Hispanic Graduation Rates And The Fetish of Proportionality

The Las Vegas Review Journal has an odd article lamenting that “Hispanic college graduation rate lags.”

The article is loosely based on a recent report from the Pew Hispanic Center analyzing this gap, but that report is also a bit odd in some of its key findings. The Pew study found that Hispanics were entering college “in equitable droves to their white peers” (this quaint phrasing is from the Review Journal article, revealing one of the reasons I find it odd) but were only half as likely to graduate. One of the most important factors explaining this gap, however, is that a disproportionate number of Hispanics attend colleges with low graduation rates for everyone.

It finds that the gap in white/Hispanic bachelor

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  1. La Shawn Barber June 29, 2004 at 2:20 pm | | Reply

    Ah, yes. Proportionality. You may be interested in my post on proportionality in a Maryland county fire department: http://lashawnbarber.blogspot.com/archives/2004_06_01_lashawnbarber_archive.html#108852610112250715

  2. Art Revueltas August 29, 2004 at 2:48 pm | | Reply

    John,

    I read the article and found it odd also.The numbers don’t seem to jibe with others I have read about. I am a middle school principal of a school which is 95% Latino. The diversity of the student population(from 5th generation American to just arrived) defies most generalizations. We must also add issues related to poverty to this conversation. For example what is the income level of those Latinos which do graduate? What is the rate of graduation for poor Latinos? There seems to be a lot of clumping together going on.

    Art Revueltas

  3. andre August 18, 2005 at 9:13 pm | | Reply

    why is it that even within the hispanic culture, persons who are lighter in skin tone seem to have more power, money, and look down upon hispanics with darker skin tones

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