2nd generation has nothing to do with education, though. It's because they lived in society. Typical 1st generation families speak their native tongue, 2nd generation speak 2 languages, 3rd generation speak english. The numbers I identified are for those who clearly have the language problems. For all immigrants, the dropout rate is 20%, but for hispanics 50%. I assume the dropout rate is higher than for the rest of the population because they're strangers in a strange land, so to speak. But even the 50% to 20% kind of numbers speaks to hispanics being poorly served. I was a parent who attended school board meetings in Mountain View. It is unbelievable the bullshit that goes on in the education system. Vast sums of money cannot be spent for useful purposes by regulation, so the money is swept up by the state govt. and spent on some other form of graft. What do we want, kids to graduate and be successful or do we want them to drop out and become a drag on society or maybe even become criminals?
To say that language is the only problem with immigrants is ignoring all of the other factors that cause dropouts though. http://www.urban.org/publications/411936.html Family and Community poverty are also not going to change with merely changing the language. http://www.apa.org/pi/ses/resources/indicator/2013/05/poverty-dropouts.aspx I would agree with you that spending money on schools would be better than spending it on prisons or public assistance.
I don't buy the poverty claim. The country always was about poor people (huddled masses) making good here. Immigrants have always had language problems. Some of them spoke Spanish, German, French, Yiddish, Russian, and other european languages (the white people). There are lots of boats of Chinese or Vietnamese immigrants who make it here fine, even in spite of the language barrier. This is an old article, the first one I found after spending about 5 seconds searching for it. I've seen and heard similar stories on the news frequently. http://articles.latimes.com/1993-06-03/news/mn-42768_1_san-francisco
http://www.forbes.com/sites/andrean...ire-immigrants-who-struck-it-rich-in-the-u-s/ In a year when the World Billionaires list broke many records, here’s another one to add: fifty one out of the total 492 billionaire fortunes in the U.S. now belong to foreign-born individuals. They come from a total of 26 nations and made their money in a variety of industries but are most heavily represented in tech, finance and industry. More at the link
That spoke to opportunity. How about mobility? http://www.sba.gov/advocacy/7540/141841 Overall Findings • Immigrants are found to have higher business ownership and formation rates than non-immigrants. Roughly one out of ten immigrant workers owns a business and 620 of 100,000 immigrants (0.62 percent) start a business each month. • Immigrant-owned businesses start with higher levels of startup capital than non-immigrant- owned businesses. Nearly 20 percent of immigrant- owned businesses started with $50,000 or more in startup capital, compared with 15.9 percent of non-immigrant-owned businesses. • Roughly two-thirds of immigrant-owned businesses report that the most common source of startup capital is personal or family savings. Other commonly reported sources of startup capital by immigrant businesses are credit cards, bank loans, personal or family assets, and home equity loans. Overall, the sources of startup capital used by immigrant businesses do not differ substantially from those used by non-immigrant firms. Highlights • Businesses owned by immigrants have an average sales level of $435,000, roughly 70 percent of the average sales level of non-immigrant firms. • Immigrant-owned businesses are slightly more likely to hire employees than are non-immigrant- owned firms; however, they tend to hire fewer employees on average. • Immigrant-owned businesses are more likely to export their goods and services. Among immi- grant businesses, 7.1 percent export compared with only 4.4 percent for non-immigrant busi- nesses. • Entrepreneurship increases with maturity, and married people are more likely to start a business. • More generally, there is a U-shaped relation- ship between entrepreneurship and education. Entrepreneurship rates are lower for high school graduates than for high school dropouts, but entrepreneurship rates are similar between those with some college and high school graduates. College graduates have higher rates of entrepre- neurship, and those with graduate degrees have the highest rates of entrepreneurship. • Among immigrants, 52.1 percent owned a home compared with 70.8 percent of non-immigrants.