Hispanic Americans

Hispanics, also known as Chicanas/os or Latinas/os, are the largest ethnic minority group in the United States. In 2001, the U.S. Census reported that Hispanics constituted 12% of the U.S. population, with 66% of these identifying as Mexican-heritage. However, this percentage underestimates the large number of Hispanics that enter the United States illegally and are routinely missed by census workers. By 2015, Hispanics will constitute the majority school-age population in the southwestern states, and dramatic increases in the school-age population of Hispanics in the South and the Midwest will be evidenced. Hispanic students are receiving much attention by researchers, educators, policymakers, and the media because, with the exception of the first wave of Cuban immigrants who came to the United States after Fidel Castro rose to power in 1959, as a group, [Page 471]Hispanics have the highest rates of academic difficulties and school dropout of any ethnic group in the United States. They are also severely underrepresented in higher education and in professional occupations.

Despite controversy, many states concerned with Hispanic students' educational performance have increased funding and outreach to enroll young children in pre-school enrichment programs such as Head Start and offer Hispanic families English classes and tips and strategies for supporting their children's schooling. Yet, many Hispanic children not only enter kindergarten with lower literacy and numeracy skills than their European- and Asian-heritage classmates, but they are also more likely to be held back from promotion to first grade. As they move through the K–12 grades, the gap between the educational accomplishments of these three ethnic groups continues to widen. Although African-heritage students also have poorer academic trajectories than European- and Asian-heritage students, as a group they are doing better academically than Hispanic-heritage students. Only Native American-heritage students perform as poorly or more poorly than Hispanic students in the K–12 grades; Native American-heritage students are also even less likely to attend and graduate from college and pursue graduate education and professional degrees.

Hispanics are also underrepresented in higher education and are less likely to have college-based educational goals than are other immigrant groups. For example, in California, the state with the largest Hispanic population, Hispanics constitute 40% of high school graduates, but only 6% are academically eligible to attend the University of California, the most prestigious public university in the state. Moreover, although recent statistics suggest that the number of Hispanics enrolled in college has increased dramatically in the past few decades, more careful analyses of these data have shown that most of this growth has occurred in the community college population and that a large proportion of Hispanic community college students either do not complete their degrees or, when they do, often do not transfer to 4-year universities.

This bleak educational picture is troubling to southwestern states with high proportions of Hispanic children and youth because it forecasts a future in which these states will lack a sufficiently trained workforce to meet their needs for skilled labor and professionals. As businesses that traditionally employed unskilled and semi-skilled workers, such as canneries, factories, and electronic, garment, and other types of assembly plants, move to Latin American and Asian countries that provide cheaper labor and allow them to compete with Asian imports, states that have a high density of Hispanics also worry about how their already strained welfare systems will be able to absorb the steady stream of Hispanic immigrants, many of which enter the United States illegally and are the subject of charged debates at the local, state, and federal levels.

...