To outsiders, the area around McAllen, Texas is best known for other reasons: It's ground zero in the immigration wars. This is where Donald Trump wants to build the first part of his new border wall. It's home to the country's largest immigration detention center, the place where children infamously got separated from their parents. But there's another story playing out here. McAllen is also home to IDEA Public Charter Schools, a fast-growing charter network with ambitions that extend far beyond providing good K-12 schools. IDEA wants to democratize higher education, making it routine for thousands of low-income Hispanic families in the Rio Grande Valley, who never before even considered college. Based on my visits there, they are well on their way.
When IDEA founders Tom Torkelson and JoAnn Gama, both Teach for America teachers sent to the region (Tom, a student at Georgetown University, says he had trouble finding the place on a map), launched their first charter school in 2000 in Donna, the school was only grades 4-8, but the goal was always college: All our students will go to college. At that time, in a region where few of the low-income Hispanic students even thought college was a possibility, that promise couldn't pass a laugh test. “Everyone thought they were crazy,” said Phillip Garza, who today oversees college programs for IDEA. “They said there was no way they could do it. But they had the courage and fortitude to get it done, and they delivered. For the last 12 years, 100 percent of our graduates have been accepted to college, and all but four students have gone.”
Today, when driving through the region, it's not hard to spot billboards paid for by local school districts vowing that schools are all about “preparing students for college and careers.” That's the impact IDEA has had in the Valley since 2000, said Garza. “Now, at all these districts, high school graduation alone is no longer the expectation.” That's democratizing higher education. What this means on the ground is best viewed at the student level. Many middle-class suburban families might take one look at their stories and come to a quick judgment: These students are not college material. But that's not how IDEA sees them, and now it's not how the students see themselves.
Consider Ricardo Murillo, whose parents were deported to Mexico when he was 11. At the time, they were living in Edinburg, just outside McAllen. His mother sold ice cream; his father did everything from cutting grass to working as a handyman. His entire family moved back to Mexico, but when he was 13, Murillo — the only one born in the U.S. — concluded his future was brighter in the United States and returned to Texas, living with cousins outside Edinburg. After spending a summer in Mexico with his parents, he went back to Texas to learn that his cousins were transferring to an IDEA charter, and therefore he had to as well.
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