06.26_Older-Immigrant-student-school-admissions_family-1.jpg)
Courtesy Javier Martinez
Melvin Martinez and his brother, Javier, stand with a younger member of the family.
“I all the time mentioned I needed to go to highschool, be taught extra English, be taught one thing totally different,” he mentioned.
A home painter by commerce, he would a lot quite work in gastronomy.
“I might love to show diet and the right way to cook dinner, one thing like that,” he mentioned. “I’d wish to know extra concerning the meals in different nations.”
However everybody advised him that not having completed highschool in America would make it practically unattainable for him to attend school. So, he’s adjusted his expectations to fulfill his alternative.
Alanys
Alanys Zacarias, 22, is aware of what it’s wish to be trapped by the boundaries of her schooling. She was turned away by a South Carolina highschool at age 18, she mentioned, despite the fact that enrollment goes as much as age 21 in that state, based on statute. She had already amassed the mandatory paperwork and was getting ready to get the entire required immunizations when the college dealt an sudden blow.
Zacarias, who discovered English two years in the past partly by watching 19 seasons of Gray’s Anatomy, mentioned her life can be a lot better immediately had staffers let her in. An formidable climber who mentioned she’s mastered new duties with ease at each her jobs — one at a high-end pan manufacturing facility, the opposite at a Charleston-area Walmart — Zacarias believes she would have already earned an affiliate’s diploma or can be closing in on a bachelor’s.
![Older Immigrant student school admissions: Headshot of young Latino woman with long dark hair in a maroon sweatshirt standing inside a Walmart with aisles of merchandise behind her and a tall wire display basket fill of colorful balls next to her](https://youthtoday.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/13/2024/06/NEWS_2024.06.26_Older-Immigrant-student-school-admissions_Alanys-Zacariuas.jpg)
Jo Napolitano/The 74
Alanys Zacarias, 22 and from Venezuela, contained in the South Carolina Walmart the place she works part-time.
Most significantly, she’d have the cash to deliver her mom and youthful sister right here from Venezuela, the place day by day life is a crushing wrestle. The South American nation’s annual inflation rate hit 190% last year. Water shortages and electrical outages are close to weekly plagues.
It’s exhausting for Zacarias to suppose again to her refusal from Goose Creek Excessive Faculty as a result of it upended her plans.
“When he mentioned no, I mentioned, ‘Actually?’” she recalled on an April afternoon, including she had no concept college enrollment can be so tough. “I assumed that is straightforward. All I needed to do was go to highschool. When he advised me no, I assumed,
“‘What am I going to do now?’ I used to be upset. I need to be any individual right here.”
A Goose Creek college spokesperson mentioned it welcomes college students from throughout the globe and had no touch upon Zacarias’s account of her failed enrollment try.
However the would-be scholar mentioned the encounter has saved her from pursuing her goals: A freak accident as a baby left Zacarias lacking a entrance tooth, prompting a years-long odyssey to interchange it — and a deep curiosity in dentistry. For now, although, her objectives should wait.
“When she (her mom) comes right here and he or she’s prepared and he or she’s protected — she’s going to work and my sister can be taught English — that would be the time for me,” she mentioned. “I need to attempt to assist my mother after which attempt to assist me.”
Monica
Monica Venegas was additionally intent on enrolling when she arrived on her personal in South Carolina at age 20. She was accepted with ease at R.B. Stall Excessive Faculty in 2022. The campus is lower than eight miles from the college that turned away Zacarias.
![Older Immigrant student school admissions: Smiling Latinx girl with very long black hair in gray t-shirt sits in over-stuffed brown leather chair in her living room looking up and smiling](https://youthtoday.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/13/2024/06/NEWS_2024.06.26_Older-immigranrs-diploma_Monica-771x514.jpg)
Maxwell Vittorio/The 74
Monica Venegas, 21, enrolled in a South Carolina highschool on the age of 20. She began within the twelfth grade, taking 4 English lessons in a single 12 months earlier than graduating in Might 2023. She went on to varsity, taking 5 programs this fall earlier than halting her research so she might discover work to pay for extra lessons.
Venegas, who hails from Chile, needed to full 4 English programs in a single 12 months — this, on high of American historical past and authorities — to graduate in Might 2023. It was an unlimited problem, she mentioned.
“After I got here right here, I heard folks speaking in English and I assumed, ‘Oh my God, that is so tough’,” she recalled this spring inside her condominium in Ladson, 20 miles north of Charleston.
However she made a large circle of associates at college, together with a number of native Spanish audio system whose lives appeared to reflect her personal. It was their assist that emboldened her to talk English, even when she made errors.
