Why Latinos: Dropping Out Of High School

Students who attend schools can be affected by their culture, race and background, much like how Puerto Ricans were oppressed in East Harlem in the 1980’s. This article explains how race can affect how people of certain races grow up, and how they are treated, and how when this treatment is unfair, the students usually drop out of school. “Study examines how race, culture influence school discipline, dropout rates”.

Decades of research shows that this resulting racial and economic isolation created toxic, severely under-resourced learning environments for black and brown students, from Detroit to Philadelphia to New York City.( Nikole Hannah-Jones)” Living in communities where urban students are surrounded with drug dealers and some of the dealers being people urban students know personally whether they went to school with the person who is now the drug dealer or they grew up with. Urban

In October 2000, the overall picture of high school dropouts had changed little since the late 1980s (Kaufman et al. 2001): For every 100 young adults enrolled in high school in October 1999, 5 had left school without completing a program; of 34.6 million U.S. young adults aged 16-24, 3.8 million—almost 11 percent—had not completed high school and were not enrolled. Some studies have shown that students in schools with a concentration of multiple risk factors (e.g., large schools, large classes, high poverty, inner city location) have less than one chance in two of graduating from high school; furthermore, the economic costs of dropping out have increased as time goes on (Castellano et al. 2001). Adjusting for 50

Chicano gangs have been a prominent part of the Los Angeles community since the early 1900s. These Chicano gangs consisted of young Mexican-Americans, another name used for Chicanos, which were formed as a way for some youth to identify with something. The behavior of gang members was a way of adapting to the social and economic living situation that was upon them. There was a large migration of Chicano immigrants to the Los Angeles area that resulted in several changes directly related to the larger and present Chicano presence. The most notable being the prominent presence of Chicano specific gangs. This is likely due to the fact that many people of Chicano descent are immigrants who came to America with little to nothing. This resulted in large groups of Chicanos being located in some of the poorest areas. Such areas became known as “barrios”, a Spanish term for neighborhood that became specifically in reference to the poor neighborhoods with a high Latino population. The people living in them were often working the lowest paid and hardest jobs needed by those of a higher class in society. It is commonly found that when poverty is heavy throughout a community, many youth will feel the need to act out in some way, and band together in their mutual discontent with their surrounding environment and society. In addition, many youth were also dealing with trying to identify themselves as something and weren’t sure if to identify themselves as latino, chicano, or something

Gangs have been a point of concern for states and societies around the world for centuries. Youth gangs are not exempt from that same categorization and have operated for the same amount of time worldwide. Over the last century however, a proliferation of youth gangs has been witnessed, especially among Hispanic youths immigrating into the United States. Researchers and scholars have offered multiple theories as to why youths, and Hispanics youths in particular integrate themselves into gang organizations. Three schools of thought arise when conducting gang integration research. Rational Economics Theory1 proposes that youths, and all individuals, join gangs for financial and material benefit. Cultural Deviance Theory considers youth gang

By the droves, these students, as a result of teacher expectations, are disengaging from their own education to carry out the self-fulfilling prophecy of mediocrity. The fact that 83% of educators are White, middle class women creates another layer of disconnect for Latino students who are unable to positively identify with successful role models who share their background (Gandara, 2000). Unable to see themselves reflected in the degree-earning demographics and having few encounters with educators who are adequately trained to understand their plight, Latino youth are simply rendered impotent to affect change, thus completing their assent into hopelessness.

According with Jean Piaget whose theory on child development has been a great influence in education; language development is the most important phase during the Preoperational stage of cognitive development. During this stage children develop and build up their knowledge and vocabulary by asking questions and expressing ideas through words, images and drawings. This stage is considerate to happen from two years of to seven years of age (Kendra Cherry). Language development has direct implications in the intellectual development of a child, and it is one of the main tools to develop our thinking process. We use words to store and access memories or other information. For Latinos children and especially recent arrivals whose language is

How does parent involvement affect children’s academic success in low socioeconomic areas? Does socioeconomic status and parental involvement play a major role in the academic success of teens? Many reasons can contribute to the low level of success of some teens. The thrilling memoir, The Other Wes Moore, provides readers with two scenarios, one resulting in success, and one resulting in failure. Teen’s who are raised in low socioeconomic areas, and who have a minimal level of parental involvement, tend to perform poorly in academic settings.

Buenrostro emphasized the idea of Latino children being the majority ethnicity population attending K-12th California public schools. Documenting his research process Buenrostro demonstrated many statistics on school enrollment and challenging academic performance that Latino students from grades K-6th are facing. Buenrostro ultimately concludes that the results provided in this factsheet will help school districts and board members take action and come up with an idea on what can be improved in order to help these particular students succeed and obtain necessary resources. Ultimately, this fact sheet represents an important contribution to my research topic because it addresses numerous ideas about the education system in Latino students.

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

I agree with you completely the Hispanic population is still driven down today, through the economy and educational standards in the US. This population has faced oppression, segregation, and discrimination from the Anglo Americans and these practices are still continuing as evidenced by the upcoming electoral candidates. Educational outcomes for Latinos have not been great, “The Hispanic dropout rate fell from 21.8 percent in 1990 to 21.1 percent in 2000, (three times greater than the 2000 non-Hispanic white dropout rate) (Fry, 2003)”. There have been research studies conducted trying to pin point why this is, as essentially the US Department of Education is stating that it is not the school system in the US that is the problem. From my own

A.  Hook “The most urgent problem for the American education system has a Latino face.” (Gándara)

Sociologists and psychologists have studied and documented high school dropout rate for many decades. Their focus has been put on statistics of different races/ethnicities, age groups and gender as well as underlying factors of why people drop out. Comparing the dropout statistics of different races is a common theme amongst many sociologists’ studies. The extent of their research addresses many significant aspects of high school drop out but fail to shed light on the differences within races between the two genders.

Secondary education is a highly debated subject. Many critics of secondary education say that inner-city high schools and students are not receiving the same attention as students from non inner-city high schools. Two of the biggest concerns are the lack of school funding that inner-city high schools are receive and the low success rate in sending inner-city high schools graduates to college. Critics say that while inner-city high schools struggle to pay its teachers and educate its student’s non inner-city high schools don’t have to deal with the lack of school funding. Also students from non inner-city high school are not being given the opportunity to attend colleges once the

“The Republic of East L.A. Stories” captures the heartbreaking experiences Mexican-American’s were forced to endure. Escaping poverty, alcohol abuse, drug use, and gang violence was an everyday struggle for many families during this time. African American and Latino gangs were initially created as a response to white racism. They were restricted as to what areas they could live in and where constantly harassed. As their populations increased, so did white gangs, in order to take control of their “territory”. African Americans and Latinos had no choice but to protect their families by fighting back. As time went on, the violence only continued. The Civil Rights Movement led many gang members to join organizations like the Black Panther Party, but the government quickly responded by breaking them up and soon enough, street gangs quickly returned. The violence escalated, alcohol,