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Research
That Matters
Latinos and College: The Land of Left Behind
Washington state has the tenth largest population of Latinos in the country, and that number is expected to grow more than 150 percent over the next 25 years. As the numbers swell, Latinos’ voices are gaining in volume. Of primary concern is the future of their children.
Alarmed by national drop-out rates that show almost half of all Latino students quit high school, parents are pushing schools to provide dual-language instruction and cultural training for teachers. Like all parents, they long for their children to succeed, to know that education is the pathway to opportunities, and they want the barriers to their children’s education torn down.
For College of Education Professor Frances Contreras, that fact was brought home when she spoke at a conference on Latino empowerment and advocacy in Olympia last year.
More than 600 parents showed up — many rising at 3 a.m. in eastern Washington and driving hundreds of miles to get there. "That should be a wake-up call," says Contreras. "There are Latino parents who are engaged, they are concerned. This is a community that wants their kids to go to college and knows that this is the way to the American Dream. So how can we develop a community engagement framework where multiple actors create this college-going culture?"
Contreras has spent years studying issues of equity for students who are typically underrepresented in the college population. She is the first Latino Initiative Scholar for the College Board, which granted her access to five years of scores from the SAT, one of the most widely used college entrance tests. Contreras’s goal is to examine minority students' transitions between K-12 and higher education.
The statistics for Latinos are discouraging. In Washington state in 2004, about 36,000 students took the SAT, and only 950 were Latino students. That reflects national statistics that show only 10 percent of Latinos pursue post-secondary education. Over half of those students go to community colleges, which do not require SAT testing.
Contreras wants to know why. Do Latino children want to go to college? Do they have any idea what it would take to get there? Do they have access to a college-prep curriculum? And why are students dropping out of high school at such alarming rates?
High school drop-out rates for Latinos in Washington state are even higher than the national average. In some parts of the state, they're as high as 60 percent. "It's a crisis, and no one is calling it that," says Contreras. "There needs to be a targeted effort to address retention as an aspect of the gap in achievement."
This fall, she will take her questions to understudied rural areas in Eastern Washington to explore students' and parents' concerns about opportunities for higher education. The center of the year-long study, called Project ACCESS, will be Yakima, a rural city where more than 36 percent of the residents are Latino, the median household income is about half the state's average, and, according to a 2000 study, only 7 percent of Latino students met core requirements for college competency, compared to 42 percent of white students.
Contreras will be working with seventh and ninth grade students. Seventh grade is key because it is before students start taking algebra, a "marker" course for college. "I want to find out what the seventh graders aspire to, if they see themselves as college-bound," says Contreras. "Are they already disengaged from the academic pipeline by the time they are 12?"
Ninth grade is when a majority of Latino students decide to drop out of school. Nationally, about half of Latino dropouts have less than a 10th-grade education. No one is certain why.
One problem may be students dropping out to help earn money for families — harkening back to an earlier American era where education was a luxury for those who didn't have to labor. Many of the families are migrant workers and move to different fields in different areas, depending on seasonal crops. Families are faced with the dilemma of extreme poverty or educational opportunity. Community engagement around the importance of education may lead to greater involvement and emphasis.
Another problem may be fear of failure. Latino students who do poorly in school — and more than one-third perform below grade-level nationally — are more likely to walk away from education than other ethnic minorities. Testing adds to the pressure. Many Latino parents believe the state's required test, the Washington Assessment of Student Learning, is harmful to their students’ self esteem, says Contreras. When their children fail the test, parents have difficulty responding to the question: 'Why should I go to high school if I'm not going to pass the exam and graduate?'
"All the parents see is what the test is doing psychologically to their children," says Contreras.
Project ACCESS will examine perceptions about testing, parent and teacher expectations of the schools their children will attend, high drop-out rates and student engagement in the educational process. Contreras believes the time for answers is now.
In another 20 years, Latino populations may represent 35 percent of students in this state's elementary and secondary schools. Already, a third of the 43 million Latinos in the United States are under the age of 18.
"We know this demographic shift is coming," says Contreras. "If we can be on the front end of fair, sound policy resolutions that really do address inequities, it will help to ensure just educational practices for all students in this state."
For More Information
Frances Contreras Faculty Profile
Forthcoming Article: Gandara, P., & Contreras, F. Understanding the Latino Education Gap: Why Latinos Don't Go to College. Harvard University Press.
That Matters
...Are they already disengaged from the academic pipeline by the time they are 12?
—Frances Contreras
—Frances Contreras