Getting It Right: A Better Start for Immigrant Students With Non-English Names

• In Event: 53.039 - Achieving the Promise of Equal Educational Opportunity for Subgroups of English Learners in Washington State

Abstract

Objectives
Getting a student’s name right is the first step in welcoming him or her to school. Staff members who work with student-level data also know the importance of accurately and consistently recording a student’s name in order to track student data over time and to match files across data sets. This presentation will discuss a set of eight naming conventions reference guides that were created for the most common non-English languages in Washington.

Theoretical framework
For students whose home language is not English, properly recording their information can be difficult. School personnel who register students may not be familiar with different naming conventions in languages other than English. Incorrectly entering student names can mean that the same student is listed in different databases in various ways and often with incomplete records. Consequently, students who are eligible for services (e.g., EL support) can be unidentified or overlooked.

Data and Methods
We created a set of naming conventions reference guides to serve as a reference for accurately entering students’ names in school, district, and state databases. The guides build off earlier work on practices for improving the welcoming and records of students from non-English language backgrounds (Marcus, Adger & Arteagoitia 2007) and was supplemented with consultation from linguists and verified by multiple native speakers and primary sources reporting scholarly research.

Results
The naming conventions reference guides provide a general overview of the naming practices in eight languages (Cantonese, Punjabi, Russian, Somali, Spanish, Tagalog, Ukrainian, and Vietnamese). Each guide will help school and district staff become more familiar with what to expect when they encounter students from these cultural backgrounds: for example, the number of given names or family names, the order of these names, and where the names might fit into common database fields. The reference guides also provide guidance on how to politely address parents. For each language, a single-page, double-sided guide features; (1) an overview of the naming conventions in the language, (2) appropriate ways to address family members from that language background, (3) rules on how to register students, and (4) visual representations of how to enter some typical names. At the end of this guide are reference cards with examples of how to identify first, middle, and last names with the help of one family example in each language. The reference cards offer a quick guide to the naming structures prevalent in any of the eight languages featured in the set.

Significance
This project provides guidance to improve the way student data are entered into school, district, and state databases, which will in turn improve the quality of those data and the ability of districts to track students over time, to match files across data sets, and ultimately to make meaning from the data. It provides those who interact directly with families a basic knowledge of appropriate forms of address, as well as the background to ask appropriate questions to ensure accurate data entry.

Authors

• Jason Greenberg Motamedi, Education Northwest

• Zafreen Jaffery, Education Northwest