If we are serious about helping all kids, including Latino children, get the best education, it makes sense for us to consider what gets in the way.

Getting a quality education is much more than using the best methods, having the best teachers, and making the best educational tools accessible, although each of these pieces are important.

There are many things in a child’s environment – both inside and outside the school setting – that contribute to his or her ability to learn…or detract from it.

Until we address all of these issues, we will be leaving some children behind. And I hope we can agree that we want ALL of our children to have the best education possible.

So we must also look at the bigger picture.

One of the huge issues confronting children when it comes to education is poverty. Lack of financial resources may mean lack of basic needs, including food and shelter. Even if food and shelter are available, being poor may mean lack of health care, lack of study tools, an unfriendly environment in which to study, or having to contend with competing obligations, such as having to work to help support family needs.

Since Latino children are more likely to live in poverty than other children, this is a huge issue to confront when it comes to Latino education.

The educational environment, including low expectations, teachers’ attitudes of superiority, or outright racism, can hamper a child’s ability, or desire, to learn. Unfortunately, these attitudes confront Latino children more often than we’d like to believe.

When a teacher (or another school administrator or official) or parent doesn’t accept who a child IS, then a young mind is having to defend their very identity. A young Latino who is not accepted because of any number of factors – sexual orientation, learning style, size (late or early bloomer), etc. – has to struggle in a hostile environment. This makes it difficult to concentrate on subject matter and makes it difficult for a child to put in the effort to learn.

Thelma Reyna talked about the importance of parent expectations for children. When low expectations — from parents and/or from educators – are part of a child’s environment, they may simply assume that more is not possible.

We know this is changing, but too often we still hear of children who were not encouraged to their highest potential.

Lack of knowledge and resources is another challenge. Often even if children (and their parents) have high expectations, they may not have the knowledge of the precise steps needed to take to be able to get to the next level. What classes are prerequisites for advanced classes? What classes are needed to get into college?

And once college is in a student’s sights, they may have lack of knowledge of scholarship resources.

These are just a few examples of the multitude of challenges children – and especially Latino children — face in trying to get and pursue an education. And these are just but a few examples, and only skim the top of such issues.

Many, many of us have first hand knowledge of what it is like to struggle through a school system and attempt to get an education even when many factors were against us.

Latino success stories show us that children can succeed in spite of having to fight all the obstacles above. However, we lose many when we place all these barriers up. And just because a small number can succeed in spite of the odds, I know I for one would like to see the odds stacked the other way – in the students’ favor.

What issues – outside of the school itself – do you think are the biggest obstacles for Latinos succeeding in education?