http://worldcat.org/entity/work/id/998534917

Newcomers in American schools meeting the educational needs of immigrant youths

In this report, the authors examine the schooling needs of immigrant students, assess how well these needs are currently being met, and suggest strategies for improving schooling outcomes for immigrants. The study analyzes immigrant education from a broad policy perspective, explicitly considering it as a political issue in competition for policymakers' attention and scarce public resources and as one of many challenges facing increasingly overburdened local school systems. Study data were collected from a purposive sample of nine school districts and 57 schools. Both on-site and telephone interviews were conducted with 240 district and school administrators, teachers, counselors, and community representatives. Four major conclusions emerged from the research: 1) Although they represent only a fraction of the nation's youth, immigrants constitute a growing proportion of that cohort and are heavily concentrated in a few areas of the country; 2) immigrant education is not a visible policy issue. Independent of their need to learn English and to escape the consequences of poverty, immigrant students are not viewed by federal and state policymakers as a distinct group requiring unique policy remedies--that immigrants may have different needs than native-born students is not widely recognized nor accepted; 3) the quality of schooling that immigrant students receive largely depends on the capacity of the local communities in which they reside. Yet most of these districts and schools lack the human and fiscal resources to educate students well, whether they are immigrant or native-born; and 4) immigrant students have unmet educational needs that are unique to their newcomer status. But the best way to help immigrant students is to strengthen the school systems that serve them, not to create new categorical programs that single out immigrants for special benefits.

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