Additive Schooling in Subtractive Times: Bilingual Education and Dominican Immigrant Youth in the Heights

9. Educating Immigrant Youth: Lessons Learned

231 9 Educating Immigrant Youth: Lessons Learned Immigrant children and youth are enrolling in schools at an accelerated pace: “The school-age foreign-born population increased by one million over the 1990s, and by 2000, 6 percent of the nation’s school-age children were born in another country” (Fry 2007, 579). The education of foreign-born students is a significant concern for major urban centers across the United States, but it is increasingly a preoccupation in geographically dispersed settings: in 2000, 67 percent of foreign-born students were being educated in the six largest traditional receiving states, down from 77 percent in 1990 (Capps, Fix, and Passel 2002; Fry 2007). Immigrant Latino students, who constitute the majority of immigrant students, face significant obstacles. Thirty-five percent of immigrant Latino students live in poverty (Fry and González 2008, ii–iv), and they tend to live in highly segregated areas where the schools lack resources and well-trained teachers (Gándara and Contreras 2009; Orfield and Eaton 1996; Orfield and Lee 2005). Their previous educational experiences, if of low quality, hinder their success in U.S. schools (Fry 2005; Van Hook and Fix 2000; Vernez and Abrahamse 1996). While immigrant students bring to their schooling important resources, such as optimism toward schooling and a resolve to succeed (Kao and Tienda 1995; Portes and Rumbaut 2001; Suárez-Orozco and Suárez-Orozco 1995; Suárez-Orozco, SuárezOrozco , and Todorova 2008), they “perform poorly on a variety of academic indicators, including achievement tests, grades, dropout rates, and college enrollment” (Suárez-Orozco, Pimentel, and Martin 2009, 713; see also Gándara 1994; Gándara and Contreras 2009; Ruiz-de-Velasco and Fix 2000). Immigrant students are also dropping out of school at alarm- 232 Additive Schooling in Subtractive Times ing rates (Fry and Lowell 2002; Fry 2005, 2007; Rosenbaum and Cortina 2004). And yet, from a policy perspective, “the needs and problems of immigrant students are rarely considered independent of their status as nonEnglish speakers” (McDonnell and Hill 1993, xi–xii). Because the language of immigrant students is considered a problem, educational policy focuses on how to make them transition toward English (Ruiz 1984); this deficit approach, in turn, generates all sorts of educational challenges (Gándara and Contreras 2009). The case study of Gregorio Luperón High School developed in this book offers key insights into the successful education of Latino immigrant students. In this chapter, we consider the lessons learned that will help educators optimize academic experiences for newcomer children and youth. The youth benefited from a school planned by and for Latino immigrants. The story of Luperón demonstrates the value of a community school planned by and for Latino immigrants. The political battle to open and maintain the school united the educators of Luperón, and the sense of ownership and shared struggle among the founders fueled their commitment to the school and its students. Further, there was a palpable sense at the school of collective effort oriented toward the edification of an entire community. Luperón’s founders translated the growing political influence of the Dominican community in Washington Heights into the concrete institutional resource of a bilingual high school. It is hard to overstate the value of having a space in which immigrant Latinos assumed major leadership roles and formed the overwhelming majority of the faculty, staff, and student population. The educators of Luperón established what Moll and Ruiz (2002) call educational sovereignty , based on self-determination and self-reliance. Notably, Luperón constructed its sovereignty in an inclusive way that also valued the contributions of Anglo teachers and staff. The generous Luperón version of sovereignty was rooted in social justice. While many scholars and citizens are justifiably concerned about the class and ethnic resegregation of U.S. schools (e.g., Frankenburg and Lee 2002; Orfield and Yun 1999), there is evidence of the value of “majority minority” schools when such schools have sufficient funding, employ highly trained faculty and staff, and pay specific attention to the educational and linguistic needs of emergent bilinguals (Gándara and Contreras 2009; National High School Center 2009). Educating Immigrant Youth: Lessons Learned 233 An engaged staff was essential to establishing a beneficial school culture. An important feature of Luperón was the role played by the entire staff in establishing a healthy and positive school culture. The bilingual secretary was essentially the gateway...