Center for Education | Research: Dropout Speeches

The Rice University Center for Education
in collaboration with Furr High School
for the Houston Independent School District Conference
Expectation: Graduation
May 11, 2004

Dropout Speeches

1. Behind the Numbers: Framing the Stories of High School Dropouts

We appreciate this opportunity to talk with you about our four-month research project on dropouts. It is a collaborative effort between Rice University’s Center for Education and Furr High School. During this discussion, we will tell you why we care about this issue, how we came to do this study, and the methodology of our research. The lives of our students at Furr are important because 76% of our students are at-risk of dropping out according to HISD’s latest profile of our school. The PEER Committee Report commissioned by HISD guided our literature review, our student interviews and our discussions. We will talk about our lives, in and out of school, and share our recommendations. We invite your questions, observations, and suggestions as we discuss our research. We also look forward to developing an action plan with you for our report back to the larger group.

2. Why We Care About Dropouts

In November 2003, the stories in the news discussed the inaccurate number of high school dropouts at schools throughout HISD, including Furr. I told Dr. Simmons that what was missing was concern for the students. It’s the stories of the students and what’s happening in their lives that matters. At that time, I was thinking of dropping out. And it’s been hard for me because my cousin, who’s always gone to this school with me, dropped out. Dr. Simmons and the teachers try to meet with and contact these students, but this work is difficult. She only needed one credit to graduate, and she dropped out of school. And then I kept seeing my friends drop out. And last year three boys – you could tell, to look at them, they had a lot of problems. They couldn’t stay in school. They couldn’t better their lives. You knew which way they were going. I had already seen my uncles and everybody do that. They went the same way. They never finished school. They never took a chance. And I remembered the stories my dad told me. Everybody I knew – it’s like they didn’t have hope. They didn’t think that they could make it. When Dr. Simmons asked me to take part in this study, I said yes, and I have been working with Ms. Borzon, my teacher, and the Rice researchers, Dr. Radigan, Habib Irshad, and Esther Shaw on this project for the past four months.

3. The Dropout Study

This study began as part of a legislative project in the senior English and government classes of Furr High School during the first semester. Dr. Simmons asked our English teachers and Dr. Radigan to participate in an in-depth study that would examine the research in the field and our students’ stories at Furr High School. As the second semester began, Ms. Borzon introduced the study with articles about the HISD dropout data. We were encouraged throughout the process to determine what was missing from the literature. Our study continued with small group discussions of current research about dropouts. Researchers from Rice helped us learn more about our students and those students and parents who left school. We began a series of interviews. We followed interview protocols developed by the Rice researchers. School leavers and potential school leavers discussed their academic lives and the roles their family and friends played in their lives. We found that we were telling our own stories as we interviewed others who also told of brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers who had left school without graduating. The class projects ended with papers and PowerPoint presentations in response to the PEER Committee Report on Dropouts commissioned by HISD. For the past month, a small group of senior and junior students, Ms. Borzon, and the Rice researchers worked on the findings we will discuss this morning.

4. At- Risk Students

The PEER Committee recommends that HISD expand its at-risk criteria. However, when we looked at the high school profiles we found that 16 of our high schools including Furr listed well over 50% as at-risk. In fact, Furr, Davis, Jones, Sharpstown, and Westbury listed over 75% at risk. Lee, Sharpstown, and Wheatley listed over 80% at risk. Only Bellaire, Lamar, and Westside and the magnet schools have less than 50% of their students listed as at-risk. Rather than expanding the states’ criteria for at risk students and adding supplemental programs, we believe the district should consider lowering class size and compensating teachers. Now we would like to tell you about our parents, our home, work, street, and school lives so that you can better understand who we are.

5. Parents

Many of our parents work multiple jobs. These are often manual labor jobs that depend on the weather and the needs of contractors like yard work, construction, car and air conditioning repair. Some of the jobs are at discount and food stores, but those jobs are usually part time. So, many of our parents have no insurance, no worker compensation, and no pension plan.

