Latino High School Graduation

While high school drop-out rates have steadily declined among white and African American students over the last twenty years, a constant 35 percent of Latino students continue to quit school before graduation. Troubled by both the magnitude and the constancy of the Latino drop-out rate, Harriett Romo and Toni Falbo conducted a four-year study of at-risk Latino students to determine how some defy the odds and stay in school to earn high school diplomas. This book reveals in full detail what they found. Romo and Falbo followed the school progress of 100 at-risk students in Austin, Texas, beginning in 1989 when the students were fifteen years old. Drawing on extensive interviews with the students and their parents, school records, and fieldwork in the students' schools and communities, the authors identify both the obstacles that cause many students to drop out and the successful strategies that other students and their parents pursue to ensure high school graduation. Detailed case studies allow students and parents to describe their experiences with the public schools in their own words. After presenting their findings, Romo and Falbo conclude with seven provocative and far-reaching recommendations for changes in the public schools to boost the graduation rate of at-risk Latino students. Sure to provoke lively interest and debate among all groups with a stake in schools, this book will be required reading for school administrators, teachers, parents, legislators, and community leaders in all regions with Latino student populations.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.