Research Alert
How Are Schools Helping Unaccompanied Migrant Students?
From October 2013 to September 2015, U.S. Customs and Border Protection apprehended more than 102,000 unaccompanied minors from Central America and Mexico at the U.S.-Mexico border. An issue brief from the Migration Policy Institute details the scope of the situation, explains how the U.S. immigration system is handling these cases, and documents the challenges these children face, often including recovery from trauma and gaps in formal education. The brief also notes how school districts serving unaccompanied minors have responded to the influx.
The U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement has released 77,194 unaccompanied minors to live in communities throughout the United States. States with large existing Latino populations—like California and Texas—received the most minors, but other states have also taken in substantial numbers.
Local school districts bear most of the cost of educating unaccompanied minors. The brief includes links to several federal programs that can provide states and local education agencies with additional funds for this effort. It also highlights strategies affected school districts have used to serve these students. For instance, Montgomery County, Maryland, welcomed 1,571 unaccompanied child migrants between October 2013 and August 2015. The district created a job skills program for older unaccompanied immigrant students, who sometimes find they can't accrue enough credits to graduate from high school by the time they reach the maximum enrollment age.
The report, Unaccompanied Child Migrants in U.S. Communities, Immigration Court, and Schools by Sarah Pierce, is available at www.migrationpolicy.org/research/unaccompanied-child-migrants-us-communities-immigration-court-and-schools.
Online Only
Where to Find Diverse Books
In spring 2014, authors Ellen Oh and Malinda Lo took to Twitter to comment on the lack of diverse authors slated to appear at a BookCon panel about children's and YA literature. Soon, #WeNeedDiverseBooks was born. People from around the world used the hashtag to express why diverse books matter to the young readers in their lives.
The We Need Diverse Books website is a hub for the movement, featuring contests, grants, and opportunities to get involved. The site also features a rich listing of resources, available at www.weneeddiversebooks.org/where-to-find-diverse-books, to help educators and parents identify diverse books.
Putting ELLs on the Map
English language learners represented nearly 10 percent of the total K–12 student population in U.S. public schools during the 2012–13 school year. States with the highest density of ELLs included California (24 percent); New Mexico (18 percent); and Nevada (17 percent). Conversely, West Virginia (1 percent); Mississippi; and Vermont (both with 2 percent) had the smallest shares of ELLs.
Source: Migration Policy Institute's States and Districts with the Highest Number and Share of English Language Learners.
Relevant Reads
Dreamers: An Immigrant Generation's Fight for Their American Dream, by Eileen Truax (Beacon Press, 2015)
"I grew up thinking this was my country." Again and again, that's what we hear from the young people in this book. Their parents brought them to the United States without documentation when they were young, and they were legally entitled to public education through high school. But once they graduate, these "Dreamers" face a new reality. They are often denied access to college, face enormous barriers to pursuing a career, and live under the threat of deportation to a country they don't remember.
It would easy to make a political, economic, or academic case for legalizing these immigrants, says author Eileen Truax. But in this book, she elects to show the daily struggles of individual Dreamers. A student forms an activist group and joins in public protests at the risk of arrest and deportation. A high-achieving student had always planned to become a nurse, but her excitement at applying to college fades when she realizes she needs a Social Security number. Full-time UCLA students depend on the university's makeshift food closet, just outside the dining hall, to survive as they pursue their studies. These stories bring an important perspective to the question, What do we do with young people who have no legal right to be here, but who consider the United States their home?
Numbers of Note
Figure
Screen Grabs
The Road to Graduation
The two-part film The Graduates/Los Graduados, which aired on the PBS series Independent Lens, tells the stories of six Latino and Latina students and the challenges they face as they make their way through U.S. high schools. In Part 1, "Girls," we meet Darla from Tulsa, who is trying to return to school after having a son. Stephanie, the daughter of Salvadoran immigrants, is determined to go to college but worries about the violence in her Chicago neighborhood. And in the Bronx, Chastity sees school as a helpful distraction from her family's struggles with homelessness. Part 2, "Boys," features Eduardo, who escapes a life of gang crime when he is invited to join a college-prep program. In Griffin, Georgia, Gustavo grapples with how his status as an undocumented immigrant will affect his future. And Juan, from Lawrence, Massachusetts, uses dance to cope with being bullied because he's gay.
Experts including Pedro Noguera and Patricia Gándara offer background information to put the students' stories in context.
The film, along with related resources, is available in English and Spanish at www.pbs.org/independentlens/films/graduates.
PageTurner
How well a student can speak a second language has nothing to do with her or his ability to think abstractly.
