PATHWAYS TO OPPORTUNITY

The successful integration of the children of immigrants into the educational systems of their receiving countries is one of the most important and fundamental challenges of our time. Understanding the specific needs that different immigrant populations face vis-à-vis the education system is critical in order to determine appropriate interventions. Given the diversity of the immigrant student populations entering schools in many different countries, it is clear that a one-size-fits-all model will not work. However, a number of key factors have emerged in the cross-national research as demonstrating positive implications for the schooling performance and educational integration of immigrant students; these factors have guided our search for promising school-based practices.

For many immigrant youth, the excitement and challenges of transitioning to a new society play out in the hallways, cafeterias, and classrooms of school buildings. Newcomer youth may face substantial language barriers, social isolation, and difficulty understanding and adjusting to new teaching styles and academic expectations. In response, school districts in many parts of the world have begun to adopt strategies designed to meet the specific needs of newcomer students. Special schools and programs within schools have been developed to support newcomer students and create a community of peers who are experiencing the dramatic transition to a new educational system, a new culture, and a new language. Some schools and programs serve newcomer students for a short period of time, working toward the goal of moving them into a mainstream school; other schools serve these students for multiple years with the same academic offerings as the other schools in the district. Many of these schools and programs have developed innovative pedagogical methods that could be useful to all schools and teachers working with immigrant students and second language learners. They should be looked to as exemplary practices in the education of newcomer students and in other educational areas.

The mission of the Internationals Network for Public Schools is to provide quality education for recently arrived immigrant students through a unique educational model based on exploration of interdisciplinary academic content in linguistically heterogeneous, learner-centered environments. See also http://www.internationalsnps.org

The Belmont High School Newcomer Center in Los Angeles, California offers full-day classes for English language learner (ELL) students and optional half-day summer and winter sessions to help accelerate language development. Students’ primary languages are used to improve their comprehension, and the program’s curriculum is aligned with the mainstream academic curriculum to minimize the loss of academic content in the process of language learning. Serving newly arrived immigrants ages 13 to 18 in grades nine through eleven, the Belmont High School Newcomer Center admits students on a rolling basis for a period of up to three semesters before they transition to mainstream classes and schools.

For some newcomer immigrant youth, arrival in a new country coincides with their first opportunity to attend school or their return to school after a prolonged absence. These students, commonly referred to as “students with interrupted formal education” (SIFE) may have significant gaps in their learning, and their skill levels often do not correspond to their age. Age-graded classrooms may not be the most appropriate placement for these students, and instead, they may require more creative solutions for their academic needs. As the number of war refugees, persons holding political asylum, and immigrants escaping persecution and economic deprivation continues to rise, the number of SIFE students grows and host countries are being forced to respond by thinking about students in new ways and developing innovative approaches to education.

The Manhattan Comprehensive Night and Day High School in New York City serves non-traditional students ages 17 to 21 in a model designed to provide SIFE students with expanded learning opportunities. The school offers flexible scheduling in order to allow for accelerated skills development and credit accumulation, with accommodations for adult life demands (such as work, childcare, and family responsibilities.) Classes run from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Monday–Thursday and Sunday, and students can enroll in either daytime or evening instruction. In addition to extensive language support, the school offers weekend academic programs and a comprehensive summer school. Working in partnership with a community-based organization, the school also provides social and psychological services, employment counseling, and college admission support to all students. For more information, see www.mancomp.org

The Toronto District School Board created the Literacy Enrichment Academic Program (LEAP) for students ages 11–16 who did not have the opportunity to attend school regularly before arriving in Canada. LEAP offers these students a chance to gain English language, literacy, and mathematics skills so that they can catch up to other students their age and eventually integrate into the mainstream program. The Toronto District School Board offers LEAP in over 40 elementary schools, as well as in 15 secondary schools, and the program has been shown to help some students make gains of at least two grade levels in one academic year. For further information, see http://www.tdsb.on.ca/

Some of the fiercest debates about immigration center on the question of children’s language development. Cross-country comparisons of good practice demonstrate that it is important to make “long-term investments in systematic language support” (Christensen & Stanat, 2007, p. 2) as well as to provide pre-service and professional development training for teachers in order to help them appropriately support their English language learner students. Although ideology often competes with scientific evidence in determining how children should be taught to develop new language skills, some efforts are demonstrating real promise in facilitating language acquisition. The diversity of political and ideological climates means that in each country certain programs are more or less likely to be adopted, regardless of their proven effectiveness. However, innovative approaches are being developed in divergent contexts and offer a range of options worthy of study and emulation.

