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Home > Online Resources > K-12 Educational Research : Programs & Tools

Programs & Tools to Aid Latina/o Academic Success

Programs Helping Latinas/os Achieve Higher Education

Beyond the Head Count (PDF)
Evaluating Family Involvement in Out-of-School Time
Harvard Family Research Project. August 2002.
This publication offers an overview of how out-of-school time programs involve families and how programs can evaluate family involvement, considering the practice of engaging families as one of the many strategies that out-of- school time (OST) programs use to create quality, adult-supervised experiences for children ages five to nineteen. Incorporated into this report are the responses from interviews and e-mail correspondence to define and propose a framework for understanding family involvement in OST. This brief then examines ways for OST programs to evaluate their own family involvement strategies and practices.

Education Working Paper (PDF)
Public High School Graduation and College-Readiness Rates: 1991–2002
Greene, Jay P, Ph.D. and Marcus A. Winters. Center for Civic Innovation at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. February 2005.
With complied data provided by the U.S. Department of Education, this study examines a widely utilized method of calculating graduation rates of public school graduating classes across the nation for the 1991-2002 school years. This calculation also helps to identify how many of these students are eligible enroll in college based upon the successful completion of high school requirements when public schools are preparing minority youth for entrance into the higher education system of our nation.

How Latino students pay for college (PDF)
Patterns of Financial Aid in 2003–04
Institute for Higher Education Policy. Excelencia in Education. August 2005.
As college tuition dollars constantly augment, the financial aid needs of college students today is a very frequent and important topic. In the 2003-2004, almost 80 percent of Latino undergraduates applied for full assistance financial aid and only 63 percent of these students who applied only received some aid funding. This report, Excelencia in Education and the Institute for Higher Education Policy have prepared a study in this field to help increase knowledge and understanding of issues concerning Latino education and the goal of nationally equalizing educational opportunity(ies), eliminating grounds of discrimination and loss of access and funding due to economic hardship within minority families of college-bound students.

Indicators of Opportunity in Higher Education (PDF)
The Pell Institute. Fall 2004.
The Council for Opportunity in Education, The Education Resources Institute (TERI), and the Institute for Higher Education Policy, in the summer of 1999, collaborated to produce a publication with the a goal of this publication and related seminar to stimulate dialogue about defining opportunities for postsecondary education and ways to measure progress in order to inform the decision-making process of policymakers focusing on the K-12 education reform. In addition to this effort, in 2004, the institute wrote this report addressing issues of measuring opportunities for low-income students, performance at grade level, as well as access and success in higher education.

Learner Outcomes: Students' Reading and Mathematics Achievement Through 3rd Grade (PDF)
The Condition of Education. 2004.
The Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998–99 collects information on a cohort of children who began kindergarten in fall 1998 and follows them through spring 2004, when most will have completed grade 5. The study assesses children's achievement in reading, mathematics, and general knowledge as they progress through school. From fall 1998 through the end of 3rd grade in spring 2002, children's average reading scale score increased 81 points, from 27 to 108. The corresponding increase in mathematics was 63 points from a scale score of 22 in fall 1998 to 85 in spring 2002.

Leveling the Playing Field (PDF)
Programs that Help Young People Stay In School, Off Drugs, and On Track
The amount focused on young people has increased dramatically over the last several decades. Research from all quarters has proven that young people do not grow into active, productive citizens by themselves. This report focuses on how children need guidance and nurturing. They need to set goals. Young people in every community are still falling through the cracks and making decisions in their teens that will forever alter their choices in life.

Minority Teacher Recruitment, Development, and Retention (PDF)
The Educational Alliance. Brown University.
The Northeast and Islands Regional Educational Laboratory at Brown University (LAB) has prepared this review with the understanding that, while there may be much knowledge in practice about minority teacher recruitment, retention, and development, there is still a need to gather and synthesize promising research in order to enable education practitioners and policymakers to identify the most effective programs and practices that encourage more minorities to choose teaching as a career. This report represents the third annual synthesis of research in a series of five proposed to the Institute of Education Sciences at the United States Department of Education examining beliefs expressed through research of diversity of viewpoints to generate knowledge and creative ideas for further research.

Moblization Matters (PDF)
The United Way of America.
Building effective plans that target community results and measure them is accomplished through Vision Councils, community partnerships, or other representative bodies. Outcome-focused strategic planning addresses the challenges of defining, influencing, and measuring community-level results. United Way of America's "outcome-focused" planning process is different from other strategic planning processes because it starts by explicitly identifying the "end result" of the targeted benefits for people that the Community Mobilization aims to influence. This report defines what community changes are needed to reach the desired outcome(s) and identifies how the Community Mobilization will create such changes.

