Juan says he isn't nervous, but his yawns give him away. He yawns a lot. A sure sign of stress.

"You have been accused of fighting," says Zack Cazares, an Adamson High School assistant principal. He alternates between Spanish and English. A tape recorder runs.

Juan glances at his mom, trying to read her reaction. She hardly ever wears makeup. But today she does. Sheer plum lipstick and a little blush.

The February meeting is in Mr. Cazares' office. It's called a hearing, but, really, Juan's fate is already set. He admitted that he could have walked away from the fight and didn't. Under Adamson's no-tolerance policy, that means 30 days at Village Fair, a Dallas ISD alternative school, no matter who started the trouble.

Village Fair has a tough rep. Many parents, teachers and administrators cringe at the prospect of sending a good kid there. An Adamson security guard who once worked there calls it a mini-prison. Students wear color-coded shirts. Purple means they were busted for fighting or discipline problems. Green means middle school. White means drugs. There are a lot of white shirts.

Even though Juan's sentence is inevitable, his supporters crowd Mr. Cazares' small office. Mariela, Juan's 19-year-old sister, always accompanies her mother to school meetings. She moved to Dallas at age 16 but never attended school here. As the oldest child, she helped raise Juan and two younger sisters. She feels responsible for him.

Marcia Niemann is Adamson's lead teacher for students learning English as a second language. In six years of teaching, this is the first hearing she has attended. A social activist who started teaching when she was 50, she wants to make sure Juan, a recent immigrant from Mexico, and his mother understand completely what's going on. She fears that if he is sent to alternative school, he will drop out and return to work. For some kids like Juan, school can't compete with the allure of a paycheck and the responsibility to help support their families.

If there is a portrait of a group of kids least likely to succeed academically in American high schools, it might include Juan. He quit junior high in Mexico and came to Dallas at age 14 with his father to work construction. After a year, he earned enough to help bring other family members here and buy a small adobe house for $7,000 back home, next to his parents' house.

While working in construction, Juan realized he needed to speak English, which for immigrants is the language of money. "A person who doesn't speak English and doesn't have papers does the work of four people who speak English and have papers," he says.

At 15, he attended Adamson for three months before quitting for a job in a furniture factory. Now, he's 16 and a couple of months into the second semester of his freshman year. He's still an age when the law says he must be in school, but the clock is ticking. At 17, he can quit with his parents' permission, and at 18, he can quit on his own.

Ms. Niemann says Juan can be "mildly disruptive" in the classroom. But he's also smart and self-motivated and makes her feel successful as a teacher. "He's the kind of kid that's fun to teach because he gets it so quickly," she says. It would be a waste of potential if Juan failed to finish high school.

It's a long shot. Fewer than two of 10 recent Mexican immigrants, ages 15-17, from similar spotty academic backgrounds stay in school, according to analysis of U.S. Census data by the Pew Hispanic Center, a national research nonprofit.

Overall, immigrant teens account for a disproportionate number of dropouts. Eight percent of the nation's teens are foreign-born, according to Pew, but they make up a quarter of teen dropouts. Immigrant teenagers who never enrolled in U.S. schools are counted as dropouts by the census.

High school dropouts cost everyone. The Alliance for Excellent Education, a Washington, D.C., public policy group, estimates that the 1.2 million dropouts from the Class of 2007, over their lifetimes, will cost the U.S. nearly a third of a trillion dollars in foregone wages, taxes and productivity. In the Dallas-Fort Worth area, each high school dropout translates into lifetime losses of more than $2 million in gross regional economic activity and $1.2 million in income, according to an analysis prepared for The News by economist Ray Perryman.

Ms. Niemann wants her students to graduate but views any added education as a plus. Immigrants whose parents finished only middle school can improve their families' prospects by getting a few years of high school. It increases the chances that their children will graduate from high school and their grandchildren from college.

Juan's mother, Maria, wipes away tears with an open hand. Her husband finished second grade in Mexico. She finished third grade, later completing an adult program that equaled a ninth-grade education. She is embarrassed to be crying, but she can't stop.

"And he's going to remain locked up?" she asks in Spanish.

"No, no, no," Mr. Cazares says. "He's going to another school."

"It's not like a jail," Ms. Niemann says. "The teachers are very good teachers, and they really care about the kids."

Ms. Niemann turns to Juan. "The thing I want to say is I want you back," she says, speaking slowly, softly.

Juan doesn't look at her. "I am not coming back, Miss," he says in English.

"I want you to come back, and I hope that you will come back to the school," she repeats.

"No."

