Chicano School Failure

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

     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

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

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

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.

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

Throughout my classes at DePaul’s College of Education, I have wondered how and why socioeconomic factors have such a profound effect on children's school readiness, development, and future of learning. With the addition of clinical experiences in various schools and grades, a passion and focus area of mine has been multicultural perspectives, often volunteering at schools where students and their families live below the poverty line. I have personally witnessed that the lack of family income makes it difficult or impossible for children to learn and develop at the same capacity as their higher socioeconomic counterparts. It is under these conditions that roadblocks can occur, making academic performance difficult for at-risk students.

In our American families and societies, we still see that racial and ethnic inequalities that still exists. The news article of Stanford News, “Significant racial and ethnic disparities still exist, according to Stanford report” by Milenko Martinovich relates with our lecture on Social class and racial/ethnic differences in family formation patterns because the news report and out lecture slides clearly explained that most of the African Americans and Hispanics are the ones who faces the inequities of housing, employment, health, wealth and education. Also this is not a perfect example of our lecture topic on social class and racial/ethnic differences in family formation patterns because their news reports did not mention anything about how and in what level are most of the African Americans and Hispanics families goes under social classes.

Educational inequality and inequity have been and continue to be at the very epicenter of the academic failure of thousands of Latino students every year. Although well documented, this issue has yet to have a solution that has been well implemented. Latinos are the fasted growing ethnic population in the United States, and yet they are falling behind in today’s education system. The academic achievement, or lack thereof, of Latino students is both a contemporary and historical phenomenon. The term “academic achievement” is a loaded term that has historically, and more so recently used to legitimize punitive measures taken against schools with high populations of poor students of color. Under current policy, academic achievement is measured using norm-referenced high stakes standardized assessments. These assessments are designed, mostly by corporations, which are farthest removed from the classroom. In Patricia Gándara’s Overcoming Triple Segregation, she comes to a conclusion that poverty is the culprit and Latino children are more than twice as likely to live in poverty than white children, therefore affecting the quality of education they receive in the classroom due to the de facto segregation and disenfranchisement of Latino students. It is clearly evident that Latino students are not faring well in American schools. Poor quality of instruction coupled with sub-standard facilities, books, and supplies only serve to magnify the problem.