As you may have noticed, academics and policy makers tend to portray dropping out as a discrete event caused by any number of personological, familial, and cultural factors. The Texas Youth Commission, for example, asserts that "the most important risk factors for young offenders (and dropouts) are those that are related to the individual", and particularly "the biological and psychological dispositions that each child has." The following links provide different perpsective on two common explanations for Latino dropout rates:

Teen motherhood:
National Association of State Boards of Educators
Teenpregnancy.com

Devaluation of education among Latinos:
Harvard Family Research Project
American Educational Research Association
New Horizons for Learning
Hispanic Magazine.com
Hispanic Heritage

Definition
Dominant ideologies function to reify the status quo and to protect status and wealth privileges. How does this happen? Most people tend to be cognitive misers--that is, they prefer attributionally and cognitively simplistic explanations for complex social phenomena (Taylor, 1981). Dominant groups exploit these social psychological tendencies by advancing attractive, yet out-group disparaging, explanations for social inequality (Kluegal & Smith, 1986). Over time, these attributions are accepted as a priori truths that frame subsequent political and educational discourse (Contextual Factors Surrounding Hispanic Dropouts). Given that tenure in the political arena is predicated upon the popularity of one's position on controversial issues, it is usually in the policy maker's best interests to defend her/his position by advancing simplistic arguments that are consistent with prevailing ideologies. Two common examples are:

The just-world belief
As Americans we have been socialized to believe that there is a direct correlation between a person's life circumstances and her/his degree of organic worth. In other words, good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people. In order to get ahead, you simply need to align yourself with accepted intepretations of truth and justice (Lerner and Miller, 1978).

The myth of meritocracy
In a similar way, most of us believe that resources should be allotted accroding to ability and effort. Those people who are naturally skilled and/or exert the most energy deserve to reign over the unskilled and the lazy. This belief is also rooted in the western ideal of rugged individualism and, in many ways, is the anti-thesis of a structural attributional set (Kluegal & Smith, 1986).

The result of ignoring ideological tyranny is summed up well by Sarason: "Any educational reform that does not explicitly and courageously own up to issues surrounding changing patterns of power relationships is likely to fail ... that the strength of the status quo--its underlying axioms, its pattern of power relationships, its sense of tradition and therefore what seems right, natural, and proper--almost automatically rules out options for change in that status quo" (The Predictable Failure of Educational Reform pp. 35-36). In order to serve Latinos and other visible racial/ethnic students better, we need to challenge the ideological assumptions upon which our perspectives on school reform rest.

Dominant ideologies manifest in various ways at all levels of the educational system. The result is a systemic marginalization of visible racial/ethnic students which, in turn, increases the probability of their dropping out. By considering how multiple aspects of the schooling process interact to negatively influence visible racial/ethnic students, we can move beyond accepting person- and culture-blaming attributions for dropping out and toward fixing the system itself. Consider the following examples:

The anti-social promotion movement:
If we assume that individuals are afforded equal opportunity, that they can be reliably judged by their performance, and that they are solely responsible for their behavior, then it is logical and just to hold them accountable for their actions. This is often the case with schooling--students are seen as responsible for their academic performance, and those who "choose" not to learn are rightfully sentenced to repeat lessons (or grades) until they acquiesce to the goals of the system (see Separating fact from fiction about education). Of course, basing policy decisions on individualistic attributions discounts the potency of exogenous factors that afford some students (i.e., those whose racial and cultural status covaries with wealth and power) more and higher quality opportunities to actualize their potential (see Conceptualising and capturing voices in dropout research).

Ideological reproduction through state-mandated curricula:
School curricula are used to cultivate dominant group-favoring ideologies (Apple, 1979) and to foster internalized oppression. What's more, schooling is not a voluntary activity. Visible racial/ethinc students and their families must participate in the process of ideological reproduction or face the consequences (i.e., lose their chance at gaining social mobility). This creates a situation in which students are confronted with a forced choice: They can choose to maintain personal and cultural integrity or they can pursue the academic goals defined for them by state-sponsored racial/cultural antagonists. Confronted with these options, it is now wonder that many visible racial/ethnic students feel a sense of cultural dissonance (see Joaquin's dilemma ; Latina teens and Culturally diverse student populations).

Inattention to funding disparities
In some ways, schools and school districts can be thought of as stigmatized entities in that they are subjected to the same hostile explanations bestowed upon “underachieving” students. The prevailing belief is that if a school is “low-performing”, the people at the school (i.e. the teachers, the principal and, of course, the students) must suffer from some form of personal or collective defect. Thus, "throwing money" (i.e., providing equitable funding) at "the problem" (i.e., visible raical/ethnic students and their incompetent educators) is deemed indefensible (see Lashway, 2001).

