Leaving school early has a dramatic impact on Hispanic girls, because Latinas face greater barriers than males when seeking high-wage jobs and opportunities in postsecondary education. This Digest examines how gender roles, families, schools, and friends influence Latinas in their education and career decisions, and outlines practical dropout prevention strategies for schools and families. Gender-role attitudes in U.S. society, schools, and Latino families contribute to girls' educational performance, and girls' gender attitudes may signal whether they will pursue stereotypical vocations and familial paths or seek higher education and careers. School factors that influence decisions to drop out of school include tracking into vocational or general education programs, sexual harassment and the refusal of schools to correct it, and the attitudes of peer groups in school. Some practical solutions are school programs that promote self-efficacy and high expectations, programs that improve academic performance at early ages and encourage career goals, teacher efforts to avoid and counter gender bias, the belief among school staff that all students can succeed, programs to help teen parents graduate and find work, Hispanic mother-daughter programs that raise aspirations, and programs that take into account the differences among Latinas of different generations and cultural groups. (Contains 20 references.) (SV)