The British Colombia Ministry of Education’s approach to new language development has been highly touted by experts in many fields (for example, see Christensen & Stanat, 2007). At the primary level, the focus is on immersion with up to six hours per week of systematic language support. At the secondary level, new immigrants participate in a three-phase preparation program divided into reception, transition, and integration, before they move to mainstream instruction. At each level of schooling, teachers receive specialized training to prepare them to provide high quality academic and language instruction. For further information, see http://www.bced.gov.bc.ca/esl/

The Internationals Network for Public Schools approaches new language development in what many would consider a non-traditional manner. However, given its extraordinary results with students (65 percent graduate — significantly higher than district graduate rates — and over 90 percent of graduates continue on to college), educators are starting to pay attention. At Internationals, there are no separate language classes; rather, every teacher is a language teacher, and students learn language through activity-based learning and a variety of assessments. Students are mixed by age, grade, academic ability, linguistic proficiency, native language, and prior schooling; and English is fostered through collaborative project-based work. At the same time, students strengthen their native language skills by working with other native speakers and including native language products in their work. Ultimately, the student is the locus of control for language use, and this control is mediated by different learning contexts. For further information, see http://www.internationalsnps.org. (See also Newcomer programs above. )

Immigrants, adults and youth alike possess valuable skills and talents that are frequently overlooked and undervalued by their host society. Fluency in multiple languages is a prime example, and language loss may produce negative consequences in public and private, social and economic, and political and cultural spheres. Recently, a number of people have begun to pay attention to the impact of heritage language loss and have dedicated resources to developing programs to combat this disturbing phenomenon. What had previously been restricted to private language schools and community-based efforts has now become part of the work of many school districts and government programs. Proficiency in multiple languages is all but required in the current global era, and societies must take responsibility for promoting this. Building on immigrants’ existing abilities is an important step toward ensuring the development of a successful global citizenry.

The French Language Heritage Program, created in 2005 by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs in partnership with the New York City Department of Education, teaches French language, literature, and culture to students of Francophone background enrolled in New York City public schools. Designed with the objectives of helping these students develop proficiency in French reading comprehension, writing, and oral expression, the program also works to support students’ ethnic identity formation in the context of a multicultural, multiethnic environment. Ultimately, the French Language Heritage Program aims to equip these students with skills and confidence in their native language that will help them succeed academically in other languages as well. For further information, see http://www.facecouncil.org/fhlp/index.html

The Programme d’enseignement des langues d’origine (Program for Native Language Instruction) was launched in Quebec in 1977 in an effort to offer heritage instruction to immigrant youth outside of regular class time. Heritage language classes are made available to students before and after school as well as during lunch periods. Through this program, school districts have recognized the importance of nurturing immigrant students’ first language fluency and providing immigrant-origin youth with opportunities to learn their parents’ native languages. This recognition does not go unnoticed or unappreciated by immigrants in the community who have seen their own languages being valued. Click here for further information.

The education of children of immigrants must been understood by every educator and support staff member in the school building as a priority and a responsibility in order to effectively educate and integrate all immigrant-origin youth. To achieve this, considerable structural and cultural shifts are often needed in the orientation and organization of schooling. When the instruction of immigrant-origin children is understood as residing exclusively in the domain of a small cohort of second language instructors, as is typically the case, the rest of the school community may not feel sufficiently involved in ensuring these students’ academic success. These students’ needs go beyond solely second language development to include cultural adaptation, social support, and assistance in general academic subjects. Therefore, schools should provide ongoing professional development to all faculty and staff in the building on how to work with immigrant origin children in their classrooms and schools. Just as teachers across the academic disciplines are being called on to learn how to incorporate literacy-building activities into their lessons, the same must be true for taking on the education of immigrant-origin students as a school-wide endeavor. School personnel may also require education in effectively communicating with parents of different national, cultural, and linguistic backgrounds, and this too must be incorporated into school professional development planning.

