Subtractive Schooling

Winner of the 2000 Outstanding Book Award presented by the American Educational Research AssociationWinner of the 2001 American Educational Studies Association Critics' Choice AwardHonorable Mention, 2000 Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book AwardsSubtractive Schooling provides a framework for understanding the patterns of immigrant achievement and U.S.-born underachievement frequently noted in the literature and observed by the author in her ethnographic account of regular-track youth attending a comprehensive, virtually all-Mexican, inner-city high school in Houston. Valenzuela argues that schools subtract resources from youth in two major ways: firstly by dismissing their definition of education and secondly, through assimilationist policies and practices that minimize their culture and language. A key consequence is the erosion of students' social capital evident in the absence of academically oriented networks among acculturated, U.S.-born youth.