The Project of Representation, Equity and Governance (PERG)and the Carlos Cantu Hispanic Education and Opportunity Endowment released a report examining Latino attitudes toward education in Texas using data from the Latino National Survey. The findings indicate that education continues to be highly salient for Latinos. In a number of surveys over the past twenty years Latinos have consistently cited education as the most important issue facing the community. There is ample evidence that this population is actively engaged in school activities, knowledgeable on a range of specific education policies and has ambitious educational goals and expectations. These results run counter to recent popular media characterizations of Latinos as disinterested or disengaged from educational issues.

 

Scholars and practitioners within the U.S. education system have focused considerable attention on developing new programs aimed at raising educational achievement for disadvantaged students. New programs are only one way to improve student performance, however; recent work in public administration suggests that public management and implementation practices might also have a large impact on student performance. Existing research shows that managerial networking, managerial quality, and effective personnel management can significantly improve the quality of the education received by disadvantaged students. Additional work highlights the contribution of representative bureaucracy. Because these research agendas have targeted the public administration literature rather than the education policy literature, this paper seeks to bring this research back to education policy. Using data from several hundred Texas public school districts, spanning 1995 to 2002, and focusing on disadvantaged student performance (Latinos, blacks, and low income students), this paper illustrates how both management and processes to enhance the representativeness of teaching faculty produce benefits for disadvantaged students.

 

• Adobe Acrobat : report027.pdf

   

This paper examines the role of the macro-economy in the Latino dropout problem. Specifically, it looks at the effects of the county unemployment rate on Latino and Black district dropout rates. Previous studies have used unemployment rates to look at differences in causes of Latino and Black dropouts, but this paper specifies a more realistic process. Namely, it is not the absolute unemployment rate that contributes to Latino dropout behavior, rather it is the change in unemployment from one summer to the next that compels Latino students to consider leaving school. I analyze each racial group separately from 1997-98 to 2001-02, using Texas school district data and ordinary least squares methods. After controlling for other potential causes of Latino and Black dropout rates, I find differential effects across groups. Increases in the Latino dropout rate are observed in districts with increasing summer employment, all else equal. As the theory suggests, these macro-economic effects are not observed using Black dropout rates. Beyond these divergent results, the paper presents an improved research design for examining the relationship between the macro-economy and dropout behavior.

 

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Does organizational structure matter to program performance? This study addresses this question by focusing on how decentralization within an organization affects performance, generally. More specifically, it extracts expectations from the general concept to evaluate whether decentralization induces positive (negative) outcomes for organizations serving diverse clientele. Public education provides the context for the investigation. Findings demonstrate that administrative decentralization contributes positively to organizational performance, especially when faced with diversity. These expectations are then extended to evaluate another salient issue in education: the Latino dropout problem. While administrative decentralizion does not significantly decrease the Latino dropout rate (when utilizing a basic education production function), evidence supports the inclusion of such a variable in a more comprehensive model of Latino dropouts.

 

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Recent events have put a spotlight on the issue of school discipline. While some contend that harsher discipline policies improve student performance because they foster a safer educational environment, others argue that they impair student success and disproportionately target minorities. Using data from a 184 school districts in Texas, I examine the differing ways in which disciplinary actions influence Anglo, Latino, and African-American student achievement. Evidence provided by this study supports those who contend that suspensions are often used to "push out" students. Also, the results indicate that discipline policies have a much more potent impact among minorities than they do among Anglos. The finding is most consistent for African-Americans. Thus, the increased emphasis placed on harsher disciplinarily policies in recent years may produce negative consequences that policymakers do not intend.

 

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Proponents and opponents of bilingual education argue that it affect Latino dropout rates; with proponents arguing that bilingual education is a cure for the dropout problem and opponents arguing that it is a cause. This paper tests these arguments by comparing two types of programs geared toward limited English proficient (LEP) students, English as a second language (ESL) and bilingual programs. Using data from Texas, this study finds evidence for either proponents or opponents of bilingual education. That is, there is no evidence that bilingual education, compared to ESL programs, either help or hurt the Latino dropout problem. However, the Latino dropout problem appears to be, in part, a function of LEP students not being served by either ESL or bilingual programs. Specifically, Latino dropout rates increase when the number of Latino LEP students who are not served by either ESL or bilingual programs increases. These findings suggest that the important policy decision is not what type of program to use, but instead to ensure that all LEP students are served by some form of English acquisition assistance program.

 

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Standardized testing has become a large part of the educational process. As states increase the importance of these tests, many administrators are feeling pressure to raise their district's scores. Some studies argue that administrators may attempt to artificially inflate district pass rates by removing certain students from the test pool, either by pushing those students out of school or retaining them in lower grades (Schrag 2000; McNeil 2000). In identifying which students should be pushed out, Latino students may become a target, assuming that administrators will act on previous literature that cites language barriers, most often encountered by Latino students, as a primary obstacle to success (Heubert and Hauser 1999; Olson 2000). This paper tests the assumption that removing Latino students from the test pool will raise high stakes pass rates both for Latino students and the school district. Statistical findings give evidence to support the conclusion that administrative cheating, if it exists, does not work. Increased dropout and retention rates are negatively related to test performance, even when controlling for district quality.

 

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