COLLEGE STATION -- A report released by the Texas Educational Excellence Project (TEEP) examines the impact of changing summer employment opportunities on Latino dropout behavior. Combining district-level dropout data from the Texas Education Agency with county-level unemployment data from the Texas Workforce Commission, the researchers find that summer unemployment fluctuations from one year to the next play a significant role in explaining the following school year's Latino dropout rate. The study looks at dropout numbers from the 97-98 to 01-02 school years.

While other studies find evidence of these macro-economic effects, suggesting Latino students use a slightly different calculus to drop out of school than do Black or Anglo students, this is the first to pinpoint summertime fluctuations as a significant culprit. "The results suggest a number of interesting things," says the report's author Eric Gonzalez Juenke. "First, it specifies a more realistic thought process for dropping out than previously examined. Students do not simply look at the unemployment rate in the county and decide to leave (or stay) in school. Rather, they appear to get a sense of increasing or decreasing opportunities from one summer to the next. It is not the absolute level of unemployment, but the change that is crucial. School districts in counties with employment growth experience higher levels of Latino dropouts in the following school year, all else equal." Of equal importance, Gonzalez Juenke says, is that this relationship is not observed for Blacks or Anglos, supporting the theory that Latino students face different familial, social, or economic incentives and constraints than their Black and Anglo counterparts.

Unlike other dropout studies, the results of this research suggest few policy prescriptions. "It is difficult for a school district to do anything about potential employment in the surrounding community and its pull on Latino students to leave school," Gonzalez Juenke explains. The results do, however, make a case for paying attention to the influence of summer employment on the decision of some Latinos to leave school. Research that does not control for changes in the surrounding macro-economy may be missing an important piece of the dropout puzzle, producing evidence for a particular policy solution that may be inappropriate.

The Texas Educational Excellence Project seeks to apply scholarly research to educational policy issues in order to make recommendations for greater quality and equity in Texas school systems. Statistical data for all districts used for the report can be found at http://teep.tamu.edu/.

The Carlos Cantu Hispanic Education and Opportunity Endowment provides funding for this project and other studies concerning Latino dropout research. This work is part of a larger project investigating factors affecting Latino dropout rates.

To see the entire report visit the TEEP web site at teep.tamu.edu Contact: Nick Theobald, theobald@polisci.tamu.edu or
Eric Juenke at ejuenke@politics.tamu.edu
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