As the Mexican American student population in U.S. public schools climbs to over 8 million, the establishment of policies that promote equity and respect have never been more crucial. In Mexican Americans and Education, Estela Godinez Ballón provides an overview of the relationship between Mexican Americans and all levels of U.S. public schooling. Mexican Americans and Education begins with a brief overview of historical educational conditions that have impacted the experiences and opportunities of Mexican American students, and moves into an examination of major contemporary institutional barriers to academic success, including segregation, high-stakes testing, and curriculum tracking. Ballón also explores the status of Mexican American students in higher education and introduces theories and pedagogies that aim to understand and improve school conditions. Through her extensive examination of the major issues impacting Mexican American students, Ballón provides a broad introduction to an increasingly relevant topic. Ballón uses understandable and accessible language to examine institutional and ideological factors that have negatively impacted Mexican Americans’ public school experiences, while also focusing on their strengths and possibilities for future action. This unique overview serves as a foundation for both education and Chicana/o studies courses, as well as in teacher and professional development.

Originally published: Philadelphia: Balch Institute Press, 1990.

Examining the Mexican American struggle for equal education during the 1960s and 1970s in the Southwest in general and in a California community in particular, Donato challenges conventional wisdom that Mexican Americans were passive victims, accepting their educational fates. He looks at how Mexican American parents confronted the relative tranquility of school governance, how educators responded to increasing numbers of Mexican Americans in schools, how school officials viewed problems faced by Mexican American children, and why educators chose specific remedies. Finally, he examines how federal, state, and local educational policies corresponded with the desires of the Mexican American community.

Much of the history of Mexican American educational reform efforts has focused on campaigns to eliminate discrimination in public schools. However, as historian Guadalupe San Miguel demonstrates in Chicana/o Struggles for Education: Activisim in the Community, the story is much broader and more varied than that. While activists certainly challenged discrimination, they also worked for specific public school reforms and sought private schooling opportunities, utilizing new patterns of contestation and advocacy. In documenting and reviewing these additional strategies, San Miguel’s nuanced overview and analysis offers enhanced insight into the quest for equal educational opportunity to new generations of students. San Miguel addresses questions such as what factors led to change in the 1960s and in later years; who the individuals and organizations were that led the movements in this period and what motivated them to get involved; and what strategies were pursued, how they were chosen, and how successful they were. He argues that while Chicana/o activists continued to challenge school segregation in the 1960s as earlier generations had, they broadened their efforts to address new concerns such as school funding, testing, English-only curricula, the exclusion of undocumented immigrants, and school closings. They also advocated cultural pride and memory, inclusion of the Mexican American community in school governance, and opportunities to seek educational excellence in private religious, nationalist, and secular schools. The profusion of strategies has not erased patterns of de facto segregation and unequal academic achievement, San Miguel concludes, but it has played a key role in expanding educational opportunities. The actions he describes have expanded, extended, and diversified the historic struggle for Mexican American education.

Winner of the 2000 Outstanding Book Award presented by the American Educational Research Association Winner of the 2001 American Educational Studies Association Critics' Choice Award Honorable Mention, 2000 Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Awards Subtractive Schooling provides a framework for understanding the patterns of immigrant achievement and U.S.-born underachievement frequently noted in the literature and observed by the author in her ethnographic account of regular-track youth attending a comprehensive, virtually all-Mexican, inner-city high school in Houston. Valenzuela argues that schools subtract resources from youth in two major ways: firstly by dismissing their definition of education and secondly, through assimilationist policies and practices that minimize their culture and language. A key consequence is the erosion of students' social capital evident in the absence of academically oriented networks among acculturated, U.S.-born youth.

Hispanics and the Future of America presents details of the complex story of a population that varies in many dimensions, including national origin, immigration status, and generation. The papers in this volume draw on a wide variety of data sources to describe the contours of this population, from the perspectives of history, demography, geography, education, family, employment, economic well-being, health, and political engagement. They provide a rich source of information for researchers, policy makers, and others who want to better understand the fast-growing and diverse population that we call "Hispanic." The current period is a critical one for getting a better understanding of how Hispanics are being shaped by the U.S. experience. This will, in turn, affect the United States and the contours of the Hispanic future remain uncertain. The uncertainties include such issues as whether Hispanics, especially immigrants, improve their educational attainment and fluency in English and thereby improve their economic position; whether growing numbers of foreign-born Hispanics become citizens and achieve empowerment at the ballot box and through elected office; whether impending health problems are successfully averted; and whether Hispanics' geographic dispersal accelerates their spatial and social integration. The papers in this volume provide invaluable information to explore these issues.