ABSTRACT
Today, one in three children nationwide is from an ethnic or racial minority group, one in seven speaks a language other than English at home, and one in fifteen is born outside the U.S. (García, 2001). The linguistic and culture diversity of America’s schools population has increased dramatically during the past decade, and is expected to increase even more in the future (see Valencia, Chapter 2 of this volume). The concept of “minority” group as a “marker” for Hispanics will become obsolete. Moreover, educating children from Chicano immigrant and non-immigrant families is a major concern of school systems across the country. For many of these children, American education is not a successful experience. While one-tenth of non-Hispanic White students leave school without a diploma, one-third of Hispanics and two-thirds of immigrant students drop out of school (National Research Council, 1997). Confronted with this dismal reality, administrators, teachers, parents, and policymakers (executive branch, legislative branches, and the courts) have urged each other to do something different-change teaching methods, adopt new curricula, allocate more funding, and hold educational institutions accountable. Such actions at the federal and state level have and will continue to affect Chicano students in general and language minority students in particular.
