The future of Texas is sitting in room 318 at Austin High School, and right now, it could go either way.
Students in the after-school program — Hispanic and from low-income families, the group least likely to enroll in college — are optimistic.
But who knows?
“I hope to go,” says Neri Gamez, 17, a high school junior who dreams of being a doctor.
Gamez has an advantage: She is in a program run by the Center for Mexican-American Studies at the University of Houston, designed to help Hispanic students enter college and, once there, earn a degree. Academic Achievers is among dozens of programs that address one of the state’s most intractable education problems.
But Hispanics, the state’s fastest-growing ethnic group, have fallen behind in some key areas, and efforts to change that remain piecemeal:
• Statewide, 68 percent of Hispanics graduate from high school within four years, 10 points below the overall rate.
• Just 42.5 percent of Hispanics who graduated from high school in 2007 enrolled in college or a technical training program the following fall, compared with 45.3 percent of black students and 57.5 percent of white students.
• Texas is “well below target” in raising the number of Hispanics in college, according to a 2008 report by the Higher Education Coordinating Board. Enrollment of both white and black students was “somewhat above target.”
And there are no consequences for schools that don’t raise Hispanic enrollment. READ FULL STORY
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