When you finish studying this chapter, you should be able to:

1. Describe the status of racial segregation in U.S. schools before and since 1954.
2. Distinguish between de jure and de facto segregation.
3. Describe the major components of desegregation plans.
4. Describe the desegregation of nonblack minorities, particularly Hispanic students.
5. Describe the effects of desegregation on student performance and attitudes.
6. Identify the components of compensatory education and their importance in educating disadvantaged students.
7. Describe early and more recent conclusions of research on the effectiveness of compensatory education programs.
8. Identify and analyze fundamental questions about the ability of compensatory education programs to equalize educational opportunities for students with disadvantages.
9. Describe the impact of the No Child Left Behind Act on compensatory education and other efforts to provide equal educational opportunity.
10. Describe the concepts of multicultural education and cultural pluralism.
11. Describe and assess various aspects of multicultural instruction, including instruction responsive to student leaning styles and dialect differences, bilingual education, multiethnic curriculum and instruction, and recent controversies regarding multicultural programs.
12. Identify and analyze future issues in multicultural education.
13. Understand and describe some of the challenges in providing equal opportunity for students with disabilities.

Focus and Refocus Questions:

When you finish studying this chapter, you should be able to answer the following questions from your textbook:

Focus Questions

• What are the rationales for desegregation, compensatory education, multicultural education, and education of children with disabilities?
• What are the major obstacles and approaches in desegregating the schools?
• What are the major approaches to compensatory education?
• What is multicultural education? What forms does it take in elementary and secondary schools? What are its major benefits and dangers?
• What does the law say about providing education for students with disabilities? What are the major issues in their education?

Refocus Questions

• Were the schools you attended well integrated, or did one racial or ethnic group predominate? Do you want to teach in a school with enrollment similar to that where you attended, or with differing enrollment? Why?
• Do you think you are or will be well prepared to teach students who receive or should receive compensatory services? What might you do to be better prepared?
• In what ways are you preparing to work with students from a variety of cultural and linguistic backgrounds? How might you benefit as a teacher from knowing more about the cultural background of students different from yourself?
• What aspects of working with inclusion students do you believe will be most challenging for you, as a teacher? What are you doing now to prepare for the challenges?