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Alondra Rivera
Jaya Dubey
Writing 39C

27 October 2015

Hispanics and the Educational Attainment in Los Angeles

With Los Angeles having 4.9 million Hispanics we have to start of with the issue of the
educational attainment. The difference between Los Angeles and other locations makes the issue
over education varies among different racial groups. With 45% of students in the Los Angeles
Unified School District completing all four years of high school successfully, compared with the
national graduation average of 70%, exemplifies that students in urban public schools are less
probable to graduate high school than those students who are enrolled in suburban locations (LA
TIMES). The educational attainment is a powerful predictor that was first implemented in the
1990 Decennial Census. It helped determine that statistic of those who graduated high school in
the LAUSD, but it also determines the students well being; it helps predict unemployment, establish the students academic success, and socio-economic well being, lack in academic resources, measures the individuals future health, and finally helps detect the likelihood of future
success.
From the 1980s until present times, the employed population in California of 18 to 34
year olds has decreased from around 71 percent in the 1980s, to 60% in 2013. The result of this
decline has to do with the employment of our youth, primarily because more hispanics are falling
into the educational attainment gap and do not exceed their education after high school. The ed-

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ucational attainment in Californiaparticularly high

school completion varies
significantly by race and
ethnicity. As figure one
shows, in 2012, 37.3% of
Latinos failed to complete
high school, compared to
African Americans who calculat-

Figure 1: Demonstrates the educational attainment of the main races/ethnicity of individuals in 2012. Clearly
Latinos have the highest amount of people not fulfilling a high school education and the result is that there is
less people having a high school diploma, a college degree, bachelors, or graduate degree.

ed at 9.7%, 9.1% for Asians, and

lastly and the least numbers of those who didnt complete their high school education were
whites with only 4.6%. This gap is troubling given that Latinos represent about 35% of Californias working-age population. (Public Policy Institute of California) The problem with the educational gap is that as whites, asians, and blacks rise in substantial speeds; the hispanic community
tends to progress only at gradual pace.
The reason there is such slow speeds for the hispanic community is that whiter and
wealthier schools and urban minority schools tend to focus their attention in contrasting ways.
Such as the whites schools hire more highly qualified and experienced teachers (Clotfelter, Ladd,
& Vigdor, 2005; Rivkin, Hanushek, & Kain, 2005). They normalize a school and community
climate that encourages homework completion, academic achievement, regular attendance, and
college enrollment (Kahlenberg, 2001); and finally they offer students more advanced and challenging curricula (Rumberger & Palardy, 2005). For these studies identifying how white/richer

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students have an advantage I have added figure 2 to illustrate how our education system is unjust
because in this case rich students are predisposed to know how to of better in school and have
more resources such as teachers providing assistance (making
them the monkey) since they can do the task with more of an advantage. While on the other hand hispanics schools primarily
those in the LAUSD have factors interfering with the students
success which results in them being the other animals in which
they mostly resemble the fish. For example, a fish specializes in
swimmingly superbly, and its ability to climb a tree is non-exisFigure 2: Our education is like this image; they
expects so highly of those who do not have the
resources or skills to achieve academically. I went
to a quote investigator website, and the first close
Matthew Kelly contained a chapter titled Everybody is a Genius which began with him stating
Albert Einstein invented the quote but there is no
full evidence to back it up, I just figured it was a
useful illustration to exemplify my argument on
how unjust the school system is.

tent, but that doesnt meant they fail completely at everything since
in this case it is unfair to judge an animal by focusing on a skill
which the creature does not have, such as with students in lower

income communities who dont have the required tools to strive academically. Thus, teachers do
play a role when it comes to educational gaps because teachers provide a positive impact on students social and academic outcomes, which is important for the long-term trajectory of school
and eventually employment (Baker et al., 2008; OConnor et al., 2011; Silver et al., 2005). The
problems with the LAUSD is that even though teachers are supposed to be students mentors for
academic success when it comes to all the low income schools in that area, they have the disadvantage where they definitely cannot afford the best teachers, nor have the best classes. So as a
result by teachers not being able to overcome the problem affects the hispanic community greatly
in the sense that these educators who minority children look up to for guidance cannot successfully fulfill all the educational requirements required.

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Next, teachers and poor classroom settings arent the only problem for the causes of
achievement gap in Los Angeles School Districts. One of the main contributor to the educational
attainment is income. While 48.4% of Hispanics are living in Los Angeles County, 27% of them
are living in poverty. Yet another ten percent of Latinos live in deep poverty (with incomes below 50% of the federal poverty threshold), compared to seven percent of all people in the United
States. (Feeding America) Whereas whites make up for only 10% living in impoverishment. And
yet, the incomes of the rich continues to grow in an accelerating speeds in these last thirty years
than the incomes of the middle class and the poor, which are most likely constant or declining as
the years pass. The reason the rich end up doing better socioeconomically is because money
helps families dispense cognitively stimulating experiences for their young children in the sense
that it establishes a more secure home environment, more time for parents to communicate and
peruse with their children, and more access to higher-quality preschool and child care. (United
Way Silicon Valley) It is evident that the rich do better academically because from such a young
age children get accustomed to school working ethics, being responsible, and learn to advance
academically in their studies and homework. Whereas in low income urban locations like Los
Angeles, usually preschools could only accept a minimal amount of kids and for those who are
on the wait list it is not really beneficiary because the list is so extensive that most children wont
even get the chance to be enrolled. As Kim Pattillo Brownson, of the Advancement Project and a
member of the districts Early Education Ad-Hoc committee stated, Theres already 87,000 kids
who dont have seats just within the geographic boundaries who are preschool eligible, many of
whom are low-income. These numbers are just for the LAUSD, but thats 87 thousand kids

