What Can Be Done to Reduce the Latino Dropout Rate?: Racial-Ethnic Schemas in Latino Educational Disparities

Problem Statement

One of every two students enrolled in the Spring Branch Independent School District identifies as Latino. Of all the district’s high schools, Northbrook has the highest Latino concentration (89.6%), the highest economically disadvantaged index (85.6%), and the district’s highest dropout rate (15.3%). Consistently, this rate is twice as high compared to nearby schools. For NHS’s Latino population, the disparity is even higher than for other racial-ethnic identities at 16.2%. Higher drop out rates for Latinos are common throughout the district. Nationally, this is also the case- some Latino urban centers report dropout rates upwards of 70%. Disparities in education represent inequalities supersede local communities. Placed contextually, these higher rates beg the question  ‘Why are Latino youth less likely to be in school and more likely to dropout?’ When these dropout rates are indicative of social problems, such as racial-ethnic and class struggle, how can communities grapple with these larger inequalities at a localized level?

Spring Branch ISD’s significantly higher dropout rate for Latinos illustrates the limitations towards educational success, concentrated within NHS. Reasons for these obstacles are three-fold:

• Quality of education (including course rigor and instruction): The value a student sees in continuing their education depends heavily on the student’s perceived applicability of a diploma in their life. If a student has an abstract understanding of education, the applicability of a subpar quality further discourages a student from continuing their education.
• Staff Perceptions of Students and Parents: Students and parents who report feeling marginalized or discriminated within the school system are less likely to participate in an academic setting.
• Feelings of Discrimination: Discrimination, direct or indirect, is often cited as a principal cause of segmented assimilation. This theory suggest that downward mobility is the result of contextual influence on identify and assimilation. This affects education outcomes, because the theory implies that student’s acculturating to their community environment, including school peers, leads to a rejection of traditional values of success.

Although Northbrook’s community does not exist independently from local or national cultures, by attempting to address some of these issues (options listed below), the school can attempt to lessen its dropout rate by making racial-ethnic identity formation its primary focus.