Distance learning has led to an increase in dropout from high school in Santa Clara County.
The 2021 Silicon Valley Index, released by the nonprofit Silicon Valley Joint Venture Institute for Regional Studies, showed that this was especially true for homeless youth, English students, Hispanics and low-income students.
Rachel Massaro, vice president and research director at the Joint Venture Silicon Valley, said students have struggled with distance learning, especially those facing inequality.
“The fact that the pandemic has increased school dropout rates in Silicon Valley is highly worrying,” said Massaro. “Not only because we never want any student to drop out of high school, but also because of the disparities in how students have managed to overcome this crisis.”
Filipino students saw the biggest increase in dropout rates among high school students in Santa Clara County schools. In 2019-20, another 160 Filipino students left school without a diploma compared to the previous school year, Massaro said. This increase, from 37 to 197 dropouts among the nearly 1,000 Filipino high school students in the county, represented a jump in their dropout rate from about 4% to almost 20%.
During the 2019-20 school year, 2,946 of the 21,398 high school students in a Santa Clara County cohort dropped out, an dropout rate of around 14%. That is 9%, or 1,925 dropouts out of a total of 21,276 students in the previous year. Among racial and ethnic groups in Santa Clara County who dropped out during the 2019-20 school year, 52% were Hispanic, 20% Asian, 14% black and 13% white.
Language division
Distance learning is especially difficult for people who have learned English as a second language, said Cuauhcihuatl Trinidad, vice president of program operations for ConXion to Community, a non-profit organization in San Jose that offers education, workforce, behavioral health and social services.
Parents who have difficulty with English cannot provide help with homework and access to teachers is more limited. In the 2018-19 school year, 156 English students dropped out of high school. That number increased to 1,086 English students in the 2019-20 academic year.
“Some find it difficult to concentrate,” said Trinidad. “… And they will only participate if they have their parents or someone to make sure they do.”
Corina Herrera-Loera, chairman of the Alum Rock Union School District Council, said that young people on the East Side face additional challenges in their education. As many have parents who are essential workers, they are in charge of caring for their younger siblings and have no quiet places to do schoolwork.
“When I think of young people in our East Side community, many of them are janitors,” she said. “I can’t imagine the daily stress of a high school student who needs to … do his own job, supervise children’s needs and share the internet.”
Herrera-Loera said that this type of stress, together with the connectivity challenges, can cause teenagers to drop out of school. They may decide that keeping their siblings safe, connected and fed while their parents need to work is the priority, she said.
Or students may feel compelled to enter the job market to ensure that the family can pay the rent. Many also share a room with other family members, making it difficult to concentrate.
Latino students’ dropout rate is more than four times the rate of other students in some schools in the district, officials said.
Chris Funk, superintendent of the East Side Union High School District, agreed that the coronavirus pandemic disproportionately affected Latino students.
To reduce dropout rates, the district decided last spring that distance learning would not negatively affect students’ grades. This semester, he changed all Fs to no pass. Students still need to compensate for failing classes, but this does not affect their GPAs.
“I think it will keep more children in the game for longer,” said Funk.
Contact Lorraine Gabbert at [email protected]