Main findings -- Policy implications -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Research goals and questions -- Outline of the report -- Policy context for adult education in California -- Public and private providers in the state -- Dual-provider system -- Funding issues facing adult schools -- The English-language proficiency of California's immigrants -- The ESL target population in California -- Predicted enrollment -- Summary -- Enrollment in ESL programs -- ESL enrollment: regional variation -- Trends in enrollment in public providers -- ESL enrollment and ADA units -- Where is enrollment constrained? -- Teaching for free? -- Summary -- Policy implications and conclusion -- Policy consequences of overenrolled courses -- Partial reform of the adult school funding formula -- How much does partial reform of the funding formula help? -- Policy implications -- Summary -- Appendix A. Notes on data and methods -- Appendix B. Estimates and results -- References.

Immigrant youth who do not attend schools in the United States fare poorly on many standard measures of well-being, such as educational attainment, English language ability, earnings, health insurance coverage, and poverty status. Most federal and state dollars spent on youth do not reach these young people because the dollars go through educational institutions they do not attend. If policymakers wish to improve the well-being of this very vulnerable young immigrant population, traditional school systems are not likely to be a place to reach them. A federal program, the Migrant Education program (MEP), aims to serve out-of-school immigrant youth as a part of its mission, as do a few local and state programs. This report describes the population of out-of-school immigrant youth in California and the subset of this group served by MEP. The report uses census data to describe this population and then turns to program data from two regions in California's Migrant Education Program. these data not only help us understand educational backgrounds, socioeconomic needs, and academic goals more thoroughly than do the census data, but they also help us understand how the populations in the two regions may differ. Analyses of these data also lead us to suggest some changes to MEP for out-of-school immigrant youth, such as ways to target services, improve future data collection, and enhance program organization.

In 2010, Hispanics represented one out of every six people in the U.S. (up from one out of eight in 2000), such that the economic status of this population has become increasingly important for the economic direction of the nation. This volume brings together a group of scholars who analyze a variety of socioeconomic issues (particularly those related to education, poverty, and health) to assess how Hispanics have been faring relative to other Americans. A common theme across the chapters is that Hispanics tend to lag behind non-Hispanics with respect to their economic outcomes. Despite this lag, however, some of the studies indicate that Hispanics have been making progress in terms of improving their relative economic position in recent years. Several of the chapters also discuss policy implications. The intended audience includes social scientists, students, policymakers, and anyone interested in learning more about the economic conditions of Hispanic Americans. Many of the authors employed rigorous statistical methods to analyze the economic status of Hispanics, but the chapters were written to be accessible to a broad audience instead of one comprised mainly of quantitatively-oriented academics.