Juan stares ahead, just like the Pink Panther with the thick gold chain pictured on the front of his T-shirt. On his feet are white Air Force 1's. He owns eight pair of Nikes, purchased with money earned on weekends cleaning and repairing apartments.

"There are people who believe in you," Mr. Cazares tells him. "The question is whether you believe in yourself."

Juan doesn't answer. 

Nationwide and in North Texas, the rate of immigration has slowed since 2001. Still, nearly 2,000 new students went through the Dallas Independent School District's immigrant intake center this past school year. Adding in students who enrolled directly in a school, the number of new immigrants exceeded 2,200, the district says, two-thirds from Mexico. That brought the total number of immigrants in DISD to nearly 23,000, or one out of seven students.

The intake center has processed more than 12,000 kids since it opened in 2003. About half were placed in ninth grade, the first year of high school.

Most who come through the intake center are part of a larger group of students with limited English skills. Statewide, the number of kids learning English more than doubled between 1991 and 2008, to more than 770,000, according to the Texas Education Agency. Total enrollment grew just one-fourth as fast. The overwhelming majority are U.S.-born children of immigrants in elementary school.

In Dallas ISD, the story is similar. The number of students learning English grew from about 23,000 to about 51,000. They're now nearly a third of the district's total enrollment.

Most of these students are Hispanic. The majority of them or their families are from Mexico.

As with all students, factors such as parent education levels and family income strongly influence the academic success of students with limited English skills. But they have an added challenge in the cruel calculus of getting an American education: The older they arrive in the U.S., and, therefore, the later they learn English, the tougher it is to earn a high school diploma.

For recent immigrants with backgrounds like Juan's, it's almost a mission impossible. In four years, they must master a new language so that they can read, write and speak English fluently, while earning enough credits to finish high school.

And in Texas, they also must pass all of their TAKS graduation exams.

It's tough enough being a normal teenager, but the additional obstacles some recent immigrant students face make them especially vulnerable academically. They're the ones with breaks in their education, disruptions in their family life and, often, major cultural gaps.

Dallas ISD Superintendent Michael Hinojosa says recent immigrants in high school are academically "at the furthest end of the continuum" of students most at-risk for dropping out. Within the next three years, one of his goals is to establish an "international newcomers" high school to meet their specific needs.

Recent immigrants are a small part of the total population at Adamson High School, in the heart of old Oak Cliff. Ninety-four percent of Adamson students are Hispanic, 80 percent learned English in school, most at a young age, Ms. Niemann says, and 27 percent still are classified with limited English skills. Four-fifths are low-income.

Overall, the school has a low graduation rate of about 60 percent; it's even lower for limited-English kids, just 36 percent.

Additionally, 30 percent to 40 percent of Adamson students are in the U.S. illegally, principal Rawly Sanchez estimates. He doesn't know for sure. That's just his feeling from working with the students.

Illegal immigration is an especially sensitive subject. Critics say illegal immigrants get access to expensive public services, such as education, that they don't deserve, diverting scarce resources from legal citizens. Some say Mexico should help pay for the schooling of its immigrant children in America.

In a 2006 report, the Texas comptroller's office acknowledged that illegal immigrants add costs for some public agencies, such as school districts. But all factors considered, the report said, they have a net positive economic impact on the state.

A student's immigration status is not an issue for Mr. Sanchez and his faculty. No one asks because, according to law, schools must educate all kids, regardless of status.

Dr. Hinojosa says he used to estimate that 20,000, or one-eighth, of the district's 160,000 students are here illegally. Now, he thinks that total is somewhat less. Even assuming 10 percent are illegal, that accounts for a significant portion of the district's $1 billion-plus annual operating budget.

"They're all our kids, no matter where they come from," says Dr. Hinojosa, who came to the U.S. legally with his family from Mexico when he was a young child.

Most of the newest immigrant students at Adamson come from the Mexican states of Guanajuato, San Luis Potosi and Jalísco. There also are some from the border states of Coahuila and Nuevo Leon, and a few from Central America.

Those from larger urban centers tend to be better prepared. On his first day at Adamson this spring, Victor, who came from a bilingual program at a Monterrey private school, wrote better English compositions than some U.S.-born Adamson students. Some recent immigrants will have no problem graduating in four years.

The largest single group of Adamson's recent immigrants, however, comes from Ocampo, a rural area in the state of Guanajuato in central Mexico, one of the poorer regions of the country. Students from such areas tend to struggle the most academically and are the most ambivalent about the benefits of education.

