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Edited by Steven J. Gold and Ruben G. Rumbaut
   

   
Mexican Immigrant Parents Advocating for School Reform
   

Mariolga Reyes Cruz

       
   

Reyes Cruz describes the experiences of Mexican immigrant parents working to make public schools responsive and accountable to Latino American children and their families in a small Midwestern town. The town is a racially divided city where a community of working-poor Latino American immigrants is forming. The parents do not believe schools are preparing their children for academic success and publicly advocate reforms. In the process, power struggles, knowledge-claim battles, and a generalized colonial mentality conspire to silence the parents' basic claims for respect, dignity, and their children's rights. Reyes Cruz tells the story from a critical perspective with an eye for understanding how power is played out in the daily reproduction and contestation of social inequalities.

       
  Mariolga Reyes Cruz Mariolga Reyes Cruz obtained her doctorate in community psychology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2005. Her work examines the reproduction and contestation of social inequality in public schools aiming to promote citizen participation in education public policy. She is currently a researcher at the Institute of Interdisciplinary Research at the University of Puerto Rico, Cayey.
       
    xii, 196 pages. Index, bibliography. ISBN 978-1-59332-236-6.
$60. Published 2008. Casebound.