Educating Latinos
An NPR Special Report the series

part 1: an education crisis
part 2: bilingual education
part 3: teacher shortage
part 4: mothers and daughters
part 5: assimilation experience

series resources
the experts
educating Latinos home page

All Things Considered

NPR Special Report: Educating Latinos

Latino students make up the largest minority group of America's school-age population -- and there's broad consensus that public schools are not doing a good job of meeting their needs. In the final report of a five-part series on educating Latinos, NPR's Claudio Sanchez reports on the process and experience of assimilation. Browse online resources about the issues, and learn about each of the reports in this series.

November-December 2002 -- Latino students now make up the largest minority group in the school-age population in the country. Yet they lag behind their white and Asian peers -- and in some cases African-Americans as well -- on most measures of achievement: test scores, college completion, and dropout rates.

Part 5 of the five-part series Educating Latinos, airing Mondays on NPR's All Things Considered, examines an issue that comes up over and over again in discussions about Hispanic children in this country: assimilation. Latino teens -- whether they're the first, second or even third generation of their families to live in the United States, often feel torn between the values and traditions of their parents and America's youth culture. In reporting for this series, NPR's Claudio Sanchez spoke with some Latino families around the country about these conflicting pressures, and the role education plays in their hopes for the future.

The series began with a visit to a community northeast of Atlanta coping with a dramatic increase in itys non-English speaking Hispanic population. Part 2 visited Arizona for an analysis of the debate over bilingual education; Part 3 examined the shortage of qualified bilingual education teachers; and Part 4 addressed the bleak future facing many Hispanic girls in this country. The series concludes with an assessment of the process of assimilation.