For language minority children who have acquired English through another culture, opportunities to learn in U.S. schools are not equal, either at the point of entry or at any time thereafter. Children's ability to participate meaningfully in school learning activities is intimately linked to cognitive and social skills that presuppose specific and substantial cultural and linguistic knowledge. Those children who lack these skills stand out as low achievers in the early school years. This book examines some phases of the struggle of language minority children to participate in school learning activities. The chapters and their authors are the following: (1) The Ethnography of Schooling (H. Trueba); (2) Hispanic Achievement: Old Views and New Perspectives (C. Walker); (3) Saving Place and Marking Time: Some Aspects of the Social Lives of Three-Year-Old Children (J. Shultz and J. Theophano); (4) English Communicative Competence of Language Minority Children: Assessment and Treatment of Language "Impaired" Preschoolers (L. Cheng); (5) Contrasting Acculturation Patterns of Two Non-English-Speaking Preschoolers (J. Willett); (6) Learning Failure: Tests as Gatekeepers and the Culturally Different Child (D. Deyhle); (7) Learning Spanish and Classroom Dynamics: School Failure in a Guatemalan Maya Community (J. Richards); (8) Parent Perceptions of School: Supportive Environments for Children (C. Delgado-Gaitan); (9) Towards a Psychosocial Understanding of Hispanic Adaptation to American Schooling (M. Suarez-Orozco); (10) Becoming Marginal (R. Sinclair and W. Ghory); and (11) Social and Communicative Aspects of Language Proficiency in Low-Achieving Language Minority Students (R. Rueda). (VM)