Help Latinas graduate from school.
There is a group on Facebook that I've joined that is striving to keep Latinas in school and on their way to earning a high school diploma. I really encourage everyone, Latina or not, to join.
Some of the statistics are:
41% of Latinas do not graduate with their class, if at all.
At least 53% become pregnant before the age of 20.
Here is the link.
Comments are appreciated, thanks!
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Are those statistics correct? That doesn't seem quite right. My town has a very dense Hispanic and Latino population, and, as a result, most of my friends at school are Latina. And most, if not at all of them as far as I know, are graduating.
This is often an understated issue in many cities. Education is soo important and with the drop in funding in the majority of school districts across the country, encouraging HS enrollment and graduation is as important as ever.
In Oregon, the statistics are even more shocking.
Thak you for highlighting this issue.
-Sb
I don't know where those numbers are coming from but they are not even in the ballpark of correct statistics.
This cnn.com article has some legitimate stats:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/05/19/latinas.pregnancy.rate/
In 2007 "the teen birth rate among Hispanic teens ages 15 to 19 was 81.7 per 1,000" That's c. 82 births per 1,000. Not 53 per 100 as claimed by the OP.
I almost wonder if these stats came from some anti-immigration group they are so egregious.
The number of pregnancies is not the same as the number of births as pregnancies don't go to full term for a number of reasons.
Also, comparing a 20 year (admittedly less when you don't include sexual immaturity) time frame is not the same as looking at a 5 year time frame.
Also, the article you linked to doth say "According to the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, 53 percent of Latinas get pregnant in their teens, about twice the national average.
Hmmm, there is that 53% again... hmmm.
Sweetboots: I've had a few people tell me to think twice about the stats. I kind of agree, but I think whether or not the stats are right is besides the point: this is still a major issue and it's hardly being addressed, except with organizations that have reported it obviously. So yes, stats can be misleading and maybe it is too big a number, but do you really think that Latinas are on par with their Caucasian counterparts when it comes to obtaining an education (high school and beyond)? I'm not trying to sound rude, but even the Latina women that I go to college with (which is about 70% female and is a Hispanic-serving institution) struggle with many things even though they have come far in their education. This is an issue for sure in Texas, and I'm sure in Cali, Illinois, and New York as well as many other states and cities. I could be wrong, but I'm not sure I would even be in college if it wasn't for many people encouraging me. I've had the drive, but many of us who are Latina are always self-doubting because we can't always see those great women who could be our idols. Congrats to your friends though.
Sophia: I just think it's an issue that really hasn't been properly addressed/ dealt with. Thanks!
Those stats are off by nearly a factor of 10!
They border on racist propaganda. Keeping Latinas in school is undoubtedly important but feeding into right wing paranoia is not the way to go about doing so.
I don't see how this is racist. This was done by the National Women's Law Center and the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund...I suppose they could be racist? Honestly, I mainly wanted to bring up the issue, not so much the statistics. Maybe I made that mistake by posting the stats up but I did it because I thought many posters would understand that statistics are flawed and not definite anyway.
This is not a new issue, it's just something I'm passionate about because 1)Education for all is very important to me 2) I'm a woman and 3) I'm a Latina. I could be bias, but I don't mind being bias when it comes to issues such as these.
Statistics are not inherently flawed. Often specific statistics being quoted are flawed (this is probably a prime example of that) or people interpret them in flawed ways. But it is certainly possible to have accurate and clear statistics. This case is one where its fairly easy to have accurate statistics, because schools keep records on this stuff. Its not that difficult to see how many students in various groups drop out of high school, because there are accurate records being kept. Its not like an example when statistics come from anonymous surveys and therefore might not be at all accurate.
I don't know much about these specific statistics, but I don't think its good in general to post statistics that even you admit may be very far from the truth and then hide behind "oh, statistics don't count anyway". If they're flawed and indefinite, then don't try to use them for shock value.
There are many good articles and books on how to understand and use statistics in valid ways. Just because lots of people are bad at it doesn't mean the entire field is flawed.
Here is a link to the PDF of the report that the OP is quoting.
http://maldef.org/assets/pdf/ListeningtoLatinas.pdf
To the OP: I think that you should post this report along with your statements so that when people see your shocking statistics, they can know how they came about.
Well I already admitted to not posting the original link, which was obviously my fault for not doing. I think I have a basic understanding of how stats work...they are never 100 percent accurate because the person conducting the stats cannot get the whole population, they can only get a sample. In this case, I would think that they would be more accurate than an average study if they did happen to use numbers from states or school districts. I can only give somebody the benefit of the doubt right?
Like I've said before, I mainly wanted to get the issue out here, not to focus mainly on the stats. I could have posted this in a better format so I apologize, but this concerns me because of my experience in my high school. I'm not sure if there's a way that I can go back and edit my original post, but hopefully I put the issue out there at least. Latinos recognize this problem and hopefully MALDEF and the National Women's Law Center have some impact on those that have authority over policies regarding drop out prevention.
I'm aware that pregnancy is only one of the many factors. At my university many Mexican American women were discouraged to attend college because we are seen as mothers and homemakers at all times. I've often heard stories of fathers telling their daughters "You're just gonna get pregnant and drop out anyway". I love my culture but something has really got to change because many of us have to fight just to get into and stay in college and it should not have to be that way.
