Chicano School Failure

One particular class that has influenced me tremendously is my Ethnic Studies 130 course, the Chicano/Mexican-American Experience with Professora, Dr. Julie Figueroa - a badass professor most definitely. In her class we read the book, “Subtractive Schooling: U.S.-Mexican Youth and the Politics of Caring” by Angela Valenzuela. In this book, Valenzuela thoroughly explains her three-year ethnographic study “of academic achievement and schooling orientations among immigrant Mexican and Mexican American students at Juan Seguin High School in Houston, Texas” (p. 3). As I only hope you get to read this book, I understand by your time there will be numerous more books out talking with new data so I will summarize the chapters in the next paragraphs for you because i think it is important for you to know of this book.

Howard, T.G. (2010). Why Race and Culture Matter in Schools: Closing the Achievement Gap in

Reframing these ideation resources of racial identity into the context of Chicano life was necessary to involve the community. Mexicans in America faced similar levels of discrimination as African Americans but African Americans never had question their citizenship status. Although Mexicans were legally labelled as whites, they were not afforded the same rights as them. The lack of education amongst Chicano populations served as an indicator that the struggles they experienced as a race were unique. Whites in Texas attended school for an estimated 11.5 years and African Americans were enrolled in the education system for 8.1 years (Jensen, pp. 198).

Despite their better standing, the research has surprisingly found that they are “only slightly more likely than those whose parents were first-generation immigrants to have had some education beyond high school or to report household or personal incomes above $25,000” (28). These differences in educational and occupational attainment may be attributed to the overcrowded, underfunded inner-city schools second and third generation Latinos attend or to the fact that young Latinos feel economic pressure to drop out of school to get a job and financially assist their families; thus, keeping them in lower occupational ranks since the well-paid professional positions require a higher educational standard. These results are a bit disheartening, but nonetheless, the educational attainment of Latinos is still in a positive trend since we are seeing a slow, yet gradual increase of educational attainment.

By  Luis Rodriguez writes how people from a different community is placed in under structure classes, which is not a class  for A+ students but toward lower income community minorities. He states, “But the school also took in the people from the hills and surrounding communities who somehow made it past junior high. They were mostly Mexican, in the “C” track (what were called the stupid classes), and who made up the rosters of the wood, print and auto shop. Only a few of these students participated in school government, in sports, or in the various clubs.(83) Rodriguez elaborates that Mexican students were placed in a classroom that is considered stupid and undesirable environment to be in. Also According to a study by John Eligon, writes how children, lack of education can cause implication of having a job in society, especially not graduate high school which will increase the unemployment rate. He states, “For some, there was admittedly a lack of motivation to job-hunt. For another, Criminal records got in the way. Kaos said he had been turned away from Walmart, walgreens, Footlocker and other. One in four adults in this neighborhood has not graduated from high school, and the unemployment rate is 33 percent, two and a half times the citywide

     Why do some groups not succeed in academic settings? One theory brought up in “Understanding inequality” suggests that the gap in the socioeconomic status drives the inequalities in the school system. The low and working class have less time and income to intervene with schooling. This means they have less time to meet with teachers, hire tutors, and provide continuous transportation. Therefore the lower class can’t possibly compete with the middle and upper classes. Angela Valenzuela gives the accounts of some Hispanic students’ experiences in school. These students feel that it is the inferior nature of the schools in the US that contribute to the low success

Conversely, some believe that Latino apathy toward education, rather than institutional racism, is what impedes academic success. It is their work ethic and lack of familial support that disengages students from the learning process. If Latino students would stop being lazy and commit to their studies and if parents would get involved and show some interest in their children’s education, instead of blaming poor performance on teacher bias, then success would

Last source is an article that I will be using called, “New York City’s graduation rate hits 70 percent for first time” by Patrick Wall. This article states numerical data, which shows graduation rates of Hispanic, Asian, black and white students. It also includes the number of dropout rates. This article is relevant because the way one confirms to education is based on family morals, which differentiates because all kids come from different cultures. As stated before children of immigrant parents such as Hispanic students and Asian students have different remarks on education, which is shown by graduating

The United States Hispanic population continues to increase each year. In turn, school populations of Hispanics increase as well. Hispanics, although improving academically, continue to have high school dropout rates, higher than other racial and ethnic groups and continue to lag behind school peers. The discrepancy between Hispanic students and other students’ achievement is the result of many factors, including acculturalization, language acquisition, poverty, and school factors. Schools

The Chicano education movement. A movement in which mexican american took pride in who they were their identity their heritage. They asserted their civil rights and worked towards improving mexican american financial, social, and educational laws. Similar to all the other movements that have been going throughout that time the chicano education movement made people realize the injustice mexican americans have been suffering in the united states and this spurred some kind of social change. This movement has been mainly analyzed as three important parts, the struggle for their restoration of land grants, the appeal for mexican american farmworkers rights and last they demanded equal access to empowerment via education and political rights.

This not only highlights the many schools do not offer the same resources to the Latino populations at school compared those who are non- latino. “They include but are not limited to a breakdown of community structure, violence, gang activity, poor housing, and poverty” (A study, paragraph 4). Which contributes to the graduation rate of latino because they don't have someone to look at for them in education and to tell them education is the important in order to succeed . To not give into the norm of the family and not play into the

Sociologists have been studying the effects of education on Latino Americans and to their findings there are physical and conceptual issues which include: language barriers, issues with educators and peers which cause issues within their identity development and ultimately creating this separation of cultures which can effect Latino Americans success in school. While there are other factors that may be

Several studies have been administered to find the correlation of race, such as Latino, and educational success of students. According to a 2011 study conducted by the Pew

C.  Thesis Statement – The Us education system is alarmingly promoting the Hispanic achievement gap with segregation, discouragement and discrimination.

Social Class and Education”. It opens by discussing research conducted in the 1960’s in an effort to identify factors contributing to differences in the academic achievement of Whites and Blacks (Banks & Banks, 2013). Researchers hypothesized that the achievement gaps were mainly the result of disparities in school resources and characteristics, but found that there is a high correlation between achievement and socioeconomic status (SES) (Banks & Banks, 2013). Furthermore, attention is drawn to the class stratification which exists in our educational system and works to maintain inequality through exclusion strategies such as ability grouping and tracking (Banks & Banks, 2013). Evidence of the correlation between social class and