Hispanics Have Highest Dropout Rate

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Hispanics still drop out of school at a far higher rate than non-Hispanic blacks and whites, and leave school at an earlier age, the Education Department reported Thursday.

The department's National Center for Education statistics found that nearly one-third of Hispanics age 16 to 24 were dropouts in 1995, a rate that has held steady for more than 20 years.

By contrast, the dropout rate for black Americans age 16 to 24 has fallen and is approaching the rate for whites, the center said in its yearly report on dropouts.

Advocates for Hispanic education said the reasons were complex and varied. They cited low education of parents, lack of access to early education programs such as Head Start, a huge problem with teen pregnancy, few Latino teachers to hold out as good examples and cuts in bilingual education.

``All the issues that are associated with urban poverty are certainly contributing factors,'' said Ronald Blackburn-Moreno, national director of Aspira, a group devoted to Hispanic education. ``But I think above and beyond that is the language and culture issue and the lack of role models in schools.''

Critics who want to restrict immigration say the numbers show the failure by immigrants or their children to blend in.

``It points to a cultural problem of high-level immigration coming from countries where they do not have an expectation of high education completion rates,'' said John Martin, an analyst for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which wants to control immigration.

The numbers point to the failure of bilingual education to break the cultural pattern, he said.

The statistical report said language problems were ``associated'' with failure to complete high school but stopped short of saying they were a cause.

Overall, 12 percent of young adults were not enrolled in high school and had not finished it in October 1995. That's nearly 4 million people out of 32.4 million. The rate has eased down from nearly 15 percent in 1972.

The rate was 30 percent for Hispanics, however, meaning 1.3 million people were dropouts. That compares with 1.9 million, close to 9 percent, for other whites.

There were 557,000 black dropouts, accounting for 12 percent of those young adults. The rate for blacks had exceeded 20 percent in the early 1970s.

The rate for Hispanics has been high in part because statisticians count those who enter this country with less than a 12th-grade education and never enroll in U.S. schools.

But analysts were able to determine for the first time that looking just at those who enrolled in U.S. schools at some time, the rate was close to 20 percent.

Those who do attend school drop out sooner. In 1995, more than half of the Hispanic dropouts reported having less than a 10th-grade education, compared with 31.1 percent of non-Hispanic white dropouts and 27 percent of the black dropouts.

For those foreign-born Hispanics who never went to a U.S. school, fewer than 43 percent had finished the 10th grade or higher.