Eduhonesty: I know many principals have stopped showing kids the door. Maybe some kids have also realized the job market can be more frightening than any hypothetical zombie apocalypse. In any case, the U.S. dropout rate has shown real progress over the last two decades. But buried in our statistics, I see an ugly truth, one hidden from those people who only see Dreamers in passing, if they notice these outsiders in their midst at all.
What happens when Dreamers run out of dreams? What happens to the kid who was brought here at 6 months of age, the kid who cannot remember Guadalajara, who is currently living on the surface of South Chicago? The kid who is wondering if his family will be deported while his little brother and sister are left behind? Let’s look at some government drop-out data.
Status dropout rates of 16- to 24-year-olds, by race/ethnicity: 1990 through 2014
SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. (2016). The Condition of Education 2016 (NCES 2016-144), Status Dropout Rates
According to census and other government data, the overall American dropout rate fell from 12.1 percent in 1990 to 6.5 percent in 2014 — nearly half the earlier rate. Most of the fall came after 2000. Between 1990 and 2014, the dropout rate for males fell from 12.3 to 7.1 percent, nearly all that progress happening after 2000. We have been working hard on the problem of dropouts. For females, the rate showed little change from 1990 to 2000, falling gently from 11.8 percent to 9.9 percent, but then made substantial progress, reaching 5.9 percent in 2014.
Unfortunately, these numbers do not look so rosy when broken down. For each year, beginning in 1990 and ending in 2014, the dropout rate remains lower for Caucasians than for African-Americans. The Hispanic dropout rate always comes in highest. When we reach 2014, our Caucasian dropout rate measures 5.2 percent, while the African-American rate pegs in at 7.4 percent, and the Hispanic rate at 10.6 percent. We might pause to congratulate ourselves that the gap between Caucasians and African-Americans stood at only 2.2 percentage points in 2014, down from 6.2 percent points in 2000.
My graph comes from https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=16, a site that offers links that add to my picture.
Broken down, though, that last set of numbers tells us that one in ten Hispanic students left school before graduation. As a former bilingual teacher, I understand some of the truth behind that number. Our elementary school Dreamers have dreams. They plan to be doctors, nurses, firefighters, cops, teachers, astronauts and the many other shiny possibilities teachers keep holding up to them. By middle school, their dreams are fraying, as older relatives and friends tell them those shiny possibilities are pipe dreams without a valid social security number. Some kids hold on to hope, even as they watch Laura, one of the best students they know, giving up her nursing dreams to enter a medical assistant program, hoping maybe she will be able to find a healthcare job as an assistant without the magic social number. At worst, they see Laura complete her program at the top of her class and then go to work in the semi-secret backroom of the local factory.
We are extinguishing dreams out here. And whether there are 10,000,000 or 14,000,000 undocumented aliens in this country, many children are growing up in America without hope of stepping onto the U.S. ladder to success. We are wasting minds. We are wasting time.
If we want to improve America, I can think of one quick fix: Let’s guarantee Dreamers a possible foothold on the American dream. Four to six years of college and/or military service after high school would be my simple choice. So many dreamers who drop out are bright, exciting young people — kids who have earned much more than the sweaty semi-secret backroom that has been benefitting our economy. We have been buying those economic benefits at the expense of our soul.