Trying to fill the Latino education gap

Ty Phillips:

Eleven percent of third-generation Latinos receive a college degree, which pales in comparison to the figures for third-generation Asians (46 percent) and whites (38 percent).

Those figures, which show a glaring weakness among the largest demographic of the state's future work force, came from a study released Thursday by the Public Policy Institute of California. Mexican-Americans, and all immigrants, showed great educational improvement over their parents or grandparents, but the study highlighted some areas of concern, particularly among Latinos. Among the study's other findings:

Only 5 percent of the state's Latino women in their 30s have earned college degrees. Seventeen percent of their grandchildren are expected to finish college, far short of the 40 percent the state's economy will require.

Just 17 percent of immigrant youths from Mexico have a mother with a high school diploma.

In cases where neither parent has a high school diploma, only 5 percent of their children can be expected to graduate from college.

"For a long time, the message from our parents was, 'Get a good job,'" Madueno said. "To them, that meant being a supervisor at a cannery, someone who wore a white helmet. They were really looking to us to do that. They didn't see the immediate return on us going to school. That's just the way our culture is."

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