Equity & Diversity

Report Probes Educational Challenges Facing Latinas

‘Alarming’ Dropout Rates Attributed to Factors Including Stereotyping
By Catherine Gewertz — August 27, 2009 4 min read
  • Save to favorites
  • Print

Includes updates and/or revisions

A potent mix of barriers—including family care-taking responsibilities, poor academic preparation, and gender stereotyping—leads Latina students to drop out of high school at “alarming” rates, a report released today concludes.

The study says the dismal graduation rates threaten the future stability of the fastest-growing group of female students in the nation. For the report, which paints a picture of the difficulties Latina students face as they try to complete high school, the National Women’s Law Center and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund conducted surveys, focus groups, and interviews nationwide with young Latinas and adults who work with them.

Lara Kaufmann, a senior counsel for the law center and a co-author of the study, said the organizations decided to focus on high school issues facing Latinas after a 2007 report by the law center about girls’ graduation rates showed particularly high dropout rates for Latinas.

“We really wanted to bring the voices of Latinas into the dialogue about high school graduation,” she said.

Numbers tell a disheartening story about Latinas in public school. The report’s authors, citing a graduation-rate analysis by the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center in the 2009 edition of Education Week’s Diplomas Count report, note that 59 percent of Hispanic females graduate from high school on time with a standard diploma, compared with 78 percent of non-Hispanic white females.

Black and Native American females, and black, Hispanic, and Native American males, graduate on time even less often.

Latinas without high school diplomas are more likely than their male counterparts to be unemployed, and earn lower wages when they do work, the report says.

Low Expectations

Researchers on the project found a big gap between Latinas’ educational goals and their optimism about reaching them. Eighty percent of the students, for instance, said they wanted to complete college, but one-third said they did not expect to do so.

Reasons for that outlook included factors that affect Latinos of both genders, such as poor academic preparation, limited English proficiency, instability created by immigration status, and low levels of parental involvement in school, the report says. But Latinas described challenges unique to their blend of ethnicity and gender.

Stereotypes of Latinas as “submissive underachievers and caretakers” can fuel their own low expectations, the report says, as well as those of adults at school and in their own families. One worker in an after-school program said the parents of a girl with six siblings were encouraging her to “be a dental tech or [do] something with hair.” She couldn’t go to college, the girl explained to the after-school worker, because her parents could afford to send only the boys in the family.

A Latina college student said her experience in high school wasn’t exactly encouraging.

“Generally, academic expectations are lower,” she said. “You are supposed to get married and have kids and not set high academic goals for yourself. For example, at one point when I told a teacher I was heading away to college, he said he gave me two years before I was married and pregnant.”

Discrimination “both subtle and blatant” can lead Latinas to feel unwelcome at school, the report says, and they tend to be “steered away from—or opt out of—career and technical training programs in fields that lead to higher wages, but which are more commonly chosen by males.”

Family Duties

A middle school counselor told the researchers that she tried to persuade an 8th grader to take a welding program, but that the girl wouldn’t do it because she didn’t want to risk the discomfort of being the one female in the program, only to enter the field and “earn bunk” because she was the only woman.

Family care-giving responsibilities also complicate the education of Latinas. With the nation’s highest teenage birthrate—half of Latinas younger than age 20 have given birth—as well as familial expectations that they will care for older relatives and younger siblings, Latinas miss school more often than their brothers, leading to poor academic performance and disengagement from school, the study says.

Latina students also undermine their educational outcomes by not getting involved in sports and other school activities as much as their Latino peers, the researchers found. Students who are involved in such activities are more likely to avoid risky behaviors and stay in school.

The organizations suggest a long list of steps policymakers can take to address the problems of Latinas in finishing high school, including providing better child care and early-childhood and mentoring programs, comprehensive sex education, family-outreach programs, and college-readiness initiatives.

Josef Lukan, a policy analyst who focuses on high school issues at the National Council of La Raza, a Washington-based advocacy group for Hispanics, said his organization, like the report’s co-authors, hopes the new federal emphasis on data systems in education will produce improved ways to track subgroups of students, such as Latinas, who face distinctive struggles.

