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This ethnographic case study examined how 16 Latinx community college students experienced the transition to a selective 4-year public research-intensive university. Participants encountered challenges with social isolation, adapting to a fast-paced quarter system and to large course sizes, limited access to information on resources, restricted access to majors, and maintaining healthy lifestyles while attending to academic achievement. Participants benefited from involvement with student organizations, family, and professors, and accessing selected university resources for transfer students.

This study examined how heritage language and cultural funds of knowledge of Spanish-dominant Latinx immigrant families served as powerful resources for their concientización--critical awareness of important problems and social conditions--and bridged their cultural worlds of home, community, and school policy. The study drew on three complementary theories: Cultural Historical Activity Theory or Funds of Knowledge, Critical Pedagogy, and Bridging Multiple Worlds; all challenge common deficit models that these parents lack sufficient knowledge and concern for their children's formal education. Qualitative ethnographic study of Latinx immigrant parents in a parent engagement program revealed how dialogic interaction or plática, using colloquial funds of knowledge through dichos (words with extended metaphorical cultural significance) and refranes (proverbs conveying cultural wisdom about how to live and act), and cultural brokering from parent-coordinators helped parents author persuasive petition letters to school officials. The discussion addresses implications for research and practice supporting meaningful parent engagement.

A case study of a Latinx parent-school engagement program is presented illustrating how immigrant parents became collective political actors providing input into their California school district's formulation of its Local Control Accountability Plan (LCAP). The LCAP was part of newly adopted statewide Local Control Funding Formula policy providing supplemental funding to schools in support of services needed by students who were identified as low-income, English Language Learners (ELLs), and foster-care. The study investigated how Latinx parents developed a face-to-face understanding of the LCAP policy and planning process, and their rights and collective power as advocates for their children's education. Focused attention is given to one parent group advocating for summer academic programs and how parents negotiated rhetorical and linguistic formulation of arguments in their letter petition to the local school board. In so doing, parents drew on their cultural funds of knowledge and developed sensitivity to the communicative practices of school boards, and to the need of parents to present their voice and stances persuasively and assertively indicative of their rights as community members. The study helps ground theories of political action in the face-to-face world of parent engagement programs.

Subject-area standards such as Common Core State Standards for Language Arts and Mathematics and Next Generation Science Standards offer deeper, richer views of subject-area proficiency. In science, they underscore doing things with facts and concepts, such as explaining, planning, and investigating--activities that are intertwined with language, with specialized structures and functions of academic English. This article explores the implications of a sociocognitive view of learning for assessment based on these standards, focusing on English learners (ELs). The authors describe how ELs and native English speakers alike develop subject-area and language resources jointly through activities, and how teachers use local knowledge to scaffold this development for students from diverse cultures and varying English experience. They then describe concomitant assessment strategies. The grounding of the standards in learning progressions enables the design of tasks which, while complex, challenge particular aspects of capability at targeted levels. A strategy can be used to craft tasks that are at once consistent with the standards but targeted to students with differing profiles of capabilities. This design strategy is well suited to contextualized formative assessment in local contexts such as classrooms. It supports design for large-scale assessment as well, although rich and complex tasks that are not matched to students' language and subject-area profiles face the low generalizability that plagued performance assessments in the 1980s. We consider ways that assessment design and tailored adaption can ameliorate some of the difficulties.

Recent education reforms have begun to reframe academic discussion and teacher practice surrounding bilingual educational approaches for preparing "21st century, college and career ready" citizens. Given this broader context, in this article we examine ways that we might join implementation of dual language programs, Common Core State Standards, and critical pedagogy at the school and classroom levels via a teacher, school administrator, and teacher professional development program. We focus on a concrete example of a partnership between a progressive dual language school along the U.S.-Mexico border, known as Chula Vista Learning Community Charter School, and a bilingual teacher education program in the College of Education at San Diego State University, which prepares teachers and administrators to implement and develop dual language instruction aligned (but not beholden) to Common Core State Standards. We include discussion of a Freirian-based instructional program that helps unite the opportunities presented by dual language programs and standards-based reform initiatives in a deeper equity and social justice framework for educating students. We discuss opportunities ("oportunidades"), strategies ("estrategias"), and challenges ("retos") encountered during this collaborative work between the bilingual teacher preparation program, a Dual Language school, and one exemplary fourth grade teacher team and their enactment of a critical pedagogy-based curriculum. We conclude with a discussion of implications of our work for education of multilingual learners and the educators that work with them.

English-Spanish cognates are words that are spelled similarly or identically and possess the same or nearly the same meanings in both languages. Many cognates are academic vocabulary words and are very common in content area textbooks. The primary purpose of this investigation was to obtain an estimate of the number of different cognates in picture books. Two studies of picture books were conducted to determine their English-Spanish cognate content. Both studies found significant numbers of cognates in the picture books. Furthermore, it was found that trade books written in Spanish contained more unique cognates than those written in English. Finally, a free online database of the picture books and their cognates was presented.

This paper provides descriptive information regarding the composition of the Latinx population of the United States. I note differences in educational attainment and occupational mobility confirming findings by other authors–Latinix individuals continue to experience a stalled mode of incorporation in America. The paper also discusses policy implications, giving special attention to the changing character of the American economy. For Latinix people to advance socially and financially, they will need greater access to specialized technical skills. Without deliberate action on the part of government, the prospects seem dismal. Limited progress in educational institutions and the labour market threatens the future of children and grandchildren of Latinx immigrants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]