Additive Schooling in Subtractive Times: Bilingual Education and Dominican Immigrant Youth in the Heights - Hardcover

"An elegant and timely volume that weaves together sociocultural theory, political analysis, and the fine-grained details of dynamic bilingualism in a punishing era of 'English Only' and xenophobia to tell a story of possibility about the Luperon school community. . . . Additive Schooling in Subtractive Times shows us what is within reach, what is denied, and how we might create a different tomorrow with our newest Americans." --Michelle Fine "Recommended." --Choice "Because it provides compelling counterstories of success and achievement among Latino youth, Additive Schooling in Subtractive Times is a welcome antidote to the typical stories of failure and despair among this population." --Comparative Education Review

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 Bloomberg have 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.