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Portes and Smagorinsky examine the degree to which stable schools and authoritarian instruction accommodate the needs of learners exhibiting difference, with special attention to Spanish-speaking English Language Learners in a Southern setting. They find that the influx of immigrant students in Southern schools lays bare the normative institutional structures and instructional practices that go unchallenged until a new cultural group enters the school and reveals that what is normative to some is alien to others.