Our parents have a problem with substance abuse. Our parents abuse alcohol and drugs. Dora told us:

To me, most Mexican and Chicano men, they drink. Every man I’ve ever seen has drunk. They drink. When they come home from work, they drink. When they have a break, they drink. … My mom told me my dad started doing drugs when he was thirteen or something twelve. When he’s drunk, he’ll tell you every drug he’s ever done.

Juan agrees that Mexican and Chicano men have trouble with drugs and alcohol.

Everybody drinks, you know. But then once you start drinking you want to hit onto the next level, like probably smoke a joint or hit a line, you know.

We also see domestic abuse in our homes. It is the same violence our parents and grandparents saw in their homes. Dora described one of her experiences.

And I can remember, when we moved to Denver Harbor, I was in fifth grade. … we lived in an apartment behind my grandmother’s house. My dad came home drunk. He was mad about something ‘cause my grandmother went and told him something. I remember us waking up because my dad was hitting my mom. And she was trying not to scream. And my little sister is the one who woke us up screaming. My grandma came outside, and she said, “Are y’all okay.” And he said, “Yeah.” And she just walked inside the house. And she closed the door. And she didn’t do anything. Nobody in the house did anything. Not my grandfather, my uncles, nobody.

Sexual abuse is another problem in our overcrowded homes. It’s difficult for us to talk about it. But it happened to our grandmothers and our mothers before it happened to us. It’s often a family member or someone who is staying in the house. We not only have to protect ourselves, we also have to protect our younger sisters. The memories of these acts stay with us. They come back, flash back, when we don’t expect them. The comfort comes from friends who have experienced the same things and say, “You can make it.”

Many of us also have parents and relatives who have prison records. Some of us have been incarcerated. Juan described his situation and that of his family.

You know, school’s the last thing you think about. They don’t even care about if I’m going to graduate – none of that. Just care about making money out there. It’s the easy life. But life isn’t really much like that if you know how to live it. I’ve already done been incarcerated. And done gangbang all over for a couple of years. I lost one of my uncles in the struggle too, you know

I had another uncle who was incarcerated for five years, and he told me if you get incarcerated that is your fault. I ain’t going to feel sorry for you because you know what you did wrong. But, I’ll tell you one thing, I really want you to graduate, ‘cause I spent five years in the penitentiary. I could have done something with my life. I got one that’s doing time right now. He’s doing 7. And that’s the last one we have in there. A lot of young Hispanic people get incarcerated. I’m saying the same as black people. And they all do drop out.

Yes, many of our family members have dropped out of schools. Our mothers drop out to get married and our father drop out to provide for our families. We feel proud when we graduate because many times we are the first family member that has graduated from high school.

One thing we all need is role models, particularly male role models. Marquise says men are missing from our lives.

The reason I think most students, African Americans really drop out is because they don’t have the father figure at home to push them. And the mothers try to do all they can, but it don’t work because you need their father figure, Someone who you can look up to and say, “Well, my daddy taking care of me. My daddy doing this for me.

Really I take care of my nephew. When he needs to get his haircut, I take him. He plays football. When he has a football game, I go see him. I try to be that male figure that he can come talk to whenever he needs anything or whenever somthin’s on his mind and he wants to talk about it. I didn’t have no male figure. My mother was my male figure. My mother was both male and female. I feel responsibility to be a role model for my little nephew.

Hispanics need role models, too as Dora explains:

Boys, they need something besides their daddies beating their moms. They need some sort of role models. With the girls I can’t really say. I would like to have my father. I would have liked to have a good dad, the kind of dad you are suppose to be. I would like that, but because I didn’t have it. Do I want it? Yes.

6. Life at Home

Many of our homes, particularly our Hispanic homes are overcrowded with family members. When someone loses a job or their home, they move in with family members – often with grandparents. Our families are important to us. We devote time and energy to those family members in need of our help. Yesenia told us about her family living together.

I lived in a house with 23 people. Everybody was sleeping on the floor. Many didn’t wake up till 12 or one o’clock. There was no room. My mother, my sisters, their husbands, their kids, and my uncle lived there. Only two of us went to school.

