Lori Peek Meghan Mordy Colorado State University
Completing high school opens up new pathways to success for poor youth. Degree completion can provide access to better jobs, healthcare benefits, safer homes, and more secure communities. Yet, many poor youth, in the US and elsewhere, fail to earn this critical degree. This dissertation research examines the case of El Salvador, where only 40% of youth graduate high school and 41% of 16-18 year-olds have dropped out before completing middle school. Nearly one-quarter of the population is between the ages of 10 and 19 and these young people are growing up in the midst of a crisis in youth violence and childhood poverty. This project is a multi-year qualitative study that examines why the majority of poor Salvadoran adolescents are pushed out of school, while some are able to complete their high school degrees. It employs ethnographic fieldwork in one rural and two urban schools, including participant observation in middle school classrooms and focus group interviews. The dissertation will examine how youth disengage academically and identify the factors that put them at-risk for dropout. In its entirety, this project aims to describe the mechanisms that translate poor children's family- and community-based disadvantages into school-based ones. It brings together analysis of what schools demand from students in terms of academic performance and classroom behavior with an examination of how families and communities enable (or fail to enable) youth to meet these conditions and successfully complete high school.
Broader Impacts: This dissertation has implications for educational and other social policy reform. It is highly relevant to ongoing school reform projects, particularly in El Salvador. Findings will be shared with policy makers, and with educators, school administrators, and other practitioners at meetings and through conference presentations. More broadly, the dissertation has implications for multilateral development aid initiatives. By providing evidence on the connections between poor youth?s home and community environments and their educational outcomes, the dissertation can be used to inform both educational and broader social policy that supports the goals of improving the achievement and retention of poor youth in the Global South. In addition, the dissertation will provide insights and data that can be applied in other research areas, such as studies of Central American migration patterns or youth violence in the region.
This research explains—through examining family, school, peer, and community effects—why so many poor youth in El Salvador are unable to complete high school. Dropout is the most common educational outcome amongst poor youth in this Central American country. According to the World Bank, of 100 children who enroll in first grade, only 39 complete middle school and 22 earn high school degrees. Very few of these graduates are poor. As a consequence of not completing high school, poor Salvadorans are less likely to escape poverty and more likely to endure a lifetime of unstable employment, inadequate housing, and other associated issues. El Salvador, like many developing countries, is beset by extreme social inequalities. In order to increase the opportunities of poor children, the nation embarked on a rapid expansion of educational access in the 1990s and 2000s–building schools throughout the country and providing small educational grants to poor rural families. While primary schooling is now nearly universal in the country, completion rates drop off as youth enter middle school (grades 7-9) and are extremely low for high school, the level of education which makes the biggest impact on reducing poverty. This project draws on in-depth qualitative interviews with dropouts (n=63), students at imminent risk of dropping out (n=28), high school graduates (n=49), and members of these children’s families (n=40) to reveal the contexts and factors that shape and constrain educational opportunities of Salvadoran youth. In addition to the 180 interviews completed, the Co-PI also carried out participant observation in one rural and two urban schools over a 24 month period, a survey with nearly 370 middle school students, and interviews with 20 teachers. In surveys and interviews, Salvadoran youth express very high educational aspirations, no matter their station in life. The vast majority desire high school and college degrees and the professional jobs that higher education promises. Yet their paths toward those ideal futures are marred by obstacles. Their parents often work in the precarious informal market: In urban settings, adults are employed as street vendors, domestic workers, bakers, maquila workers, and taxi drivers. In rural areas, adult caregivers work as subsistence farmers, day laborers, and domestic workers. Many parents have migrated to the U.S. or larger cities in search of work, leaving their children behind with grandparents. Youth are highly aware of the economic stresses enveloping their families and one of their central motivations for aspiring to higher education is the hope that they will one day earn enough to support their parents. At a young age, children learn to help their families scrape by economically, either by taking on some of their parent’s work, finding their own employment, or taking responsibility for household chores or childcare. Their schoolwork suffers as a result. These youth lack academic support at home – few have a quiet place (or time) to do homework, reading materials, or resources for school projects. As they enter middle school, teachers’ expectations and the academic workload increase. At the same time, they become more involved in and able to help their family financially. As a result of these and other accumulated barriers, students begin to fail academically and often begin to have discipline issues at school. Youth, sometimes with the support and even encouragement of their families, decide it is better to drop out than spend more money and time on school. This decision is often perceived as temporary. Many youth "drop in" to school the next year, but because the underlying economic and academic issues go unresolved, many drop out again. Because this long-term investigation followed dropouts and graduates, it reveals not only how poor youth were pushed out of school but also the strategies, resources, and relationships that successful graduates – poor youth from similar backgrounds as dropouts – used to complete high school. Like the families of dropouts, high school youth also suffer extreme economic stress, but these families tend to be more focused on their child’s success at school and more involved in homework and other academic activities. Moreover, the children themselves are usually more academically engaged as well. Students’ success at school helps build strong relationships with teachers which help parents and youth navigate through high school. This work sheds light on the impact of poverty on schooling in the developing world. In addition, it is relevant to understanding the flood of unaccompanied minors arriving in the U.S. from Central America. It documents children’s daily experience of violence, inequality, and poverty in Central America and also describes how youth and their families weigh the opportunities and risks of migrating to the U.S. or staying at home. This project also integrates research and education by enabling the Co-PI to complete her Ph.D. in Sociology. The data served as the basis for six conference presentations and will be used for future peer-reviewed publications.