Two blocks from Jefferson Boulevard, Adamson is the old Oak Cliff High School. A replacement for the oldest part of the school is in the $1.35 billion bond package recently approved by voters. Jim Wright, former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, is a 1939 Adamson graduate.

A lot has changed since then.

From some vantage points on campus, the towering skyline of downtown Dallas looms spectacularly, just across the Trinity River. But in the nearby neighborhood, Spanish, as much as English, is the language of everyday life. Supermercado Monterrey and Pizza Patron accept payment in pesos as well as dollars. Single-bedroom apartments rent for as little as $400 a month. Shop windows display bright red, blue and yellow quinceañera dresses. 

The story of many recent teenage immigrant students is really the story of the gaps they face and who steps in to fill them – a teacher, a coach, a principal. Every year, during the first days of school, the story begins anew.

In the early days of this past school year, Ms. Niemann, who understands some Spanish but speaks little, tells her new students to call her by her first name, or Ms. Niemann or Ms. Marcia. "Just don't call me Miss," she says. But, teens being teens, for the rest of the year, most of her kids will only call her "Miss."

Ms. Niemann warned Laurie Gonzalez, who is starting her first year as an English as a second language teacher at Adamson, that beginner classes always start small. Mrs. Gonzalez, who also teaches art, married a Mexican immigrant and speaks Spanish.

Sure enough, only four students start in Mrs. Gonzalez's class, all boys, huddled at one table on one side of the room. Several more kids will enroll during the first semester. Others will arrive as late as March.

On the second day, Josefina, 24, enrolls her 14-year-old sister, Brenda. Josefina speaks some English, Brenda none. This is Brenda's first year in the United States. She looks around the classroom; the boys check her out. She is the youngest in her family and everyone roots for her to be the first to graduate from a U.S. high school.

Before the school year ends, the class will grow more than fivefold, to 25.

For several days the first week, Mr. Sanchez, the principal, stands outside the auditorium on the first floor scanning transcripts as students and parents anxiously await his decision. They live outside the Adamson district but want to transfer to his school, which struggles with test scores – it was rated academically unacceptable in 2007 – but has a reputation for being well run and safe.

He scolds a mother for rewarding her son, who had excessive absences, with a car. He tells a girl, who is there with her father, that he will let her attend Adamson. "But I don't want to see any hickeys," he says, and points to one on her neck. He tells a mother that he'll make an exception for her son, but he'll personally keep track of the boy's grades.

Mr. Sanchez rejects some. Too many absences and too few credits mean an automatic "no." When a student first enters ninth grade, he or she has four years to graduate, otherwise it counts against the school in state and federal accountability ratings. Mr. Sanchez eventually will accept 235 hardship transfers, a few of them immigrants. He knows that in the end, some will probably hurt his school's ratings. 

Adamson has three full-time English as a second language teachers and six teaching assistants, four of them bilingual. Their students are divided by ability and grade level.

As their English improves, ESL students also can take regular English classes taught by teachers who are supposed to be trained in teaching language skills. In other subjects, such as math and science, immigrant students are in mixed classes from their first day. The key to success, recent immigrant students quickly discover, is finding a bilingual student who can translate.

Almost every class at Adamson has at least a few English language learners.

First-year ESL students take eight classes but get graduation credit for only four. The beginning classes in reading, English, English for math and English for science don't count. That makes it a scramble to graduate on time. By their junior years or their fourth year in U.S. schools – whichever comes first – students must start taking the state TAKS test, in English, making understanding the language paramount. Even the math test has word problems.

"It isn't the math; it's the reading," says math teacher Kris Bentley, explaining why many students learning English fail the math TAKS.

At Adamson, Ms. Niemann is the one who best knows immigrant kids. She heads meetings where teachers scan report cards, looking for failing grades and red flags. During the first six-week grading period, Ms. Niemann says a disproportionate number of ESL kids failed Algebra I. They all had the same teacher, who doesn't speak Spanish. She met with the teacher and told the kids to go to tutoring.

Six years ago, she gave up a career helping battered women and sexual assault survivors to go into teaching. She enrolled in an alternative teacher's certification program and, soon afterward, started teaching third-graders. Two years later, she was at Adamson, where she has taught four years, making her the most veteran ESL teacher.

Ms. Niemann, whose car is often the last one in the faculty parking lot at night, is a walking student data bank. She knows the reading levels of her students, when they came to Dallas, whom they live with. Knowing students' personal lives is important, she says, because it affects them at school.

