Date of Graduation

5-2015

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy in Curriculum and Instruction (PhD)

Degree Level

Graduate

Department

Curriculum and Instruction

Advisor/Mentor

Bowles, Freddie A.

Committee Member

Lincoln, Felicia F.

Second Committee Member

Díaz, Eva I.

Keywords

Education; Educational language policy; Ethnography of education; Historical-textual methodology; Latinos en el nuevo south

Abstract

With the changing demographics nationwide of Latinos moving from urban traditional

settlements sites to non-traditional settlement sites such as Arkansas (Pew Hispanic Research Group, 2013; Smith, 2014; Smith and Furuseth, 2005) Arkansas is now part of the new south or El Nuevo South (Smith and Furuseth, 2005). Although Arkansas is a non-traditional receiving state it is one of the states with the largest growing Latino population (Pew Hispanic Research Group, 2013). Northwest Arkansas in particular has the largest concentration of Latinos to date with the area being host to some of the largest companies in the United States, such as Wal-mart,Tyson Chicken, and JB Hunt.

The focus of this study was to evaluate how the K-20 public institutions of interest in an

understudied and non-traditional settlement site have responded to the Latino students and theirfamilies. By looking at an array of data, in particular, enrollment and graduation rates, district and state policies, educational services and resources, and informant interviews were collected in an attempt to ascertain how they are meeting the academic needs of their Latino students. The researcher found that schools are creating and implementing programs and services for their Latino and ELL students. The districts in question are graduating Latino students at a higher rate than the national average. The two higher education institutions are creating and implementing services and resources for the K-12 community with a focus on 5-12. The area's public university provides coursework and programs at the higher education level for undergraduates as well as students studying to be educators. Informant interviews with local educators who provide instruction, resources, services and programs for Latino and ELL students provide a narrative to the documented data.

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