Article: Foreign born hispanics

PDF: U.S. Dept. of Edu Hispanic Dropouts

Roberto Rojas has seen too many Hispanic students fall victim to “the monster of dropout,” a troubling trend the educator is working to reverse.

The problem is “something every school in the country is battling,” said Mr. Rojas, director of the NovaNet program aimed at decreasing the Hispanic dropout rate at Dalton High School.

“Hispanics are a segment of the population that cannot be ignored, that’s going to be the future work force of this town and (who) have made dramatic changes,” he said.

But researchers say Hispanics have among the highest dropout rates in the nation, and the disparities in the South are even greater.

In the Dalton Public Schools system, 66 percent of Hispanic students graduated compared to an overall graduation rate of 74 percent in the 2006-2007 school year, records show. In Whitfield County, 65 percent of Hispanic students graduated compared to an overall graduation rate of 72 percent.

In Hamilton County, 78 percent of Hispanic students graduated compared to an overall graduation rate of 75 percent during that school year. But while Hamilton County’s Hispanic graduation rate appears to be good, some educators said that is because Hispanic students in the county often drop out before they reach their senior year.

“We tend to take in a great number at kindergarten and elementary, but oftentimes we are losing our children in middle school and high school and we don’t know if they entered the work force,” said Sabrina Walton, director of the English Language Learner program at Hamilton County Schools. “Sometimes they return home. There are (many) situations that dictate how many kids are actually graduating.”

Jessica Castañeda, state coordinator and recruiter for the Tennessee Migrant Education Program, said the program is aware of about 100 Hispanics between the ages of 14 and 21 who never enrolled in a Chattanooga school system.

“We have seen a lot of youth that come from other areas who haven’t gone very far in school due to language barriers,” she said. “They don’t have the skills or ability to graduate from school, so a lot of them drop out when they are 14, 15, 16 years old.”

Ignacio Soto, a 17-year-old Dalton High School senior, said he almost became part of the problem.

“Basically my whole life I grew up with people telling me you’re not going to make it, you’re going to be out in the streets,” he said. “But now I’m in the situation where I’m going to graduate, I’m thinking of going to college, actually bettering myself and showing everybody I could make it no matter what they told me.”

Mr. Soto, who is taking part in the NovaNet program, said the encouragement he received from his teachers was essential to turning his life around.

“Teachers can give you that support that you need and make you try harder and realize you can do it,” he said.

DROP-OUT CONTRIBUTORS

Dr. Richard Fry, senior researcher with the Pew Hispanic Center, said factors that play a role in Hispanic student drop-out rates include:

n The quality of English as a Second Language programs

n Language barriers

n Parents’ economic status and education level.

n Overall growth rates in the South in the 1990s.

“These schools not only were experiencing growing enrollment in general, which creates strains in the school systems, but also most of the Hispanic arrivals were from Mexico and Central America,” Dr. Fry said.

Among Hispanic youth, those two groups tend to have higher drop-out rates, he said.

Dr. Fry said newly arrived Hispanic families, especially in the South, tend to be economically disadvantaged, and children from such families tend to fare worse in school.

Mike Feely, director of the St. Andrew’s Center, an organization that helps Hispanics, said teenage pregnancy and the legal status of immigrants also can result in students dropping out.

In 2007, Georgia legislators passed a law that disqualified students who are in the country illegally from receiving in-state tuition, and the Tennessee Legislature is considering a bill that would require all public colleges and universities to inspect immigration documents of prospective students.

“I found there was a fair amount of people who dropped out of school because they couldn’t go to college, especially that group who was brought here when they were little (and) might not even speak Spanish but are still counted as undocumented,” Mr. Feely said.

Mr. Rojas said work is a higher priority than education for some Hispanic parents.

“Sometimes they are really trying to make ends meet, and in some cases children have to help them,” he said. “A lot of times education is not a priority, not because they don’t want it to be, but because it hasn’t been in the past or because they are trying to survive.”

FINDING SOLUTIONS

Ana Rojas, a 24-year-old Dalton resident who migrated from Mexico when she was 15, dropped out of high school during her senior year and started working full time.

“I managed to learn the language pretty fast and was an A/B student,” she said.

But Mrs. Rojas dropped out at age 18 before graduating. She now has a child, is working to obtain her GED and has plans to attend an online university.

“I want a better life and education for my son just like my parents did when they decided to bring us to the United States,” Mrs. Rojas said.

Pablo Alvarez, a biology teacher and after-school tutor at Dalton High School, said some students don’t want to stay in high school because they don’t see the connection between education and the future.

He said, however, that “once they come to the (tutoring) program and start seeing they can actually do the work and get good grades, a lot of them decide to stay in school.”

The International Inclusion Center, located in Dalton, provides an intensive English course for incoming foreign students before they are immersed in regular high schools.

Ms. Walton said Hamilton County is running a summer program to help non-native English speakers prepare for the Gateway exam, a Tennessee test students must pass to graduate. Educators also are planning to start an English Language Learners program at East Lake Academy.

Dalton High School graduation coach Sonia Rodríguez said educators there also try to contact students who have dropped out and convince them to re-enroll.

“So far, we have had two students come back, and we are planning to continue doing it,” she said.

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