Give Latin (and Potential Dropouts) a Chance

By Baynard Woods

Last year, I was lucky enough to teach Latin to a group of African-American and Latino juniors and seniors at a charter high school in Washington. The school had just, for the first time, made “adequate yearly progress” under the federal No Child Left Behind Act. But it had barely passed, and we knew we still had a long way to go. Many experts may believe that AYP is a poor measure of quality, but in this case it was an accurate indicator of a problem: Many of our students could not read well.

The school, and the literacy consultants it hired, had tried everything to bring students to understanding and independence through texts—and to help them pass the District of Columbia’s annual Comprehensive Assessment System, or CAS, test. On a schoolwide level, we were doing many things right, but the reading problem remained vast. So last year, after working as a literacy coach and a mentor teacher, I was able to try an elective in Latin, which I had taught before in other settings.

Because of budgetary constraints, I was only able to teach the course for one year, and I know I did not do it perfectly. Yet the experience convinced me that there may be compelling reasons to think that Latin might play a role in eliminating the achievement gap between disadvantaged and affluent students. It holds the power, I found, to bridge a subtle but perhaps...