Many of Adamson's recent immigrant students had been living with a relative back in Mexico. In Dallas, they reunite with family they may not have seen in years. So while they adapt to a new school and a new language, they also cope with a new home life. Often, students say, the parent in Dallas has remarried and is raising U.S.-born children.

Mothers come to Ms. Niemann for advice about how to deal with an abusive husband or a difficult teen. A common complaint: a kid not getting along with the new stepparent. Ms. Niemann often recommends counseling services and other agencies that help immigrants.

As soon as they turn 16, most of her students apply for jobs, which she encourages because those who work learn English more quickly, she says. Among boys, especially, the pressure to work comes sooner. Many of them help support their families, here or still in Mexico. A few are already on their own, often living with uncles or brothers not much older than they are. In their families, they are seen as adults.

That's why it's so important, Ms. Niemann says, to try to connect students to school. She steers some kids to the track and cross country teams, to shop class and the JROTC program. Cross country coach Roberto Urbina, who was born in Mexico, is bilingual, as are the three JROTC instructors.

A few weeks into the first semester, Ms. Niemann splits her second-year students by reading and writing levels into classes of 15 advanced kids and about 22 intermediate students, ranging in age from 14 to 18. Results come fast. In the intermediate class, Alex, who had spent the first few weeks looking uninterested and confused, begins volunteering to read. He answers questions, completes his assignments and helps Ms. Niemann translate.

"Any class that's bigger than 12, 15 kids is too big for ESL kids that are at low levels. It's like a day care center," Ms. Niemann says. 

The first year is always the hardest for new immigrants. Many didn't want to come to the United States. Some weren't told they were staying until after they got here. They all left loved ones behind – parents, grandparents, siblings, boyfriends and girlfriends. Others would probably not be in high school had they stayed back home.

Many students live in apartments near the school. Parents complain that their kids are not safe. There are shootings. One father says drug users sniffed cocaine in the parking lot of his complex.

Outside of school, the biggest complaint of recent immigrant students is a lack of freedom. They can't walk or drive to visit relatives, as they could in Mexico. They say they sometimes feel like prisoners, unable to go out after dark. During Ms. Niemann's first year, one of her students wrote in an essay that, since moving to the U.S., she had seen the moon only through the window of her apartment.

Two months into the school year, Nilda sits at the back of Mrs. Gonzalez's art class. Nilda arrived the month before, but she and the classmates at her table still can't understand most of what Mrs. Gonzalez says in English.

"In Mexico, I was an excellent student ... and here, nothing," Nilda tells the table in Spanish.

Nilda says she spent the first two days at Adamson crying. She lives with her mom, who has remarried, but she misses her dad back in Mexico. She complains that even after several weeks, she still can't say her ABCs or count in English.

She says she no longer cries, but she still feels nervous, sick to her stomach, a common complaint among first-year immigrant students. For some, it will be months before they can tolerate the cafeteria food.

One of the girls at the table asks the designated student translator to call Border Patrol. She wants to get deported.

"Their first year they are just so homesick," Ms. Niemann says. 

During the first few months of the school year, some of the students and their parents are preoccupied with the news in Irving involving deportations and Farmers Branch over a rental ban for illegal immigrants.

At Adamson's fall open house, PTA officers wonder if that's why attendance is lower than usual.

Norma Posada, the PTA president and mother of a junior, says schools need to explain expectations of the U.S. educational system to immigrant parents. "If parents would all unite, everything would be even better."

Martina Duran, the treasurer, says too few students who graduate from Adamson have university aspirations. One of her sons graduated from Adamson and another from Townview Magnet Center, which offers specialized classes in law, engineering, social sciences and business. Those types of programs, she says, keep kids from dropping out.

Mrs. Posada says she tells her son that even if she has to sell aluminum cans to raise money, he is attending college. "I tell him, 'The best inheritance I can give you is that you were born in the United States and that I support you in your education,' " she says. "Knowing that, I can die happy." 

By late October, Ms. Niemann distributes a district-ordered survey to her class of students who've been here two years or more. The questions about safety and attitudes at Adamson are in English.

"Hallways?" one student asks, as he points to the word.

Others trip over the word "courtyard." Ms. Niemann is frustrated. Her daily lessons are planned to the fullest. She mumbles that if officials really want feedback, they should make sure all students can read and understand the questions.

"Do you know the patio for lunch? El patio?" she asks slowly, pronouncing every word clearly. "The patio for lunch is a courtyard."

Another girl asks, "What's 'parking lot'?" She knows the word "parking," but "lot" is confusing her.

Ms. Niemann decides she'll read each question on the four-page document and her teacher's aide will translate.

