How Immigrants Experience the U.S. Education System
Immigrant children in U.S. schools face numerous challenges due to language barriers. Many cannot productively learn in all subjects, experience emotional stress, and have difficulty forming friendships and relationships in school. Moreover, these children’s respective schools lack the accessible resources (i.e. language-friendly textbooks) needed to create productive and constructive learning environments in which immigrant children are able to flourish. Policies dictating how the U.S. education system operates have improved the experiences of some immigrant children and their families, but many still struggle inside and outside the classroom.
Nearly a quarter of schoolchildren in the United States are immigrants or are the children of immigrants. These children are significantly more likely to face high levels of stress and lack sufficient money to participate in academic enrichment activities and/or programs. More specifically, children of illegal immigrants, at the age of two, tend to exhibit lower levels of language and cognitive development compared to children of legal immigrants and native-born parents. Additionally, as there are only around 3,400 ENL (English as a New Language) teachers on the New York City Public School staff, the approximately 20,000 migrant children starting school in the fall won’t receive the individualized attention they need in order to thrive in U.S. schools.
In fact, according to Bobby Bridges, dean of Achievement First Bushwick Middle School in Brooklyn, New York, “Students whose parents are immigrants actually work harder because they feel like they owe it to their parents to get good grades for the sacrifices they make.” And according to Jerry Guiracocha, a 17-year-old attending a charter school in Brooklyn, “When I first came to the United States, I did not go to kindergarten and went straight to first grade and had to learn English. Having to learn a new language made school difficult and I had no one to help me.” Jerry’s story highlights what so many other students experience everyday when they go to school; the stress of having to learn English in order to understand the material being taught negatively affects learning.
The perpetuation of these language barriers is partly due to the fact that schools generally allocate more resources and funding towards promoting education for students whose first language is English. Thus, public schools and institutions are not prepared with the proper tools and tutoring to accommodate the increased influx of immigrant children enrolling in schools.
Parents of immigrant children face even more obstacles, ranging from having trouble communicating with their child’s teachers to not completing legal documents, such as college financial aid forms, because they may not speak or read English. Undocumented immigrants in particular are often reluctant to ask for help for their children due to the fear of being deported. As a result, parents and children may not fully trust school officials.
Many initiatives are currently being discussed to improve how immigrants experience the education system. Ideas include outreach programs, the creation of language-inclusive curriculums/courses/classes, making extra-help available to students who struggle linguistically (i.e. through tutoring), and providing family counseling for parents and children. All immigrant children deserve quality education and equal access to educational opportunities, and the first step towards achieving this is to ensure their needs are acknowledged and acted upon by schools.