If Arizona is going to be successful not only in improving minority access to higher education, but more importantly, minority student success in higher education, a systematic approach needs to be developed. The answers to improving minority access and achievement in higher education requires a holistic view of education as a system as well as an integrated look into the drivers of academic success. A fundamental problem exists with current policies designed to improve minority representation in higher education. Arizona’s lack of both a systematic view of the problem and the creation of a framework to evaluate policy ideas are sources of these disappointing results. The purpose of this paper is to fill in the gap by providing a framework of focus for academic success to be used to enhance Arizona’s approach to higher education policy.

The primary purpose of this paper is to examine the educational achievement and attainment of Latinos living in Arizona. In short, the educational performance and attainment of Hispanics lags considerably behind that of the state’s non-Hispanic white residents. Moreover, the growth in the number of Hispanics, especially children, has far outpaced that of the non-Hispanic white population, raising the importance of this educational gap. This issue was highlighted in the 2001 Morrison Institute report Five Shoes Waiting to Drop on Arizona’s Future.

The specific goal of this report is to assess the future of Hispanic educational performance and attainment in Arizona, but this outlook is dependent to a very sizable extent on the characteristics of the Hispanics living in Arizona. In particular, the educational achievement and attainment of Hispanic immigrants has been substantially less than that of Hispanics born in the United States. Forecasting Hispanic immigration specifically and the characteristics of the Hispanic population generally is extremely difficult for two reasons: severe data limitations, and recent legal and policy changes related to immigration.

The Arizona Youth Tobacco Survey is a series of biannual school-based tobacco-focused surveys first implemented in the spring of 2000. The survey is designed to help monitor trends in tobacco use among public school students in grades 6 through 12 and to compare changes in rates over time. The survey also collects data on topics including: tobacco use; tobacco-related knowledge, attitudes and beliefs; access to tobacco products; exposure to environmental tobacco smoke; initiation and cessation; influence of family, friends and the media; and social, school and community interventions.

Adult tobacco use represents an important and ongoing morbidity, mortality and health care cost problem. The Arizona Department of Health Services Office of Tobacco Education and Prevention Program has been working since 1996 to reduce tobacco use in Arizona. This report presents data from the Adult Tobacco Survey on adult tobacco use prevalence rates, cessation behaviors, and Arizonan’s beliefs and attitudes about smoking hazards and tobacco policies. It also provides trends over time on Arizonans tobacco use and other related behaviors, using comparable data from surveys conducted previously in 1996, 1999, and 2002.