BE020836: Contextual Factors Surrounding Hispanic Dropouts.

Notes:

43 p.

Abstract:

This paper considers the problem of Hispanic high school dropouts by advocating a relocation of the causes, the meanings, and the problematics of dropping out by placing the dropout phenomenon in the broader context within which it occurs. It is argued that dropping out should be considered in social, not personal terms, specifically as an institutional production that reproduces the structures of inequality in the educational, economic, and civic domains of everyday life. The institutional context significant to dropout rates includes the social organization of schooling with its unequal distribution of resources, including teachers, curriculum and instruction. The larger social context includes the social organization of society with its hierarchy of work that produces conditions of structural unemployment, marginal employment, and underemployment that are disproportionately endured by minorities, women, and low-income individuals. Contextualizing the dropout phenomenon in this way is helpful because it shifts attention away from the presumed deficiencies of individual students and shows that students' reasoning is not faulty but reflects a thoughtful analysis of existing institutional and socioeconomic circumstances. The political influences on the role of public schools in society are considered, and the history of the dropout phenomenon is reviewed, including the definition, counting, and analysis of dropouts. (jpb)