This article examines the development of racially segregated Mexican rooms and Mexican schools in Wyoming during the Depression era. Working in concert with New Deal legislation, the segregation of Mexican children--regardless of US citizenship--in Wyoming was not just a matter of social practice and local custom, it became an expression of…

This article relies primarily on both postcolonial theory and Critical Indigenous Studies to demonstrate how the Mexican American Studies (MAS) PreK-12 Committee of the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies Tejas Foco, or chapter, successfully waged battle in getting the Texas State Board of Education to officially incorporate…

This paper evaluates the impact on dropout rates of a policy change in Mexico that eliminates grade retention for all first to third-grade students, causing a sharp reduction in repetition rates. I use a 12-year panel of schools to exploit such variation and estimate Difference-in-Difference models showing an average decrease in dropout rates of…

In recent decades, formal programmes for Mexican civic education have slowly shifted from an emphasis on national identity and solidarity through assimilation to a multicultural (if not intercultural) emphasis on forms of democratic membership and participation. Yet such advances in educational policy and curricula are limited and sometimes…

The accelerated growth of the Latin@ population in the United States in the last few decades represents one of the most significant demographic changes in the nation. Alongside this population shift, some other trends have started to emerge: the Latin@ population, especially Mexican-origin people, has begun to move and settle outside traditional…

This article maintains that in spite of their seeming progress, Mexican-origin students in the US continue to face barriers that are typical of the complex challenges endured in public schools by minoritized and racialised peoples in the American context. It begins with a brief overview of the current-day demographics of the Mexican-origin…

The purpose of this article is twofold. First, I situate a discussion on Leadership for Chicano/Latino education that is grounded in a history of resistance and activism among these same communities generally, and in particular acknowledging the contributions of Chicana feminist scholarship. Second, I discuss how the topic of Leadership…

This article explores the way that discourses of smartness and whiteness are produced and reproduced in schooling. Using an approach grounded in narrative research, I explore the convergences and contradictions between my own educational autobiography and the representations of schooling found in my school pictures and yearbooks. In my analysis, I…

As a Mexican American and an educator, all of my life I have travelled between formal educational and Mexican American cultures. For decades I felt alienated professionally and thoroughly embedded within my ethnic origins until an educational trip to Mexico encouraged me to think differently. As a result, to become a more authentic educator and…

This article introduces "La Escuelita," an after-school health literacy program for youth and families that currently meets in a community center one mile from a port of entry into El Paso, Texas. Through weekly activities that include mediums like art, community-based mapping, and collaborative cooking, participants at "La…

This policy brief is based on the edited book "The Magic Key: The Educational Journey of Mexican Americans from K-12 to College and Beyond" (Zambrana & Hurtado, 2015a), which focuses on the experiences of Mexican Americans in education. Drawing from an interdisciplinary corpus of work, the authors move beyond the rhetoric of progress…

"Brown v. Board of Education" (1954) was a landmark decision that was the result of decades of efforts by grassroots activists and civil rights organizations to end legalized segregation. A less well-known effort challenged the extralegal segregation of Mexican American students in the Southwest. I combine original research and research…

This paper provides an analysis of the intersection between education and immigration policies within a transnational context and explores the extent to which U.S. immigration law has caused a forced return migration to Mexico of the U.S. DREAMer population. My analysis includes a discussion of the social conditions and lack of policies in Mexico…

Beginning in March 2012, my public scholarship with deported and returning young adults originated from an ethnographic and oral history framework based upon participant research action methodology (Seidman 2006). In collaboration with the Asamblea Popular de Familias Migrantes (APOFAM), I began to meet with groups of returning and deported young…

This article investigates the role of autoethnographic research as the methodological tool of choice for a Chicana who positions herself along the liminal perspective. I posit that "testimonios", autobiographical educational experiences, must be used as valid ethnographic research to contribute to existing knowledge around issues of…