The Parent Institute for Quality Education (PIQE), a non-governmental organization based in California, leads workshops for teachers to help them learn how to work with immigrant parents. Schools and school districts contract with PIQE to lead six-hour workshops to train instructors on how present school as a valuable and welcoming community asset for families. In the course of the workshops, teachers receive strategies to enable them to bridge language and cultural gaps, and they are instructed on how to utilize cultural differences to a child’s advantage. Workshop participants learn to interact with parents from various educational, economic, cultural, and linguistic backgrounds and are offered suggestions on how to address parents’ misgivings and misconceptions about the educational system. For further information, see http://www.piqe.org/ (See also Support for Parenting in the New Land above.)

At Family Life Academy Charter School, an elementary school in the Bronx, New York serving students in kindergarten through fifth grade, teachers and school staff receive workshops throughout the year on how to work with English language learner students. Since over 40 percent of the student body is classified as ELL, the majority in the lower grades, all teachers receive instruction in a variety of strategies to meet these students’ needs. Professional development covers topics such as the stages of ELL students’ language acquisition, myths about second language acquisition, and specific classroom activities that correspond to each stage of language development. According to the school principal, good pedagogy for ELL students is really good pedagogy for all students, and therefore teachers are encouraged to apply what they learn in workshops about ELL students to their practice more generally. For more information about Family Life Academy Charter School, go to www.flacsnyc.com/index

Over the course of the last two decades, higher educational credentials have become basic requirements for entry into the skilled labor market. Awareness of the importance of acquiring post-secondary credentials and of the process it takes to access post-secondary educational opportunities is a key issue related to the successful integration and education of children of immigrants. Navigating the maze of colleges, universities, and vocational and technical programs that exist in different societies is no easy task. This, coupled with the high cost of post-secondary education in many post-industrial nations, either in the form of tuition or in deferred household income, makes it critically important to assist immigrant families with the process of searching for schools, applying for admissions, and securing grants and loans. Without such assistance, a generation of youth may end up undereducated, underemployed, and unable to participate in the global economy and society.

While there are few examples of initiatives specifically directed at enhancing immigrant students’ college literacy and access, one program, the PALMS (Post-secondary Access for Latino Middle-grades Students) Project addresses a number of important and related issues. Created as a partnership between the Education Development Center, LULAC (League of United Latin American Citizens) National Educational Service Centers, and the National Forum to Accelerate Middle-Grades Reform, the PALMS Project works to improve the life chances of Latino youth by increasing their participation in post-secondary education. Focusing on youth ages 10 to 14 — a critical period for students to develop the knowledge and skills to succeed in high school and beyond, the PALMS Project has developed resources to assist educators in promoting Latino post-secondary enrollment by improving communication strategies and outreach to families. The PALMS website offers a variety of ideas and supports for practitioners, and the PALMS Toolkit for School Leaders includes a host of materials to facilitate increased school-family collaboration to ensure Latino youth’s eligibility and access to post-secondary education. For further information, see http://www.palmsproject.net/

Summer learning loss represents a serious obstacle to all children’s academic progress. Research has demonstrated the increased risks for children from economically disadvantaged backgrounds (Alexander, Entwisle & Olson, 2004; Burkam, Ready, Lee & LoGerfor, 2004; Cooper, Charlton, Valentine & Muhlenbruck, 2000; Cooper, Nye, Charlton, Lindsay & Greathouse, 1996), and second language learners may experience even greater losses in the area of new language development during the summer. A three-month gap in language instruction may cause significant setbacks for these (typically immigrant) students and can have implications for the timing of their transition to mainstream classrooms. Summer enrichment activities offer immigrant youth opportunities to reduce summer learning loss as well as to participate in positive social activities, thus fostering integration in multiple areas.

The Project Alerta Summer Program, Alerta Verano, is a four-week program run by the University of Massachusetts Institute for Learning and Teaching that offers summer enrichment to Latino and ELL students from the Boston Public Schools. This program is designed to minimize summer learning loss and help these students prepare to take the challenging entrance examination for Boston’s most competitive public schools. Students in grades three through five receive a full day of academic instruction in math, writing, reading, and creative arts that combines a rigorous curriculum with fun and engaging activities. Experienced teachers from the Boston Public Schools system serve as the primary instructors and graduate and undergraduate students from the University of Massachusetts-Boston work as teaching assistants. This program represents an inventive collaboration among universities, community organizations, and local public schools to fill a major gap in the existing social services, and it serves as a model for future partnerships that are needed to address issues in multiple domains. For more information about Alerta Verano, see http://www.umb.edu/academics/departments/gce/ilt/alerta/alerta_summer_prgm.php

