Before Jose Orozco got himself together enough to get his GED, attend San Diego City College, transfer to San Diego State, then California Western School of Law, he showed up at San Diego High School only for lunch and freshman phys ed. Soon he dropped out altogether, joining a host of students then and now for whom ninth grade is a prime dropout time.
Jose, whose story was told by San Diego Union-Tribune reporter Tanya Sierra in April, lucked into a mentor, who lucked into a kid who disliked his options enough to return to school and move up the education ladder. The rest is history – history that bears repeating by every dropout in the city.
But that isn't happening, especially among Latinos. The chart below, for school year 2005-06 (the latest data available), shows that among major demographic groups in the San Diego Unified School District, more Latino students than others dropped out of school in every grade between seventh and 12th.
The fewest students were American Indians, who also had the highest percentage of dropouts. Except for them, most other dropouts – Asian, Pacific Islander, Filipino, Latino, African-American and white – dropped out in 12th grade.
It's also true, however, that more Latino students enrolled in district schools at every grade level and far more of them saw high school through than dropped out. Districtwide, the percentage of dropouts was nearly 1 percent less than the year before. And the total percentage of dropouts in 2004-05 was 2.5 percent, which sounds low but is enough to fill a high school.
Dropouts cost the school district big bucks in state funding based on the number of students in seats. Statewide, dropouts cost districts billions. But the state loses, too, in wages and tax revenue lost to unemployment and poorly paying jobs, and in the costs of adult prisons and juvenile justice systems, where a high percentage of dropouts end up.
David Valladolid, president and CEO of the Parent Institute for Quality Education, finds the dropout statistics far short of reality, particularly for Latino and African-American students. Interviewed shortly after the publication of Jose's story, Valladolid cites circumstances often beyond families' control – school assignments, lack of resources and low expectations of minority students among them.
His organization, however, tackles a significant factor: the lack of parents' involvement in their kids' education primarily, he says, because they don't know how the school system works. More than 500,000 parents and guardians have learned the system in the institute's “Parent Involvement and Education Program.” In a three-year collaboration with the California State University system, the institute is teaching parents admissions requirements and how to work toward them from elementary school on up.
No one knows better than the school district that what kids learn in their six or so hours at school can be unlearned in the other 18 – unless parents, guardians, families, friends reinforce it. So the schools, too, encourage parents' involvement. Ideally, the district and the institute share information about what works.
