Dive Brief:

• School districts around the country that receive large numbers of refugee students have hired extra translators and interpreters, opened targeted schools or service centers and created social-emotional support services to respond to the needs of this group.
• District Administration reports the Rochester City School District in New York opened the Rochester International Academy in 2011 for students in grades K-12 who are new to the country, while the Granite School District in Utah places newcomer students in the Tumaini Center for their first two weeks, teaching students and families about the district, local services and job opportunities in addition to providing social-emotional supports to help families deal with traumatic events.
• In Harrisonburg, VA, Arab teenage girls formed a support group to help get through the transition to the United States, where there are very different customs and laws about what women can and cannot do, and high school students from refugee countries are trained as interpreters to help the district communicate with families.

Dive Insight:

Many immigrant families come to the United States from countries that approach education very differently. Beyond language services and social-emotional supports, these families need to learn about the expectations in the U.S. education system, including parent engagement. Parents who care about their children and their academic success probably do not know teachers need to meet them at parent-teacher conferences to recognize that.

Language can be a major barrier to parent engagement. Butschools are responsible for providing qualified interpreters at no cost to families under federal civil rights law. The Civil Rights Act says people cannot be discriminated against based on national origin and the courts have consistently ruled that a lack of access to public services because of a language barrier equates to exactly that discrimination. In 2015, the Departments of Education and Justice released theclearest set of expectations yet about what schools must do to serve immigrant families and comply with the law.

Recommended Reading

District Administration: Route to refugee success in schools