The Tomás Rivera Policy Institute

How We're Effective

TRPI's nonpartisan research impacts policy making, civic engagement and community mobilization, delivering actionable recommendations that have inspired the following:

Our findings on the lack of school breakfast program offerings in Southern California elementary schools resulted in the initiation of breakfast programs benefiting nearly 30,000 students .

TRPI revealed the inequity of Advanced Placement (AP) courses in California public schools, which led the American Civil Liberties Union to file a lawsuit against the California Department of Education for equitable relief. The Institute is cited in the first page of the legal brief.

In December 2004, the Institute released The New Latino South and the Challenge to Public Education: Strategies for Educators and Policymakers in Emerging Immigrant Communities . The study received national media attention, and inspired the Associated Press to assign its reporters to a regional study in 2005.

The Institute's June 2004 policy brief, Eliminating Outreach at the University of California: Program Contributions and the Consequences of their Reductions , recommended restoring $29.3 million in state funding for UC outreach--the allocation the programming received in the prior budget year (2003-04). On July 27, Governor Schwarzenegger signed into budget this amount, helping to maintain the infrastructure of outreach programming .

In December 2003, TRPI's College Knowledge findings inspired The Sallie Mae Fund to commission the largest national survey of Latino parents and young adults' college financial assistance knowledge. Based on these surveys' findings, Sallie Mae began a 22-city tour promoting College Knowledge in Latino neighborhoods .

TRPI's September 2003 survey on Black and Latino attitudes on California's Proposition 54 (the Racial Privacy Act) demonstrated that close to 50% of Black and Latino voters in California did not know the significance of this initiative. Our survey findings led to anti-Proposition 54 campaigns , which saturated Black radio and Spanish-language television in the last two weeks of the campaign. The result: Blacks and Latinos voted 3 to 1 against this initiative, a factor which contributed to the defeat of this initiative.

In 2002, TRPI produced a report on the lack of "College Knowledge" by low-income Latino parents. The report led the mayor of Los Angeles to begin a city-wide program to assist Latino parents fill out financial aid forms. This same report has been cited in editorials by the Arizona Republic and the Denver Post, as well as a posting on the White House web site on Hispanic education.

The Institute has monitored and periodically publicized the impact of the University of California's Regents decision to eliminate racial and ethnic preferences in the application rates and admissions of Latino and African American undergraduates.

The Institute's report on child care access and cultural considerations for Latino working families was utilized by over fifty Latino child care organizations to justify their funding requests to local governments and foundations.

At the height of California's Proposition 209 debate, our report on Latino voters' perceptions and lack of knowledge of the anti-affirmative action initiative mobilized Latino civic leaders to conduct public education outreach campaigns on the measure.

The California Hispanic Legislative Caucus used TRPI's report on minority children's lack of enrollment in public health insurance programs to advocate for increased funding for outreach and enrollment efforts for the health of vulnerable minority populations.

The Institute worked with Latino state legislators from across the country to produce a K-12 educational agenda entitled Closing the Achievement Gaps, which was unanimously adopted by the National Hispanic Caucus of State Legislators .