In this article, I argue that there has been a basic continuity between what immigrants historically have sought from American schools and what contemporary immigrants seek. In neither case have immigrants sought to utilize the schools to "reproduce" or to "preserve" cultures separate from the American mainstream. Rather, immigrants have consistently sought to utilize American schooling for purposes of incorporation into a system of American ethnic groups that exhibit aspects of acculturation and retention. I make the case for continuity through an examination of the fate of homeland languages in the public schools during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; of the role of parochial schooling in the first third of the twentieth century; of the resistance of Mexican Americans of Crystal City, Texas, to "schooled ethnicity" during the 1970s and 1980s; of the attitudes of contemporary immigrants toward bilingual education; and, finally, of patterns of supplementary schooling among the children of immigrants. (Contains 8 notes.)