New Executive Order
Benchmarking Latino College Completion
Low-Income Young Adults
Project Win-Win

New Executive Order
By U. S. Department of Education
On October 19, 2010, President Obama signed a new executive order renewing the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanics. This historic event demonstrates the president’s strong support for the critical role Hispanics play in the overall prosperity of the nation and highlights the Administration’s commitment to expanding education opportunities and improving education outcomes for all students.

New elements of the executive order place a high priority on action, such as: Working directly with communities nationwide in public-private partnerships, linking together key individuals and organizations from within and outside the education system to increase capacity and announce communitywide education initiatives; establishing a Presidential Advisory Commission and national network of community leaders that will provide real-time input and advice on the development, implementation and coordination of education policy and programs that impact the Hispanic community; forming a Federal Interagency Working Group to exchange resources and address issues impacting the lives of Hispanics nationwide, including housing, health, finance, employment and education, among others.
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Benchmarking Latino College Completion to Meet National Goals
By Excelenica
While all groups will have to increase college degree attainment to meet President Obama's college completion goals, increasing Latino educational attainment is crucial because their educational attainment is lower than other groups (only 19 percent of Latino adults have earned an associate or higher) and the Latino population is rapidly expanding. By 2020, Latinos are projected to represent about 20 percent of the 18-64 year-old U.S. population, compared to 15 percent in 2008; by 2020 Latinos are projected to represent close to 25 percent of the U.S. 18-29 year-old population, up from 18 percent in 2008.

This benchmarking guide provides a clear framework and public baseline for tracking our nation's college degree completion goal disaggregated by race/ethnicity. The framework includes two sets of metrics using existing data: 1) projections of degree completion needs, and 2) analysis of current equity gaps in degree completion. The guide also includes contextual information about Latinos in the educational pipeline and the equity gap between Latinos and whites in achievement by state.
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A Portrait of Low-Income Young Adults in Education
By Institute for Higher Education Policy
This brief, A Portrait of Low-Income Young Adults in Education, is the first of a new publication series called “Portraits” that draws from the most recent national data to describe the population of low-income young adults—between ages 18 and 26 and whose total household income is near or below the federal poverty level—and situates them in the context of national college completion goals. It specifically outlines the demographic characteristics of low-income young adults while providing a brief overview of their pre-college and degree attainment trends.
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Project Win-Win
By Institute for Higher Education Policy
Project Win-Win involves 35 community colleges and colleges in six states—Louisiana, Missouri, New York, Ohio, Virginia, and Wisconsin—in finding former students, no longer enrolled anywhere and never awarded any degree, whose records qualify them for associate’s degrees, and get those degrees awarded retroactively. Simultaneously, this effort will identify former students who are “academically short” of an associate’s degree by no more than nine credits, find them, and seek to bring them back to complete their degree. Project Win-Win, undertaken in a partnership of IHEP and the State Higher Education Executive Officers, and funded by Lumina Foundation for Education, is a major expansion of a pilot program conducted in the fall and spring terms of 2009-10 in nine of the 35 institutions and under the sponsorship of the Education Trust.
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