Additive Schooling in Subtractive Times

Bilingual Education and Dominican Immigrant Youth in the Heights

Lesley Bartlett, Ofelia Garcia

• Publisher: Vanderbilt University Press
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9780826517630, 9780826517623
• eBook ISBN: 9780826517647
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Additive Schooling in Subtractive Times documents the unusually successful efforts of one New York City high school to educate Dominican immigrant youth, at a time when Latino immigrants constitute a growing and vulnerable population in the nation's secondary schools. Based on four and a half years of qualitative research, the book examines the schooling of teens in the Dominican Republic, the social and linguistic challenges the immigrant teens face in Washington Heights, and how Gregorio Luperon High School works with the community to respond to those challenges. The staff at Luperon see their students as emergent bilinguals and adhere to a culturally and linguistically additive approach.

After offering a history of the school's formation, the authors detail the ways in which federal No Child Left Behind policies, New York State accountability measures, and New York City's educational reforms under Mayor Michael Bloomberg complicated the school's efforts. The book then describes the dynamic bilingual pedagogical approach adopted within the school to help students develop academic Spanish and English. Focusing on the lives of twenty immigrant youth, Bartlett and Garcia also show that, although the school achieves high completion rates, the graduating students nevertheless face difficult postsecondary educational and work environments that too often consign them to the ranks of the working poor.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• 1. Introduction: Schooling Immigrant Youth
• 2. In the Heights: Dominican Youth Immigrate to New York
• 3. Education Policy as Social Context
• 4. From Subtractive to Additive Schooling: The History of Gregorio Luperón High School
• 5. Languaging at Luperón
• 6. Challenges Facing Immigrant Youth at Luperón
• 7. Social Capital and Additive Schooling at Luperón
• 8. The Political Economy of Education: Trajectories of Luperón Students through School and Beyond
• 9. Educating Immigrant Youth: Lessons Learned
• Notes
• References
• Index