“It would allow us to determine more-targeted approaches to helping these students,” he said.

A version of this article appeared in the September 02, 2009 edition of Education Week as Report Probes Educational Challenges Facing Latinas

Events

Jobs Virtual Career Fair for Teachers and K-12 Staff
Find teaching jobs and other jobs in K-12 education at the EdWeek Top School Jobs virtual career fair.
Ed-Tech Policy Webinar Artificial Intelligence in Practice: Building a Roadmap for AI Use in Schools
AI in education: game-changer or classroom chaos? Join our webinar & learn how to navigate this evolving tech responsibly.
Education Webinar Developing and Executing Impactful Research Campaigns to Fuel Your Ed Marketing Strategy 
Develop impactful research campaigns to fuel your marketing. Join the EdWeek Research Center for a webinar with actionable take-aways for companies who sell to K-12 districts.

EdWeek Top School Jobs

Teacher Jobs
Search over ten thousand teaching jobs nationwide — elementary, middle, high school and more.
View Jobs
Principal Jobs
Find hundreds of jobs for principals, assistant principals, and other school leadership roles.
View Jobs
Administrator Jobs
Over a thousand district-level jobs: superintendents, directors, more.
View Jobs
Support Staff Jobs
Search thousands of jobs, from paraprofessionals to counselors and more.
View Jobs

Read Next

Equity & Diversity Girls Are Falling in Love With Wrestling, the Nation's Fastest-Growing High School Sport
A surging number of states have sanctioned the sport, with bolstering from various groups.
6 min read
Benton's Callie Hess, left, battles Plum's Saphia Davis, right, during the first found of the PIAA High School Wrestling Championships in Hershey, Pa., on March 7, 2024. Girls’ wrestling has become the fastest-growing high school sport in the country.
Callie Hess, left, battles Saphia Davis, right, during the first round of the PIAA High School Wrestling Championships in Hershey, Pa., on March 7, 2024. Girls’ wrestling has become the fastest-growing high school sport in the country.
Matt Rourke/AP
Equity & Diversity What's Permissible Under Florida’s ‘Don’t Say Gay’ Law? A New Legal Settlement Clarifies
The Florida department of education must send out a copy of the settlement agreement to school boards across the state.
4 min read
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis answers questions from the media, March 7, 2023, at the state Capitol in Tallahassee, Fla. Students and teachers will be able to speak freely about sexual orientation and gender identity in Florida classrooms under a settlement reached March 11, 2024 between Florida education officials and civil rights attorneys who had challenged a state law which critics dubbed “Don't Say Gay.”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis answers questions from the media, March 7, 2023, at the state Capitol in Tallahassee, Fla. Students and teachers will be able to speak freely about sexual orientation and gender identity in Florida classrooms under a settlement reached March 11, 2024, between Florida education officials and civil rights attorneys who had challenged the state's “Don't Say Gay” law.
Phil Sears/AP
Equity & Diversity Q&A The Lily Gladstone Effect: A Teacher Explains the Value of Indigenous Language Immersion
Students in the Browning public schools district in Montana engage in a Blackfoot language immersion program for all ages.
5 min read
Lily Gladstone arrives at the 96th Academy Awards Oscar nominees luncheon on Feb. 12, 2024, at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif.
Lily Gladstone arrives at the 96th Academy Awards Oscar nominees luncheon on Feb. 12, 2024, at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif.
Jordan Strauss/Invision via AP
Equity & Diversity What the Research Says Suburban Segregation Is Rising. What States and Districts Can Do
New research finds existing policy levers have failed to stop rising suburban racial segregation.
4 min read
Meghan Kelly, a project manager with the Whirlpool Corp., works with students at Benton Harbor Charter School in Benton Harbor, Mich., on Dec. 3, 2019., to develop apps as part of the goIT computer science program.
Meghan Kelly, a project manager with the Whirlpool Corp., works with students at Benton Harbor Charter School in Benton Harbor, Mich., on Dec. 3, 2019., to develop apps as part of the goIT computer science program.
Don Campbell/The Herald-Palladium via AP