Reluctant Partners, Problem Definition, and Legislative Intent: K-16 Policy for Latino College Success

Improving access to college for Latinos and other underrepresented minorities is a serious policy dilemma, particularly in states where they constitute large and growing numbers of the college-age population. Latinos as a group face numerous obstacles to college attendance, including a lack of knowledge about college and how to get there, inadequate financial resources, and the absence of adequate adult guidance for navigating the college choice and enrollment process. This article describes the separation between K-12 and postsecondary education that contributes to Latino students’ transition problems between levels. School-university collaboration and partnerships and early interventions activities have helped to mitigate such problems since the 1960s. A new form of interaction between levels, K-16 educational coordination, is described as a recent and increasingly popular policy strategy for addressing the problem. Texas is used to illustrate the development of such policy over five state legislative sessions and within the state’s race-neutral context.