Chicano school failure and success : research and policy agendas for the 1990s /

For Mexican Americans, no issue has been more important than the education of their children. The US Commission on Civil Rights' Mexican American Education Study (5 vols., 1971-73) is one of the most comprehensive studies ever made of the education of minority children, but for nearly a quarter-century it has been largely ignored. So it is singularly appropriate that Chicano School Failure And Success appears now. Valencia (University of Texas, Austin) has skillfully edited a wide range of papers and other materials that largely originated in a 1989 conference on Chicano education held at Stanford. His book is the best contemporary index and register on the state of Mexican-American education, and is, indeed, welcome. The papers are arranged in five sections: Current Realities of Chicano Schooling Experience; Language and Classroom Perspectives on Chicano Achievement; Cultural and Familial Perspectives on Chicano Achievement; Educational Testing and Special Education Issues vis-`a-vis Chicano Students; The Big Picture and Chicano School Failure. Themes addressed (always with a review of extant scholarship) include, schooling conditions; bilingualism, acquiring second language; cultural conflict; cognitive socialization and educational testing. In a final chapter, Valencia provides a review and synthesis of the volume's findings and recommendatons. Fully indexed. An essential acquisition in education and the social sciences. For undergraduate and graduate students.-F. Cordasco, Montclair State College