One day in the early 1970s, a child from the town of Guadalupe asked Socorro Hernández-Bernasconi a question: Mrs. Socorro, why do they have us in these classes?
Socorro was a counselor in the Tempe Elementary School District. She worked with Yaqui, Mexican and Mexican American children from Guadalupe, a small town southeast of Phoenix founded by Pascua Yaqui Indians.
She saw that the children of many Latino farmworkers and immigrants were segregated from their White classmates. The children spoke Spanish, and were assigned to special education classes for students with intellectual disabilities based on IQ tests administered by school officials in English…