Immigration Policy in the Northwest: Leveraging Partnerships in an Urban Network

• In Event: 35.023 - The Effects of Trump-Era Immigration Policies on Four School Districts Across the United States

Abstract

Objectives
In this paper, we focus on the case of West City Public Schools (WCPS), a small urban district enrolling almost 19,000 students from heterogenous backgrounds. Among the 95 languages spoken in the district, the top 8 languages are English, Spanish, Vietnamese, Somali, Amharic, Punjabi, Arabic, and Cambodian. WCPS serves multiple cities with rapidly changing demographics near a large Western metro area. WCPS values its diverse population, as evidenced by its focus on dual-language learning for all students, seeing bilingual students as future bilingual educators. Additionally, district documents acknowledge the impact of federal policies on their immigrant families and offer advice for what to do if ICE officials arrive at a school campus. Through our research, we address the following question: “In what ways does the local context of reception shape the educational experiences of immigrant youth given current anti-immigrant discourses and policies at the federal level?”

Theoretical frameworks
Our research seeks to understand how the context of reception informs the immigrant experience by drawing on theories of immigration acculturation. Contexts of reception can be described as the opportunity structure, degree of openness versus hostility, and acceptance in the local community (Schwartz et al., 2013). Immigrants in positive contexts of reception flourish while those in negative contexts struggle to get established both financially and emotionally (Portes & Rumbaut, 2006). This particular theoretical framework has lead us to focus on aspects of school contexts which inform the experience of immigrant students and educators who serve them.

Methods
Methodologically, we draw on data from a survey administered during the spring of 2018 to all-staff, including administrators, teachers, guidance counselors and others, across the district with a 41% response rate. The survey measured school climate, the impact of immigration policies, response to policies, and resources needed by educators. In order to identify patterns in the data, we focused on descriptive and inferential statistics. We also performed a thematic analysis (Strauss & Corbin, 1990) of open-ended data to illustrate the nuances of our quantitative findings. The qualitative data also helped us to highlight and better understand outliers (Tashakkori & Teddlie, 1998). We gathered district information from the Department of Education’s Common Core of Data in order to paint a fuller picture of the context of reception.

Findings and Significance
The survey revealed struggles in an urban district with a large population of immigrant students. WCPS educators work to address challenges, but feel overwhelmed by the current political and social climate. The educators sense that administrators are making efforts to address immigration but those efforts are being perceived in diverse ways. Since WCPS has many resources and networks around them to support immigrant students, administrators are working to leverage those connections but the nature of those connections may not be clear to educators. There needs to be more attention to strengthening the lines of communication amongst educators as well as external partnerships.

Author

• Dafney Blanca Dabach, University of Washington - Seattle