Wednesday, June 10th, 2009

| CWK Producer

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.

Nearly thirty percent of Hispanic kids ages 16 to 24 have dropped out of school. 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.

Reginald Beaty, executive director of Communities in Schools (GA), the organization that runs the alternative school where Roach works, says, “These kids have had so many challenges and barriers in their lives that all of a sudden the light goes off.”

Jose has figured that out. “As long as I try hard enough, I think I can make it,” he says.

Experts say parents can contact their local school – even if their kids have already dropped out – to find out about programs that are available in their area.

Tips for Parents

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.
• 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.

References

• Education Week
• League of United Latin American Citizens
• National Dropout Prevention Center/Network

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