In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

PREFACE This book has been a life’s work. The most conscious sense I have of its beginning is when I taught elementary school in inner-city Los Angeles. Teaching in a working-class community that was almost all Latina/o, mainly Mexican, I saw things I had always known but never wanted to witness in such vivid detail. In the three years I worked there, I faced the constant and systematic denial of educational opportunity to all but a select few students. I was enraged and determined to use my academic work to address the needs of Chicana/o students. During that time, as a doctoral student, I began research that would help me understand how certain Chicana/o students survive and even thrive in the midst of the educational injustice I had witnessed. I was particularly interested in how issues of race themselves affect Chicana/o students’ success and failure. This work led me, several years later, to embark on a massive research agenda. I wanted to deconstruct Chicana/o students’ social identities. That is, I wanted to understand how Chicana/o youth understand themselves within their social worlds. In addition, I wanted to determine how, if at all, these students’ social identities were related to their school lives. My interests were shared by many others I had met in a number of different arenas of my experience. In every Chicana/o community in which I have spent any time, the same concerns hang thick in the air. Although different communities and individuals emphasize specific issues such as crime, underemployment, or gangs, two interconnected factors shape these concerns: poverty and education. The roles of poverty and education in shaping Chicana/o community life are grounded in a legacy of oppression that is far removed from the twenty-first century and yet ever present in the daily lives of millions of Chicanas/os. Parents, ix 00a-T3261-FM 3/22/05 1:21 PM Page ix c h i c a n a s a n d c h i c a n o s i n s c h o o l community members, and students themselves do not sit idly and watch these problems wreak havoc. In barrios across the United States, members of these communities dedicate their lives to addressing those concerns . They link their concerns to larger issues of political, economic, and social inequality and injustice. In striving to address these injustices, there is always a large group that focuses on education and schooling. Education is seen as the means by which families can climb out of the poverty that has often plagued them for generations. The concerns of Chicana/o communities about the schooling of their children are many. In the end, parents want their children to have committed teachers who have the resources to provide students with the skills to obtain good jobs. Parents are frightened by the possibility that their children will suffer and struggle to survive as they themselves have. The questions that have been asked in these communities for generations are these: Why are so many Chicana/o students failing in the schools? Why are so many schools failing Chicana/o students? And what can be done about this failure? Over the years, both Chicana/o communities and researchers have found a number of answers to the first question regarding failure. Even at the turn of the new century, however, I heard a leading researcher on Latina/o schooling explain that although we have a great deal of data and we can attempt to link poverty, segregation, and other factors to Latina/o school failure, the data do not tell us why this failure has happened and why it continues to happen. This book will provide answers to that question in very concrete terms. In so doing, the book will help us understand the second question—why schools fail so many Chicanas /os. Unfortunately, the final question regarding what can be done has been even more difficult to answer. It is that question that drives my work. I want to be able to help Chicana/o communities (and those who want to work with these communities) do something about Chicana/o school failure. I have been frustrated at the consistent inability of the schools to improve Chicana/o school performance. I have been equally frustrated with the research community. While we have made significant progress in understanding what is happening in our schools, researchers have made little...

Share