The requirements and performance standards placed on public schools under the
auspices of NCLB meant the academic needs of the Latino student needed attention. The
reality being, these same students would either be entering post-secondary education or
the workforce with the skills and knowledge they received from their school experiences.
In 2001 alone, the Hispanic dropout rate was 21.1% for students aged 16-19 years, while
the dropout rate was 6.9% for non-Hispanic students of the same age range (U.S. Census
Bureau, 2006). In 2005, this percentage rose to 22.4% for the same Hispanic population
(Jones & Bou-Waked, 2007). In Texas, every year more than 135,000 of the state’s 1.2
million secondary students drop out before graduation and slightly less than 50% of
Latinos graduate (McNeil, Coppola, & Radigan, 2008, p. 2). These data show that the
Latino subset’s graduation and dropout rates under NCLB warranted a response from
public school systems.