A student receives help at Bronx Community College in New York City (photo by Ryan Brenizer)
It’s no secret that the growing Latino population in America will have large implications for the U.S. educational landscape over the next generation. By 2020, Latinos are projected to account for 25 percent of the nation’s population aged 18-29. Government officials, policymakers and teachers alike face the challenge of improving the services and support provided to Latino students, particularly when it comes to increasing college completion rates. As of 2011, 21 percent of Latinos had an associate degree or higher, compared to 57 percent of Asians, 44 percent of whites and 30 percent of blacks.
“It is pretty clear in the data that our ability to educate Latino students and prepare them for [college] is a failed enterprise,” said Tony Carnevale, director of the
Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, on a conference call yesterday about
a new report on Latino college completion rates.
The report—by
Excelencia in Education, a nonprofit focused on how America can better serve Latino students—
by Nick Pandolfo
Patricia Gándara
Increasing educational attainment among Latino students—who are the fastest-growing ethnic group in the country, and who consistently lag behind their white and Asian peers in college completion—is a priority of many advocates and policymakers.
Patricia Gándara, co-director of the
Civil Rights Project at UCLA, has been focused on this issue for decades. She recently spoke with
The Hechinger Report about how we can better address low completion rates.
Q: Excelencia in Education released a report this week that included a state-by-state fact sheet on Latino achievement in higher education, which showed a ballooning younger Latino population that 