Participation in Education (PDF)
Enrollment Trends by Age
The Condition of Education. 2004.
The indicators in this section of The Condition of Education report trends in enrollments across all levels of education. There are 14 indicators in this section: 7, prepared for this year's volume, appear on the following pages, and all 14, including indicators from previous years, appear on the web as a key indicator of the scope of and access to educational opportunities and a basic description of American education. Changes in enrollment have implications for the demand for educational resources, such as qualified teachers, physical facilities, and funding levels required to provide a high-quality education for all our nation's students.

Programs and Strategies to Increase Latino Students' Educational Attainment (PDF)
Haro, Roberto. San Francisco State University. Education and Urban Society, Vol. 36. No. 2, Corwin Press, Inc. February 2004. 205-222.
This article presents strategies that Latino parents and students need to know regarding preparing for and selecting the best undergraduate college or university for the career involving engineering, mathematics, or the sciences. Discussed in this article is how Latino students can gain access to information on preparation for admission to a college or a university. Also discussed is the role of faculty and of academic guidance able to assist students with making informed decisions for themselves and their futures.

The Impacts of Regular Upward Bound (PDF)
Results from the Third Follow-Up Data Collection
Myers, David; Rob Olsen; Neil Seftor; Christina Tuttle; and Julie Young. U.S. Department of Education. April 2004.
Data from the 1990s indicating that students from high-income families were more than twice as likely to attend a four-year college or university as students from low-income families. This report analyzes Upward Bound, one of the largest and longest running federal programs designed to help economically disadvantaged students prepare for entrance and success in college by helping students generate skills and motivation necessary for advancement from inadequate secondary school preparation.

Transforming Schools Through Community Organizing (PDF)
López, Elena M. Harvard Family Research Project. December 2003.
Community organizing engages parents in poor performing schools to improve children's educational outcomes. Although standard parent involvement practices such as monitoring children's homework, reading to them, and volunteering in schools are linked to students' positive academic and behavioral outcomes. Parents in these failing schools realize that although they are responsible for supporting children's learning, schools are also responsible for providing a quality education.

What "Extras" Do We Get with Extracurriculars? (PDF)
Technical Research Considerations
Chaplin, Duncan, Michael J. Puma. The Urban Institute. 30 September, 2003.
Education has become one of the most important issues in American society, often dominating the political landscape in response to lagging academic achievement and persistent gaps in performance between advantaged and disadvantaged children. Initial analyses in this report examines students who participate in out-of-school-time extracurricular activities differ in important ways from non-participants. These analyses found statistically significant and positive effects of such participation in arts, music, drama, and language classes. The results also suggest that more rigorous evaluation can be conducted before further investments are made based on such claims, particularly where such expenditures are made as a trade-off against investments in other, possibly more effective, educational reforms.

Tools to Help Latinas/os Succeed in Higher Education

Latino Students and the Educational Pipeline: Part I (PDF)
Cabrera, Alberto; Chul Lee; Watson Scott Swail; and Adriane Williams. Educational Policy Institute. 4 April, 2005.
From Middle School to the Workforce: Latino Students in the Educational Pipeline. This component of the three part series focuses on an 8th-grade cohort and their progression through high school, postsecondary education, to the workforce. This section provides the most comprehensive look at what happens to students from the 8th grade in 1988 by the year 2000.

Latino Students and the Educational Pipeline: Part II (PDF)
Cabrera, Alberto; Chul Lee; Watson Scott Swail; and Adriane Williams. Educational Policy Institute. 4 April, 2005.
Latino High School & Baccalaureate Graduates: A Comparison. This section focuses on students who complete a Bachelor's Degree as compared to those students obtaining a high school diploma as their highest level or education. Advantages of obtaining Certificate and Associate's Bachelor's Degrees are also discussed in this selection.

Latino Students and the Educational Pipeline: Part III (PDF)
Cabrera, Alberto; Chul Lee; Watson Scott Swail; and Adriane Williams. Educational Policy Institute. 4 April, 2005.
Pathways to the Bachelor's Degree for Latino Students. The third component of the three-part series focuses on students who attained a Bachelor's Degree and what it took to get there. We used multiple regression analysis to determine the factors that seemed to matter on the pathway to the earning a Bachelor's Degree (B.A.).

Learning from Logic Models In and Out-of School Time (PDF)
Harvard Family Research Project. 2000.
This study introduces logic models as a concise way to show how programs are designed and will make a difference for programs participants and their communities. A logic model can be strategic and program planning to summarize the key elements of your program, reveals the rationale behind your approach, articulates your intended outcomes and how they can be measured, and shows the cause-and-effect relationships between the program and its intended outcome.