ABSTRACT
Data collected for the National Assessment of Educational Progress during the years 1994-2000 show a difference of approximately 25 points in reading between fourth-, eighth-, and tenth-grade students who routinely speak a language other than English at home and students who speak only English at home (Campbell, Hombo, & Mazzeo, 2000). Research addressing differential outcomes in school performance of linguistic minority and majority children has taught us that explanations for these differences must address a complex set of factors including, but not limited to, differences in socioeconomic, linguistic, cultural, and sociopolitical circumstances. We know of the overrepresentation of language minority children in high poverty schools, in chronically lowachieving schools, and in communities with low levels of formal education and low levels of economic resources of the type that translate into access to artifacts and experiences that are valued by schools. We know also that amid this picture of seeming deficit there exists a wealth of individual, family, and com-munity resources that enrich the lives of language minority children, but in ways that are not often captured by indicators of educational attainment. This is so because, by design, the intellectual and social resources of a particular minority group do not form part of the set of core values and knowledge targeted by most mainstream assessments of learning, which attempt to reflect the values and knowledge of a majority.