The Arlington County Public School system in Virginia offers a High Intensity Language Training in the summer for English language learner students in high school. This summer program is based on a High Intensity Language Trainingthat immigrant students participate in during the academic year, and it consists of a sequence of classes developed to facilitate students’ transition into mainstream academic courses by preventing summer learning loss. Instructors work to ensure that ELL students attain English proficiency while meeting state standards by integrating language skill development with content area instruction. For further information, see http://www2.apsva.us/1540108115825853/site/default.asp

The importance of family involvement in children’s education has been well substantiated in the research literature (Eccles & Harold, 1993; Epstein 1995; Fantuzzo, McWayne, Perry, & Childs, 2004; Jeynes, 2003). Immigrant children’s need for parent involvement and support may be particularly acute, given that they are simultaneously adapting to a new country, a new educational system, and, often, a new language. Parent involvement comes in a variety of forms, ranging from providing children with a quiet place to work at home to regularly visiting school and interacting with teachers. Societal expectations for parent involvement are generally assumed rather than explicitly articulated, and those who fail to exhibit certain behaviors may be deemed uncaring or uninvolved parents. In some cultures, for example, the idea that parents would frequently engage with their children’s teachers and make inquiries or requests is completely foreign, and the concept of parent involvement is generally restricted to home-based activities. In others, failure to participate actively in school events is taken to indicate lack of interest in their children’s education. Immigrant parents may require additional guidance and support in order to learn about and incorporate new (expected) practices into their parenting repertoire.

Facilitating parent involvement in schools benefits children and helps reduce the inaccurate stereotyping of immigrant parents’ commitment to their children’s education.
The Montgomery County Public School ESOL Parent Center in Rockville, Maryland, offers a comprehensive model for engaging immigrant parents and establishing strong links between them and their children’s schools. The Parent Center provides parents with an orientation to the Montgomery County Public Schools system and includes a specific focus on the ESOL (English Speakers of Other Languages) and bilingual programs. In addition, staff at the Parent Center assists parents in completing required school forms. Furthermore, the Parent Center offers parents interpretation services for parent-teacher conferences and school- and system-wide meetings. An additional strength of this center lies in the fact that it serves as a community resource for parents, providing information about services in the community within and beyond the educational system.

At Family Life Academy Charter School, establishing strong home-school partnerships is a central part of the school’s mission, and a sizeable part of the school budget is dedicated to engaging with families. The principal and school personnel understand that there are different levels of parent involvement and that parents may engage with schools in multiple ways. Building on their knowledge of the challenges that parents face in their daily lives, the school administration works to provide a variety of opportunities for parents to learn about their children’s academic progress and how to support them, and it employs a range of communication strategies. There is a part-time parent engagement officer whose child is enrolled at the school, and he or she serves as an important point of contact for parents. In addition, the principal hosts parent workshops that offer tips on what they can do to help their children at home, and she holds them at different times in order to accommodate parents’ work schedules. In order to encourage parents to attend these workshops, the school awards prizes such as books and CD players to families. Family Life Academy Charter School has developed a series of initiatives to support and engage parents in ways that are sensitive to their realities, and as a result, the school has been successful in creating unique and enriching partnerships between home and school. For more information about Family Life Academy Charter School, go to www.flacsnyc.com/index

The Toronto Public Schools, winner of the 2008 Carl Bertelsmann Foundation Award, places the involvement of immigrant parents at the center of its educational policy initiatives. See also Services for Students with Interrupted Formal Education (SIFE) . For further information, see http://www.tdsb.on.ca/

Regardless of parents’ preferred form of involvement, keeping them abreast of their children’s academic progress, sharing important notices and events, and communicating information about school policies is one of the most critical ways that school districts can work to promote parent involvement. In many cases, however, immigrant parents face substantial challenges to engaging with their children’s school and understanding the information they receive, not the least of which are language and communication barriers. Efforts to provide professional, culturally-relevant translation and interpretation services can go a long way in improving home-school relationships, bolstering communication, and increasing immigrant families’ sense of comfort with their children’s school. Ultimately, children can benefit tremendously when their parents are well-informed about their education, but this only happens when parents have access to the information they need to support their children and intervene when necessary.

