Creating A College Culture For Latino Students

How can we ensure that more Latino students have the opportunity to pursue higher education? Based on lessons learned from successful college bound programs and research on Latino students, this book provides K-12 educators with a comprehensive guide to preparing and motivating Latino students to attend college. Learn how you can create a college-going culture through: High expectations Goal setting Taking rigorous courses Exposure to college environments from an early age Parental involvement throughout the K-12 experience Early socialization beginning in the early grades

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.

This book will support teachers, counselors, and administrators in creating a culturally relevant, school-wide, college-going culture to improve educational experiences and outcomes for Black and Latina/o youth. The authors present the perspectives and experiences of 25 students, focusing on the complexities of their daily lives and illuminating some of the significant influences that have supported or hindered their college readiness and access. They situate issues of college access in a national context, provide insight into who and what influences youths college-going processes, and engage readers in critical analysis to create culturally relevant policies and practices within their own school contexts.

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.

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.

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.

Navigating the American Education System: Four Latino Success Stories showcases the educational journey of four Latino/a men and women who navigated the American education system successfully. Their success is significant given the multiple and varied challenges that most Latinos/as encounter throughout the K–20 educational continuum. The purpose of this book is not only to show and tell, but to describe ordinary people attaining extraordinary results, who might also stand as good role models for the youngest- and fastest-growing group—Latinos/as—in this country. Researchers of this topic offer compelling statistics, such as the following projection: Out of 100 Latino/a students, a few more than 50 will finish high school; out of this number, five will enroll in college; and out of the original 100, less than one percent will complete a doctorate. While the causes of low academic attainment for Latinos may vary, including limited financial resources and cultural differences, the lack of Latino role models in K–20 education may be a significant contributing factor. The expression, “You can’t be what you don’t see” is especially applicable to Latino/a students who seldom see people like them in positions of prominence and power in educational environments. Across the country, and in particular in states with high numbers of Latino/a students, as the K–20 student body becomes darker, the teaching and decision-making personnel remain light-skinned. Consequently, the absence of role models for an increasing number of students of color may contribute to low levels of aspiration. Many attempts and existing literature regarding the achievement gap of students of color, especially Latinos/as, seem to have had modest or no impact, even when statistical analysis and sound rationales are provided. On the other hand, the stories included in this book offer an alternative that may have an impact and long-lasting effect in the lives of students of color. Story messages tend to stay longer with us and enable us to make sense of complex situations, such as education, culture, and personality traits—persistence, motivation, resilience. Consequently, the stories in this book become vehicles to learn from real-life examples the abstractions of education, home and school culture, and other factors that contribute to academic success. Furthermore, the stories encourage people to write, tell, and share experiences to address ongoing problems; invite change where change is needed; organize thoughts and seek meaningful solutions; invite us to become cognizant about how our emotions direct our thoughts and “move mountains”; enable us to discover undercurrents that hinder organizational communication; direct us to pay attention to the little things that matter and build trust; awaken the good in people through an invitational approach, as opposed to one that it’s mandated; push us to avoid playing it safe and stick out our emotional necks when dealing with people; seek authentic voices to make room for new thinking; make time for people; and allow our voices to define the values we embrace.

In Learning to Be Latino, sociologist Daisy Verduzco Reyes paints a vivid picture of Latino student life at a liberal arts college, a research university, and a regional public university, outlining students’ interactions with one another, with non-Latino peers, and with faculty, administrators, and the outside community. Reyes identifies the normative institutional arrangements that shape the social relationships relevant to Latino students’ lives, including school size, the demographic profile of the student body, residential arrangements, the relationship between students and administrators, and how well diversity programs integrate students through cultural centers and retention centers. Together these characteristics create an environment for Latino students that influences how they interact, identify, and come to understand their place on campus. Drawing on extensive ethnographic observations, Reyes shows how college campuses shape much more than students’ academic and occupational trajectories; they mold students’ ideas about inequality and opportunity in America, their identities, and even how they intend to practice politics.