Counselor behavior:
Counselors' assessments of visible racial/ethnic students's academic proficiencies are also affected by dominant ideologies, and many perform what Burton Clark (1980) has referred to as a “cooling-out function” to dissuade VRE students from pursuing challenging courses in high school and from applying to four-year institutions. Media icons such as Dinesh D’Souza and Steven and Abigail Thernstorm (see also Shalom, 1999) have sucessfully perpetuated these notions by playing on racial/cultural stereotypes and the just-world belief to convince Americans of the academic ineptitude of visible racial/ethnic students and the unfairness of remedial social policy.

Proliferation of high-stakes testing:
The goal of high-stakes testing and, indeed, the accountability movement in general is to improve the quality of education, especially in the lowest performing schools (High stakes testing and school completion). However, high-stakes testing creates additional barriers to successful completion of high school, thus making dropping out seem more reasonable and appealing (Graduation Exit Testing Fails; for a review of the connections between testing and dropping out, see Understanding Dropouts). When testing is related to grade retnetion, as it is in Texas, its potential for worsening the dropout problem is heightened (see Grade retention and dropping out).

Moreover, McNeil and Valenzuela have noted that the high-stakes testing movement has actually widened the gap in educational quality between under- and adequately funded schools, and these differences may also contribute to the observed Latino dropout rate. In preparing for standardized tests, Latino students in "low-performing" schools are subjected to repititious drill-and-practice sessions that subtract the last remaining molecules of relevancy from the curriculum. Inundated with messages of inferiority and failing to see the benefits of mastering multiple choice tests, many Latinos simply opt out of the system altogether.

Public criticism of our nation's schools:
Gerald Bracey (1996) has pointed out that negative media attention has created unfavorable perceptions of our nation’s schools. Interestingly, these effects are more pronounced when Americans are asked about their attitudes toward schools in general than when they are asked about their attitudes toward their children’s schools specifically. Why? One reason may be that people are primed to believe attributions that indict VRE students and stigmatized schools, so, unless they have first-hand knowledge that a school is effective, they will tend to believe that it is not.

Tracking:
Students who find themselves in the lowest tracks are inundated with messages about their academic inferiority, thus further eroding their academic self-concept and their decreasing the value they place on formal schooling. (See Keeping schools on track and Still Separate and Unequal). Again, when students see school as a hostile place where they are continuously informed of their academic ineptitudes, they are not likely to show resiliency in the face of social and scholastic ineqaulity.

Effects on Behavior and Policy

Pygmalion in practice...

Deficit thinking
Made famous by the political philosophies of the 1960s (e.g., Patrick Thomas Moynihan and Oscar Lewis), the cultural deficit perspective posits that cultural forces socialize Latinos into self-defeating behaviors and moral bankruptcy. Teachers and school officials are charged with the task of molding Latino students into worthwhile citizens by inculcating them with mainstream (i.e., White, middle-class) norms. It is assumed that schools fucntion to equip students with the knowledge and life skills necessary to compete in the formal economy. (see Hispanic’s Choose to Dropout Out of School).

Subtractive schooling
Teachers and administrators who subscribe to a cultural deficit perspective are at increased risk for practicing subtractive schooling. These educators seek to subtract resources from visible racial/ethnic students in the name of assimilation. At the policy level, English-only mandates send clear messages to non-native speakers and bilingual students that their first language is "wrong" and inappropriate in high status settings. Although some educators who practice subtractive schooling may indeed emante from a place of comapassion and good intentions, in effect students are taught to de-value their home cultures. Authentic, power-aware caring, support, and the transmission of social capital are antidotes for these deficit-minded practices. (see Testimony Before the President's Advisory Commission and Student perceptions of teacher ethinc bias). This may take the form of educating for bi-culturalism (for more information, see Delpit, 1995 and Darder, 1991) and teaching sociology of education courses that explicitly delineate the ways in which racist ideology is used to reproduce social ineqaultities (see Stanton-Salazar, 2001).

Structural Obstacles
Romo and Falbo's book Latino High School Graduation outlines several aspects of the school system that contribute to Latino dropout rates. These features include:

• School size


• Failure to utilize the services of community agencies


• Attendance policies


• Barriers to re-entry


• Anti-affirmative action policies

Programs that work
Some existing programs build on students’ cultural strengths while simultaneously helping them to achieve academically. Two programs that appear to be especially successful are the Hispanic Mother-Daughter Program and Communities in Schools.