Many of our students are first or second generation immigrants. When someone new comes into the country, they move in with relatives. Those of us who are older often have to babysit if there’s a family emergency. Our African American girls are also babysitting for siblings and cousins for similar reasons. Of course, most of us are expected to work to help pay for household expenses and to take care of our personal needs.

7. Life at Work

Many of us put in 8 hours of work a day in addition to our hours at school. Students often work 8 hours a day after attending school to help with home expenses and their personal expenses. Employers rarely understand students’ needs to do homework. Students often arrive late to school if at all. Some of us work two jobs. One is part of our co-op school program. The other one, we find ourselves. I can tell you about that. In my co-op job I do secretarial work at Exxon, and it helps me think about what I want to do later in life. I work my other job to get money for personal expenses. Most of my work there is on the weekends which is my time to do my schoolwork. I might tell my manager or my supervisor, “Do you think I could leave early or go to work late because I need to finish my project.” And sometimes they are like you need to do that on your own time. My own time, I never have my own time because I go to school. I have work. I do some after school activities.

Many of our Chicano, second generation males don’t want to follow their immigrant dads, uncles, and grandpas into day labor work, because these men are picked up at 6 in the morning and returned home at 6 at night. These men have no benefits, no health insurance for their families. One of our students explains his feelings.

I’m a Hispanic and my grandpa always told us, “A Mexican always busts his ass, no matter how much the rate pay is, he busts his ass to make that money and support his family.” But a Chicano, that’s a Hispanic American, he don’t want to work. He don’t want to lead the hard life. He wants to lead the easy life like the White people that most of the time they’ve got every thing made for them. Most of the parents, some times they have money. Some of them don’t, but it’s still made for them. If a Hispanic has his mind clear on it and is at the top of his game, ahead of his life, he can have a lot of this stuff. But no, we want to go out there and sell drugs, fight for our neighborhood. And try to make our own money instead of bustin a sweat out there. Working labor. Working in the sun all day. Taking orders from a man you don’t even know.

For some of us, work helps us give money to our families and understand what we want to do in life. Work does that for Marquise.

When I get my check off the top sometimes I give my mother half. Some times if I have to do something for myself, then I give her a certain amount. I work at Sports Extra Sportswear. My cousin got me the job. I’m a sales associate, so if I put a shirt and pants together for a customer and I make the sale I get paid off of that. I get paid extra off of that. I want to major in business management in college. I see a whole lot of black entrepreneurs out in my work. I work 8 hours a day but it doesn’t hurt my schoolwork. If I have to buckle down and study for a class, I do that.

8. Life in Love Relationships

We have two major ways of escaping our home and work responsibilities. One is our consuming relationships with the opposite sex. These relationships take up a lot of our time, and breaking up can cause depression for males and females. Our boyfriends and our girlfriends are more important than our school life, our work life, and sometimes our family life. Loving someone like this means there is one person that really cares about you. But when the person you love is treating you badly or leaves you, you become depressed. It is hard for you to think about anything. Sometimes you turn to drink, drugs. You may even consider suicide. Elena told us:

I think having a boyfriend affects you because you’re just not worried about your schoolwork. You are worried about that person. You’re in your class and you can’t concentrate on your work because you are thinking about that person. Like what is he or she doing. Many schools pretend like you don’t have a boyfriend or a girlfriend.. They should help you to deal with the relationship in case something happens you won’t go crazy and start doing all these bad things, doing drugs, failing your classes. People do that when the relationship is going bad, you go do bad stuff. You should have a safe way around it with counseling for that particular issue.

I felt lonely as if I had nobody to talk to. The only thing I saw was drugs as my solution. If I would have had two choices, between the drugs and let’s say, a friend that was there for me, I would have chosen my friend. But since I didn’t see that, I just went to the drugs. I started doing it a lot, really a lot. Until I got caught. When I saw my mom, that she was worried, I was like what am I doing. I shouldn’t be doing this to her, especially to my mom who has been struggling. She’s been the one who has been supporting us. Because there are 5 of us. That’s when I was, I can’t do this. That’s when I started doing better.

9. Life in the Streets

Another way of escaping is our participation in neighborhood gangs. We meet in the parks to talk and hangout.

