International & Immigrant Services at CCSU

"Despite their numbers, Latinos continue to lack full and equal participation in all facets of American life, including education. This book provides a critical discussion of the role that select K–12 educational policies have and continue to play in failing Latino students. The author draws upon institutional, national, and statewide data, as well as interviews with students, teachers, and college administrators, to explore the role that public policies play in educating Latino students. The book concludes with specific recommendations that aim to raise achievement, college transition rates, and success among Latino students from preschool through college."

"This volume explores the experiences of Latinos in higher education and seeks to shape a picture of their participation that is representative of the diversity of the group and of the higher education institutions they inhabit. Contributors provide information that will be useful to student affairs professionals who serve Latinos on a regular basis. The insights here have implications for admissions, student activities and Greek affairs, career development, ethnic student services, and academic advising programs and offices. The innovative scholars here all have experience as practitioners that enhances their approach to research. The research findings highlight personal and educational experiences of Latinos in higher education; demonstrate the students’ tenacity to overcome economic, educational, and cultural barriers to succeed in college; and illuminate the factors in the college environment that contributed to their success."

"This reader of nearly 60 articles covers major events in the Caribbean struggle for freedom from emancipation to the present - from Toussaint's Haiti to the more recent revolutions in Cuba, Grenada and the Dominican Republic. The range of coverage is comprehensive calling attention to the variety of post-slavery experiences in the Spanish, Dutch, English and French Caribbean. Three broad themes are identified: • the slow disintegration of the slave system which was not completed until 1886; • the attempts by resistant social groups and imperial agencies to accept and adjust to freedom; and • the maturing of nationalist consciousness in terms of constitutional and cultural independence. Among the areas covered under these themes are popular revolts and aborted revolutions; the sugar industry and economic diversification; peasants and planters; immigration from Europe, India and China; the role of women; labour movements; independence and nationhood."

Many immigrant Latino families are settling in U.S. communities that previously had little Latino presence. Through case studies of such communities in Georgia, North Carolina, Maine, Colorado, Illinois, and Indiana, this book describes relations between host communities and newcomers, with particular focus on educational policy formation and implementation as communities and newcomers struggle to define themselves and to meet new educational needs.

Latino Americans have a powerful voice in society and a wealth of cultural traditions. Fundamental to those traditions are numerous folktales. Some are funny, some draw upon the supernatural, some look back on ancestral ways, and some capture the experience of Latinos in the United States. Written expressly for students and general readers, this book assembles and comments on a wide range of Latino American folktales. These are grouped in topical sections on origins; heroes, heroines, villains, and fools; society and conflict; and the supernatural.

"Richly informative and accessibly written, The Latino Education Crisis describes the cumulative disadvantages faced by too many children in the complex American school systems, where one in five students is Latino. Many live in poor and dangerous neighborhoods, attend impoverished and underachieving schools, and are raised by parents who speak little English and are the least educated of any ethnic group."

News media and pundits too frequently perpetuate the notion that Latinos, particularly Mexicans, are an invading force bent on reconquering land once their own and destroying the American way of life. In this book, Leo R. Chavez contests this assumption's basic tenets, offering facts to counter the many fictions about the'Latino threat.'With new discussion about anchor babies, the DREAM Act, and recent anti-immigrant legislation in Arizona and other states, this expanded second edition critically investigates the stories about recent immigrants to show how prejudices are used to malign an entire population—and to define what it means to be American.