The nation’s high school on-time graduation rate in 2010 was the highest since 1976, with only a 3 percent dropout rate, and part of this rise is due to better graduation rates among Latino students. A new report by the National Center for Education Statistics found that 71.4 percent of Latino students graduated on-time from high school in 2010, compared to 61.4 percent in 2006, a 10-point gain in four years.

by Sandra Lilley, @sandralilley 10:44 am on 01/22/2013
Read complete article here

http://nbclatino.com/2013/01/22/latino-graduation-rates-climb-10-points-since-2006/

Cecilia Muñoz, who is Bolivian American, has served as the U.S. government’s director of intergovernmental affairs for the last three years. According to The Washington Post, the announcement of 49-year-old Muñoz’s new job was made today. She will replace Melody Barnes. According to a press release by the White House, Muñoz will coordinate the policy-making process and supervise execution of the government’s domestic policy.

Muñoz is formerly a top official at the National Council of La Raza (NCLR) and, according to Hispanically Speaking News, has run into
controversy before over her defense of the deportation policies placed by President Barack Obama’s administration. Last fall, Muñoz sparked anger from many after comments she made in a Frontline documentary about the record number of deportations under Obama’s administration.

“At the end of the day, when you have immigration law that’s broken and you have a community of 10 million, 11 million people living and working in the United States illegally, some of these things are going  to happen,” Muñoz said in the documentary, according to Hispanically Speaking News. “Even if the law is executed with perfection, there will be parents separated from their children. They don’t have to like it, but it is a result of having a broken system of laws.  And the answer to that problem is reforming the law….” After that, many called for her resignation.

During her time with NCLR, Muñoz worked as the organization’s Senior Vice President for the Office of Research, Advocacy and Legislation.  She was named a MacArthur Fellow for her work on civil rights and immigration back in 2000.

Let’s see how Muñoz does with her new post. Congrats to her!

Judge Sonia Sotomayor has lived the American dream. Born to a Puerto Rican family, she grew up in a public housing project in the South Bronx. Her parents moved to New York during World War II – her mother served in the Women’s Auxiliary Corps during the war. Her father, a factory worker with a third-grade education, died when Sotomayor was nine years old. Her mother, a nurse, then raised Sotomayor and her younger brother, Juan, now a physician in Syracuse. After her father’s death, Sotomayor turned to books for solace, and it was her new found love of Nancy Drew that inspired a love of reading and learning, a path that ultimately led her to the law.

Most importantly, at an early age, her mother instilled in Sotomayor and her brother a belief in the power of education. Driven by an indefatigable work ethic, and rising to the challenge of managing a diagnosis of juvenile diabetes, Sotomayor excelled in school. Sotomayor graduated as valedictorian of her class at Blessed Sacrament
and at Cardinal Spellman High School in New York. She first heard about the Ivy League from her high school debate coach, Ken Moy, who attended Princeton University, and she soon followed in his footsteps after winning a scholarship.

At Princeton, she continued to excel, graduating summa cum laude, and Phi Beta Kappa. She was a co-recipient of the M. Taylor Pyne Prize, the highest honor Princeton awards to an undergraduate. At Yale Law School, Judge Sotomayor served as an editor of the Yale Law Journal and as managing editor of the Yale Studies in World Public Order. One of Sotomayor’s former Yale Law School classmates, Robert Klonoff (now Dean of Lewis & Clark Law School), remembers her intellectual toughness from law school: “She would stand up for herself and not be intimidated by anyone.” [Washington Post, 5/7/09]