Some white people have never been down here, you know. And if they do come down here, they’re all scared, “Oh, we’re going to get robbed by these people.” Or, “Lock your doors.” It ain’t even much like that.

There is also a taken-for-granted code that governs the way we act in the streets. We have to be ready to defend who we are. We need to have respect. We expect others to respect us. We also expect our group and family members to be loyal to us.

Sometimes we’re in the park. We’re playing basketball. Somebody will talk. You know, you’re talking too much. Go ahead and fight. Fight him and show us what you’re all about. He fights with the person we set them up with. If he wins or loses no matter what, as long as he had his hands up in the air. He was a man to do what he had to do and then it’s all right.

It’s important not to look weak in front of anyone in your group or in any other neighborhood as Marquise says:

If somebody calls me weak, that’s my mentality. How somebody reacts toward me, that’s how I react towards them. So if looks at me that way, then I’m going to look back at him back that way. Eventually, I’ll find out why he looks at me that way, but while he’s looking at me like that, I’m not going to think about it. And whatever happens after that, it happens. Respect.

There is also a respect and loyalty that you owe your neighborhood group. Sometimes, that loyalty leads you into a fight with a rival group.

It’s two neighborhoods. They get in to it over whatever the situation may be – over a girl, over “he walked by me; he bumped into me,” over anything. If you feel that somebody has crossed that line to where they disrespect you, then you’re going to do whatever you feel on your mind that you feel is necessary to gain the respect of that person. So whether y’all fight, whether every time you see ‘em you look at them crazy, whether you talk to one of his friends or some’in, and you tell ‘im, “Well, I don’t like him and you tell ‘em, ‘Well, I don’t like him and tell him I said it.’ Whatever come to mind that you can think of, you’re going to do that.

There is danger if you are part of a neighborhood group: (Juan)

We started at the age of fifteen. I lost a homeboy a long time ago. We were at the park. We were just playing. And they had done a drive by at another neighborhood. So once a car rolled up by the park. They called him out there. When he went out to the car, they shot him. And that was it for him. He was about 20. They all dropped out of school. Once they hit ninth or tenth grade, they dropped out.

We’re also loyal to our friends and family. We don’t tell on anyone. (Dora ):

Like when they offer rewards, you know. If you snitched, they’re going to have to deal with that. I mean, you’re going to have to deal with what you did. They can’t just let you get away with it.. …

Juan gives an example of how this loyalty works in a fight.

Depends on what neighborhood you’re from. If you back away, they’ve got to deal with you. We don’t. You just backed away. That’s your problem. Let’s say, he ain’t from my neighborhood. He backs out from a fight with one of my friends. Well, his neighborhood is going to deal with him. They call him a punk, you know. They’ll fight him at home. They’ll jump him.

Respect is part of a fight too (Dora):

It’s your reputation on the line. Like me, just because I may look geeky, I like my schoolwork doesn’t mean if you come up to me and talk mess to me I’m going to walk away. If you keep coming after me I can’t stand there and just let you. Because that means that all those other girls or those other boys or something like that - they’re going to think they can walk all over me.

There is an unspoken code of respect and loyalty to your group as well as the respect you demand for yourself. You must be willing to fight to defend this code. The code of the street and school policies are in direct conflict.

10. Life in School

We appreciate the PEER Committee’s listing of the school policies and procedures that hurt potential dropouts: zero tolerance, criminalization of student behavior, referral to alternative schools, the enrollment process, attendance policies, and the awarding of Carnegie credits. All of these issues hurt our continuance in high school. Their punitive effects cause students to dropout and often send our family members and friends into downward spirals of crime and poverty.

Zero tolerance has put students back on the streets with no counseling, no guidance. The brother of one of our team members received a series of tickets for fights in school. He was unable to pay them so he dropped out. He is not working. When his sister asks him for help with her schoolwork, he responds, “Why are you asking me, I’m stupid. I didn’t even finish school.” Juan says that when a fight breaks out in school, kids are not thinking about zero tolerance.

