Strangers in the School: Facilitators and Barriers Regarding Refugee Parental Involvement

Orientation, Parent Engagement, Tutoring, Summer Programs, and College Support: How a City is Helping Immigrant Students

“…These include language and cultural barriers [24], challenges with academic adjustment and expectations in the U.S. [25], unresolved historical trauma [26,27] , as well as differing priorities and goals between family members who may want children to work vs. schools who may push for access to college [28,29]. Additionally, level of education, language ability, lack of familiarity with US school systems, and socioeconomic status of parents greatly influences the parent's availability to assist their children with homework and educational needs [30,31,32]. Given the multiple challenges that immigrant students face, educational attainment and access to freely attend and participate in school is of utmost importance to immigrants in the U.S. educational system.…”

“…In order to understand the results of the document analysis, it is important to fully understand the immigrant community living in the city. While the focus of this study is immigrant students in K-12 education, we include statistics on all immigrants because the research supports the idea that parents are influential in the academic trajectory of their children [30][31][32]39,41].…”

“…ESL classes should be offered in the school setting, in the community, and virtually in order to meet the needs of both students and their families. ESL services should also be available to adults as the literature suggests that parents' knowledge can heavily influence the academic outcomes of children [30][31][32]39,41].…”

Perspectives on Transitions in Refugee Education

“…Therefore, it is clearly concerning if there is generally a low attendance rate at these meetings by refugee background parents, as indicated by educators from the participating Victorian and New South Wales schools. Although non-attendance at school events may be perceived as indicative of a parent's lack of interest (Cureton 2020), some of the participating refugee background parents from these schools suggested that rather than a brief talk with the teachers at Parent-Teacher meetings, they would prefer events targeted specifically to help them in supporting their children's learning, such as workshops with a focus on engaging with homework content or learning English and computer skills. Some of the participating school practices reflect a tendency to categorize refugee background parents together with other CALD parents as if they were a homogenous group (Azerdogan 2019), thereby disregarding intragroup differences such as differences in class, gender, and educational background.…”

Education without evidence: Gaps in data availability for refugee, asylee, and humanitarian migrant students in US schools

“…As such, in the US the terms of federally-mandated programs like ESSA and Results Driven Accountability are violated by the failure to provide education-related data, such as educational conditions and academic outcomes, to educators and educational decision-makers working with RAHM students. Where available, evidence suggests that the resources required to educate RAHM students are not adequately used (Cureton, 2020; Leachman et al., 2017; McBrien, 2005), primarily because the specific academic needs of this population have never been identified due to the lack of data.…”