A vast question loomed over all of my learning with the youth of South Vista, as it now looms over the closing chapter of this book: what is the purpose of schooling in a pluralist society? The history of schooling in the United States, a country home to epic linguistic, racial, and cultural diversity, has traditionally defined this purpose rather clearly. The purpose of schooling has been to transition or mainstream the ways of knowing and being of those whose cultures and languages fall outside the dominant stream into White, DAE, middle-class norms. Yet volumes of research and theorizing in the past three decades have profoundly challenged these narrow assimilatory goals. This work has critiqued both the unsatisfactory academic results for young people of color and the perpetuation of racial and cultural bias through assimilatory models of education.