At the moment we don’t think about zero tolerance, it’s our reputation. We can’t let nobody take our manhood away and make us look like we’ve got problems in front of all these people. At that moment, we are running the school. We don’t think about nobody. Nothing goes through your head. Dr. Simmons knows that. All the teachers know that.

Thinking about zero tolerance, does not stop Marquise’s actions.

You think about zero tolerance, but everything happens so fast. If somebody runs up on you, you can’t do nothing about it but defend yourself. And if you get kicked out over defending yourself, then you get kicked out. If you don’t, then you don’t. When that happened on Halloween, we had already came, and we had our little discussion. We had everything squashed, but when we went back outside it was a whole different story. And it happened so fast, you couldn’t do nothing but react. Whatever was on your mind, that’s what you reacted to. It’s not racial; it’s about respect.

Dr. Simmons, our principal, says that zero tolerance keeps faculty and staff from building relationships with students that may help eliminate problems rather than set these students back in the streets and on the road to prison. Last year she adopted a group of gang members who participated in a school fight. She counseled with them weekly and followed their progress in their classes. At the end of the year, she took them to New York. The boys never fought again.

When students are sent to alternative schools, they are placed with other students who have had similar life experiences as they have. In interviews, students have told us they learned about new drugs, new drug dealer contacts and ways to make easy money on the streets. They get in fights and get little support from teachers who just hand them packets of work.

Because he was told that he would finish high school faster, Juan chose to go to an alternative school; but that was not the way it turned out:

I chose it because they said you could graduate faster, but that was all a lie. None of the teachers made no mind to you. They’re like, “Man, if you don’t want to learn get out of my class. I’ll count you here.” I just see students walking out and they still pass. But a person who like me, I’m not talking back to teachers, and I do my work. I see my report card and I’m failing. I say, “What? How am I failing?”

Enrollment processes can be confusing. When our students enter schools from other countries they are often not put in the right classes. Laura came to Furr after she had completed high school in Mexico. Because she had trouble obtaining all of her records from Mexico, she was placed in the 9^th grade. Laura found the work easy, and her placement in the class demeaning. She left school. Dr. Simmons called her and said the school had worked out a plan to give her credit with one more year’s attendance. She will graduate next year.

Many of our students receive no grades for their courses because of attendance problems. Rather than worrying about our attendance, we think the schools should look at our grades. If we are keeping up our grades, we should receive credit in the courses we are taking. As we explained earlier, events in our home and work life often keep us out of school. However, we do make up our work, and we make up our tests that we have missed.

The awarding of Carnegie credits almost caused one of our team of students to drop out of school. We applaud the district’s decision to allow us to be sophomores, juniors, and seniors on the basis of the credits re have received rather than if we have passed the core courses for each grade level. The old policy caused some of us to be freshmen for three years and then graduate as juniors. We had the additional problem of passing the TAAS or TAKS test on the first try.

11. Personalization in School

Many of the students stay in school because a teacher, staff member, or their principal cares about them. Each of our team members have mentioned teachers in their academy who was available when they needed them to talk about problems with family, with teachers, or with friends. We find the mentoring program artificial because assigned staff members and assigned meeting times do not meet our one-on-one needs. Just as our friends are important to us in school, so are teachers whom we know and trust. We appreciate these teachers who give up their time to talk with us. Some of us say that it is a particular teacher or staff member that has kept them in school. Dora describes the way a teacher kept her from dropping out.

A caring teacher is somebody who is going to work with you and not judge you. And not sit there to criticize you because you don’t know this thing one day or because you’re having a bad day in your class. Ms. Borzon never gave up on me. She defended me in the magnet hall when they wanted to kick me out. I could always tell her things. It seemed easier. You can see she really knows what’s happening. I know she knows.

Marquise had two people who have helped him stay in high school.

The nurse here, when I came back, she told me from my ninth grade all the way to the twelfth grade. Well, she just told me that she didn’t think I was going to make it. And she had tears coming out of her eyes, telling me that I surprised her. She didn’t think I was going to make it, and that I have a whole lot going for me. I listened to her and took her advice. My English teacher, Ms. Borzon, she was a big inspiration. ’Cause when I got removed and was suppose to come back, they weren’t going to let me in. And she put her job on the line. And said that if I was to get in anything, that they could fire her. And when she did that, it just took my mind. It took me by storm, because I ain’t never had nobody just put everything on the line for me like that.

