Crosnoe, Robert. (2006). Mexican Roots, American Schools: Helping Mexican Immigrant Children Succeed. Reviewed by Bernadette J. Rodriguez, San José State University

Crosnoe, Robert. (2006). Mexican Roots, American Schools: Helping Mexican Immigrant Children Succeed. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Pp. 169     ISBN 0804755221 Reviewed by Bernadette J. Rodriguez San José State University March 1, 2007 Robert Crosnoe’s book entitled, Mexican Roots, American Schools: Helping Mexican Immigrant Children Success is an impassioned plea, backed with a comparative statistical analysis that calls for educational justice for this particular group of students. In the initial pages of the book he writes, “Part of the reason that children from Mexican immigrant families are at risk in the early years of schooling is because of the transition into U.S. schools with different kinds of intellectual competencies. Please, please note that I said different [italics in original], not worse or inferior” (p.34). Crosnoe goes on to note that the differences Mexican immigrant children bring to the classroom is over looked by US public schools that tend to interpret the difference as disadvantage. The statistical reference for the study is the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort (ECLS-K). This particular study was conducted by the US government and took a sampling of several kindergartners. Statistics for the ECLS-K study were collected by the National Center for Educational Statistics (NECS) and was made up of 22,782 kinder families and comprised 13,503 children. In an effort to create a sensitive and poignant argument in support of Mexican Immigrant children in US schools, Crosnoe utilized a sub-set of statistics from the ECLS-K study. His subset included White, Latino, African-American and Asian-American children. For example, he looked at the ECLS-K statistics in terms of physical health, mental health, the type of child care the children received (i.e. home-based or center-based), and the mathematics abilities as shown on tests administered within the boundaries of the ECLS-K study. In the initial chapters the author writes, “More interesting, and more telling, are the racial/ethnic and immigration related differences in the socioeconomic and academic factors. Mexican immigrant families had, by far, the lowest level of socio-economic status and the highest rate of poverty in the sample. Nearly one-half [italics in original] of Mexican immigrant families reported an annual income below [italics in original] the federal poverty line” (p. 19). Physical and Mental Health With respect to physical and mental health, Crosnoe’s adaptation of the ECLS-K study found that the children of Mexican Immigrants tend to be less physically healthy than the other children in the study as they suffer from physical ailments such as obesity and asthma. Crosnoe found that children of Mexican immigrants, despite the fact that they may suffer set backs with regard to their physical health, the development of their mental health held some positive attributes. Crosnoe’s statistical analysis study showed the children of Mexican immigrants to be as he termed “self-regulating” where self-regulating was described as “the degree to which children can control their own behavior according to the expectations and demands of any given setting” (p. 29). He goes on to note that children of Mexican immigrants who demonstrate self-regulating behavior are able to follow the verbal and non-verbal rules of school. These children are familiar with the expectations of the classroom and make the appropriate decisions necessary to participate successfully within a school environment and as Crosnoe notes such self-regulating behavior “is an important factor in early achievement” (p. 29). One other facet of self-regulating behavior noted by Crosnoe is that students who display this particular attribute at school tend to be less peer oriented and focus more upon the adult relationships in their lives as well as their families. Exploring Three Contexts for Child Development In the second section of the book, Crosnoe distinguishes between domains versus contexts noting that “domains refer to the different kinds of development, contexts refer to the settings in which these different kinds of development takes places” (p. 40). As a result three specific contexts for early childhood are described. The first is the family, the second is child care settings, and the third is schools. Home Care. Home learning activities, such as reading books together, and parental involvement at school comprise the angle from which Mexican immigrant children are viewed by Crosnoe primarily because together they are the fertile ground for 1) academic development, 2) build on school knowledge, and 3) they instill the motivation for future learning. With respect to parent involvement at school, Crosnoe notes three possible explanations for a lack of parental participation at school. The first is that the less formally educated the parents, the less likely they are to be involved. The second plausible explanation is a sense of mistrust of schools and school personal and the third is that schools discourage participation by less education parents. Crosnoe notes that while Mexican immigrant parents place a strong emphasis on the value of education translating this emphasis into active means of educational support will aide in school success becomes the question. Given the strong verbal support of education, the author noted that Mexican immigrant parents were less likely to engage in home learning activities. Secondly, with regard to school participation by Mexican immigrant parents, the sub-set of statistics of the ECLS-K study revealed that this group of parents was also less likely to be active in school. In Crosnoe’s own words, “Past research has documented that Mexican immigrant parents really care about education and want their children to do well in school, but my study has revealed that the highly positive features of Mexican immigrant families does not necessarily translate into certain active parenting strategies that work