Achieving Equity for Latino Students: Expanding the Pathway to Higher Education Through Public Policy

Citation

Nuñez, A. (2013), "Achieving Equity for Latino Students: Expanding the Pathway to Higher Education Through Public Policy", Journal of Educational Administration, Vol. 51 No. 1, pp. 95-97. https://doi.org/10.1108/09578231311291468

As the fastest growing racial/ethnic population in the USA, Latinos are expected to comprise three in ten Americans by 2050, according to US census projections. Reflecting their increased presence in the youth population, Latino students have recently surpassed black students as the group with the largest enrollment in US postsecondary education. Yet, Latinos continue to have lower educational attainment than whites, Asians, or blacks. This lack of educational attainment contributes to making Latinos one of the poorest racial/ethnic demographic groups in this country.

In her new book, Achieving equity for Latino students: Expanding the pathway to higher education, Frances Contreras explores key policy conditions – high‐stakes testing, financial support for college, and affirmative action – that affect Latinos’ postsecondary attainment. She emphasizes the role of institutions in shaping higher education possibilities for Latinos. As she notes, raising Latinos’ postsecondary attainment is critical to human capital development in this country, but investment in the human capital development of Latinos through education has not been commensurate with the resources required to promote Latinos’ postsecondary educational attainment. She calls the current situation in which Latinos are increasing in the population but have seen minimal public resources allocated to education the “Brown paradox.” She places this situation in historical context by reminding us that the 1940s and 1960s saw significant increases in education investment through programs like the GI Bill, Elementary and Secondary Education Act, and Higher Education Act. However, no comparable increases in education investment have occurred in recent years, and, in the wake of economic pressures, the states and federal government are divesting their roles in funding public K‐12 and higher education.

In the second chapter, Contreras discusses K‐12 Latino students’ differential opportunities to learn college preparatory skills. She presents a useful visual framework that illustrates influences on Latinos’ postsecondary attainment along the P‐20 continuum and takes into account family, community, school, and financial factors. Latinos have among the lowest high school graduation rates – she cites data indicating that graduation rates for a cohort beginning in the ninth grade and tracked four years later are only 56 percent. Among Latinos, english learner (EL) students are most vulnerable to dropping out of high school; the instruction offered in K‐12 schools is often not appropriately aligned for their skills and needs. Moreover, her own research with a sample of teachers in Washington state indicates that about one in five of those teachers feel like they do not have adequate support or training to teach EL students.

In Chapter 3, Contreras traces trends in high‐stakes testing, including many states’ implementation of high school graduation exit exams. As noted elsewhere, these tests have influenced many teachers to teach narrowly to the test, at the expense of learning more holistic skills, a process which disadvantages EL students in particular. Contreras argues that the tests often promote stress rather than performance, due to stereotype threat (Steele, 2010) and other conditions. Moreover, because Latino students’ schools tend to be less well‐resourced than those of other students, test results typically do not reflect what Latino students are capable of achieving when the playing field is leveled.

Chapter 4 addresses the Latino students’ financial capacity to attend college. Recent Census calculations indicate that Latinos rank among the poorest of racial/ethnic groups. Moreover, Latino families tend to overestimate the cost of college and are the most concerned about financing college. These conditions make many Latino families averse to taking out loans. Hence, Latino students are more likely to enroll in low‐cost options such as community colleges, which see the lowest transfer and graduation rates among all public sectors of postsecondary education. Meanwhile, recent economic conditions have made it even more difficult to attend college, as the tuition has risen in relation to merit or need‐based aid.

In Chapter 5, Contreras turns more specifically to Latino undocumented students’ financial challenges in pursuing higher education. Importantly, she notes that, although exact figures are not available, a very small number of Latino students are undocumented. She cites one recent estimate that 65,000 undocumented students graduate each year from high school. Despite this relatively small number, most states (at the time of the book's publication, 40 out of 50), do not permit these students to pay in‐state public college tuition. Hence, many of them face uncertain postsecondary education and employment opportunities.

