Immigrants Having Hard Time in U.S. Schools, Study Says

A national report on immigrant students released in Los Angeles on Wednesday painted a dismal picture of how these youngsters--estimated at 6% of the nation’s public school enrollment--are faring in American school systems.

Cultural misunderstandings, inaccurate assessments of non-English-speaking students’ educational level, harassment by immigration officials and adjustment problems due to war trauma are common, said the National Coalition of Advocates for Students, a Boston-based organization formed to examine school experiences of immigrant youngsters.

“We cannot assume that time alone will take care” of these problems, former California Supreme Court Justice Cruz Reynoso, who chaired the national advisory panel for the group, said during a press conference at Belmont High School, a largely immigrant school near downtown.

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The report, titled “New Voices: Immigrant Students in U.S. Public Schools,” estimated that close to 2.7 million of the nation’s 40 million public school children are recent immigrants, mainly from Mexico, Central America, Asia and the Caribbean. Based on case studies, interviews and public hearings in five major cities, including Los Angeles, it offered considerable anecdotal evidence of inadequate education or mistreatment of these foreign-born students.

It included stories like the one relayed by a Los Angeles witness about a 12-year-old boy who was picked up by immigration officials while riding his bicycle.

“That has sent fear amongst parents, so kids aren’t going to school,” said the witness, who was not identified by name in the report. Similar stories were told by a social worker in New York, an immigration attorney in Miami and a case worker in Cambridge, Mass., and tended to support reports from school districts with large immigrant populations that deportation fears have caused unexpected enrollment drops.

Particularly in states such as California, Texas and Florida, school officials have reported being rudely awakened to the changes taking place on their campuses because of immigration, the report suggested.

One of the most jarring examples was offered in testimony by a Fresno principal who, in informing the parent of a Hmong student that his child faced punishment for fighting, was told by the parent: “It’s all right if you discipline my child. Just please do not cripple him or blind him.”

The report also cited problems stemming from the difficulty of obtaining school records, such as report cards, from the immigrant student’s native country. This has resulted in arbitrary and potentially harmful policies, the report said, such as a rule in Dade County, Fla., that requires school officials to place immigrant high school-aged students without proper records no higher than the ninth grade, even if the student asserts that he completed a higher grade at home.

The report made numerous recommendations. It urged that schools eliminate discriminatory “tracking” of immigrant students into low-ability or vocational courses, which the report said can lead to alienation from school, dropping out or failure to qualify for college.

It also recommended that districts create assessment centers with bilingual staffs to prevent arbitrary grade placements or improper evaluation of immigrant youngsters’ educational skills.

The report also called for recruiting and training more bilingual teachers, particularly from immigrant communities, and endorsed an instructional approach called “English Plus,” which would provide native-language tutors and teachers for students who are learning English.