Sometimes they do, in fact, get the whole population in statistics. For example, that's what the census bureau spends their time doing. Not all statistics are extrapolated from a small sample, although many are. That's why its important to check your source.
I wish this article hadn't switched over to pay only (I guess they're only free for a certain amount of time) but its really worth a read if you can track it down:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=knowing-your-chances
They give a lot of good examples of why people misunderstand statistics, and what better ways might be of teaching and presenting them so they are clearer. They give examples of times when people make mistakes with statistics that are really critical-- like when your doctor tells you your likelihood of surviving a certain procedure.
Their main point seems to be this: most people don't understand quantum physics, but they know they don't understand quantum physics. So if they need to do something with it, they'll consult an expert. On the other hand, most people don't understand basic statistics and probability either, but they think that they do.
So when your doctor hears that a test is 99% accurate, he thinks he's right when he tells you that there's only a 1% chance that your test was wrong. He doesn't consult an expert who could tell him that if you actually do out the math (taking into account the general rate of the disease in the population, etc) it might turn out that there's actually something more like a 40% chance that the test was wrong in your case.
Regarding the actual statistics in this case, I don't know what the accurate numbers are-- I just hate seeing people proudly proclaim that they don't understand statistics and the whole idea of them is flawed anyway. Try to talk to some math majors, do some research. I will say that if 53% of Latinas are getting pregnant in high school but only 8% of them are giving birth, its unlikely that all those pregnancies that didn't result in a birth were the cause of dropping out of school.
Yep, it just doesn't seem to make sense: If 53% of Latina teens are getting pregnant, and 8% of Latina teens are having babies, then that makes about 15% of pregnancies resulting in a birth. (8 births divided by 53 pregnancies, in a sample of 100 Latina teens.) Meaning, the other 85% are ending in miscarriage or abortion. That's extraordinarily high! In the general population, 22% of all pregnancies (wanted and unwanted) end in abortion and another ~15% in miscarriage -- the other 63% are births. [The 22/15/63 stat is from the Guttmacher Institute, Facts On Induced Abortion.] Even if every pregnancy to a Latina teen were unwanted (for the sake of argument), could their likelihood of choosing abortion be so much higher than the general population's that it would make up the difference between that 63 vs 15?
More to the point, Guttmacher also reports that the pregnancy rate for Latina teens is 131 in 1000, or 13% -- not a low number, but a far cry from 53%. (And the abortion rate is only 28% -- higher than the 22% of the general population, but still leaves 57% of pregnancies resulting in a birth [assuming the miscarriage risk is about the same - a big assumption but the best I can do right now], which is a lot more than the 15% indicated by our first calculation.) http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/2006/09/12/USTPstats.pdf
None of this is to knock the intent of the original post -- I'm just really confused about how the 53% statistic was derived and why it conflicts so much with the other established data. And I do think it's important to get our stats right, since they are the best measure we have of the size of a problem.
How is your number crunching affected by the fact that one Latina could have numerous pregnancies and births before the age of 20?
Steven, it's hard to know from the given data. The term birth-rate should be interpreted as "number of children born per 1000 women" in that year. We do know that not many women give birth twice in one year (though it does happen). But with overall pregnancies, it's certainly possible to get pregnant multiple times in a year -- though still not overwhelmingly common. (Unfortunately I don't have numbers to back that up, at least not that I can find from this computer.)
FYI, the measure you're asking about -- "on average how many children does each woman have?" -- is called fertility rate. That's why I specified the definition of birth rate above.
I'm not a professional statistician, so it takes me a while to reason through things like this. After having thought (and commented) about it, I'm convinced the origin/calculation of the "53% teen pregnancy" stat is crucial. It comes down to, are they saying this is how many Latina teens get pregnant every year, or is it the current cumulative total of Latinas presently 15-19 years old who have ever gotten pregnant? With a number that big, I'm starting to suspect it's got to be the latter -- and we don't have that particular statistic for non-Latina teens, or at least I couldn't find it in the Guttmacher data and don't know where the National Partnership got their number either.
I'd add that if we use the Guttmacher stat of 13% for pregnancy rate, and do our division again -- given a sample of 100 Latina teens, this time 13 get pregnant, and once again 8 of those give birth, so 8/13 = 62% -- we get a "pregnancies resulting in birth" proportion that is very similar to that in the general population! It doesn't quite line up with the 57% I had guessed at (maybe among younger women the miscarriage rate is a little lower than average?), but falls pretty close.
What's weird: the source someone linked to above cites a document that gives 51% as the Latina teen pregnancy rate, and in turn cites a document that I cannot find online ("Look at Latinos General Overview Fact Sheet"). It also gives 31% as the overall teen pregnancy rate, and cites the same Guttmacher document as I did, but when I looked at the Guttmacher document for overall pregnancy rate I got 7.5%. What's going on here?!
My only guess is that when they say "__ of Latinas get pregnant before age 20," they are not counting the % of Latinas
ps, sorry about this comment getting cut off. The rest was supposed to say "they are not counting the % of Latina teens who got pregnant in one given year, but rather the total cumulative number of Latinas who are 15-19 years old right now and have ever been pregnant, including in previous years." As I said in my other comment, that's the only way I could understand a "53% teen pregnancy" stat without it being a fake number.