Ahhhh the teenage mind! Good times huh?! I have extensive experience working with this age group (mostly high risk youth) and I'll share what I know in case it is of help.
One of the techniques I learned when communicating with the teen who loves to respond with "I don't know" and "no" and very brief avoidant speech is to tell them "I promise I'm not going to ask anything you don't already know the answer to so if you don't want to answer, just say so, okay?" You'd be AMAZED how well this works! Of course, then it was up to me to make sure I asked open-ended questions to not provide an opportunity for "yes" or "no" responses:) If she then says "I don't want to talk about it", then maybe have a conversation about why.
Now, I realize when it comes to school work not being done you might be thinking she HAS to talk about it whether she wants to or not. I'm not suggesting to not talk about it, simply be creative about how you talk about it because my guess is that it has less to do with school work and more to do about growing into the teenage life experience and adapting to new environments and new friends.
Starting around age 12 the human brain begins a process called 'pruning' where all of the brain cells that have not been used are discarded (and there are hundreds of thousands not being used regardless of how smart a child is!). One of the results is the area of the brain responsible for regulating emotion (limbic system) becomes highly active. This is true for ALL teenage brains! Because the limbic system is highly active, the part of the brain responsible for reason and logic is less influential. Stress of any kind seems sooooo huge for the teenager for this reason...we think they are over reacting, they don't.
Developmentally, children younger than 11 or 12 look to their parents for support and connection. Children 12 and older magically switch to looking to their peers for support and connection. This doesn't mean that you don't matter any more, it just means the priority is on what peers think and do. And this is when the relationship with the parent needs to shift a bit to provide different kinds of support in order to help the teen navigate through all of the pitfalls of making poor and risky choices. The part of the brain responsible for understanding 'future' in terms of why not to do something doesn't fully develop until around 19-20 years of age. So having a conversation about the importance of looking to the future often does little good, but is still good to have anyways.
So maybe try to find immediate rewards that demonstrate why school success is important.
If I were to make a guess as to what is happening with your daughter, I would say she's adapting to a new environment and making new friends and seeing that many of them don't spend as much time as she has excelling in school and maybe she's wanting to try to be 'normal'. I'd look at who she's spending time with in school (peers) and maybe try to get her involved in an activity with peers who are wanting to excel in school AND have fun being teens as well. There is a balance in there somewhere and it seems to me your daughter is pulling to an extreme direction in response to the extreme excellence she has demonstrated thus far.
I might try to balance fun time with mom and academic time with mom. She needs to learn that there is no need to choose between fun and education...she can do both!
As far as the Spanish speaking help you have to offer...maybe set up an hour or so over the weekend and a few weeknights where this is the only language spoken, and where English is not acknowledged or has to be explained in Spanish...sounds like you are fluent in Spanish so this might help her. Immersion!
Lots of luck to you with your daughter! You sound like a very wonderful mama who loves her dearly so I'm sure this rough patch will work out:) I might recommend googling "protective factors" and "developmental assets" to learn more about how to support a young teen and help them succeed during this very complicated time in their life.
