LatinaLista — After the economy, the next big crisis to hit the United States down the road will be education. Specifically, the dropout problem among Latino students.
With Latinos due to be the majority in the country by 2042, and still holding onto the unflattering title of being the “Dropout Kings and Queens”, it’s imperative that educators start looking at how to retain and motivate students to not just finish school but go on for advanced degrees.
Luckily, there are some schools that are having success and it’s no coincidence that the majority of their school populations are already made up of Latino students. These eight universities and community colleges/colleges are along the Texas-Mexico border and sit in some of the poorest counties in the nation.
Yet, they have learned what it takes to attract, retain and graduate Latino students — and at high rates. Obviously, there’s a lot to be learned from these schools.
Back in October, Excelencia in Education published a report titled ALASS: Accelerating Latino Student Success at Texas Border Institutions: Possibilities and Challenges, where an in-depth examination was conducted of the success experienced by these eight schools.
The report analyzed the reasons behind these schools’ phenomenal success in graduating Latino students. The authors highlighted which programs and strategies the schools were successfully using to work with their students, and best of all, the report’s authors actually offered policy recommendations to help the Department of Education spread the message to other school districts across the nation on how to improve the success rates of their Latino students.
This looming crisis can’t be ignored until it’s too late, because by then there won’t be enough money to bail out the mess of having an undereducated/uneducated majority in this country that won’t be able to sustain our economy in a globally competitive environment.
New report shows educators what it takes to attract, retain and graduate Latino students and thwart an educational crisis