well in the US education system” (p. 48). Child Care. With respect to childcare arrangements, Crosnoe divided the topic of child care into two groups. The first being home-based child care and the second being center-based child care. He further divided home-care into the three categories of solo parental care, non-parental care (i.e. relatives) and home-based care. He found that home based care showed no observable effects on school readiness in the academic sense (p.50). However, as Crosnoe (2006) points out, although home care may not instill or produce school skills in the same way as a child-care center might, children who are cared for in home based programs have slightly better behavior adjustment than those children who spend their early childhood years in a center based program. Center based care, that is care out of the home, revealed that children in high quality centers do better academically when they enter school. The key here is “high quality” unfortunately, Crosnoe failed mention or further define the meaning of “high quality”. As a reader it would have been helpful to know more specifics about what constituted “high quality” center-based early childhood education particularly for the children of Mexican immigrants and if Crosnoe considered primary language instruction to be a component included with the definition of “high quality” center based care. School Setting “…if equality of opportunity means that children of Mexican immigrants and native White children have equal access to good schools, not just equal access to schools in general. That is an “if” that needs to be investigated. Given the cumulative nature of education, if children from Mexican immigrant families enter the U.S. educational system through more problematic elementary systems, they will likely demonstrate truncated rates of education attainment in the long run, leaving intact the over all inequality in the United States that favors other groups over the growing Mexican origin population” (p. 56). This particular quote offers insight into the manner in which the author further divided the concept of school into the following categories of school characteristics: school structure (i.e. organization of the school), school composition (i.e. types of children that attend the particular school), and school climate (i.e. the general atmosphere of what the school is like). As a result of further analysis of the ECLS-K study statistics, Crosnoe found that on average children of Mexican immigrants attend larger schools than native White children and they encountered teachers with fewer years of training and experience than native White children. The children of Mexican immigrant children also attended schools that were in areas of high-crime and in disorganized communities more so than native White children. In other words, these children attended unsafe schools. Mathematics The third area in which Crosnoe reviewed the ECLS-K statistics with respect to the children of Mexican immigrants was in the area of mathematics. The average child from Mexican immigrant families did indeed score lower on the math test in the Spring semester of first grade, “…children from Mexican immigrant families start the absolutely crucial curriculum already at a disadvantage” (p. 66). When the author cross-references mathematics with the physical and mental health of Mexican immigrant children, he discerns that the positive gains of the children’s mental health played a key role in the lives of Mexican immigrant children and essentially cancelled out the negative effects of their poor physical health. Crosnoe also cross-referenced self-regulation and social competence with the math learning that occurred in the first grade. Within this comparison, self-regulation was found to be the more influential of the two. Crosnoe also cross-referenced child care setting and math learning. Here he found that all forms of center-based and home-based child care (especially preschool) produced higher rates of math learning as opposed to children who received parent care exclusively. In the end Crosnoe points to the cultivation of language development and math proficiency before entering school as the as a major function of what happens once children begin school. Unfortunately, admittedly the author fails to focus on primary language development as part of the “cultivation of language development” and instead focuses only on English language acquisition. Conclusions Crosnoe concludes that the children of Mexican immigrants are an issue whose time has come and it is an issue of national importance due to the fact that these children face inequality from the onset and are forced to play the catch-up game. According to Crosnoe, the comparative analysis served three purposes, 1) that children from Mexican immigrant families transition into elementary school with lower levels of math learning than their peers, 2) that this learning differential tended to widen over the course of the early years of elementary school, and 3) that these patterns are likely tied to the socioeconomic characteristics that go hand in hand with immigration from Mexico. For Crosnoe, the relevance of these three purposes act as call for promoting more social programs of equity and he notes that this particular topic is one of nation relevance and needs to be addressed seriously if the children of Mexican immigrants are to succeed in our schools and in society. Overall, the book offers insights into the need for assistance programs for both social and education for Mexican immigrant children. Absent from the book were the voices of the students, their parents, and the teachers which cannot be captured via statistics alone. However, the book is a great starting point to begin conversations that hold the potential to bring about positive changes for the children of Mexican immigrants. About the Author Robert Crosnoe is Associate Professor of Sociology and Faculty Research Associate at the Population Research Center at the University of Texas, Austin. About the Reviewer Bernadette J. Rodriguez, Adjunct Lecturer, Elementary Education Department, San José State University