This is what happens when you pour absolutely no money into education, their teachers can’t relate to them, and they are taught about how great white Zaddy is all the while going back to the hood with their own personal problems.. couple that with puberty, raging hormones etc
If a great importance on education isn’t backed by parents and teachers, kids will follow suit.
Seeing as those kids were Latino, it's probably the language thing.
I did my volunteer hours for high school at my old Elementary school. With kids who were behind.
And all off them were Latinos, and had the same story. They or older siblings grew up in a house, where they learnt English from TV, older sibling, or at preschool. And a lot simply can't function much in English on an academic level when they get to grade school.
It's a reason why some Latinos even tho they born here, still got a slight accent. A lot off them pick up English second.