Latino Change Agents in Higher Education offers college and university leaders a practical guide for meeting the challenges of educating the burgeoning population of Latino students. The contributors, a stellar group of experienced leaders in higher education, clearly show that the changes to higher education needed to ensure Latino student success will benefit all students.
The Rising Voices of Latino Change Agents in Education is an anthology of riveting stories by Latino educators trained as school change agents in the 1970s. This book joins other recent Latino/Chicano literary contributions to social justice and education.
While the black and white racial experience has been delineated over the years, the ethnic realities of Latinos have received minimal attention. Therefore, with Latinos projected as the upcoming U.S. population majority, the central goal of this book is to document the Latino experience in the world of academia, focusing primarily, but not exclusively, on first-generation Latino students in higher education, delineating the dynamics of the educational journey, while situating their experiences within the ethnic community, the overall American society, and the international community. The text focuses on (1) ethnic realities including Latino student access to higher education, retention, graduation rates, and career success; (2) analysis of historic trends; (3) extensive review of prior empirical studies; (4) a holistic portrayal of education in the U.S.; (5) a qualitative study conducted in an institution of higher education in Texas, placing the stories of participating Latino students in theoretical context; (6) vivid documentation of historically entrenched racial ideologies in American education; (7) exploration of potential solutions to historical and contemporary barriers confronting Latino students; (8) development of a model of empowerment for Latino students; (9) information for the establishment of a balanced educational system; (10) accountability of higher education institutions; (11) review of revolutionizing education in the midst of current globalization; and (12) venturing into the future of Latino education in the overall American experience. Finally, the book seeks to examine not only America’s racism that is evident, but also the structural, cultural, and ideological forces that have influenced and continue to perpetuate the current educational situation for Latinos.
Now the largest and fastest-growing ethnic population in the U.S., Latino students face many challenges and complexities when it comes to college choice and access. This edited volume provides much needed theoretical and empirical data on how the schooling experiences of Latino students shape their educational aspirations and access to higher education. It explores how the individual and collective influence of the home, school and policy shape the college decision-making process. This unique collection of original scholarly articles offers critical insight on educational pathways that will help families, educators and policy makers intervene in ways that foster and sustain college access and participation for Latino students. It considers destination preferences and enrollment selections, elementary and secondary school experiences, and intervention programs that shed light on how practitioners can promote participation and retention. This multi-conceptual, multi-methodological volume offers directions for future research, programming and policy in Latino education.
Latino males are effectively vanishing from the American higher education pipeline. Even as the number of Latinas/os attending college has actually increased steadily over the last few decades, the proportional representation of Latino males continues to slide relative to their Latina female counterparts. The question of why Latino males are losing ground in accessing higher education—relative to their peers—is an important and complex one, and it lies at the heart of this book. There are several broad themes highlighted, catalogued along with the four dimensions of policy, theory, research, and practice. The contributors to this book present new research on factors that inhibit or promote Latino success in both four-year institutions and community colleges in order to inform both policy and practice. They explore the social-cultural factors, peer dynamics, and labor force demands that may be perpetuating the growing gender gap, and consider what lessons can be learned from research on the success of Latinas. This book also closely examines key practices that enable first generation Latino male undergraduates to succeed which may seem counterintuitive to institutional expectations and preconceived notions of student behavior. Using narrative data, the book also explores the role of family in persistence; outlines how Latino men conceptualize fulfilling expectations, negotiate the emasculization of the educational process, and how they confront racialization in the pursuit of a higher education; uncovers attitudes to help-seeking that are detrimental to their success: and analyzes how those who succeed and progress in college apply their social capital – whether aspirational, navigational, social, linguistic, familial, or resistant.While uncovering the lack of awareness at all levels of our colleges and universities about the depth and severity of the challenges facing Latino males, this book provides the foundation for rethinking policy; challenges leaders to institutionalize male-focused programs and services; and presents data to inform needed changes in practice for outreach and retention.
"As a volume destined to be employed by researchers, practitioners and policy makers, "The Majority in the Minority" appears at the right time in our nation’s demographic history. It connects us to the triumphs an tragedies of our Latino collective pasts and leads us to a more hopeful scenario for the future." -- from the Foreword by Laura RendónLatinas/os are the largest ethnic minority group in the U.S. They are propelling minority communities to majority status in states as disparate as California, Florida, New Jersey, New York and Texas.Their growth in the population at large is not reflected in higher education. In fact Latinos are the least represented population in our colleges and universities, whether as administrators, faculty or students; and as students have one of the highest levels of attrition.Opening access to Latinas/os, assuring their persistence as students in higher education, and their increased presence in college faculty and governance, is of paramount importance if they are to make essential economic gains and fully to participate in and contribute to American society.In this ground-breaking book, twenty-four Latina/o scholars provide an historical background; review issues of student access and achievement, and lessons learned; and present the problems of status and barriers faced by administrators and faculty. The book also includes narratives by graduate students, administrators and faculty that complement the essays and vividly bring these issues to life.This is a book that should be read by policy makers, college administrators, student affairs personnel and faculty concerned about shaping the future of higher education--and constitutes an invaluable resource for all leaders of the Latino community.