Chapter 6 focusses on how restrictive policies on affirmative action affect Latino students’ college access. Research in states with restricted affirmative action policies, including California, Texas, and Washington, indicates that application rates to flagships in these states declined after anti‐affirmative measures were implemented. These trends in application rates (rather than admit rates, as is commonly thought) resulted in declines in enrollment of Latinos and African Americans. Contreras also argues that yield rates (rates of whether students accepted for admission actually choose to attend a given college) for Latinos in flagships in California also fell.

Chapter 7 presents policy recommendations based on these considerations. First, Contreras briefly traces the legal decisions that have affected Latinos’ educational access. This discussion presents an important reminder that individuals who mobilize for collective change can expand educational opportunities. Her recommendations include: implementing a federal college‐for‐all policy, reframing approaches to testing and accountability, building state longitudinal systems for data to improve policy and practice, strengthening college affordability policies (such as tax credits), making financial aid accessible, implementing a federal DREAM Act, recasting affirmative action policies to recognize differential inputs (access to educational opportunities) as well as student outcomes, and implementing P‐20 Councils (groups of stakeholders across the P‐20 spectrum working on common educational goals). Recommendations lying further outside the locus of education include fostering Latino family involvement, promoting civic engagement, establishing multicultural alliances to strengthen local education, and advancing Latino candidates for public office.

This book provides a useful overview of the policy contexts that are meaningful in Latino educational attainment. It is a rare book that takes into account the role of both K‐12 and higher education in promoting Latino postsecondary attainment. For this reason alone, the book will be a helpful read to researchers and practitioners along the P‐20 continuum who are interested in applying a P‐20 perspective to understand and address the needs of Latino students.

In addition to its P‐20 emphasis, another fresh aspect of the book is its extension of research on Latino students to the Washington state policy context, primarily through Contreras's inclusion of her own research in that state addressing high‐stakes testing, ELs, and undocumented students. Understanding the condition of education for Latinos in this state is critical because it is one of few states that have banned affirmative action, but has received little research attention in comparison to California and Texas. Hopefully, the insights from this research will encourage researchers to examine how policy conditions in other states affect Latino students’ educational opportunities.

The book serves as a good resource for policy‐relevant research on Latinos, but there are some ways in which it could be strengthened. There are some instances when Contreras could be more transparent about the methodology in her own studies. For example, in her study of Washington state teachers, discussed in the first chapter, it would be useful to provide more background about why this particular sample of teachers was selected, the extent to which there might have been non‐response bias, and how representative these teachers are of Washington state teachers. Further, in order to get a broader sense of how teachers in other locations address Latino and EL students, it would be illuminating to see how these studies’ results compare to those of similar studies.

The book would also be strengthened by the inclusion of more current research on the role of Latino families, community networks, and state DREAM acts (or lack of them) in affecting Latino students’ college access. In discussing these areas, Contreras tends to rely on her own research and other research that is more dated. Inclusion of more recent scholarship from researchers such as Miguel Ceja, Amy Fann, Stella Flores, Patricia Perez, and William Perez (among others), would bolster Contreras's arguments in a range of topical areas. Interested readers are encouraged to consult recent sources from these scholars and others doing related work.

Although the book gives some attention to the effects of gender, immigration status, and EL status on Latino educational opportunity, the role of the demographic diversity within the Latino population and its implications for policy development is not addressed in detail. Yet, the research tells us that Latino ethnic subgroups; including Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, and Cuban Americans differ significantly on income and education levels. It would be instructive to speak to the implications of these differences for public policy targeting Latino postsecondary educational attainment.

All in all, the book will serve as a useful resource for researchers, leaders, and policymakers concerned about education policy and Latinos. It remains unclear how to mobilize political will to bring about the book's policy recommendations. As Contreras suggests, one thing educational leaders can do is to encourage a shift in discourse to talking about funding Latinos from a “cost” to an important “investment” that will affect not just the future of Latinos, but of everyone in this country.