Latino students continue to fall behind white students across the country, according to a recent report by the U.S. Department of Education.
The report found that Latinos were less likely to graduate from high school than whites and Asians in all but two states in the 2010-2011, according to a recent ABC Univision article. According to a 2011 state education department report 64 percent of Connecticut’s Latino students graduated high school in four years versus 81 percent for all students.
Maine and Hawaii were the two exceptions where Latinos had higher graduation rates than whites – the only exceptions to the troubling data. The worst graduation rate for Latinos was 51 percent in Minnesota, according to the article. The District of Columbia had the second biggest achievement gap between Latinos and whites, at 30 percent.
Maine, which has a Latino population of less than 2 percent, saw an 87 percent graduation rate for Latinos, the highest percentage of Latino graduates in any state. Texas, at 38 percent Hispanic, had a Latino grad rate of 82 percent, according to the article.