The Translation and Interpretation Unit at the New York City Department of Education constitutes an essential part of the Department’s language access initiative. It aims to enhance the New York City schools’ ability to communicate with and better engage limited English proficient parents of schoolchildren. The Translation and Interpretation Unit provides schools and offices with an internal resource for accessing written translation and oral interpretation services in the eight most commonly spoken languages in the homes of New York City children: Arabic, Bengali, Haitian Creole, Korean, Mandarin, Russian, Spanish, and Urdu. Schools and offices may make on-demand requests for services, and translations and interpretations may occur in person, over the telephone, or in printed document form. For further information, see http://schools.nyc.gov/Offices/Translation/default.htm

The Department of Education and Early Childhood Development in Victoria, Australia offers free interpretation and translation services to all government schools with students and families from language backgrounds other than English. This initiative was specifically developed in order to make available to parents information in their first language relating to school programs and student progress. The Victoria Department of Education and Early Childhood Education provides all schools with clear guidelines for requesting translation and interpretation services in twenty-two languages, and it hosts a website with some of the school notices and materials most commonly requested for translation. For further information, see http://www.education.vic.gov.au/management/schooloperations/interpret/default.htm

Wrap-Around Services: Advisory Groups, After-School Academic Supports, & Health Services

Increasingly, it is recognized that students with high needs require greater support in order to be successful in school (Eber, Osuch & Redditt, 1996; Noguera, 2003, Rothstein, 2004). The highly lauded “Harlem miracle” was achieved by the Harlem Children’s Zone in part through the provision of wrap-around services, which include advisory groups, after-school academic supports, and health services (along with rigorous teaching) to students from high-risk backgrounds (see Harlem Children’s Zone, 2008; Tough, 2008). Immigrant students often live in high poverty, high violence neighborhoods (Hernandez, Denton, & McCartney, 2007) and attend far from optimal schools (Suárez-Orozco, Suárez-Orozco, & Todorova, 2008), and thus may benefit from the same supports as other high-need students.
While our search did not yield specific examples unique to immigrants under each of these categories, we did find two examples of sites that provide some of these services in combination and that serve high populations of immigrant students. Below we describe the significance of each type of practice and discuss the two innovative sites.

The Children’s Aid Society adopts an exemplary approach to meeting the intense and varied needs of children and families in struggling communities, and it has been a leader in the field of social services for over 150 years. Currently serving more than 150,000 children and their families at more than 45 sites throughout New York City, the organization’s efforts to support healthy families and promote positive child development begins before birth with prenatal counseling and continues through high school and beyond with college and job training programs. The Children’s Aid Society’s philosophy is grounded in the belief that every aspect of a child’s development must be addressed as he or she grows, and it thus offers a wide range of services to children and families at each developmental stage. From health care and housing assistance to recreational activities and legal services, the Children’s Aid Society has adopted a full-service, wraparound model — in some cases even working inside schools — to fill in the wide gaps left by an inadequate social safety net. For more information, go to http://www.childrensaidsociety.org/

Boston Connects is a school-based collaboration between the Boston Public Schools, community agencies, and Boston College that works with over 3,000 elementary-age students in twelve elementary and K–8 schools across the system. The program is focused on strengthening students’ academic skills, building their social-emotional capacity, improving their physical well-being, and reducing barriers to learning. Boston Connects uses an intervention approach, and it begins by identifying each student’s individualized combination of strengths and needs. Subsequently, a student is connected to a customized set of support services. Recognizing the value of integrated and comprehensive student and family support, the program leverages the resources of its broad-based partners to deliver social support and mental health services as well as academic and cultural enrichment opportunities. By identifying and deeply engaging with all of the challenges that disadvantaged children experience, Boston Connects responds to the needs of the whole child and works to equip students with all of the skills and resources they require to succeed in schools and in society. For further information, see http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/soe/bostonconnects/

Schools are often the first — and in some cases the only — point of contact that immigrant students and families have with the world outside their communities. Schools can be transformed into resource centers for immigrant families by providing a range of services that target obstacles impeding educational progress. Supporting successful immigrant integration requires coordination across a wide variety of social sectors. Schools that provide this are well-positioned to serve as a significant engine for integration.