Educational Sovereignty for Latin@ Students in Arizona

Resumen

Educational sovereignty provides students and educators with opportunities to access educational resources. Without structures that support equal access in education, Latin@ students lack educational sovereignty and face continued obstacles to their success in school. Such obstacles may include segregation based on race, language, and social class, as well as exclusion of community-relevant issues and perspectives from instructional content. In Arizona, there has been a heightened level of discrimination against Latin@ students, their families, and educators. The state of Arizona has actively denied Latin@ students access to culturally-relevant material through the passage of English-only policies and the more recent Arizona House Bill 2281 (HB 2281). We will consider how efforts of Arizona’s Latin@ communities to attain educational sovereignty within this context reflect Richard Ruiz’ work surrounding educational sovereignty.