Why Latinos Give Up On Education

In "The Latino Lag," the New York Times starts off with a bunch of statistics about Latinos and education, concluding that there is a gap between Latino high school and college completion rates compared to whites and Asians.


Some reasons given for lack of achievement (some research based, some anecdotal):

• discouragement due to anti-immigrant sentiment
• not proficient in English
• 3/4 of Latinos who cut their education short said they had to do so to help their family, including too much economic costs to the family  - both in losing income from lack of work and expending money on college
• they are more likely to be teenage mothers, needing to take care of infants
• the need to babysit younger siblings
• lack of education by foreign born parents, with the level of the mother's education being a predictor - leading to a lack of understanding of college options, as well as putting low importance on college
• having to take remedial and ESL courses in college for no credit, causing college expenses to go up, as well as increasing the amount of time to earn a degree
• lack of college bound preparation in high school
• families taking trips to their home countries when work permits - but their kids are in school, causing students to miss too many classes

Some solutions for completing high school and college:

• special college bound programs beginning in 10th grade, such as dual credit
• high school teachers and counselors sharing knowledge about college admission, scholarships, etc.
• language immersion
• small learning communities in college

The article is well worth a read. In my work in high schools, I have seen all of the reasons listed above for lack of achievement in play for Latino students. It's been my experience over the past three years or so that we are doing a better job of getting Latino kids graduated from high school, but we haven't been attending very closely to ensuring they get into college and complete college.