Guest Column
Who Asked Us? A College Prep Curriculum May Turn the High School Dropout Tide
- By Nancy Meza
- Youth Commentary
- New America Media,
- Feb 09, 2006
LOS ANGELES--Last June, I was one
of few students who graduated from Roosevelt High School in Boyle Heights.
One of the main reasons I graduated was because I was a "college bound"
student. Even before entering high school I had the mindset of going to
college. This was not because I strived harder or had more potential than
other students. It was because I was part of the honors program, where we
were constantly being made aware of the benefits of going to college, and
provided the resources to get there.
Months before I graduated from middle school we had several presentations
and guest speakers who helped us map out our four-year educational plan. I
remember thinking to myself how great it was that "all" students were being
exposed to going to college and being given the tools to know how to get
there.
To my surprise, many of my friends who were not on the "college track" had
never been spoken to about higher education. Although they were the students
who really needed that help and that extra push to attend college, they were
left to fend for themselves and continued blindly into high school.
When I entered high school I was placed in a small learning academy and in
honors classes that challenged me. I also had two older brothers attending
the same high school, one as a junior and one as a sophomore. While I was
being challenged in most of my courses, my brothers were both in regular
classes (meaning not honors or AP). Most times they were not engaged in the
classroom, and so they would rather ditch.
As a freshman I watched as my brothers gradually lost interest in school.
They felt that because their classes were not engaging, missing one or two
days would not really change anything. Before they knew it, they just
stopped coming to school.
No one was pressuring them to stay in school. Instead, they received more
pressure to stay out of school. It took the school three to four months to
notify my mother that my brothers were not attending. When they re-enrolled
they were so far behind in most of their subjects that they felt they could
not catch up. The school suspended them and gave them large amounts of
detention hours. They then helped them get out of school and into a
continuation school.
When my brothers officially left high school, they did so with the hopes of
catching up at a continuation school. However my mother was given very
little information about what schools were out there. The schools that were
around the area were already overcrowded and there was a long waiting list.
My brothers then and there decided that it was way too hard to continue with
school and dropped out.
This is not only a situation that my brothers had to go through. Many of my
friends never made it to their senior year. Like my brothers, they were not
being challenged and like many students they were not being given college
prep courses and just decided that it did not matter if they stayed in high
school or not because in the end they would just end up getting the same
job. The reality is that at Roosevelt, 65 percent of students don't
graduate. And only one out of every 16 students is eligible to apply to
state colleges, because they haven't taken the required coursework.
Student's experiences and the education crisis plaguing inner-cities
throughout the country prompted me to do something about education. I became
involved with Inner City Struggle about three years ago and have helped lead
several campaigns for educational reform. We organize youths out of four
eastside high school campuses. Most recently, we created a coalition between
Latino and African-American students from throughout Los Angeles to ensure
equal access to a quality education for all students.
Specifically, we fought for the right of all students in the Los Angeles
Unified School District (LAUSD) to have access to the A-G Life-Prep
curriculum. These are the courses required by California for admissions into
a four-year public university, and many of them -- like geometry -- are
required for jobs even if you don't go to college. About 80 percent of
students were graduating at my high school without taking the A-G courses.
In the beginning everyone was against us. They thought the curriculum would
push more students out of schools. Most people had the mindset that if you
gave students harder classes, they would drop out. But when we conducted a
survey at my school, we found that 70 percent of students wanted to go to
college. Most students we talked to said they wanted to go to college, but
they didn't know how to get there and some didn't think that college was
accessible to them.
We pushed hard, and in the end we were victorious. Now, for the first time
in the history of LAUSD every student will have access to these courses and
doors that would have otherwise remained shut have now been kicked wide
open.
http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=625118f8c771b70a8867787c424d5bf6
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