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At a Los Angeles high school, counselor Antonio Roque goes from house to house — masked — trying to solve technology problems and persuade students to log in to online classes, writes Ricardo Cano on CalMatters.
The dropout rate is way up, especially for newly arrived immigrant students who have trouble understanding English or following Zoom classes.
Isaac Portillo, 19, who fled gang violence in El Salvador in 2017, hopes to go to trade school or enlist in the Marines. He’s stopped signing in to online classes, he told Roque. He has a job building furniture.
He is still learning the language, and he’d rather work full-time to help financially support the household than stay at home — struggling to understand the computer . . .
He’s thought about dropping out. If the school physically reopens, he will quit his job without hesitation, he says.
On Sundays, Isaac tries to complete assignments in hopes of getting his diploma this summer. However, “right now, I don’t feel like I’m learning anything,” he told Cano in Spanish.
Freshman Julian Peña has struggled to connect for the whole semester. “One minute he’d see his teachers’ faces flash across the screen, and just as quickly Zoom would kick him out as the signal weakened,” writes Cano. Roque tried to help, but the screen froze on him too.
Nearly half of students are logging into Zoom classes on their cell phones, a survey showed. About 50 of 140 who responded “said their district-issued iPad didn’t connect to the internet,” writes Cano. “Forty said they kept getting weak signals. Two dozen said their hotspot didn’t work.”
“With more than half of school districts using hybrid or remote models, education leaders fear struggling students will disengage and drop out, writes Rebecca Klein on HuffPost. “More teachers report that their students are opting to work hourly jobs to help support their families.”