“They helped me to be ok with myself and make me really feel extra positive about myself,” she mentioned.
Venegas, an aspiring ESL instructor who mentioned she loves children and desires to assist different newcomers, went on to win a partial scholarship to Charleston Southern College.
![](https://www.the74million.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/monica_venegas_mcdonalds_immigrants-us-schools.jpg)
Venegas has labored at McDonald’s for greater than a 12 months and a half, pulling in $13 an hour. She hopes to renew lessons this fall, although she’s undecided how she’ll pay for them. Regardless of her subsequent steps, she is grateful for her time in highschool: There is no such thing as a method, she mentioned, that she might have gone on to varsity with out it.
Kharrel
Kharrel Medza, 25, was 7 years previous when he left Cameroon for Belgium — and 17 when he entered the ninth grade in suburban Houston. Medza, fluent in French and German and equal to a twelfth grader again residence, knew nothing of English.
![Older Immigrant student school admissions: Black male athlete in red and white uniform suns on grass field after a black and white soccer ball](https://youthtoday.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/13/2024/06/NEWS_2024.06.26_Older-Immigrant-student-school-admissions_Kharrel-Medza.jpg)
Courtesy Gardner-Webb College
Kharrel Medza, born in Cameroon, performed D1 soccer for Gardner-Webb College in North Carolina.
“I needed to begin from scratch,” he mentioned. “So the easiest way was to take a step again and get each basis wanted. At the moment I used to be slightly bit pissed off. Nevertheless it didn’t take me too lengthy to know what I wanted to achieve success right here within the U.S.”
Highschool was important, even when he was far older than his friends, he mentioned.
“The start was the toughest with the language barrier,” he mentioned. “However I used to be so immersed into the English world, every part was in English: I had no alternative however to determine it out. Finally, after 5 – 6 months, I obtained comfy with dialog.”
Medza spent three years in highschool earlier than graduating in 2019. He then went on to varsity, enjoying D1 soccer at Gardner–Webb College in North Carolina earlier than transferring to Houston Christian School in Texas.
Having studied finance, he graduated this spring and hopes to work in enterprise or banking.
However some college students like Medza are saved from such milestones, prevented from getting into highschool in any respect, based mostly, partly, on biases particular to older male teenagers: that they could prey upon their youthful feminine classmates.
Medza balked on the notion that his focus was wherever aside from teachers. His strict mother and father had clear expectations of what he wanted to perform — as did he.
Medza mentioned he “can by no means be grateful sufficient” for the chance that prime college gave him. The concept he or different college students might lose out on that due to such prejudices troubles him.
“Denying schooling to somebody is a criminal offense,” he mentioned.
***
Jo Napolitano is a NY city-based journalist reporting for The 74. Beforehand she spent practically twenty years reporting for The New York Instances, Chicago Tribune and Newsday. Napolitano lectures throughout the nation concerning the often-overlooked potential of newcomer college students and in 2021 authored, The Faculty I Deserve: Six Younger Refugees and Their Struggle for Equality in America.
This story was produced with assist from the Schooling Writers Affiliation Reporting Fellowship program.
Sign up for free newsletters from The 74 to get extra like this in your inbox.
After a 74 investigation discovered new arrivals routinely turned away. Some lengthy for what they may have achieved with a H.S. diploma and others are grateful for theirs.
Melvin Martinez was practically 23 years previous when he enrolled within the twelfth grade at Rudsdale Excessive Faculty in Oakland, California.
Initially from El Salvador, he tried college years earlier, getting into the ninth grade at age 17. However he dropped out two and a half years later: Already a father or mother, he struggled with managing his research and fatherhood.
“I didn’t give it some thought, if it was a great resolution or a nasty one,” Martinez mentioned. However after toiling away at a neighborhood Mexican restaurant for years, not making any actual progress in life, he got here to remorse the transfer.
Three years after he stop college, his former math instructor got here to his office by likelihood and requested Martinez how he was doing. When the younger man mentioned he lamented his resolution to surrender on his schooling, the instructor advised him it wasn’t too late to re-enroll.
Now 24, he’s chipping away at enterprise lessons on the School of Alameda and encourages excessive colleges throughout the nation to open their doorways to older, new arrivals like him.
“There are lots of people who’re very, very good however don’t have the chance to proceed college,” he mentioned. “If we may help these guys who’re very motivated to proceed, let’s do it. It will likely be good for the nation, too.”
However a 16-month-long undercover investigation of enrollment practices at 630 excessive colleges throughout the nation — through which The 74 tried to register a 19-year-old Venezuelan newcomer who spoke little English and whose schooling had been interrupted after ninth grade — revealed rampant refusals.
