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Latino High School Graduation
Latino High School Graduation
Defying the Odds
While high school drop-out rates have steadily declined among white and African American students over the 1970s and 1980s a constant 35 percent of Latino students continued to quit school before graduation. In this pioneering work, Harriett Romo and Toni Falbo reveal how a group of at-risk Latino students defied the odds and earned a high school diploma.
Romo and Falbo tracked the progress of 100 students in Austin, Texas, from 1989 to 1993. Drawing on interviews with the students and their parents, school records, and fieldwork in the schools and communities, the authors identify both the obstacles that caused many students to drop out and the successful strategies that other students and their parents pursued to ensure high school graduation.
The authors conclude with seven far-reaching recommendations for changes in the public schools. Sure to provoke debate among all school constituencies, this book will be required reading for school administrators, teachers, parents, legislators, and community leaders.
This book ...tells stories about Hispanic community life, family life, gang life, and about what it means to be an at-risk kid trying to make it.... I have yet to read a similar book attempting this magnitude of diversity with the skill found here.
- Foreword by Charles M. Bonjean
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- 1. The Goals and Methods of This Book
- 2. The Tracking of Hispanic Students: "You're not college material."
- 3. Caught in the Web of School Policies: "Why me?"
- 4. Gang Involvement and Educational Attainment: "My own gang. "
- 5. Teen Motherhood: "I wanted him. "
- 6. Immigrant and Second-Generation Students: "Well, she's Mexican. She's going to drop out. "
- 7. Going for the GED: "I didn't want to be 20 when I graduated."
- 8. Bureaucratic Glitches: " I guess no one wants me. "
- 9. Cultural Boundaries, Family Resources, and Parental Actions: "Don't be like me--stay in school. "
- 10. What Schools Must Do to Improve Graduation Rates: "What would I change? Everything."
- Appendix 1: Parent Questionnaire
- Appendix 2: Student Questionnaire
- Appendix 3: Ethnographic Interview #1--Parent
- Appendix 4: Ethnographic Interview #1--Student
- Appendix 5: Ethnographic Interview #2--Parent
- Appendix 6: Ethnographic Interview #2--Student
- Appendix 7: Telephone Interview--Parent
- Appendix 8: Telephone Interview--Student
- Notes
- Index
Mexican Migration to the United States
Perspectives From Both Sides of the Border
Edited by Harriett D. Romo and Olivia Mogollon-Lopez
