SUPPORTS FOR STUDENTS IN IMMIGRANT FAMILIES

This brief is one in a series aimed at providing K-12 education decision makers and advocates with an evidence base to ground discussions about how to best serve students during and following the novel coronavirus pandemic.

Carolyn Sattin-Bajaj | University of California, Santa Barbara

Veronica Boix Mansilla | Harvard University

Adam Strom | Re-Imagining Migration

August 2020 | Brief No. 9

Central Question

What research-backed practices can school districts, schools and classroom teachers use to support immigrant-origin students’ educational success and build inclusive environments in learning contexts transformed by COVID-19?

Key Insights

Breaking Down the Issue

  • Immigrant-origin children are the fastest growing segment of the school-age population in the U.S.
  • Immigrant communities have been disproportionately affected by COVID-19 in terms of loss of employment, representation among frontline and essential workers, and rates of illness.
  • Immigrant-origin students tend to have lower access to at-home resources that might support their learning during the pandemic.

Strategies to Consider

  • Culturally-relevant communications with students and families in multiple languages and formats may increase family and caregiver involvement, improve home-school connections, and improve student engagement.
  • Immigrant-origin students who receive extracurricular programmatic supports to complete at-home learning activities and assignments show greater academic progress.
  • Schools that provide information and guidance about immigrants’ legal and educational rights and available services can be instrumental in supporting immigrant students’ school engagement and success.
  • Schools that embrace and incorporate the diversity of languages, identities, cultures, and family practices represented in their communities benefit from increased engagement and cross-cultural learning.
  • For immigrant-origin students to thrive, districts must know about and take seriously anti-immigrant hate and address student trauma

Strategies to Avoid

  • New modes of schooling create new concerns and exacerbate existing challenges around privacy and immigration status.
  • Failure to acknowledge and attend to the basic and socioemotional needs of children in immigrant families who may be experiencing additional stressors related to immigration or undocumented status misses a critical aspect of ensuring students’ wellbeing and readiness to learn.

Breaking Down the Issue

Note: There is considerable overlap between the immigrant-origin population and the English learner (EL) population. This brief focuses on the former. An additional brief in the series will look at research-based practices for English learners.


Immigrant-origin children are the fastest growing segment of the school-age population in the U.S.

  • Roughly 20 million children (25% of the country’s school-age population) have at least one foreign- born parent; immigrants comprised over 14% of the U.S. population in 2017.
    • Among K-12 students of immigrant-origin, around 10% are first generation immigrants and 90% are U.S.-born children of immigrants (second generation).
    • About half of this population is Latino/a and 10.1% are classified as English learners. Since 2008, immigrants from Asia (mostly China and India) have been the largest group of new arrivals.
  • Four million children, or 8% of all children enrolled in public and private K–12 schools in the United States, are living with at least one undocumented parent.

Immigrant communities have been disproportionately affected by COVID-19 in terms of loss of employment, representation among frontline and essential workers, and rates of illness.

Immigrant-origin students tend to have lower access to at-home resources that might support their learning during the pandemic.

  • Immigrant-origin children are more likely to live in poverty.
  • Children in undocumented families may be ineligible for some of the federally funded COVID-19-related resources.
    • Undocumented immigrants are ineligible for supports such as federal unemployment insurance benefits, making them particularly vulnerable to the economic fallout from the pandemic.
    • Even when eligibility is not a barrier, undocumented immigrants may be reluctant to apply for public benefits because of concerns about confidentiality of the personal information they provide.
    • Children living in undocumented or mixed-status households may have greater concerns about online privacy and security when learning in virtual settings, leading to decreased participation.

Strategies to Consider

Culturally-relevant communications with students and families in multiple languages and formats may increase family and caregiver involvement, improve home-school connections and improve student engagement.

  • School districts are legally mandated to provide education-related information in languages that every family understands.
    • Many larger school districts already have interpretation hotlines in place; school leaders and teachers can use these hotlines to set up conversations with families.
    • Smaller districts can partner with local community organizations to expand their translation and interpretation capacity and have resources translated more quickly. For example, the Sioux Falls School District established a partnership with SD Voices for Peace, which produced translations of relevant COVID-19-related materials in multiple languages.
    • Translation apps can be used to fill in gaps in district translation and interpretation services and in emergency situations but are not recommended as the primary or sole source for translation. Talking Points is an app that translates messages between districts/teachers and families in many different languages. Users are not required to download an app and families receive messages as a text message; individual and mass texts can be sent while protecting privacy.
  • Some districts have built direct programs that foster stronger ties with immigrant families and help immigrant parents become more effective advocates for their children.
    • A study of a Mexican immigrant parent empowerment effort in a California school district found that creating opportunities in which immigrant families created meeting agendas and helped determine resource allocations allowed parents to feel a part of their children’s schools and schooling and take more active roles. Activities such as workshops on topics chosen by parents helped immigrant parents learn how to help their children to succeed educationally. Evidence of attempts at power sharing on the part of the district and investment in special programs for Spanish-speaking students and families validated families’ social and cultural experiences and increased home-school cooperation.
    • A separate experimental study evaluating the effects of daily phone calls and text message communications from teachers to parents of children participating in a mandatory summer school program found that more frequent communication immediately increased students’ homework completion rates (by 40%), class participation (by 15%) and on-task behavior (by 25%). Over 30% of the treatment group were students classified as “limited English proficient” indicating a sizable proportion of immigrant-origin students/families in the sample.
    • The Immigrant Parent Leadership Initiative at Annandale High School in Virginia provides an example of a program where support, information, and resources aimed specifically at immigrant parents provided a direct avenue for family involvement.
    • Districts that do not have capacity or expertise in house to develop programs like these can provide similar supports by partnering with local culturally-specific community-based organizations (including faith-based, immigrant-serving, health, and advocacy organizations) that have already established relational trust with immigrant families.

Immigrant-origin students who receive extracurricular programmatic supports to complete at-home learning activities and assignments show greater academic progress.

Schools that provide information and guidance about immigrants’ legal and educational rights and available services can be instrumental in supporting immigrant students’ school engagement and success.

  • School districts can affirmatively demonstrate their commitment to inclusion and support of undocumented students and families through widespread messages, legal services and information, and removal of barriers to access and enrollment in schools.
    • The Boston Public School system created the website, We Dream Together, to publicly show support and bring together resources specifically targeted toward undocumented students. The Minneapolis Board of Education released a public resolution affirming all students’ rights to be in school.
    • Teachers, school counselors, and school support staff that encourage undocumented students, foster their educational aspirations, and present themselves as willing sources of guidance have been found to positively influence students’ academic and life trajectories.
  • Districts can provide basic information about immigrants’ rights and offer staff trainings so they are prepared to answer questions and allay students’ fears about security related to their schooling or their families’ safety.

Schools that embrace and incorporate the diversity of languages, identities, cultures, and family practices represented in their communities benefit from increased engagement and cross-cultural learning.

For immigrant-origin students to thrive, districts must know about and take seriously anti- immigrant hate and address student trauma.

Strategies to Avoid

New modes of schooling create new concerns and exacerbate existing challenges around privacy and immigration status.

Failure to acknowledge and attend to the basic and socioemotional needs of children in immigrant families who may be experiencing additional stressors related to immigration or undocumented status misses a critical aspect of ensuring students’ wellbeing and readiness to learn.

Funding for this research was provided by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The findings and conclusions contained within are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect positions or policies of the foundation.

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