Latinos’ postsecondary educational attainment has not kept pace with their growing representation in the U.S. population. How can Latino educational attainment be advanced? This monograph presents relevant contemporary research, focusing on the role of institutional contexts. Drawing particularly on research grounded in Latino students’ perspectives, it identifies key challenges Latino students face and discuss various approaches to address these challenges. Because so many Latino students are enrolled in federally designated Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs), it also specifically explores HSIs’ role in promoting Latinos’ higher education access and equity. As a conclusion, it offers recommendations for institutional, state, and federal policies that can foster supportive contexts. This is Volume 39 Issue 1 of the Jossey-Bass publication ASHE Higher Education Report. Each monograph in the series is the definitive analysis of a tough higher education problem, based on thorough research of pertinent literature and institutional experiences. Topics are identified by a national survey. Noted practitioners and scholars are then commissioned to write the reports, with experts providing critical reviews of each manuscript before publication.
High-Achieving Latino Students: Successful Pathways Toward College and Beyond addresses a long-standing need for a book that focuses on the success, not failure, of Latino students. While much of the existing research works from a deficit lens, this book uses a strength-based approach to support Latino achievement. Bringing together researchers and practitioners, this unique book provides research-based recommendations from early to later school years on “what works” for supporting high achievement. Praise for High-Achieving Latino Students "This book focuses on an important issue about which we know little. There are many lessons here for both scholars and educators who believe that Latino students can succeed. I congratulate the authors for taking on this timely and significant topic." ~ Guadalupe Valdés, Ph.D., Bonnie Katz Tenenbaum Professor in Education, Stanford University. Author of Con Respeto: Bridging the Distances Between Culturally Diverse Families and Schools "This is a must-read book for leaders in institutions of both K-12 and higher education who want to better understand success factors of Latino students in the US. Using a strength-based framework to understand and support Latino achievement is a new paradigm that must be considered by all." ~ Loui Olivas, Ed.D., President, American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education "In addition to being the right book at the right time, these editors should be congratulated for giving us a stellar example of how a research-practice collaboration comes together to produce such a valuable and lasting contribution to the field of school reform and improvement. Those who work in schools, universities, think tanks and policymaking centers have been waiting anxiously for this kind of book, and it’s now here." ~ Carl A. Cohn, Ed.D., Former Executive Director, California Collaborative for Educational Excellence, CA State Board of Education member, and Superintendent "There may not be a silver bullet for solving the so-called problem of Latino underachievement, but well-conceived solutions do exist. This powerful book offers strength- and asset-based frameworks that demonstrate Latino achievement is possible. Read this text to not only get informed, but to also get nurtured and inspired!" ~ Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D., Professor in Education, University of Texas at Austin. Author of Subtractive Schooling: US-Mexican Youth and the Politics of Caring
With the American dream progressively elusive for and exclusive of Latinos, there is an urgent need for empirically and conceptually based macro-level policy solutions for Latino education. Going beyond just exposing educational inequalities, this volume provides intelligent and pragmatic research-based policy directions and tools for change for U.S. Latino Education and other multicultural contexts. U.S. Latinos and Education Policy is organized round three themes: education as both product and process of social and historical events and practices; the experiences of young immigrants in schools in both U.S. and international settings and policy approaches to address their needs; and situated perspectives on learning among immigrant students across school, home, and community. With contributions from leading scholars, including Luis Moll, Eugene E. Garcia, Richard P. Durán, Sonia Nieto , Angela Valenzuela, Alejandro Portes and Barbara Flores, this volume enhances existing discussions by showcasing how researchers working both within and in collaboration with Latino communities have employed multiple analytic frameworks; illustrating how current scholarship and culturally oriented theory can serve equity-oriented practice; and, focusing attention on ethnicity in context and in relation to the interaction of developmental and cultural factors. The theoretical and methodological perspectives integrate praxis research from multiple disciplines and apply this research directly to policy.
How does the country accelerate Latino student success in higher education? The U.S. has to find programs and strategies that improve the success of Latino students, and then replicate or scale up those programs and strategies to serve more students. Those are the basic principles behind "Excelencia" in Education's Growing What Works (GWW) initiative. The Growing What Works initiative is "Excelencia" in Education's concerted effort to expand the reach of programs increasing Latino student success, as identified through the Examples of "Excelencia," and demonstrating how these programs can be replicated through small SEMILLAS (Seeding Educational Models that Impact and Leverage Latino Academic Success) grants. The results described in this brief were made possible through a working partnership with foundations and institutions of higher education who committed to achieve and propagate demonstrable results in accelerating Latino student success in higher education. This brief includes lessons learned from implementing the Growing What Works initiative and SEMILLAS grants. Critical in this time of great change for higher education and for Latino students is the following lesson. Targeted, well managed financial and human resources focused on Latino student success, not only produce effective results for students, the participating institutions and supporting foundations, but demonstrate the strength and viability of the these strategies to accelerate larger social impact and serve as catalysts for institutional change to increase Latino student success.
