ABSTRACT
With 2003 Census Bureau and National Center for Education Statistics data indicating that 43% of Latinos enter the workforce with less than a high school diploma (Chapa & De La Rosa, 2004), the emergence of a “rainbow underclass” (A. Portes & Rumbaut, 2001) threatens to destabilize America’s competitiveness in a post-industrial global marketplace (Education Trust, 2003; [U.S.] President’s Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans, 1996, 2000, 2002). Th e National Council of La Raza (2007) reports that the 2.9 million Latinos enrolled in U.S. high schools are less likely than their non-Latino peers to complete a degree and recent immigrants are among the most likely to drop out of school. At the postsecondary level, Latinos, account for only 18% of the undergraduate college population. Among those age 25 and older, Latinos (12%) are less likely than African Americans (17.7%) or Whites (30.5%) to earn a bachelor’s degree (cf., Chapa & De La Rosa, 2004; Fry, 2002, 2004, 2005).
