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Alberto Cabrera

November 2004

The challenges facing Latino students on their pathway to college are enormous at best, impossible at worst. At almost every educational level, Latino youth face uphill struggles. The cumulative result is that educational opportunity is lost for these youth, who must try harder just to keep up with other students.

Comprehensive and radical reform of the education of youth from low-income populations is necessary throughout the K-16 system to realize genuine change, according to a recent study conducted by UW-Madison education professor Alberto Cabrera and colleagues Watson Scott Swail and Chul Lee for the Educational Policy Institute (http://www.educationalpolicy.org/).

The United States is now more racially and ethnically diverse than at any other time in its history, and the near future promises a continuation of this trend. By 2050, Latinos will be the majority ethnic group in America. For that reason and others, Cabrera says it’s imperative that public policy be directed at increasing academic opportunities for Latino youth. Moreover, addressing this issue has the potential to increase opportunity for all children.

Almost all U.S. high school students expect to go to college. Aspirations generally turn into action and opportunity for students whose parents went to college and who come from moderate- to high-income families and two-parent homes. For students at the other end of the spectrum—those whose parents didn’t finish high school, who are from low-income backgrounds, and who are being raised by a single parent—the opportunities are reduced, and aspirations often vaporize within a few short years.

For Latino students, the road to success has more bumps, barriers, and detours than for most other students, but the road still exists. The pathway to success for Latino youth requires a motivation to succeed, a plan of action, a willingness to act on their intentions, and perhaps most important, a support system of family, friends, teachers, and community.

NELS findings

Cabrera, Swail, and Lee analyzed data from the National Education Longitudinal Study (NELS), a study begun in 1988 with eighth-grade students, and followed up several times, with the last follow-up survey conducted in 2000, 8 years after the students’ scheduled high school graduation. Some of the findings of Cabrera and his colleagues:

Aspirations: Seventy-three percent of the Latino students aspired to postsecondary education, but only 55%—a full 20% lower than the national average—aspired to a BA degree. The aspirations of Latino students in the U.S. were the lowest of any group in this analysis. Generally speaking, students who do not aspire to postsecondary education self-select out of the educational pipeline. Thus, 27% of the NELS Latino students—over one quarter—have made decisions leading them to a non-college trajectory by the eighth grade.

High school math credits: Mathematics course requirements serve as a primary gatekeeper limiting admission into postsecondary education. Students who stay at the rudimentary levels of mathematics are far less likely to reach the postsecondary level. Latinos tend to complete their public education with lower level math courses than other students. In fact, over 58% of the Latino students in the NELS sample finished with standard geometry and proceeded no further along the mathematics track. In comparison, only 44% of all students and 41% of White students discontinued their mathematics studies at this level. As the progression toward more challenging mathematics courses continued, the percentage of Latinos trailed off considerably. The percentage differences at each level aren’t huge, Cabrera points out, but ultimately they make a real difference in the number of students ready for higher level learning. For instance, Latinos completed calculus at half the rate of all students.

Lower mathematics achievement suggests a reduced likelihood of completing high school, limited admission to most state universities and top-tier institutions, and limited access to high-tech industrial careers that pay more than a living wage.

High school completion: On average, 92.3% of the NELS eighth-grade cohort received a high school diploma, GED, or equivalent credential by 2000. In comparison, only 86.4% of the NELS Latinos received their high school credential, the lowest percentage of the groups observed.

Postsecondary experience: Latinos are much more likely to enroll in two-year institutions than other students. In the NELS cohort, 61% of the Latino students who continued to postsecondary education enrolled in such institutions, as compared with 46.6% of the African American students and a cohort average of 44.4%.

Continuous enrollment: Latino students are more likely to attend postsecondary education on a part-time basis. Of the total NELS cohort that went on to postsecondary education, 38.6% of students attended part-time. However, over half (52%) of Latino students who enrolled in postsecondary education attended part-time.

Conclusions

In sum, the evidence is strong and unambiguous: Latino students are clearly at a disadvantage in their aspirations and preparation for, access to, and completion of postsecondary education. Cabrera’s analysis found that during the high school years, Latino students were more likely to:

• be held back in school;
• change high schools more than twice;
• earn a C or less;
• take lower forms of mathematics;
• leave high school before graduation; and
• earn a GED.

These trends relate to other background characteristics of Latino students. For instance, the NELS Latino students were more likely to:

• come from a low-income family;
• have a sibling who dropped out of school;
• have limited English proficiency;
• have a parent who did not graduate from high school;
• have children of their own during high school; and
• have a parent without postsecondary schooling.

Cabrera says that advocating for piecemeal changes in current education policy and programs will result in limited incremental reforms, which will yield little if any progress in attainment for at-risk youth. To realize genuine change, a comprehensive and radical reform of the education of youth from low-income populations along the entire K-16 system will be required.

This research was funded by a grant from the Pew Hispanic Center (http://www.pewhispanic.org/index.jsp). For the full report, see http://www.pewhispanic.org/site/docs/pdf/swail%20study-06-23-04.pdf.