Juan talks about the way Dr. Simmons, his principal, has helped him.

She helped me a lot. Every time I got in trouble she helped me out. She’d send me away, but she’d tell me, “I want you back here. I want you to graduate.” Or whenever I had a problem with a teacher, I’d come and talk to her. And she’d change me to another class. If I needed extra credit, she’d tell me, “Well, take this program. No charge. So that way you’ll get your credits.” ‘Cause she wants to see me walk across that stage, and I promised her I would. So that’s why I haven’t been messing up for the longest.

12. ESL Students

Our ESL students have trouble adjusting to school and learning English rapidly. Over half of them drop out because of this problem. Some just stay long enough to learn English so that they can get a job. Many undocumented students are afraid to stay in school. They do not understand the value of a diploma. They do not believe they can go on to college because they are undocumented. Estella explained her feelings in an interview:

Some students do not understand English easily. I told my mom, “I don’t know how to pronounce the words and they start laughing at me. That makes me sad.” My mother said those people who are laughing right now will learn that you can do if you stay in school. I don’t know why they are laughing. We are people who are learning. Some students want to learn just enough English so they can dropout and work to help their families. I want to graduate and go to college, but I don’t have papers. They are undocumented and do not believe they can continue to college.

We agree with the PEER Committee’s recommendations for ESL students. Students also need access to a bilingual counselor who can explain attendance rules and requirements for credits.

13. 9^th Grade

Name: Desiree

When we studied HISD school profiles and the profiles of Alief and Aldine districts provided by TEA, we noted that half of the school enrollments were in the ninth grade. Interviews with our students and with dropouts repeatedly had participants saying that 9^th grade was the year that was the most fun and gave them the lowest grades. A group of students that had been together since elementary school told of the excitement of meeting kids from different junior high schools. They all felt they had more freedom in high school. They talked about how easy it was to skip classes and take more than one lunch period. Of course, they paid the price with many of them gaining no credits for their freshman year of high school. Algebra and integrated physics and chemistry have been the obstacle courses that make moving out of the freshman class difficult. Furr has had a ninth grade academy in place for three years, but it did not decrease the number of students in the freshman class nor did it prevent dropouts. As Dr. Simmons explains:

We’ve learned that it is not wise to put all of the ninth graders together. They are deprived of student role models. We also know that these students need experienced teachers and smaller pupil/teacher ratios in order for them to learn.

14. Recommendations

We agree with current research and the PEER Committee Report that a multi-pronged approach is necessary to deal with the dropout problem. Early childhood programs that deal with student education, parent education, parenting, and parent’s teaching children provide a model. Our school systems have concentrated on early childhood education, but our research shows that life for kids changes when they become adolescents. Our street lives, our home lives, and our work lives become more complex. This conference that is considering student mobility, health and social issues, school policies, community connections to school, immigrant issues, and economic issues also points to the importance of a multi-pronged approach. We need to examine our small schools and our school policies, ways to educate and involve our parents, and ways to involve our businesses and community services organizations.

Furr has had small schools in place for over 10 years. Our history offers testimony for the current SRI Report (2003) commissioned by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation that it is difficult to transition from a large school to a small school. Extracurricular activities and sports span the schools and require scheduled time for participating students. Small schools do not mean smaller classes. Some of our classes have 35-40 students. Students in small schools are often marked as failures or discipline problems. They can be failed by the same teacher two years in a row. Even though Furr’s small schools are teacher led and formulated, dissension can grow among groups of teachers. We believe in the personalized environment of our small schools structure, but we find that we are restructuring every year in an attempt to build cohesive academies.

Teaching in our core classes should take a lesson from teaching in the arts and sports. We learn by doing. Science should be about using the scientific method to explore and solve problems. Math should offer us real life problems that use the equations and geometric principles. English and social studies should allow us to use problem posing and problem solving with issues important to us like dropping out of school, analyzing our neighborhood lives, and learning how to use the political process to improve our communities. This does not mean that academic rigor is not important in our education. It does mean that teaming canonical work and multicultural texts with our real life experiences gives us an opportunity to pull back and analyze our lives in our communities. In this way, we can understand the nature of our experiences and work to better life for ourselves, our family and our community.

