Why Florida’s Latino kids read better than California’s | McClatchy Washington Bureau

Florida has the highest share of Latino eighth graders who were proficient readers, according to a new study by the National Council of La Raza. Twenty-six percent of the Latino eighth graders in Florida are proficient or advanced in reading compared to 18 percent of young Latino readers in California.

The findings are part of a larger study on Latino youth and the trends and challenges they face as they rapidly reshape U.S. demographics. More than half of the children in the United States younger than five years old in 2014 were not white and one-quarter of those under 18 are Latino.

Florida was among three states, including California and Texas, that accounted for a 41 percent increase in the Latino youth population between 2000 and 2015. A growing number are being born to parents who are also U.S. citizens. In Florida, the number of children born to immigrant parents actually dropped by nine percent since 2000.

Co-author Patricia Foxen, NCLR’s deputy director of research, said the findings in Florida illustrate the different experiences of immigrants and the children of immigrants compared to second and third generation Latino youth. The reason Latino eighth graders in Florida read better than their peers elsewhere is likely because many of them are part of families that have been in the country longer. But they still lag behind the national average, which is 34 percent.

Here are some additional findings. You can see that not all are positive.

- Florida has the fourth highest rate of Latino youth who are citizens.

- Florida is among four states that had a drop of Latino youth living in limited English speaking households between 2000 and 2014.

- The share of Latino children in Florida living in unaffordable housing has increased. It has fluctuated from 39 percent in 2000 to 59 percent in 2008 to 49 percent in 2014.

- The percentage of Latino youth in Florida living in low-income families increased seven percentage points between 1999 and 2014.

- Latino children in Florida being raised by a single-parents increased 10 percent between 2000 and 2014.