Mexican Americans, Education of

Societal Context

According to U.S. Census data and recent Pew Hispanic Center reports (August 26, 2008; September 16, 2009; and April 22, 2010), there are now more than 30 million individuals of Mexican ancestry—native born and Mexican immigrants—in the United States. As a group, this is the largest and youngest minority population. In 2008, people of Mexican ancestry accounted for about two thirds of all Hispanics. Of these, slightly more than 60% were native born and nearly 40% foreign born. Of every 10 Mexican immigrants, 6 arrived within the last 20 years, and 20% are now U.S. citizens.

More than half of all people of Mexican ancestry live in the West, almost one third in the South, and about 10% in the Midwest. Relatively few live in the Northeast. Almost 40% of Mexican Americans now reside in California, another 25% in Texas. The largest populations are found in Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, San Antonio, and Phoenix. More than 1 in 5 Mexican Americans lives in poverty, with rates higher among Mexican immigrants than native born. Most Mexican Americans are proficient in English. The acquisition of English has accelerated in comparison with past generations, and this has been accompanied by a concomitant loss of proficiency in Spanish.

Patricia Gándara and Frances Contreras indicate that there are approximately 11 million people of Mexican ancestry in California, comprising more than 80% of all Latinos in the state, more than one third of the total population. The San Francisco Chronicle reports that Latino students became the majority in California public schools (50.4%) in 2009–2010; 3.1 million of 6,195,655 million students. In addition to California and Texas, students of Mexican ancestry account for a [Page 1476]significant proportion of the public school population in Arizona, Colorado, Illinois, Nevada, and New Mexico.

Historical Context

Historically, Mexican Americans have struggled for equality of opportunity and access to the kind of schooling that transcends social, economic, cultural, and linguistic divisions within society. Landmark court cases established the rights of Mexican American students based on national origin and language minority status. For example, Roberto Alvarez v. Lemon Grove School District (1931) was the first nationally recognized court case resulting in court-ordered school desegregation. The case is illustrative of the segregation found in many California school districts with significant numbers of Mexican American students. In other districts, tracking and exclusionary practices were often used to segregate students within the schools they attended. In the Lemon Grove case, more than 70 children of Mexican descent were involuntarily removed from the school they attended and moved to a segregated school. Finding the district's separation of students to be segregation, the California judge returned the children to their previous school. In Texas, the parents of Mexican American children were taking similar legal steps to desegregate their schools (e.g., Independent School District v. Salvatierra, 1930).

...