As we mentioned earlier, there are school policies that are hurting our students who are in danger of dropping out. Zero tolerance, criminalization of student behavior, referral to alternative schools, the enrollment process, attendance policies, and the awarding of Carnegie credits are school policies that need to be reexamined.

Many of our parents did not graduate from high school. They do not have pleasant memories of school. Parents come to our schools when we visit the churches in our communities and invite them. We know that we need a stronger parent outreach program that offers education and other community services.

Our students need to work to help their families with expenses. They need workplaces where employers will encourage their education, provide financial aid, and perhaps tutorials. Our parks where students gather need community centers that provide intramural sports and social activities.

We know that you can add ideas that will help us provide and an action plan when we return to the large session. We invite your questions, comments, and suggestions. We want to know what you have to say.

References
for
Dropout Presentation

Prepared by
Rice Researchers
Habib Irshad and Esther Shaw

Parents work with no benefits, no compensation package.

“Mexicans remain over-represented in low wage occupations, especially service, manual labor, and low-end manufacturing. These homogenous lower-class communities lack the high quality resources that could facilitate upward mobility for either new immigrants or second and later generation Mexicans.” (Skolnick and Skolnick, 2003)

Second generation students do not want to take the same jobs their parents had.

Suarez-Orozco (1998) verifies this position in Crossings: Mexican Immigration in Interdisciplinary Perspectives. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.]

Parental substance abuse is common.

“Research has found that children of substance-abusing parents are at higher risk than children of nonabusing parents for initiation of substance use” (Kaplow, Curran, & Dodge, 2002)

Domestic violence and prison records may be part of the family history.

Current studies have found a statistical correlation between dropouts and domestic violence (Weissman, Jogerst, Dawson, 2003; Hyle, 1991; Svec, 1987) In addition, schools have maintained a number of practices that silence students not only on cultural issues, but also on social problems affecting their lives, as noted by Fine ( 1989 ): Conversations about these very conditions of life, about alcoholism, drug abuse, domestic violence, environmental hazards, gentrification, and poor health-- to the extent that they happened at all-- remained confined to individual sessions with counselors ... and are not integrated as the substance of learning.” (p. 165) (Madhere, 1997)

Many of the family members did not finish high school.

“Mexicans have the lowest educational attainments and the largest average household size…” (Skolnick and Skolnick, 2003)

Many students have no male role model.

“In the U.S. almost 70% of African American are born to unmarried mothers compared to 22% of white babies. As a consequence of these trends, African American children are more likely to live in single-parent households than are white children.” (Pagnini and Morgan, 1996).

Babysitting for working parents is common.

“Women responded to their poverty in three ways: they extended domestic and childcare responsibilities to multiple individuals; they relaxed paternal role expectations; and they assumed a flexible maternal role.” (Benokratis, 2000)

Homes are overcrowded with families.

“Mexicans have the lowest educational attainments and the largest average household size…” (Skolnick and Skolnick, 2003)

Code of the Streets

“…street culture has evolved what may be called a code of the streets, which amounts to a set of informal rules governing interpersonal public behavior, including violence. The rules prescribe both a proper comportment and a proper way to respond if challenged” [Anderson, E. (1994) The code on the streets. In Rethinking the color line: Readings in race and ethnicity. London: Mayfield Publishing Company.]

