Chapter 1: Latinos/As and Mathematics Education: Why This Book Now?

As the title of this volume suggests, we have chosen to compile a book that addresses the mathematics education of Latinos/as, a specific cultural group. But why would researchers focus a volume on the mathematics learning and teaching on any single group, and specifically one defined by ethnicity? The rich history of research on girls’ and women’s experiences in mathematics offers one example (e.g., Walkerdine, 1998), but gender is clearly something different than culture. After all, is not mathematics a largely culture-free discipline, in which language plays but a minor role?

We argue that this misguided view is, in fact, partly responsible for the mathematics underperformance of Latinos. And it is this underperformance that provides our first compelling reason for a focus on Latinos/as. Like other “minority” groups in the U.S., Latinos/as score well below their dominant culture counterparts in mathematics. We point to data from National Center on Educational Statistics showing that Latinos generally score about a standard deviation lower on tests of mathematics achievement than their white counterparts (Jencks & Phillips, 1998; Rumberger & Gándara, 2004). Overall, 4th and 8th grade scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) mathematics assessment increased in 2009; however, Latinos continued to score among the lowest, and from 1990 to 2009 the gap in the scores for whites and Latinos did not change significantly (http://nationsreportcard.gov/math_2009/). The 2009 NAEP results show 44% at or above proficient for white students compared to 17% for “Hispanic” in 8th grade mathematics; for that same grade level, 17% white and 43% Hispanic are below basic (Aud, Fox, & KewalRamani, 2010). In spite of the overall consistency in scores, the achievement gap is particularly acute for mathematics achievement at the secondary level, where the white–Hispanic mathematics score difference for 17-year-olds has increased substantially since 1990 (Perie et al., 2005). This puzzling finding has educators and researchers asking more questions about the persistent underachievement of Latinos, the nation’s largest “minority” group at 12% of the total population, a figure that increases to over 25% when we count only those under age 25 (Therrien & Ramirez, 2000), and has generated a call to action at several governmental levels. Moreover, we want to point out that Latinos are the least educated among the nation’s major racial and ethnic groups. More than 27% of Latinos, compared to just over 4% of whites, have less than a ninth-grade education (Snyder & Dillow, 2010). The dropout rate for Hispanics is twice the average for whites, 6.0 and 2.8, respectively (Stillwell, 2010), although these dropout figures are disputed. For instance, (Gándara & Contreras, 2009) estimate that over 50% of Latino youth do not receive a diploma after four years of high school. Another aspect of concern is parental level of education: About 40% of Latino children ages 6 to 18 have a parent with less than a high school education, compared to about 6% for white children (Aud et al., 2010).