Hispanic Dropouts

A new study by the Department of Education examines school dropout rates over the past 30 years. Overall the numbers are encouraging. Dropout rates are declining for African-Americans and whites, but one group, the group with the highest dropout rate of all, has remained largely unchanged.

Seventeen-year-old Marina has seen this phenomenon in her own family. “Almost everyone in my family went to school ‘til the sixth grade and just dropped out,” she says.

Over a quarter of Hispanic kids ages 16 to 24 have dropped out of school. That’s more than twice as many as any other group. Some kids say it’s a cultural difference. “People from our culture, like Mexicans, Hispanics, they take the easy route – just drop out instead of working hard,” says 18-year-old Omar.

But many Hispanic kids are dropping out and working hard. Tammie Roach, the academic coordinator of an alternative school says, “A lot of our students feel they could serve themselves and their families better if they go out and get a full time job as opposed to coming to school.”

Sixteen-year-old Jose has seen it happen. “My friend just dropped out because his brother dropped out and started working, making money – not big money, but he liked it, and so he followed his brother,” he says.

There are choices out there for kids who need help, Hispanic or otherwise. Roach says, “Normally I see broken spirits – students who want badly to get a diploma, who want badly to be successful, because they have the same kind of dreams and hopes that other students have, but they don’t know how to set themselves up to be successful.”

Here parents are involved. They visit the school. They talk with teachers on the telephone. Day in and day out, they learn how their kids are doing. And in schools like this, the result is dramatic. Over 95 percent of kids graduate from high school.

The dropout rate has experienced little variance over the past decade. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, in 2001 11 percent of the U.S. population between 16 and 24 was not enrolled in school, did not have a high school diploma or lacked a General Educational Development credential. In 2000, adults aged 25 to 34 who had dropped out of school or had not acquired a GED earned up to 30 percent less than their peers who had completed high school or had GEDs.

The strongest predictors that a student is likely to drop out are family characteristics such as: socioeconomic status, family structure, family stress (e.g., death, divorce, family moves) and the mother’s age. Students most likely to drop out come from low-income families; are the children of single, young, unemployed mothers; or have experienced high degrees of family stress. Of these characteristics, low socioeconomic status bears the strongest relationship to students’ tendency to drop out. One study shows such students are four times as likely to drop out. Consider the following statistics concerning dropouts:

• Rates of high-risk behaviors such as teen pregnancy, delinquency, substance abuse and crime are significantly higher among dropouts.
• Hispanics have the largest dropout rate of any ethnic or racial group.
• During the 2000-01 academic year, nearly 9 percent of Hispanics in grades 10 through 12 dropped out before the end of the year. Overall, only 5 percent of high school students dropped out.
• Sixty-three percent of high school dropouts who were in eighth grade in 1988 had earned a high school diploma or an alternative credential (such as a GED) by 2000, eight years after their expected graduation.
• At the federal level, the School Dropout Prevention Program was authorized by the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 to provide three-year grants to states and school districts to assist in dropout prevention and school re-entry activities.
• The No Child Left Behind Act requires states to report graduation rates and demonstrate that schools are making progress in curbing dropout rates.
• Students who repeat a grade, even as early as kindergarten, significantly increase their chances of dropping out.
• The language barrier and socioeconomic factors are cited as reasons why Hispanics tend to have higher dropout rates than other ethnic groups.

Reasons why students drop out include:

• Dislike of school,
• Low academic achievement,
• Low retention at grade level,
• A sense that teachers and administrators do not care about students, and
• Inability to feel comfortable in a large, depersonalized school setting.

Schools tend to approach the dropout dilemma in one of three ways:

• Provide supplemental services, such as tutoring, social services and counseling, for needy students.
• Offer different learning environments as an alternative to the regular classroom.
• Institute school-wide restructuring efforts.

A high school diploma will determine your child’s standard of living for the remainder of his or her life:

• High school graduates earn $143 more per week than high school dropouts.
• High school dropouts are two-and-a-half times more likely to be on welfare than high school graduates.
• High school dropouts are four times as likely to be unemployed as college graduates.
• Eighty-two percent of America’s prisoners are high school dropouts.

Education Week
Communities in Schools
League of United Latin American Citizens
National Dropout Prevention Center/Network