In Subtractive Schooling: US-Mexican Youth and the Politics of Caring, Angela Valenzuela investigates immigrant and Mexican American experiences in education. Valenzuela mentions differences in high schools between U.S born youth and immigrants such as how immigrants she interviewed seemed to achieve in school as they feel privileged to achieve secondary education. However, she found that her study provided evidence of student failure due to schools subtracting resources from these youths. Both are plagued by stereotypes of lacking intellectual and linguistic traits along with the fear of losing their culture. As a Mexican American with many family members who immigrated to the U.S to pursue a higher education, I have experience with Valenzuela’s
theory. I strongly agree that Valenzuela’s statement, “Schooling is organized in ways that subtract resources from Mexican youth”. My high school was separated into five different schools and I believe that each of the school’s demographics support her study. As a student, I heard voices segregating these different schools. Two of the schools on campus were predominantly Hispanic while I was in the school in which students called the white privileged school. The differences between these schools were clearly visible as the school I was in offered many high placement classes while the other schools only offered a handful. Much of the campus’s funding went into making sure that the school I attended got the most funding due to high testing scores which caused two of the schools on campus to close forcing students to move schools. As a Mexican American in this school, I felt very disconnected from my peers and teachers as I felt like I had no community there. Valenzuela found that students that did have a community support and caring teachers were invested in schooling. Unconditional acceptance and caring relationships with teachers as Valenzuela are crucial in student success. As a teaching intern, I worked with three English learning students. Their teacher did not speak Spanish and did not know how to help them which caused these students to fall severely behind the rest of the class. I connected with these students without the language barrier and they were quickly able to catch up with the class.
Tara Yosso’s is a motivational, informational book that gives us an insight and awareness of how the Chicana/o students struggles throughout their education in the American society. Critical Race Counterstories Along the Chicana/Chicano Educational Pipeline, portrays how Latino students have been marginalized in the educational system. Yosso addresses the problems that might be hindering students of color to drop out of school to continue to higher education. She does this research by analyzing various situations that still happen in the K-12 educational system, as in high school, and higher education. Yosso also addresses counterstories to better understand the experiences and struggles Chicanas/os go through in their schooling. Counterstories are important to be able to know what Chicanas/os struggles go through. Also tells about the outcomes that Chicanas/os have overcome when they are in a situation were they ate being underrepresented and how they have been dealing with these unequal educational opportunities. Her book addresses, awareness of how the Chicana/o culture is being underrepresented in the American educational system. It gives an understanding of why the Chicana/o students are leaking out of the educational pipeline. It also shows the obstacles this Latino students have to face to be able to make it through the educational pipeline. Chicana/o students want to continue to higher education they have to transform the educational system and acknowledge this culture to be successful instead of setting them to failure. Furthermore, this critique will analyze the strengths and the weaknesses of Tara Y...
Applying Figure 1.1 from Victoria Bernhardt’s (2013) book Data Analysis for Continuous School Improvement it is this evaluator’s opinion that Portage High School is at a crossroads as a school of compliance and a school of continuous improvement (p. 4). Of the nine area of evaluation, Portage marks five in the area of compliance and four in the area of continuous improvement. Hence, the assessment is that Portage High School sits firmly as a school focused on compliance. This is a strong reflection of the building principal that feels that the use of data is wasteful endeavor. According the principal, “The experts in our building guide our processes; data does not drive our school. It’s only purpose is to determine
The fourth chapter in Putnam’s Our Kids is titled “Schooling”, and it focuses on how education plays into class inequality. The argument is that while schools do not cause the opportunity gap between poor kids and rich kids, but the schools allow it to grow. Putnam claims, “schools as sites probably widen the class gap,” (182). How the schools act as these sites, is based strongly on the physical segregation of rich people from poor people. Putnam refers to this segregation as “residential sorting”, and states that, “residential sorting by income [...] has shunted high-income and low-income students into separate schools,” (163). Rich parents want their kids in the best schools, with the best teachers and the best peers, and are able to afford
In the article Mind-Sets and Equitable Education, Carol S. Dweck studies the link between mind-sets and beliefs and the influence it has on student success. This article examines how beliefs about how you learn impact the manner in which you learn. It is stated that growth mind-set as opposed to fixed mind-set promotes student success and achievement. Growth mind-set is the idea that intelligence is not something individuals are born with, but is rather a skill that individuals can develop through hard work and perseverance. Fixed mind-set opposes this idea as it views intelligence as an immutable trait individuals are born with. The article mentions that not only personal mind-set impacts an individual’s success but how they perceive the mind-set
Even if these students have achieved the highest honors and have the brains of an engineer, they aren’t able to reach their greatest potential because they simply do not have documents. Those who are undocumented are doomed to working backbreaking jobs that pay substantially below minimum wage. Spare Parts has challenged and shown me that it takes an immigrant double, or even triple the amount of toil to achieve anything in life. These boys endeavoured through adversities that many of us will never encounter. Luis luckily had a green card, but Lorenzo, Oscar, and Cristian were all living under the fear of deportation. They all wanted more after graduating from Carl Hayden but their dreams quickly vanished because the reality was that they’re illegal immigrants. When we hear the word “immigration”, we automatically think “illegal”, but what we don’t see is that these illegal immigrants are trying to reach their own American Dreams by coming to America. As the author includes Patrick J. Buchanan’s perspective on immigrants, “...families came to the United States to leech off government services.” (35), it shows us how immigrants are perceived.
