As colleagues at two local foundations, the Virginia G. Piper Charitable Trust and Helios Education Foundation, we encourage you to read a new report, “Dropped? Latino Education and Arizona’s Economic Future.”

Why “Dropped” with a question mark?

Eleven years ago Morrison Institute for Public Policy published “Five Shoes Waiting To Drop on Arizona’s Future.”

The lagging graduation rates of Latinos represented one of those shoes that the report warned could drop, damaging Arizona’s economic future.

That shoe is a Size 13 today. It is perilously positioned to land, not just on our Latino friends and neighbors, but on all of us.

This new Morrison Institute report, commissioned by the two foundations, is about demographics, economics and the future of Arizona.

We know Arizona needs more high-paying jobs — and companies that pay well demand a skilled workforce. As “Dropped?” points out, by 2018, nearly two out of three jobs in Arizona will require some training beyond high school.

Technology continues to make more and more of even our low-tech jobs skill-based. Yet while 83 percent of White students graduate in Arizona, 69 percent of Latinos receive their high-school diplomas. The gap at the community-college and university levels is far greater.

Read the full story at the Arizona Republic