A Milestone and Miles to Go

Last month’s news that Latinos have become the largest minority in this nation of immigrants has been coming for decades and is being ruminated upon by experts of every stripe. Still, that official census click should spur Americans to ponder once again how best to adapt to and accommodate this latest in a long line of remarkably vibrant, in some ways problematic, populations to leap into the melting pot, salad bowl or whatever metaphor for e pluribus unum is currently in vogue.

Waves of Irish, Italian, Chinese, Filipino and Russian immigrants have tested the United States’ resources and tolerance. The new majority is more geographically and culturally heterogeneous than these other groups -- a dark-skinned physicist whose grandparents hailed from the sophisticated metropolis of Mexico City and a pale herdsman just arrived from the Andean hinterlands could both fit the “Latino” bill. Yet, by and large, the Latino population struggles in the same socioeconomic quicksand as other immigrants.

The escape route is education. Latino communities can help themselves and do the nation a great service by using their growing political clout to take an even greater role in the fight for better public schooling for everyone from toddlers to adults.

Almost half the Latinos in the United States are under 26 years old. In the last two decades, the number of Latino children attending public school has doubled. Sadly, almost a third of Latinos in the U.S., including the foreign-born, drop out before completing high school, and Latino students as a group do poorer academically than whites and most other minorities.

The problem begins when they are barely out of diapers. Presently, Latino parents are less likely than others to enroll their 3- and 4-year-olds in pre-primary education programs such as Head Start. One reason is that there just aren’t enough such schools in predominantly Latino neighborhoods.

Latinos should badger Congress to expand and strengthen this excellent program and push for more preschool programs at the state and local levels. Next, Latinos need to redouble their efforts as allies in the fight to improve elementary and secondary education; the dreadful Los Angeles Unified School District is a prime target for revolutionary reform.

Finally, even as schools get better, pushing young Latinos up the socioeconomic ladder, the nation will need to address the two-thirds of Latino adults who are foreign-born and, on average, arrive in the U.S. with only a fifth-grade education. Eighty percent of Latino males work at low-wage jobs that offer few, if any, health-care benefits. The result is a burden on families and, in turn, taxpayers.

Every expansion of adult education schools or workforce retraining programs helps break the cycle of poor education and poverty. With better skills, these adults will get better jobs and be more likely to encourage their children’s educations, giving them access to better jobs. This, in turn, will bolster the economy so that it can support the next vibrant, problematic wave of immigrants, from whatever part of the globe it comes.