THE EDUCATION FRONT Blog | The Dallas Morning News: In Arne Duncan's speech this week to the National Council of La Raza, the education secretary did a good job highlighting the need to improve high school and college graduation rates for Latinos.
I think this is the second greatest challenge facing the country, behind getting the international religion-and-politics equation right so we don't blow each other up. I was glad to see Duncan take this issue on directly, and he raised a point at the end of his speech that I hadn't thought about: The nation needs more Latino teachers.
According to Duncan, twenty percent of all public school students in the U.S. are Latino. But only five percent of their teachers are Latino. He challenged La Raza, which has a very good record in promoting educational achievement, to encourage more Latinos to become teachers.
His assumption is that more Latino teaches will help more of the growing number of Latino students -- half of Texas public school students are Hispanic -- graduate from high school and college. About half of all Latinos drop out of high school, Duncan claims.