Are students respectful to other students in the classroom? Do students treat staff members with respect? Do adults treat students fairly? If students have a problem they can't solve, do they know they can go to a staff member for help?

On the back page are a few blank lines for comments.

One girl says in Spanish, "I'm going to ask that all the teachers speak Spanish."

Precisely because biology teacher Jokasta Maldonado speaks Spanish, her class is a favorite of most recent immigrant students, even if they don't like the subject.

Ms. Maldonado started the year explaining the material in English and Spanish, until Mr. Sanchez asked her to stop. Using Spanish wasn't fair to kids who only spoke English.

So Ms. Maldonado, who is from Puerto Rico, encouraged the immigrant students to come to tutoring. The after-school and Saturday sessions were soon packed.

"I could see it in their faces that they weren't getting what I was talking about," she says of the classes in English. "It's like if you send me to China and I have to learn biology in Chinese. I wouldn't understand, either."

At one tutoring session, it's as if the last bell of the day has not rung. Students, mostly girls, crowd around Ms. Maldonado, writing notes. She has turned a lesson about photosynthesis into a love story because her students get chisme, gossip, she says. They like telenovelas.

"The sun falls in love with the plant," she explains. "The plant turns blue, red and green." 

The arrival of new students during the year is tough on teachers. They have to determine the kids' academic level and catch them up with the rest of the class.

On the first day of November, a full nine weeks into the school year, Mrs. Gonzalez gets five new students: one from El Salvador and four from Mexico. It's an unusually high number of newcomers, even at Adamson.

"Más grande familia, yeh," Mrs. Gonzalez tells the class, "Más, más, más." She spreads her arms wide.

After a few minutes of sometimes halting English introductions by the kids, she removes her jean jacket and presses on with business: a writing lesson about past, present and future tenses. Mrs. Gonzalez talks to them about dreaming big and planning for the future.

"Más English," Mrs. Gonzalez says. "You learned a first language when you were little. You can learn a second language and have a good future."

"Dream big," she repeats.

No one knows that better, perhaps, than Elias, one of the five new students. Elias, whose forearms are tattooed with his family names, got everyone's attention when he entered the room. He had never set foot in a U.S. public school, but already he spoke more English than the other students.

The 16-year-old moved from Ocampo, the town in central Mexico, eight months earlier and worked as an assistant welder, sending money back to his mom and two sisters in Mexico. When he lost his job, he decided to learn more English. His uncles told him to go to night classes; his aunts pushed high school.

"I don't plan to finish; I just want to learn more English," says Elias, who has saved $5,000 but knows it won't last long.

At one table, a student writes that in the future, he wants to go to New York City, own a motorcycle, learn more English, buy a home and own a business. Another writes that he wants to own a "cart."

"A cart, Eric?" Mrs. Gonzalez asks, as she begins to draw a horse pulling a cart. "This is what you want?"

Eric, who was born in the United States but educated in Mexico, looks confused. He joined the class at the beginning of the year, but still struggles with basics. He is among the second-largest – a distant second – group of kids coming to Dallas ISD as immigrants, U.S.-born children raised in Latin America, mainly Mexico.

"Or, this?" says Mrs. Gonzalez, drawing a car.

Eric points at the car and smiles. With zeal that can only accompany a restored dream, he erases the "t" from c-a-r-t.

By March, Elias and two others who arrived in class with him would leave Adamson.

Staff writer Holly K. Hacker contributed to this article.

LEP: Limited English Proficient. Identifies a student with limited English skills. Most, but not all, students get bilingual or ESL instruction. Many educators prefer the term English language learner, or ELL.

ESL: English as a Second Language. Instruction, mostly in English, for students who are learning the language. Teachers do not have to know students' native language, since a class can include students from many places.

BILINGUAL: Instruction aimed at developing English skills while providing some instruction in the students' native language, usually Spanish. Used mainly in elementary schools in Texas.

PARENT DENIAL: When a parent refuses bilingual or ESL classes for a child who is LEP. The child then is mainstreamed.

SHELTERED: Usually classes in core subjects such as math and science that help students understand English along with the subject. Generally used in middle and high schools.

To move out of the LEP category, students must meet several requirements:

• Reach a certain score on the language arts and reading portions of a standardized test approved by the state.

• Meet passing standards on the reading and writing English TAKS tests

• Satisfy a committee of teachers, administrators and a parent that a student can speak and write English proficiently.

Katherine Leal Unmuth

(Click on the clipboard below for graphic: Immigration and enrollment changes in Texas, 1990 - 2006.)