This special issue explores the relationship between education and empowerment and considers whether it still is valid to assume that school provides the key for people in the lower social strata in America to achieve material well being. Taken together, the essays, poetry, and studies of this issue explore the experience of social marginality in the United States, emphasizing that there is much to celebrate and much to hope for. The following contributions are included: (1) "Editors' Foreword: Marginality and Schooling" (Ramona Hernandez and Silvio Torres-Saillant); (2) "Small Victories or Big Defeats?" (Bruce P. Baskind); (3) "My English" and "Poems" (Julia Alvarez); (4) "The Pitfalls of Comparing Marginal Groups" (Ramona Hernandez); (5) "Dominicans in Higher Education" (Hanan C. Orna); (6) "Dominican High School Students: Hopes and Problems" (Leona Marsh); (7) "Confessions of a Full Professor" (Alfredo Villanueva-Collado); (8) "CUNY and the Puerto Rican/Latino Community: Issues for the 1990s" (Camille Rodriguez and Ramon Bosque-Perez); (9) "English Only: Its Historical Antecedents" (Gerald Meyer); (10) "What's beyond the English Language Amendment: An Update" (Henry Lesnik); (11) "Madre Luna" (Jose Luis Colon Santiago); and (12) "Western Discourse and the Curriculum (The Uniting of Multicultural America)S (Silvio Torres-Saillant). Many contributions contain references. (SLD)