Our take a look at teen, “Hector Guerrero,” was denied greater than 300 occasions, together with by 204 colleges within the 35 states and the District of Columbia the place highschool attendance goes as much as not less than age 20. State schooling officers in most of these places individually confirmed to The 74 {that a} 19-year-old couldn’t be turned away due to his age.
Not one of the 35 California excessive colleges queried by The 74 accepted Hector: The state gives no safety for common schooling college students who want to enroll previous 18, making Martinez’s expertise all of the extra outstanding.
The younger man mentioned he’ll always remember the instructor who inspired him to re-register.
“Chances are you’ll suppose these are little issues that aren’t vital, however in these little issues, you’ll be able to change folks’s future,” he mentioned.
Javier
Martinez’s brother, Javier, understands that lesson properly. Now 28 years previous, he didn’t know he might have enrolled in highschool when he got here to the US greater than a decade in the past. The community of latest immigrants who helped him safe work upon his arrival at 17 by no means talked about the likelihood, he mentioned. He needs somebody had.
![Immigrant student school admissions: R Latino men with black hair and beards in black t-shirts stand with arms across each others' shoulders and a pre-teen Latino boy with black hair in white t-shirt stands between them](https://youthtoday.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/13/2024/06/NEWS_2024.06.26_Older-Immigrant-student-school-admissions_family-1.jpg)
Courtesy Javier Martinez
Melvin Martinez and his brother, Javier, stand with a younger member of the family.
“I all the time mentioned I needed to go to highschool, be taught extra English, be taught one thing totally different,” he mentioned.
A home painter by commerce, he would a lot quite work in gastronomy.
“I might love to show diet and the right way to cook dinner, one thing like that,” he mentioned. “I’d wish to know extra concerning the meals in different nations.”
However everybody advised him that not having completed highschool in America would make it practically unattainable for him to attend school. So, he’s adjusted his expectations to fulfill his alternative.
Alanys
Alanys Zacarias, 22, is aware of what it’s wish to be trapped by the boundaries of her schooling. She was turned away by a South Carolina highschool at age 18, she mentioned, despite the fact that enrollment goes as much as age 21 in that state, based on statute. She had already amassed the mandatory paperwork and was getting ready to get the entire required immunizations when the college dealt an sudden blow.
Zacarias, who discovered English two years in the past partly by watching 19 seasons of Gray’s Anatomy, mentioned her life can be a lot better immediately had staffers let her in. An formidable climber who mentioned she’s mastered new duties with ease at each her jobs — one at a high-end pan manufacturing facility, the opposite at a Charleston-area Walmart — Zacarias believes she would have already earned an affiliate’s diploma or can be closing in on a bachelor’s.
![Older Immigrant student school admissions: Headshot of young Latino woman with long dark hair in a maroon sweatshirt standing inside a Walmart with aisles of merchandise behind her and a tall wire display basket fill of colorful balls next to her](https://youthtoday.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/13/2024/06/NEWS_2024.06.26_Older-Immigrant-student-school-admissions_Alanys-Zacariuas.jpg)
Jo Napolitano/The 74
Alanys Zacarias, 22 and from Venezuela, contained in the South Carolina Walmart the place she works part-time.
Most significantly, she’d have the cash to deliver her mom and youthful sister right here from Venezuela, the place day by day life is a crushing wrestle. The South American nation’s annual inflation rate hit 190% last year. Water shortages and electrical outages are close to weekly plagues.
It’s exhausting for Zacarias to suppose again to her refusal from Goose Creek Excessive Faculty as a result of it upended her plans.
“When he mentioned no, I mentioned, ‘Actually?’” she recalled on an April afternoon, including she had no concept college enrollment can be so tough. “I assumed that is straightforward. All I needed to do was go to highschool. When he advised me no, I assumed,
“‘What am I going to do now?’ I used to be upset. I need to be any individual right here.”
A Goose Creek college spokesperson mentioned it welcomes college students from throughout the globe and had no touch upon Zacarias’s account of her failed enrollment try.
However the would-be scholar mentioned the encounter has saved her from pursuing her goals: A freak accident as a baby left Zacarias lacking a entrance tooth, prompting a years-long odyssey to interchange it — and a deep curiosity in dentistry. For now, although, her objectives should wait.
“When she (her mom) comes right here and he or she’s prepared and he or she’s protected — she’s going to work and my sister can be taught English — that would be the time for me,” she mentioned. “I need to attempt to assist my mother after which attempt to assist me.”
