For Immigrant Kids, a World of Struggle

Every Thursday night in a small conference room at one of America’s most prestigious universities, a group of academic researchers talks about the education of some of the nation’s most unseen students--its immigrant children.

Hands soar into the air. The graduate and doctoral students interrupt, their voices running over one another.

They are armed with field notes and anecdotes and a need to speak out about how so many schools across the country are struggling with their new student populations.

One researcher tells of a Dominican child who was told to take off a beaded necklace that displays his country’s flag--by a teacher wearing a shamrock. Another tells of an immigrant student who wants to attend college but cannot because of the family’s illegal status.

This is the Harvard Immigration Project, a five-year study of 400 first-generation immigrant students on both coasts of the United States. The study considers not just test scores but also what project co-directors Marcelo Suarez-Orozco and Carola Suarez-Orozco call the “psychocultural aspects” of being an immigrant student in America’s public schools.

“This is not going away. This is our future. The census data says that, even more than we thought,” said Marcelo Suarez-Orozco, a professor of education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. “And social engagement is very, very powerful. If they are not socially engaged, they are not going to invest in themselves or in school.”

Through recorded interviews with students and educators, the study is tracking how teachers treat students, how students treat each other and how the social side--the emotional side--of the achievement gap can drive test scores. The husband-and-wife team has published one book, “Children of Immigration (The Developing Child),” and plan another at the end of the study next year. The first book chronicles the struggles of immigrant students in the schools and looks at the reasons that assimilation is different today than it was 100 years ago.

The book and research are linked to a graduate-level class at Harvard called “Immigrant Youth,” a seminar that attempts to explain the immigrant experience to future teachers.

At Harvard, 27 researchers are trying to learn what assimilation is like for immigrants and why some immigrant students achieve even though many fall behind.

The researchers submit case studies that detail the students’ social interactions, grades, living situations, immigration history, religious backgrounds and perceptions of American racial discrimination.

“It’s really just stunning what the immigrant census data is showing,” says Carola Suarez-Orozco. “We are seeing the complete transformation of the United States, and by extension the schools.”

At Berkeley High School in California, students, teachers and parents are studying immigrant students in its Diversity Project. Since 1998, they have been looking at all aspects of school life: learning, technology, discipline and the students’ tendency to socially segregate themselves by ethnicity.

“This kind of thing is starting to be on everyone’s mind,” said Berkeley High teacher Dana Moran. “It’s really like we have two schools. And the Latino students feel very marginalized. They are not very integrated into the rest of the school in terms of the social activities.”

Both projects are studying the effects of demographic shifts:

* The country is seeing the largest wave of immigration in its history, with most immigrants coming from Asian, Caribbean, and Central and Latin American countries.

* One of five students is an immigrant, and 80% of those are students of color.

* In two generations, nearly half the population will be people of color and the children and grandchildren of today’s immigrants. This is showing up far from the country’s borders: In Dodge City, Kan., for example, more than 30% of the children enrolled in school are children of immigrants.

These facts are felt, seen and heard in highly intimate ways through both of these studies.

Berkeley High is investigating why black and Latino students are disciplined more often than white students, and it implemented a plan to keep a database of all disciplinary actions and to intervene between students and teachers when necessary.

“The gap is there in every large urban high school throughout the United States,” said Frank Lynch, Berkeley’s principal. “If there is a high school that knows what to do about it, then we want to bottle it and sell it to everyone.”