Student Diversity In Schools

Abstract
For many years, student diversity has caused many conflicts in the educational system, especially for immigrant children and children of color. As the student population in American schools becomes increasingly diverse, educators must respond with school reform efforts that meet the needs of these students. Because of this, U.S. immigration laws, has helped the student population to become increasingly more diverse in regards to race, ethnicity, and language. In order for this to take place, school officials must be able to develop culturally sensitive curriculums that accommodate multicultural viewpoints and histories. As of today, many people believes that student diversity has come along way from where it was coming from before,
In the next twenty-five years, the school system will become increasingly diverse. Researchers have reported that by 2020, students of color will represent nearly half of the elementary and secondary population. Throughout the 20th century, schools have stressed the importance of learning a non-English language, preferably Spanish. Due to the variety of immigrant languages, the teaching of English in the U.S. public schools is complicated. In 1990, U.S. Bureau of the Census showed us the language spoken at home (Table
For instance, in 1984 MALDEF filed the Edgewood v. Kirby case to reformed the Texas school finance system by making the distribution of money for schools more equitable. The Edgewood case moved more money toward districts with poor tax base and high concentrations of Mexican American Youth. In addition to that case, in 1974, a class-action suit on behalf of 1,800 Chinese children was brought before the Supreme Court. They claimed that San Francisco Board of Education failed to provide programs designed to meet the linguistic needs of those non-speaking children. They claimed that they were being violated of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. They also felt that if the children could not understand the language used for the instruction, they were deprived for an education equal to that of other children and were, in essence, doomed to failure. So the court stipulated that special language programs were necessary if schools were to provide an equal educational opportunity for such students. This case is known as the Lau v. Nichols and also knows as the decision, which gave considerable impetus to the development of bilingual education as well as ESL