ABSTRACT
This is a quote from a teacher who is participating in a multicultural literacy program in Southeast Michigan. He perceives a dramatic improvement in his African American students' reading and writing performance, which he links to this multicultural program. Many teachers and parents, however, continue to see evidence of widespread patterns of failure among students in poverty. Others are concerned that the gap between the school literacy achievement of students who are culturally and linguistically diverse and those who are European American has widened (Au, 1998; Ladson-Billings, 1994). As the number of these students increases in our schools, the expectation that our educational system will meet their needs also increases significantly. In their article, Reyhnor and Garcia (1989) accentuated the issue:
Helping these students become successful readers and writers remains one of the greatest challenges schools face.
