This monograph describes the current educational status of Latino students in the United States and, based on the extant research, attempts to explain their relatively low educational performance. The research finds many structural and socio-cultural barriers to academic achievement for this group, including poverty, poor schooling, language …

Seventeen Mexican American women (aged 28-40) from lower socioeconomic backgrounds who had completed J.D., M.D., and Ph.D. degrees were interviewed about their backgrounds. Most important background variables contributing to the high educational achievement were: strong models provided by mothers, emotional support of families, attendance at…

When policymakers talk about closing the achievement gap, the focus is typically on bringing the average performance of minority or economically disadvantaged students in line with the average performance of White or middle-class students. From a statistical perspective, this strategy of bringing up the bottom to close the achievement gap is…

This report examines factors that influenced low-income Mexican-Americans from homes with little formal education to achieve high academic status. Although over one third of students in California's public schools are Hispanic, only a small fraction of these students complete a university education. Fifty Mexican-Americans (30 men and 20 women)…

To ascertain why some Mexican Americans achieve despite the record that less than 60% of all Hispanics complete high school and earn only 2% of all bachelor's and 1% of all doctoral degrees, retrospective interviews provided data on 10 dimensions of background characteristics of 45 Chicano "invulnerables." One-third were females; all…

This study examined the factors influencing the academic success of 50 Mexican-Americans from low-income families who received Ph.D., J.D., or M.D. degrees from prestigious universities. All of the subjects received their college and graduate education during the 1960s and 1970s, and were interviewed using a 141-question interview protocol. The…