The changing nature of immigration, the job market, and the world economy preclude today's immigrants from full participation in the culture because they are without adequate education. This paper provides insights into one group of students that is most likely to have problems in school: immigrant pre-literate adolescents. It describes the effects of a literacy intervention on the dropout rate in a mid-urban school district in Houston, Texas, examining the dropout issue from a sociopolitical perspective. Data from 147 experimental and 50 control students are analyzed to answer questions about dropout rates of pre-literate students compared to the Latino population at large, whether dropouts are true dropouts, and whether there were statistically significant differences in grade point average (GPA) or attendance between the study's two groups. Results show that only eight percent of the dropouts could be classified as true dropouts, and that the dropout rate of the pre-literate students were lower than that of the estimates of the Latino population at large. It is concluded that nationwide dropout rates among Latino students are greatly inflated and that dropping out is more a function of disempowerment within a hostile environment than a lack of academic or language abilities. (Contains 11 references.) (GLR)