Since 1971 the status of Mexican American education hasn't changed significantly in three important areas: students, curriculum, and educational finance and resources. Mexican American students are underrepresented at all academic levels, especially higher levels, and in advanced science and math courses. Educational efforts begun in the 1960s…

To spur English teachers to change their attitudes and methods in dealing with nonnative English speaking students, this autobiographical account by a Chicana woman describes how English teachers caused her to feel insecurity, frustration, and embarrassment about her use of language. Among the problems the author describes are her suffering at…

The primary data source for a study oF entry into postsecondary education was the National Longitudinal Study of the High School Class of 1972. From this data it was seen that almost one-third of high school seniors enter four-year colleges within two years of graduation, and nearly half are in either two- or four-year institutions at that time.…

This Spanish edition reports on the Aspira National Think Tank Conference attended by educational leaders and social scientists representing the major bilingual communities namely, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, and Cubans. The conference studied four major topics: (1) equality and not similarity, theory, rationale, and objectives of bilingual…

The development of the Equal Employment Opportunity Program (EEOP) of the Department of Justice, the problems that have been solved along the way, the obstacles which remain, and the actions that are being taken to achieve equal opportunity in employment throughout the department are described in this document. The Department's affirmative action…

A community college is committed to serve all persons living in the areas it encompasses, and it must demonstrate this commitment. At Sauk Valley College in Dixon, Illinois, language instruction must extend beyond the traditional Spanish-for-anglos classes, because there is a large population of Mexican-Americans living within the school district.…

Foreign language teaching methodology is confronted with the problem of teaching Spanish to English-dominant native Spanish speakers. Linguistic documentation is lacking to accurately evaluate the linguistic competence of the bilingual student, documentation also useful in the preparation of adequate instructional materials. This paper describes…

The objective of this study is to assess whether arts-based curriculum facilitates the acquisition of English as a Second Language without sacrificing proficiency in the first language (in this case, Spanish). The paper has two chief parts, one theoretical, the other empirical. In the first part, similarities between authentic arts-based…

The Puerto Rican language-culture nexus is seen as the natural field where young Puerto Ricans forge their ethnic identities. Ethnographic theory and methods were used to study this nexus from a naturalistic perspective. A focus group of 12 Puerto Rican 8th grade students (9 males and 3 females) attending a school within 1 Puerto Rican barrio in…

The relationship between instructional treatment manifested as mastery learning and non-mastery learning strategies and various measures of Spanish proficiency was studied with 41 freshmen at an all-female high school in the New Orleans (Louisiana) area. Subjects were grouped homogeneously into 2 classes of 22 and 19 students, representing the…

As part of a communicative approach and to provide non-linguistic information to students, authentic videotape recordings were incorporated into the summer intensive Spanish course in the University of South Carolina's master's program in international business. Students were introduced to the tapes by first seeing segments without sound, both to…

A sample of 15 eighth-grade Hispanic students in a bilingual classroom were used for a descriptive analysis of students' writing samples to compare their growth between pre- and post- writing samples in Spanish and English. This was accomplished by juxtaposing English and Spanish pre- and post-tests using the same holistic rubric developed by the…

This study followed longitudinal achievement data from Hispanic students with limited proficiency in English who participated in a pilot instructional program. The program involved bilingual curriculum content (BCC) in the home language and was initiated in the winter of 1983-84 and continued through the 1986-87 school year. Six elementary schools…

A federally-funded three-year project is described that was undertaken by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages to train a group of Texas-based college level foreign language educators in French, German, and Spanish to serve as oral proficiency interviewers and evaluators of all applicants for a Texas state teaching certificate…

The El Paso (Texas) Independent School District's district-wide program in majority-language (English) immersion is examined to determine the source of its success. The program's similarities to and differences from the Canadian immersion model are explored. The program's superior results in comparison with the same district's transitional…