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Wednesday, October 07, 2009

Study: Latinos Value Education

By Martin Salazar
Journal Staff Writer
       WASHINGTON, D.C. — A new national study on the attitudes of Latinos toward education shows that the vast majority of Latinos interviewed believe a college education is critical to their future, despite the fact that they attained lower levels of academic achievement than the general population.
    The study, commissioned by the Pew Hispanic Center, was released Tuesday at a conference on educating Latino children.
    The study showed that 88 percent of Latinos 16 and older agreed that a college education is important to get ahead in life, compared to 74 percent among the general population. It also found that 77 percent of youths 16 to 25 reported that their parents wanted them to go to college after high school.
    Yet only 48 percent of the surveyed Latino youths planned to get a bachelor's degree or higher, compared to 60 percent of the general population. Of adults 25 to 29 surveyed, 12 percent of Latinos had earned a bachelor's degree or higher, compared to 31 percent for the general population.
    Andrew Fuligni, a member of the University of California-Los Angeles faculty, said that despite a prevalent view that Latino students and their families don't value education, that's simply not the case.
    "Yes, they're achieving at a lower rate," he said. But he argued that it takes more motivation for a Latino to achieve the same level of academic success than non-Latinos. He said language barriers and the need to work to help families are some of the factors that stand in their way.
    New Mexico Education Secretary Veronica Garcia chronicled the state's successes and struggles in overcoming the achievement gap during a speech at the conference.
    She said Latino students in New Mexico over the last few years have, for the most part, continued to show significant gains, but so have Anglo students, resulting in the continuation of the achievement gap.
    "We're seeing incremental gains," she said. But it's not enough, she said.
    Certified graduation rates released by the state Public Education Department on Friday showed that about 56 percent of Hispanic students in the class of 2008 graduated within four years, compared to 71.3 percent of Anglo students.
    Garcia told conference participants that parent and community involvement is key. She reiterated that a cultural shift is needed to underscore the importance of education, much like the shift that has occurred in attitudes toward drinking and driving, smoking and wearing seat belts.
    Pew's nationally representative telephone survey was conducted between Aug. 5 and Sept. 16 and included 1,240 Latino youths between 16 and 25 and 772 Latino adults 26 and older. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.7 percentage points for all Latinos. General population statistics were pulled from previous studies conducted by Pew.

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