Respect and presenting oneself in a way that makes it clear a person can defend himself

“At the heart of the code is the issue of respect- loosely defined as being treated ‘right’, or granted the deference one deserves…In the street culture, especially among young people, respect is viewed as almost an external entity that is hard-won but easily lost, and so must constantly be guarded.” (Anderson, 1994)

Loyalty to friends/family

“Because they can or will not depend on law, low-status groups often develop an ethic of honor” (Cooney, 1997)

Negative School Policies

[Peer Examination, Evaluation, and Redesign. (2003, June). PEER Committee Report for Improving High School Graduation Rates]

Zero tolerance, Criminalization of Student Behavior

“…removing a student from class is a highly contextualized decision based on subtle race and gender relations that cannot be adequately addressed in school discipline policies” (Vavrus and Cole, 2002)

Referral to alternative schools

Alternative schools contain students with the same problems who encourage each other to continue the problematic behaviors. [McCall, H. J. (2001) When successful alternative students “disengage” from regular school. Reclaiming Children and Youth, 12, 113-117.]

Alternative schools remove students from the mainstream classroom and fail to meet the needs of the students. (Davison, A., Guerrero, R. M., Howarth, M. P., Barajas, H., Thomas, G. (1999 Perceptions of Chicano/Latino students who have dropped out of school. Journal of Counseling & Development, 77, 465-474.)

Attendance policies

Flexible policies will help students with family emergencies. (Davison, A., Guerrero, R. M., Howarth, M. P., Barajas, H., Thomas, G. (1999 Perceptions of Chicano/Latino students who have dropped out of school. Journal of Counseling & Development, 77, 465-474.)

Awarding of Carnegie credits

Linda McNeil (2004) notes that 5,791 African Americans and just under 15,000 Latinos do not make it to 10^th grade. Many of these ninth graders were held back because they did not pass one of their core classes, not because they did not have enough credits to be tenth graders. (Faking equity: High stakes testing and education in Leaving children behind: How “Texas style” accountability fails Latino youth, A. Valenzuela, ed. New York: SUNY Press).

Personalization in school

“These students are well-delineated negative shapes in the classroom gestalt. Many of their voices are conspicuously silent during whole-class discussions. Much of their in-class reading time is spent looking up words in dictionaries that accompany students to every class, along with an eraser and liquid paper. Their written responses to questions are easily identified by a broad expanse of blank paper separated by one or two tentative lines of script.” (O’Byrne, 2001)

[Croninger, R., & Lee, V. E. (2001) Social capital and dropping out of high school: Benefits to at-risk students of teachers’ support and guidance. Teachers College Record, 103, 548-581.]

ESL Students

Davison, A., Guerrero, R. M., Howarth, M. P., Barajas, H., Thomas, G. (1999) said that immigrant dropouts, counselors, teachers, and administrators found guidance from bilingual counselors was important. Students are unsure of attendance policies, requirements for credits, and possibilities for higher education. Perceptions of Chicano/Latino students who have dropped out of school. Journal of Counseling & Development, 77, 465-474.

9^th Grade

Recommendations

Multi-pronged program is needed.

[Christenson, S.L. & Thurlow, M. L. (2004). School dropouts: Preventions, considerations, interventions, and challenges. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 13, 36-39. Montecel, M.R., Cortez, J.D., & Cortez, A. (2004) Dropout –prevention programs: Right intent, wrong focus, and some suggestions on where to go from here. Education and Urban Society, 36, 169-188. Prevatt, F. & Kelley F. D. Dropping out of school: A review of intervention programs. Journal of School Psychology, 41, 377-395.]

Small schools, by themselves, do not guarantee personalization and dropout prevention.

Smaller schools do not mean smaller classes. [Flores-Gonzalez, Nilda. (2002). School kids/street kids: Identity development in Latino students. New York: Teachers College Press.]

Teaching should be more in line with students’ lives.

More important than the covering of material is problem-posing and problem solving through independent work and hands-on projects. [Ladson-Billings, G. (1995). Toward a theory of culturally relevant pedagogy. American Educational Research Journal, 32, 465-491. Wehlage, G. G. (2001) At-risk students and the need for high school reform. Education, 1, 18-28.]

Revise punitive school policies

Zero Tolerance

A reliance on reactive, punitive methods contributes to student antisocial behavior. [Mayer, G.R. (2001). Antisocial behavior: Its causes and prevention within our schools. Education and treatment of children, 24, 414-429.]

Community Centers in Schools can help parents and teachers.

Flores-Gonzalez, Nilda. (2002). School kids/street kids: Identity development in Latino students. New York: Teachers College Press.