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

1. Introduction: Schooling Immigrant Youth

1 1 Introduction: Schooling Immigrant Youth In recent decades, the population of immigrants in the United States has steadily increased. The numbers of foreign-born living in the United States grew from 9.6 million in 1970 to 28.4 million in 2000 and 38 million in 2006 (U.S. Census 2006–2008). Over the course of these years, the demographics of immigrant populations have changed as well. While in earlier decades the majority of immigrants came from Europe, by 2000 the majority hailed from Latin America. From 1990 to 2000, the Latino population in the United States grew from 22.4 million to 35.3 million (Logan 2001). Many of these immigrants were so-called New Latinos—Latinos from places like the Dominican Republic and El Salvador who joined groups with longer histories of immigration, including Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and Cubans. The number of New Latinos more than doubled from 1990 to 2000, from 3.0 million to 6.1 million, and their numbers continue to grow (Logan 2001). The rise in immigration and changes among immigrants has resulted in a diversification of the U.S. student population as well. Immigrant children constitute a growing but often “overlooked and underserved” percentage of the American student body (Ruiz-de-Velasco and Fix 2000). The school-age, foreign-born population increased from 2 to 6 percent between 1970 and 2000 (Capps et al. 2005, 5; Fry 2007). Thirty-five percent of Latino youth are foreign-born (López 2009). Providing appropriate schooling for this growing but vulnerable population is a mounting concern across the United States as immigrants become more geographically dispersed. While in 2000, 67 percent of the total U.S. foreign-born population resided in the six large immigrant-receiving states—California, 2 Additive Schooling in Subtractive Times Florida, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, and Texas—between 1990 and 2000 the foreign-born population more than doubled in nineteen other states (Capps et al. 2005; Capps, Fix, and Passel 2002; Fry 2007, 580). One obvious issue facing immigrant children is the need to learn English . The population of English learners has increased at a rate seven times that of the total student enrollment in public schools (NCELA 2006). While this population includes diverse language groups, it is striking that nearly 13 percent of all schoolchildren in the United States speak Spanish as their home language.1 First-generation immigrant children form an increasing percentage of the school-age population, and their specific needs (including linguistic needs) merit serious attention. The widely varying means through which schools accommodate their changing student bodies, and the consequences of these decisions, are significant . How can schools best meet the needs of these newcomer students ? How do these newcomers fare during high school and beyond? This book explores the ways in which one school has interpreted and responded to these questions. The research presented in this monograph draws from a qualitative case study of a bilingual high school for Latino newcomer immigrant youth—mostly Dominicans—in New York City. The school, Gregorio Luperón High School, represents a unique effort to serve the educational needs of immigrant newcomer youth. For a period of four years, we conducted school-based observations; interviewed administrators, faculty, students , and parents; and traced the impact of public policies on the school in order to address the following research questions: How does Luperón support the social, linguistic, and academic development of recently arrived Latino adolescents? What challenges do the school and its students face, and how do they respond? How do students progress through the school? To what extent is the school able to facilitate social mobility for these students? In answering these questions, by employing a sociocultural approach to the study of educational policy as enacted across various contexts, we consider the ways in which contemporary federal, state, and city educational mandates make possible certain practices within the school, even as they constrain instruction in other ways. We argue that the imposition of standardized testing and the mania for testing outcomes has required the school to narrow its curricular focus while potentially undermining political support for Luperón at a critical period in its development. Nevertheless , the school has managed to adapt to the constraints of testing, pri- Introduction: Schooling Immigrant Youth 3 marily by using a provision that allows their students to take most of the standardized tests in Spanish and therefore meet graduation requirements...