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who already lost a year or two of education that will quickly have him or her fall behind later on
in life.
Now to continue to the educational gap and why it is so wide is partly because Latino
students lack the proper academic resources such as the disproportionate class material.Latino
students are than taught easier material than white or
Asian rich student since low income schools do not
have enough money to buy newer more up to date
textbooks. An example is for example in low income
childrens pre-school about 80 percent of them do not
have any childrens books, either, largely because they
lack the money to buy them (United We Serve). This
is worrisome since having no books generates problems in literacy and other educational learning problems later on. Figure 3 illustrates the difference in a
Figure 3: The top picture illustrates a rich classroom where it is
visible that the student ratio is lower which provides a more one on
one learning experience. Whereas, the second picture shows an LA
school that has a larger student ratio.

high income learning environment whereas the second

picture shows a common LA classroom which is highly

impacted and more students are being jammed in a classroom that is already full. Another factor
is that an innumerable amount of Hispanic students are the offspring of Mexican immigrants who
did not finish high school thus, them not being able to provide academic resources and tutoring,
and finally with 27% of hispanics living in poverty, the main concern is not attending school
with getting the best grades. Their main worry is how they will pay rent, or for those without
healthcare worry about how they are going to take care of their family when someone gets ill. It

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is apparent that for young adults living in such a family oriented environment to want to work
now in order to make ends meet at that time, instead of having to go to school, attend college,
and then finally being able to make some sort of income thats not one hundred percent guaranteed.
Hispanics with lower educational attainment rates tend to have poor health. Such as with
hispanics not having any nor qualified health care tend to show that children have greater absenteeism (Aysola, Orav, & Ayanian, 2011; Starfield, 1997), and they cant benefit from good
schools if they are not present. An alarming effect of LAUSD is that coming from a low-educational background represents majors obstacles to achieving a high level of education. The Mental Health Youth and Education state that these,Risk factors, especially in poor childrens families and communities escalates the possibility of mental health problems in childhood, adolescence and throughout life. It also impacts on loss of productivity, task being done ineffectively,
and societal consequences. The problem is by exposing children to low education it eventually
could correlate to poor mental health, substance
abuse, violence, and lower educational
achievements. See figure 4 for a brief example.
In hence, by closing the educational attainment
in the hispanic community can contribute to
better health psychical and mental health. To
conclude, educational environments indu-

Figure 4: Students in the LAUSD are protesting for their education system to
change in order for hispanics to have higher educational resources and better
academic success. The students are well aware of all the negative factors they
face such as mental health issues, substance abuse, violence,etc. and want to end
all these risk factors that are highly present int he LA area. Image was provided
by the k-12 News Network The Wire. http://thewire.k12newsnetwork.com/wpcontent/uploads/sites/15/2014/08/slasd.jpg

bitably play a crucial role in securing childrens rights and supplying the indispensable support

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system to allow the early recognition of emotional, social, and mental difficulties and effective
resolution for these setbacks. Equally better health leads to better education. (MHYE)
With a projection that Hispanics will account for the 30% of the US population by 2030,
now is the time that minorities need to become our majority when it comes to education. If trends
continue to illustrate hispanics having the highest drop out rates (over 1 million) then how will
our nation start succeeding? Various effects come into play when it comes to the educational
achievement hispanics encounter on a daily basis. Such as children in impoverished neighborhoods are surrounded by more crime and violence and suffer from greater stress that interferes
with learning (Buka, Stichick, Birdthistle, & Earls, 2001; Burdick-Will et al., 2010; Farah et al.,
2006). Also children with less exposure to mainstream society are less familiar with the standard
English thats necessary for their future success (Sampson, Sharkey, & Raudenbush, 2008). It
makes sense since English is not most hispanics first language and even when it comes to state
testing and ACTs that whites score double the percentages when it comes to English and writing. When it comes to standardized test scores; in California 44% of students achieved targets for
their grade in English yet in LA Unified, the amount was only 25% (LA TIMES). Now with that
being stated, here is a fact that may not astonish you, The children of the rich perform better in
school, on average, than children from middle-class or poor families. Students growing up in
richer families have better grades and higher standardized test scores, on average, than poorer
studentshigher graduation rates and higher rates of college enrollment and completion(The
New York Times). Therefore, when it comes to the rates of higher educational attainment gaps

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between the lowest race: hispanics; compared to the highest race: whites then now is the time
we as American citizens have to establish change
in the way public schools are instructed or else
the education system will continue to fail and
more children will continue to be affected.
Subsequently, an effect of having low education
results in less hispanics continuing on to college
or getting high paying jobs. The United States
Census Bureau as represented in the graphs

Figure 5: The blue bars represent the whole United States, while the red
bars represent just Californias population. This information was acquired
from the United States Census Bureau.

clearly demonstrates the connection between how many of our nations youth has less employed
and the numbers represent face a substantial decrease, yet coincidently as the employed numbers
go down the amount of people living in poverty ages 18 to 34 goes up as represented in Figure 5.
Continuing, as the educational gap gets worse, it doesnt just have to do with academics but all
the factors previously discussed that contributes to the harm of low educational attainment rates
among Hispanics.
In conclusion, the Hispanic educational attainment in Los Angeles is an ongoing issue
that affects low income Hispanics. This issue helps predict unemployment, establish the students
academic success, and socio-economic well being, lack in academic resources, measures the individuals future health, and finally helps detect the likelihood of future success. One possible

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solution is to prepare Hispanics students at a young age to be college ready in order to decrease
the educational attainment rates.

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