Latino transnationals (not) in advanced academics: Asking hard questions together

This chapter begins with a brief overview of how English First/Only thinking has created barriers for Latino transnationals’ access to advanced academics. Classroom teachers and administrators need to be attuned to the structural barriers that exist at schools or within districts that prevent better representation of Latino transnationals and other minorities in advanced academics. It has been repeatedly demonstrated that expectations are the critically significant factor in Latino student achievement and success. We believe that promoting Latino access to advanced academic programming requires that professional educators ask hard questions together. This chapter examines the language of crisis that has colored most of the rhetoric surrounding Latinos in US education—a discourse in which we too have participated in our writings about the complex issues of the achievement of children of nondominant communities.