education and labor

In Depth:
I read a section in the book Battleground Immigration about the education of children who are or parents were immigrants. Because education is fundamentally related to the ability to get work, I questioned how Hispanics compared to their non-hispanic peers, and what was the root of these differences. Many Hispanic children, specifically immigrant ones, do not speak english, are illiterate, score far below average test scores, and overall cannot keep up in school. A few problems are listed that may be the cause for this huge problem. Firstly, these children fall behind in class because they cannot understand their teachers. The child speaks spanish, the teacher english, and together they cannot communicate affectively. Another problem is that they often move around between schools, states, even between the US and Mexico, too frequently to attain proper education. While this second issue is a bit more complex, as parents decide where to live, a solution is defiantly possible for the english/ spanish barrier, and many efforts are being and have been made to address the problems.

Primary:
Should illegal immigrants have the same opportunity for education, and how should schools go about teaching them?
In 1982, Plyer v. Doe entered the supreme court. The law being questioned regarded if illegal immigrants should be allowed a public education. The court decided that they should for a number of reasons  First, that it was not their fault they illegally immigrated, rather their parents', and so they do not deserve punishment. Their education does not harm anyone else, but it incredibly beneficial both to their future and the countries. They need an education to succeed, and if they succeed they may end up helping the country in ways unknown. After this, schools continued to  face the challenge of what to do with these children. Many of the kids couldn't speak english, so traditional classrooms did not teach them very much. Long before this trial even started, the idea of bilingual education started. A program in San Antonio was one of the first to deploy this idea, where the dropout rate for Hispanics reached 75% in some places. The kids were typically seen as failures, but this school gave them the opportunity to gain an education and learn english as well, which would help them in the long run.