Monica
Monica Venegas was additionally intent on enrolling when she arrived on her personal in South Carolina at age 20. She was accepted with ease at R.B. Stall Excessive Faculty in 2022. The campus is lower than eight miles from the college that turned away Zacarias.
![Older Immigrant student school admissions: Smiling Latinx girl with very long black hair in gray t-shirt sits in over-stuffed brown leather chair in her living room looking up and smiling](https://youthtoday.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/13/2024/06/NEWS_2024.06.26_Older-immigranrs-diploma_Monica-771x514.jpg)
Maxwell Vittorio/The 74
Monica Venegas, 21, enrolled in a South Carolina highschool on the age of 20. She began within the twelfth grade, taking 4 English lessons in a single 12 months earlier than graduating in Might 2023. She went on to varsity, taking 5 programs this fall earlier than halting her research so she might discover work to pay for extra lessons.
Venegas, who hails from Chile, needed to full 4 English programs in a single 12 months — this, on high of American historical past and authorities — to graduate in Might 2023. It was an unlimited problem, she mentioned.
“After I got here right here, I heard folks speaking in English and I assumed, ‘Oh my God, that is so tough’,” she recalled this spring inside her condominium in Ladson, 20 miles north of Charleston.
However she made a large circle of associates at college, together with a number of native Spanish audio system whose lives appeared to reflect her personal. It was their assist that emboldened her to talk English, even when she made errors.
“They helped me to be ok with myself and make me really feel extra positive about myself,” she mentioned.
Venegas, an aspiring ESL instructor who mentioned she loves children and desires to assist different newcomers, went on to win a partial scholarship to Charleston Southern College.
![](https://www.the74million.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/monica_venegas_mcdonalds_immigrants-us-schools.jpg)
Venegas has labored at McDonald’s for greater than a 12 months and a half, pulling in $13 an hour. She hopes to renew lessons this fall, although she’s undecided how she’ll pay for them. Regardless of her subsequent steps, she is grateful for her time in highschool: There is no such thing as a method, she mentioned, that she might have gone on to varsity with out it.
Kharrel
Kharrel Medza, 25, was 7 years previous when he left Cameroon for Belgium — and 17 when he entered the ninth grade in suburban Houston. Medza, fluent in French and German and equal to a twelfth grader again residence, knew nothing of English.
![Older Immigrant student school admissions: Black male athlete in red and white uniform suns on grass field after a black and white soccer ball](https://youthtoday.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/13/2024/06/NEWS_2024.06.26_Older-Immigrant-student-school-admissions_Kharrel-Medza.jpg)
Courtesy Gardner-Webb College
Kharrel Medza, born in Cameroon, performed D1 soccer for Gardner-Webb College in North Carolina.
“I needed to begin from scratch,” he mentioned. “So the easiest way was to take a step again and get each basis wanted. At the moment I used to be slightly bit pissed off. Nevertheless it didn’t take me too lengthy to know what I wanted to achieve success right here within the U.S.”
Highschool was important, even when he was far older than his friends, he mentioned.
“The start was the toughest with the language barrier,” he mentioned. “However I used to be so immersed into the English world, every part was in English: I had no alternative however to determine it out. Finally, after 5 – 6 months, I obtained comfy with dialog.”
Medza spent three years in highschool earlier than graduating in 2019. He then went on to varsity, enjoying D1 soccer at Gardner–Webb College in North Carolina earlier than transferring to Houston Christian School in Texas.
Having studied finance, he graduated this spring and hopes to work in enterprise or banking.
However some college students like Medza are saved from such milestones, prevented from getting into highschool in any respect, based mostly, partly, on biases particular to older male teenagers: that they could prey upon their youthful feminine classmates.
Medza balked on the notion that his focus was wherever aside from teachers. His strict mother and father had clear expectations of what he wanted to perform — as did he.
Medza mentioned he “can by no means be grateful sufficient” for the chance that prime college gave him. The concept he or different college students might lose out on that due to such prejudices troubles him.
“Denying schooling to somebody is a criminal offense,” he mentioned.
***
Jo Napolitano is a NY city-based journalist reporting for The 74. Beforehand she spent practically twenty years reporting for The New York Instances, Chicago Tribune and Newsday. Napolitano lectures throughout the nation concerning the often-overlooked potential of newcomer college students and in 2021 authored, The Faculty I Deserve: Six Younger Refugees and Their Struggle for Equality in America.
This story was produced with assist from the Schooling Writers Affiliation Reporting Fellowship program.
Sign up for free newsletters from The 74 to get extra like this in your inbox.