Ensuring equity in higher education access and success for Black and Latino Californians requires building and maintaining robust pathways from Los Angeles' high schools to its colleges and universities. In this report, the authors note that California's high schools, community colleges, and public four-year universities have increased enrollment…

Institutions and community-based organizations that serve their communities are creating positive opportunities for students and families. Over 20 years, "Excelencia" in Education has prioritized bringing national attention to the programs, institutions, and people making a positive difference for Latino students and their communities.…

This article explores how college expectations in 8th grade change by 10th grade, and if students realize the expectations for a given level of college from 8th and 10th grade, in light of the "college for all" ethos. This study is based on administrative data from 235,875 public school students in Massachusetts from 2006 to 2016. Using…

Reporting on a year-and-a-half-long study of Latina/Latino multilingual students transitioning from high school to a community college or university on the US-Mexico border, this article explores how writing instruction was shaped across the three institutional locations by a variety of internal and external forces such as standardized testing…

Excelencia in Education is committed to using data to inform public policy and institutional practice to achieve our mission of accelerating student success for Latinos in higher education. Every educational experience from early childhood to high school and into the workforce influences the potential for college success. For this reason, this…

President Barack Obama has called education "the economic issue of our time", explaining that the rise in unemployment among those without a college education is growing and eight of 10 new jobs created in the US are more likely to hire people with higher education degrees. Indeed, change is what the educational system needs to increase…

The authors interviewed Black and Latino students from five high-poverty high schools as they attempted to make the transition into college. Their ability to exert individual agency with regard to their entrance exams and their college transition was circumscribed by the messages and behavioral norms that dominated their low-performing high school…

This report examines the extent to which California high school students fail to meet the high school course requirements for admission to California's four-year public universities. It investigates students' course-taking patterns and whether the courses they take meet the universities' entrance requirements. Because students from a variety of…

This study used the NELS 88-2000 data base to examine among Hispanic students precollege, college, and environmental predictors of (a) college first enrolled in (two-year versus four-year) and (b) undergraduate degree attainment for students who first enrolled in a two-year or four-year college. Hispanic students who attended a four-year college…

The numbers of Latinas who attend college, stay in college, graduate, and attend graduate school escalated in the 1990s, surpassing gains made by any other underrepresented group of students in higher education. However, their achievements come at a personal cost, as the high-achieving Latinas profiled in this chapter demonstrate.