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This chapter explores the tremendous consequences of the undereducation of students with a first language other than English. It is not likely, Patricia Gándara explains, that the United Stateswill be able to compete in a globalizing world if it does not figure out how to meet the needs of this large and increasing proportion of students. Current language education policies are squandering an asset—students who have the potential to be bilingual and biliterate—and turning it into a deficit. The source of the problem of underachievement among many children of immigrants is not the students’ language, but the way our school system treats language difference. Rather than building on these students’ assets, we define them as liabilities and treat them as though their languages and cultures need to be replaced.Gándara offers a set of recommendations to turn this around.

The rapid growth of the Latino population in the United States brings particular urgency to the problem of increasing school segregation. An analysis of the hypersegregation of Hispanic students, and particularly Spanish-speaking English Language Learners (ELLs), suggests that little or no attention has been given to the consequences of linguistic isolation for these students. This chapter suggests how creating dual-language schools could provide enriching, equal-status integrated schooling experiences that would benefit students of all races especially the Latino students in many regions of the country.

This chapter focuses on the use of Curriculum-Based Measurement (CBM) for making special education eligibility decisions for English Language Learners (ELLs) in Saint Paul Public Schools (SPPS), a large urban district in the Midwest. It describes the process, procedures, data, and results of using CBM reading, writing, and mathematics to develop district-wide local norms for ELLs. The norms presented can be used to represent typical progress for students who are learning basic skills while they are learning English. The progress of students referred for special education services can be compared to the progress of their peers. Comparisons can then be used for special education decision making (e.g. eligibility for placement in special education) and monitoring progress in academics.

This chapter explores Spanish language use, maintenance, and education in the Midwest. It surveys various studies of intergenerational language loss, Spanish language dialects, and inter-Latino language influences among Latinas/os. By comparing Spanish language use in the Midwest to other regions, the chapter illustrates common trends and highlights distinct regional differences that make the Midwest a critical region for studying language maintenance and Latina/o identity. Most significantly are the region’s numerous dual-language schools, the long period of contact between Mexicans and Puerto Ricans, and the site of the nation’s largest school district in Chicago.

This chapter addresses Spanish-speaking, English Language Learners (ELLs) in the United States (U.S.) who are sequential bilinguals; that is, English is acquired as a second language at school. The specific focus is the writing patterns of ELLs with atypical language development, who often present with multiple complexities in authenticating their language learning profiles. Presented first is an overview of Spanish-speaking ELLs in U.S. public schools, including the challenges of identifying those with atypical language development, followed by discussion of the few studies on the writing of ELLs with language learning disabilities. Finally, two case studies are offered to demonstrate how individual differences may be explored through a mixed methods profile analysis of student writing that examines the expression of both literate language and social identity.

This chapter features the Hyun family, the most recently immigrated family, who had arrived in the United States only two years prior to our meeting. Although the parents had decided to emigrate to the United States to provide their teenage sons with better opportunities—riding the popular wave of sending Korean children overseas for precollege study abroad—the mother had her own dreams about the desired impact of immigration for her own sense of cosmopolitanism as well as family cohesiveness. The chapter follows the travails of the older son as he struggled to meet the demands of being a college-bound English language learner—a fate foisted upon him against his will by his parents and initially resisted by him. The immigrant son eventually embraced his new American young adulthood in unexpected ways (and somewhat to his parents’ dismay) by joining the U.S. Army and serving tours in the Middle East. This chapter draws continuity between the more settled Korean American families (like those featured in previous chapters) and the more recently immigrated Korean American families by capturing the illusiveness as well as the unexpected possibilities of immigrant American young adulthood.

Chapter 5 begins with a discussion of the notion of emerging adulthood and provides examples of ways that music students display this development including through identity exploration, instability, being self-focused, feeling “in between” and finally the “age of possibilities.” The chapter then examines techniques for facilitating inclusive classrooms including attention to terminology, gender, ethnicity and race, sexuality, language learning, and disabilities. Stories from music students and professors are provided throughout. The chapter concludes with discussion of music schools as spaces for the development of allyhood.