Whether children of Mexican immigrants adopt pan-ethnic terms (Latino, Hispanic), American identities, or identities rooted in their home country (Mexican) reflects how they view themselves in relation to the ethnic stratification system in the United States (Tovar, Jessica, and Cynthia Feliciano, 2009). Biculturalism may be expressed using a Mexican-American self-label, as opposed to either an American or Mexican label (Rumbaut, 1994). For those who are viewed as non-white in the United States (including most recent immigrants from Mexico and their children), ethnic identity development is an important part of overall adolescent identity formation, and may be especially complicated for those who grow up in the United States, but have parents from another country (Rumbaut,
A. According to this article, the research question arises from adolescents of Mexican-origin and economic hardship families to learn why t...
Education is the key to individual opportunity, the strength of our economy, and the vitality of our democracy. In the 21st century, this nation cannot afford to leave anyone behind. While the academic achievement and educational attainment of Hispanic Americans has been moving in the right direction, untenable gaps still exist between Hispanic students and their counterparts in the areas of early childhood education, learning English, academic achievement, and high school and college completion.
---. "Immigrant Students and Public Schools: A Fluent Fit - Public School Review." Public School Review - Profiles of USA Public Schools. 15 Apr. 2010. Web. 01 Feb. 2011.
My object of study is Hispanic women experience inequality in education due to the social constructs of subordination of women and Hispanic culture. Historically women have been conditioned with a patriarchal system, which a woman’s domain should be at home, to be a homemaker. The ideology of inferiority can and will justify the deprivation of natural born rights. During the progressive area and women’s rights movement women wanted to be seen as people, they wanted to have rights to own property, negotiate wages, legal documents, access to birth control, and the right to vote, those women who had the voice to deal with these issues were white upper and middle class women. During this time Hispanic women, amongst other minorities, were fighting battles against racism, segregation, exploitation in the work force, access to a good education, and oppression through Hispanic culture. It is not just a struggle to be Hispanic overcoming the inequalities within the education system but to be a Hispanic women within the education system has greater disadvantages. This case study will investigate what forces contribute to the inequality within the education system for Hispanic women in the United States.
Growing up in a Mexican household where education isn’t a priority or important has been one of my major obstacles that I’ve had to overcome. Although my family’s culture believes that education isn’t necessary their experiences and lifestyles have influence and motivate my choices for my future. I come from a home where I have no role model or someone influential. I have no one to ask for advice for college or anything involve in school. In most homes, older siblings help their younger siblings with their homework or projects but in my house no one was able to provide me with any help. I grew up to be independent and to do anything school related on my own. My parents are both immigrants who didn’t get to finish elementary
Latinos will make a big portion of our education system as this population continues to grow in the United States. It is estimated that by 2050 about one quarter of our nation will be of Latino decent; this will be a higher number in some states such as California, Florida, New York, and Texas (U.S. Census Bureau, 2010). At the same time, there has also being an increase in national interest in parental involvement in our schools. Schools who work with families to support learning of children at home, such as doing homework or reading, tend to succeed not just in school, but throughout life (Henderson & Berla, 1994). If having more parent involvement is important for students’ educational benefits we need to take a look at why some Latino parents are not involved in some schools and districts, and if they are not, we need to understand their perceptions of their participation in the education of their children. I will examine existing research, theories, and studies related to my research study.
The School by Donald Barthelme is a short story that proposes the significance of life in front of its reader in the most absurd way possible. Fiction is a story that is not true whereas non-fiction is a tale based on real time. But what genre would best suit this short story by Donald? A fiction because it seems so unrealistic and depressing or a nonfiction because it conveys the true message of life through unusual occurrences of the deaths and life. The School should be considered a non-fiction because it states death is inevitable, life is unpredictable and love is all we need.
Immigration has been a part of American history ever since the United States was founded. American schools were built on the foundation of European traditions that have come to be problematic due to the increased number of immigrants from different regions of the world. There have been recent arguments over the quality of education migrants, legal and illegal, are receiving in secondary education. There are various differences amongst legal and illegal immigrants’ education in the United States that are controlled by environmental situations that alter achievement in the classroom. In this decade, what are school administrators doing in secondary education to prepare immigrants students to go to college, when these students are sometimes placed in environments that hold them back from receiving post-secondary education?
As a nation, we have established institutions of learning that cater to the needs of some. Our schools allow a select handful of students to succeed. Certain segments of our population appear to be at greater risk than others. The future does not bode well for young black and Latino men and women who do not make it through high school. According to Duane Campbell, author of Choosing Democracy, the unemployment rate for Latino men and women is substantially higher than the national average and an African American child is as likely to go to prison as to college (15). According to the Economic Policy Institute, in 1991 43% of African American children and 35% of Latino children were living in poverty. It is not surprising that a vast number of the 501,875 annual school drop-outs come from impoverished black and Latino families.