Closing the Educational Divide

"We've got to get our students to go for more," said Ramirez, director of the South Plains Closing the Gaps P-20 Council, a group working to help more Hispanics earn a college degree. "No more of this dropping out of school. That's just going to be a disadvantage for all of us."

Her address came in early March during one of many informational sessions called Cafe con Leche that try to equip Hispanic parents with the tools they'll need to send their children to college.

Statistically speaking, few will be successful.

That's the Herculean task confronting today's educators.

"You don't want to do the fear thing, but people know in the back of their minds that if we don't do something to really change the trajectory for the (Hispanic) population, then the country is going to be in trouble," said Juan Sepulveda, director of the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans.

Educators and advocates across the country are scrambling to close that gap, that attrition of educational achievement for Hispanic students between early childhood education and college.

Their poor academic performance starkly contrasts President Barack Obama's goal to have the world's largest proportion of college graduates in America by 2020.

To do this, Sepulveda said, the nation must mobilize for a full-scale, systematic approach to the way it educates its youth.

Much of that comprehensive shift, he said, hinges greatly on the way America educates Hispanics - the fastest growing and youngest minority in the country.

"The president's 2020 goal, we can't get there without the Hispanic community reaching and retaining our education levels," Sepulveda said. "The future of the United States is inextricably tied to the future of the Hispanic community."