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Deibis Hernandez grew up in a village outside San Salvador and attended a provincial school that typically employed a single teacher for children of every age. He missed entire years of schooling and had completed up to only the eighth grade upon moving to the United States at 16. Yesterday, at 21, he graduated from Wheaton High School.

Hernandez is one of a growing number of older immigrant students in the county's public schools. All immigrants play catch-up, but those who arrive in the United States as teenagers face even longer odds of finishing school. They arrive lacking not only English skills, but often missing one or more years of formal education. They may not be able to read and write in their native languages, let alone in English.

Participation in the English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) program in Montgomery has risen significantly in recent years and now tops 14,000, with about 60 percent speaking Spanish. The school system does not keep statistics on how many students are recent immigrants and how many of them are teenagers, but that population, too, is expanding.

Teenage immigrants face constant frustration, ESOL teachers say. They tend to be several years older than their U.S.-born classmates and several years behind in their studies. The working world often beckons, especially with the tradition of sending money to relatives at home. Hernandez is one of the few who have overcome the obstacles to finish school, school system officials said. An analysis last year by the Latino Education Coalition, a county collaborative, found students such as Hernandez dropping out at a rate of 40 to 50 percent a year at some schools.

His teachers cite a dozen reasons why Hernandez succeeded while others did not. His particular family structure, with an older brother already working, lightened the burden of sending money to El Salvador. Older relatives encouraged him to study and to learn the language. And he attacked his studies, teachers said, with a rare resolve.

"Any time I'd give him a paper back where the grade was a C, he'd go and he'd do it again," said Sharon Ceneta, Hernandez's first ESOL teacher at Wheaton High. "He wants to have the A or the B. He doesn't want to just get by." Hernandez, who spoke alternately in Spanish and English in a series of interviews over the past week, offered this explanation: "I came to the United States to do better in life, to have a better future. I didn't come to play and to have fun."

Teachers worry that the Salvadoran student's younger peers may face even slimmer hopes of finishing school. Starting with the Class of 2009, students will be required to pass a battery of high school assessments to receive a diploma. The mandate, still subject to revision, would pose little problem to high-achieving, English-fluent students but would place a diploma well beyond the grasp of many in the ESOL program, teachers say.

This spring, Montgomery school officials announced a pilot program that will begin in the summer at Wheaton High, a campus serving a large immigrant population. The pilot, called Students Engaged in Pathways to Achievement, will target a group of perhaps 15 students, all recent immigrants in their late teens. Students will learn functional English, with an emphasis on career-specific vocabulary, and also to read and write fluently in Spanish. Courses will explore careers such as horticulture and cosmetology. The program confronts the uphill battle facing the population of older immigrants.

"It is not unusual for our kids to be cleaning offices until 11 at night and then be in class at 7:25 in the morning," Ceneta wrote in an e-mail describing her students and their challenges. "They live in the present. It's survival that has been their life." Hernandez grew up in the village of San Alejo. He immigrated to the United States in 2003, he said, "to have a better education." He joined his older brother Juan Hernandez, 33, who had been in the United States for nearly 20 years.

"He just wanted to know how was life in America," said Juan Hernandez, who supports the family back home by working as a cook in the District. Juan Hernandez tried to finish high school but ultimately quit: "I was too tired," he said. But he encouraged his younger brother to persevere, telling him that the schooling and the language fluency "is going to help me get ahead in life," Deibis Hernandez said. The younger Hernandez enrolled at Wheaton High as a 17-year-old freshman. "When he first walked in on the first day," Ceneta recalled, "all he did was smile."

His freshman year was a mix of English classes and special academic courses, taught in simple English. He has just finished his fourth year of ESOL, progressing well -- although by no means fluent -- in written and spoken English. He was far enough along to take regular classes this year in geometry and biology with English-fluent classmates.

Hernandez remains a poor speller, a product of his spotty academic background, teachers say. His rough drafts are very rough. But he keeps at it, correcting and rewriting until he gets the grade he wants. "He really wants to do well," Ceneta said. "And a lot of them lose that, because they get to a point where they can't do well, no matter how hard they try."

Hernandez works three days a week -- as a cook, like his brother -- at a Greek food-court eatery inside the Old Post Office building in the District. He is the first in his family to finish high school. Hernandez plans to go to college eventually, although he says he doesn't have the money right now. He dreams of teaching history one day.

"If you study and pay attention in your classes," he said, "you can do it."

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