Chicago- My first visit to Washington, D.C., occurred when I was 7. The town impressed several things upon my young brain: Compared to Chicago, the buildings were all squat and white, and traffic was horrendous. But it was where the president lived and therefore the world's center of power. 

     The family had traveled there to visit my dad's cousin Lupe, who turned out to be one of a wave of what a recent Washington Post article called the "educated elite" from Latin America who came to the nation's capital in the 1960s, '70s and '80s. 

     She and her children, who are my age, helped shape the Hispanic community in Washington, which today lays claim to being the most educated and affluent in the U.S.  

     Stunningly, Washington's 700,000 Hispanics boast a median household income of nearly $61,000 -- the highest in the country among Latinos. And at a time when school districts everywhere are struggling with how to get Latino graduation rates up -- nationally, the dropout rate for Hispanics is almost 20 percent -- almost one in four Hispanic adults in Washington has at least a four-year college degree, almost double the national rate for Latinos. 

     What would be really fantastic is if the city and its surrounding suburbs had a winning formula for educating and launching Latinos into careers -- one that could be replicated across the country in the states with the highest number of Latino residents. But alas, that's not the case. 

     While cities like New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago have traditionally offered a mix of both unskilled and professional job opportunities, basically, Washington offers only brain work. It's a place overflowing with professional positions at embassies, international organizations, government agencies and numerous think tanks. As a result, the people who flock there bring their education with them: According to the Post, the 23 percent of Hispanics who have college degrees still trails the 60 percent of Asians, 57 percent of whites and 29 percent of African-Americans with degrees. And they pass on their educational expectations to their children.

     Through her adoption of controversial student and teacher performance assessment practices, outgoing schools chief Michelle Rhee put Washington's struggling school system into the national spotlight -- further highlighting this tale of two cities where, as a whole, the Latino community is better off than other U.S. Hispanic communities. But as you look at those outside the elite, well-educated group, the depressing reality is that about 12 percent of adult Hispanics in Washington live below the poverty level, and as many people have college degrees as have less than a ninth-grade education. 

     I celebrate and envy Washington's Latinos but lament that their mostly imported affluence isn't something that can be easily copied and scaled to benefit Latinos across the U.S. The rest of the country will have to continue finding ways to grow their own Latino success stories.