Responding to Demographic Change

This work presents an ethnographic case study of a §migrant education program within a larger community §response to changing demographics in a rural §Nebraska community. A rapidly growing Hispanic §population has created new opportunities and placed §new demands on schools and community services whose §leaders have responded with creative and innovative §approaches; developing migrant education programming §that has been lauded by the National Office of §Migrant Education in the U.S. Department of §Education. School administrators, faculty, staff, §community leaders and representatives were §interviewed to gain a sense of the overall responses §to changes.In examining these school and community §efforts it was found that the programming, policies, §and practices in this community shared many of the §characteristics of schools that have been described §in the literature as high performing schools for §Hispanic students. Insights gained from this study §of what was described as a model migrant program §provide key considerations that should be taken into §account in efforts to create effective schools for §the most educationally vulnerable students.