ABSTRACT
Public policy has become a constant, even if not always welcome, companion of educational research. Th e relationship between public policy and educational outcomes has played a particularly prominent role in the higher educational opportunity structure of Latino students in the United States. From the lingering eff ects of the Brown v. Board of Education U.S. Supreme Court ruling on desegregation in 1954 to the Gratz v. Bollinger and Grutter v. Bollinger decisions on affi rmative action in 2003, the implementation of educational law and policy at the local, institutional, state, and federal levels are oft en in direct response to (or in direct neglect of) major public policy institutions, such as U.S. courts. Latino students have been at the forefront of these events since before the Brown decision, as seen in the 1947 Méndez v. Westminster School District case, and in recent years as one of the primary groups aff ected by Supreme Court rulings on desegregation/resegregation cases regarding voluntary student assignment plans in Louisville and Seattle (Ancheta, 2007; Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School Dist. No. 1, 2007; Meredith v. Jeff erson County Bd. of Educ., 2007; Valencia, 2005). Although the Brown and Méndez cases involved elementary and secondary school access, these decisions set the stage for college access in very tangible ways. Opportunities aff orded at the elementary and secondary level create the foundation for the realization of college aspirations. Ironically, even when court decisions and other policy were passed to better the socioeconomic status of Latinos, tracking the eff ects of such rulings at the national level, particularly educational attainment outcomes, was oft en not possible until recent decades. In the 1970s, “Hispanic” fi nally became an offi cial category on the U.S. Census, a policy decision that made it possible to better track this group’s status in the nation’s higher education enrollment and completion records (MacDonald, Botti, & Clark, 2007). Th e availability of more reliable and representative methods of counting Hispanic/ Latino individuals in the United States changed the nature of the research, policy decisions, and attention aff orded this long-ignored constituency.
