Thursday, April 28, 2011

Improving Education for the Latino Community

In his State of the Union, the President made it clear that the most important contest this country faces today is not between Democrats and Republicans, but with competitors around the world for the jobs and industries of our time. To win that contest and secure prosperity for all Americans, we must out-innovate, out-educate, and out-build the rest of the world. The Latino community is integral to that plan to win the future.

There are 50.5 million Hispanics in the United States, composing 16 percent of the total population and a significant portion of the labor force. When you add the nearly 4 million residents of Puerto Rico, the total number of Latinos surpasses 54 million. Between 2000 and 2010, the Latino population increased by 15.2 million, accounting for more than half of the 27.3 million increase in the total population of the United States. In the coming decades, Latinos will continue to drive the growth of the labor force, as they will account for 60 percent of the Nation’s population growth between 2005 and 2050. In this way, Latino success in education and in the labor market is of both immediate and long-term importance to America’s economy. Learn more...