ABSTRACT
In early 2011, the Brookings Institution, a non-partisan policy institute in Washington D.C., reported that for the first time in U.S. history less than half of three-year-olds entering pre-school were white. This transition to majority minority youth came to Texas more than a decade ago. In fact, the 2010 census reported that Hispanics accounted for 95 percent of child population growth in Texas since 2000 and that just 37.5 percent of children in Texas nursery, pre-school, and kindergarten programs were Anglo. Only three states — Hawaii, New Mexico, and California — along with D.C., have smaller proportions of young Anglo students. 1
What makes these numbers particularly intriguing is the near universal recognition that a good education, certainly a high school diploma and hopefully a college degree, is a prerequisite to a good job, a productive life, and a secure future. One cannot have a conversation about the future of the United States or Texas without the discussion turning quickly to education and the preparation of tomorrow’s workforce. In today’s Texas workforce, 40 percent of Hispanics lack a high school degree and, as we saw in the exercise that concluded Chapter 3, unless educational attainment among Texas Hispanics improves significantly in coming decades, Texas will be a less productive and poorer state.
