Across America, citizens debate immigration. It's an old question and a big one. It's about who we are as a nation and what we want to become.
Hispanics, most of them from Mexico, are among the largest immigrant groups. They come looking for work and better lives. Many of them come to harvest the produce of the land: apples and strawberries, lettuce and peppers, cotton and potatoes. Many stay, not only for jobs, but for the education U.S. schools can give their children.
The anti-immigration voices are calling for building walls at the border, for sending in the troops, for locking kids out of schools. They are calling for making English the official and only language of government.
Those who argue the opposing view say we have been a nation of immigrants since the Pilgrims met the Wam- panoag tribe in the land we now know as Massachusetts. They say our strength lies in the many colors of our ethnic palette. They say, "Let us honor and embrace diversity."
In communities divided on who belongs, schools struggle to educate children whose first language is not English. Under the Constitution, no child can be turned away from the classroom. But it's not enough to let the child sit at a desk, left on her own to make it or fail. Schools, the courts have ruled, must take steps to help the language-minority child grasp the lesson and understand the language.
In these pages, you will meet teachers and administrators who are reaching across the cultural and linguistic divide to educate the newcomers. You will meet a former farmworker who wants her children to study law, medicine, and architecture. You will follow a recent immigrant through her day as a ninth-grader at a school that sets high standards for all and accepts excuses from none. You will look in on a first-grader who writes to Santa in two languages--just to be certain he gets his Super Nintendo.
You will find a synthesis of the research on bilingual education. A discussion on systemic reform. A look inside Northwest schools that are innovating. And ideas about what works.
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Date of Last Update: 9/28/01 
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