Moving from young adulthood to her experiences as a nontraditional student at Pace University, Rivera chronicles her path to independence in this poignant essay about determination, support, and sacrifice. Evoking powerful images, she introduces the people and forces that served to inspire, recharge, and steady her resolve to succeed in her second…

Explores research on Puerto Rican students in U.S. schools in combination with fiction by Puerto Ricans. Identifies four themes: colonialism/resistance, cultural deficit/cultural acceptance, assimilation/identity, and marginalization/belonging. Asserts that care is the missing ingredient in the education of Puerto Ricans. (SK)

In this article, Luis O. Reyes provides a retrospective of the historic 1974 Aspira Consent Decree between the New York City Board of Education and Aspira of New York, which established bilingual instruction as a legally enforceable federal entitlement for New York City's non-English-speaking Puerto Rican and Latino students. Reyes analyzes the…

In one Chicago high school, nationalist ideology and education based on principles of Puerto Rican self-determination are powerful methods for creating student success. Ironically, the ideology focused on critical appraisal of U.S. policies encourages youth to pursue mainstream achievements. (SK)

School data, court reports, and interviews shape a case study of the experience of Puerto Rican students in a northeastern U.S. school system manifesting colonialism and its opposition in racially/ethnically positioned tensions. (Author/SK)

Although policymakers, courts, and advocacy groups have raised awareness of bilingual education, there is a gap between the remedial model and grassroots community views of bilingual education as enrichment. Support for bilingual education must be recontextualized as a strategy for education reform with leadership from language-minority persons.…