Recognizing Inequality and the Pursuit of Equity: A Legal and Social Equity Framework

Arriving in the United States in 1954 as a child, my immigrant Mexican parents quickly settled in northeast Los Angeles, on the outskirts of East Los Angeles. My parents strongly inculcated to their seven children the value that we are all equal and had the right to receive equal access to education. In 1955 my parents moved near Ave. 43 close to Highland Park, a community that at that time was predominantly Euro-American, so the Ochoa family integrated a segregated community. Placed in an elementary school that had no interventions for recently arrived immigrant children from other parts of the world, as a third grader, I was given speech pathology for 15 minutes a week. Knowing how to read and write in Spanish enabled me to survive the lack of comprehensible instruction and the well-meaning teachers who constantly kept reminding me to speak English and not to associate with perceived gang members. I entered one of the most integrated middle schools (Nightingale Junior High) in the early 1960s with African-Americans, Asians (multiple heritages), Latinos (fi rst, second, and third generation), and Euro-Americans, placed at one school site and expected to get along. No cross-cultural education was provided, so lunchtime was a living theater of survival and one of my best-lived cross-cultural experiences in my entire education. Upon completing junior high, I enrolled in Lincoln High School, the fi rst school to have the 1968 student walkouts in the Los Angeles Unifi ed School District. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Mexican-Americans/Chicanos across the state of Texas also made their voices heard in a civil rights movement that would change the state forever. The walkouts were driven by Latino students’ concern for the quality of their education, the high death toll of Latinos in the Vietnam War, and the growing voice of the Chicano Movement. I survived high school andreceived good grades with an emphasis in mathematics, but was never encouraged to apply to college. However, I did so because my older brother, Jose, had enrolled in college and the Vietnam War was in my face. I applied and was accepted while always looking for part-time jobs to pay tuition, books, and transportation. By my late teens I was clearly aware of discriminatory practices, lack of academic rigor in my schooling, and the lack of K-12 schooling opportunity to maintain my home language with a high level of academic profi ciency. In the late 1960s, I continued to encounter racism, often harassed by police for being in the wrong communities late at night, and became an active participant of the Chicano Movement. My drive to continue to further develop my skills and fi nd ways to contribute to social policy, civil rights-oriented educational projects, and social initiatives led me to graduate from the university, obtain teaching credentials, receive an MA in special education, and complete my doctoral degree in education with an emphasis on community development and non-formal education. My persistent passion for educational access in the last 35 years has led me to direct national, state, and local projects and research grants that have focused on equity of opportunity, language policy, community development, and development of biliteracy teachers-guided by respect of voice, representation, dignity, and opportunity to reclaim historical, cultural, and academic presence. This will persist until my last breath on earth.