As President Barack Obama emphasizes that educational achievement in the United States is a critical economic issue, Colorado suffers the largest “ethnic achievement” gap in the country. That’s according to Boulder’s Daily Camera, which reports that the divide between whites and Latinos receiving an associate’s degree or higher is 39 percentage points. The national average is less than 20 points. Though Latinos are the fastest growing ethnic demographic in Colorado, only eight percent have a bachelor’s degree and only six percent have an associate’s degree. One obvious problem is that too few Latinos are graduating from high school: Nearly 40 percent don’t receive a diploma.

Obama told The Today Show this morning that China, India, and other nations have school systems that are creating students who outperform those in America. “They have caught up and now in some cases have surpassed us,” he said, adding that better standards and teachers are needed and that perhaps children should be kept in school an average of one month longer each year (via USA Today).

Meanwhile, in other education news, Colorado education commissioner Dwight Jones will find out later this week if he’ll be offered the job of overseeing the fifth-largest school district in the nation, in Clark County, Nevada, which includes Las Vegas, reports The Denver Post.