The above headline ran on top of the lead two-part editorial in USA Today on January 31, 2003. The article, full of statistics and research reports, can be read in its entirety on www.usatoday.com. A brief summary follows.

The state of the art editorial points out that in public schools, the picture is bleak with up to 21% of Hispanic students dropping out of high school, compared to 8% of whites and 12% of blacks. In Los Angeles where up to 71% of any student body may be Hispanic, nearly one in four become dropouts.

Educators cite these factors as the most influential: poor research on how to teach a child whose primary language is not English, weak accountability of school districts with little hard data and sporadic tracking, low expectations with few schools making attempts to steer Hispanics into college-track courses, and bad communication, with surveys showing that only 38% of Hispanic parents believe they are given the information they need to help their children succeed in the classroom.

Opposing view: Some Private Schools Show Success

A companion piece touts the advantages private schools have, especially the new Charter schools, with their increased flexibility to experiment with new approaches. In this article, Jeanne Allen, President of the Center for Education Reform, points to the new multimillion-dollar effort by the National Council of La Raza, that connects Latino-based Charter schools nationally.

She also cites the example of the Cesar Chavez High School in Washington, D.C., that recently had to re-educate the majority of its students in math and reading. Last summer, every senior graduated and went to college; most received scholarships to schools of their choice, a few in the Ivy League. Allen also told of a new San Antonio Horizon Scholarship program where 93% are Hispanic, many of them previous dropouts. She predicts these programs will grow once their success is more widely known among parents and state leaders.

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