First look: Biden orders new panel on Hispanic education

Driving the news: Biden signed an executive order Monday creating a White House initiative, "Advancing Educational Equity, Excellence, and Economic Opportunity for Hispanics," which will be housed within the U.S. Department of Education.

• This will focus on breaking down barriers and systemic challenges facing Hispanic students from early childhood through college, the White House told Axios.
• Obama administration official and former journalist Melody Gonzales, of San Diego, will lead the effort and collect data on the state of Latino education as schools re-open from the pandemic.

Of note: The order also creates the new Presidential Advisory Commission on Advancing Equity, Excellence, and Economic Opportunity for Hispanics, which will be made up of business, education, and community leaders.

• The commission will offer recommendations to the president and Education Secretary Miguel Cardona.

By the numbers: Latinos have a national adjusted cohort high school graduation rate of 82% during the 2018–19 school year, the last available numbers, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

• That rate was below the overall national average by four percentage points and seven percentage points behind whites.

• About two-in-ten Hispanic children (21%) were living in poverty in 2019, the Pew Research Center reported last year. That's higher than the national average of 14% of all children.

Don't forget: New Mexico, the state with the largest percentage of Hispanic residents in the country, is locked in a legal battle called the Yazzie/Martinez lawsuit.

• The lawsuit alleges that New Mexico has failed to provide a sufficient and uniform system of education to all New Mexican children as guaranteed by the state constitution.
• New Mexico has regularly ranked as 49th or 50th annually in education.