The work of addressing the challenge of the education of Latinos/as has begun through, among other efforts, the National Latino/a Education Research and Policy Project, or NLERAP. Beginning in 2000 as a national initiative of the Centro de Estudios Puertorriquenos at Hunter College, NLERAP's goal has been to add multiple Latino/a perspectives to the type of educational research needed to meet the needs of the communities throughout the U.S. After hosting a series of regional meetings around the country that invited educators, community activists, university scholars, and others within the broader Latino/a community to comment on the pressing educational needs of Latinos/as, the NLERAP National Advisory Board developed and published a research agenda. The Agenda articulated a framework for using participatory and collaborative research results to influence the outcomes of schooling for Latino/a youth. In this document, the authors address the context of education for Latino/as on the three levels enunciated in the Agenda documents (i.e., interpersonal, instructional, and institutional). They envision the review as a critical synthesis of the literature, intended for both professional and scholarly audiences. The intent is to provide a useful tool for researchers, practitioners, advocates, and administrators undertaking studies relating to the improvement of education for Latino/a students in their local areas. A major purpose is to contextualize the framework and approaches that have been used previously by others to analyze schooling problems found in different Latino/a communities around the country. The document begins with a description of the NLERAP approach to research on the education of Latinos/as in the U.S. with a focus on sociocultural and sociopolitical contexts, and a description of Participatory Action Research, or PAR, an approach to pedagogy and research that shows great promise in both promoting achievement and encouraging civic engagement. This is followed by a brief general overview of the education of Latinos/as, including both historical and demographic data and an articulation of some of the foremost challenges concerning educational attainment among the various Latino/a communities. (Contains 2 footnotes.)