Four out of five cities that rank in the bottom five among the 37 that Next America analyzed for high school and college attainment are located around California's Central Valley. Dallas is the exception. Only 5 to 7 percent of the Latino populations hold a four-year degree or higher in the California metro areas of Bakersfield, Visalia, Salinas, Stockton, and Modesto. And just about half of Latinos have finished high school in Salinas, Bakersfield, Visalia, Fresno, and Dallas.

Those statistics have long concerned California education experts. They also carry serious implications for the state's future, says Michele Siqueiros, president of the Campaign for College Opportunity, a nonprofit working to expand access to higher education in California.

"We're on track to under-produce the number of graduates we need for the state's workforce and economy," says Siqueiros. "We do absolutely need to close gaps that exist for students of color in our state, considering that we are already a minority-majority state."

The challenge in the Central Valley is its high share of immigrant workers whose children are often first-generation college students. It is both one of the fastest-growing regions in the state and one of its poorest, according to data from the Campaign for College Opportunity.

While more students are enrolling, the goal now is to make sure they graduate, says Cheri Cruz, associate director of the Central Valley Higher Education Consortium, a partnership of 27 area colleges working to increase attainment in the region. Latino students in the Central Valley often arrive underprepared and without the financial resources and support that a college-educated parent can provide.

"They're working maybe one or two jobs, some of them are trying to balance family, and it's taking them seven years to go through college," Cruz says. "They're going to give up. We know that without that support at home, without all of what it takes to support someone going through college, it's really easy to just give up. So persistence becomes an issue."

The Central Valley Higher Education Consortium is tackling attainment from many angles—from hosting math and college boot camps to facilitating collaboration on curriculum between high schools and colleges, as well as providing more course-scheduling flexibility.

"With students that are highly at risk of not completing, the best thing we can do is to decrease the time to degree, especially for Hispanic students," Cruz says. "They have other priorities; they want to get out and work and start a family. We want to get them through, get them out and get them employed."

Already there is noticeable progress among second-generation Latinos in the Central Valley. Attainment levels for Latinos tend to skew low overall, because they include education levels of both immigrants who might not have degrees and those who were born and educated in the United States. High school graduation rates immediately shoot up past 75 percent for native-born students in those Central Valley metro areas, reaching as high as 81 percent in Visalia. College completion among native-born Latinos reaches 13 percent in the Salinas metro area and 10 percent in Visalia and Stockon.