Immigration and Education in North Carolina

Transcription

1 Immigration and Education in North Carolina

2 BREAKTHROUGHS IN THE SOCIOLOGY OF EDUCATION VOLUME 6 Series Editor: George W. Noblit, Joseph R. Neikirk Distinguished Professor of Sociology of Education, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA Scope: In this series, we are establishing a new tradition in the sociology of education. Like many fields, the sociology of education has largely assumed that the field develops through the steady accumulation of studies. Thomas Kuhn referred to this as normal science. Yet normal science builds on a paradigm shift, elaborating and expanding the paradigm. What has received less attention are the works that contribute to paradigm shifts themselves. To remedy this, we will focus on books that move the field in dramatic and recognizable ways what can be called breakthroughs. Kuhn was analyzing natural science and was less sure his ideas fit the social sciences. Yet it is likely that the social sciences are more subject to paradigm shifts than the natural sciences because the social sciences are fed back into the social world. Thus sociology and social life react to each other, and are less able separate the knower from the known. With reactivity of culture and knowledge, the social sciences follow a more complex process than that of natural science. This is clearly the case with the sociology of education. The multiplicity of theories and methods mix with issues of normativity in terms of what constitutes good research, policy and/or practice. Moreover, the sociology of education is increasingly global in its reach meaning that the national interests are now less defining of the field and more interrogative of what is important to know. This makes the sociology of education even more complex and multiple in its paradigm configurations. The result is both that there is less shared agreement on the social facts of education but more vibrancy as a field. What we know and understand is shifting on multiple fronts constantly. Breakthroughs is to the series for works that push the boundaries a place where all the books do more than contribute to the field, they remake the field in fundamental ways. Books are selected precisely because they change how we understand both education and the sociology of education.

3 Immigration and Education in North Carolina The Challenges and Responses in a New Gateway State Edited by Xue Lan Rong University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA and Jeremy Hilburn University of North Carolina Wilmington, USA

4 A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: (paperback) ISBN: (hardback) ISBN: (e-book) Published by: Sense Publishers, P.O. Box 21858, 3001 AW Rotterdam, The Netherlands Printed on acid-free paper All Rights Reserved 2017 Sense Publishers No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work.

5 TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface Acknowledgments vii xv Section I: The Demographic Context and Historical Backgrounds of Immigration and Education in North Carolina 1. Immigration, Demographic Changes and Schools in North Carolina from 1990 to 2015: Transformations to a Multiethnic, Global Community 3 Xue Lan Rong, Jeremy Hilburn and Wenyang Sun 2. The Lost Years of Opportunity for North Carolina s ESL Students 25 Sharon Shofer Section II: Immigration, Immigrants, Schools and Communities in North Carolina 3. Schooling Experience of Latino/a Immigrant Adolescents in North Carolina: An Examination of Relationships between Peers, Teachers, and Parents 53 Matthew Green, Krista M. Perreira and Linda K. Ko 4. I m Not Ashamed of Who I Am : Counter-Stories of Muslim, Arab Immigrant Students in North Carolina 81 Kate R. Allman 5. Social Studies Educators Perceptions on Policy Issues and Efforts to Teach Immigrant Students in North Carolina 103 Jeremy Hilburn 6. Citizenship without Papers: A Case Study of Undocumented Youth Fighting for In-State Tuition Policy 125 Hillary Parkhouse and Emily Freeman 7. In Search of Aztlán, North Carolina: Jose s Story 149 Juan Carrillo v

6 TABLE OF CONTENTS Section III: Language Education and the Translinguistic Community 8. The Problem of the Mixed Class Dynamic: Teaching Spanish to Heritage Language Learners and Second Language Learners in North Carolina s High School Classrooms 167 Linwood J. Randolph Jr. 9. Countering Silence and Reconstructing Identities in a Spanish/English Two-Way Immersion Program: Latina Mothers Pedagogies in El Nuevo Sur 195 Claudia G. Cervantes-Soon and Alison M. Turner 10. Heritage Language Sustainability and Transnational Affect: The Case of Second-Generation Korean Americans 221 Ji-Yeon O. Jo and Seok-In Lee 11. Czech and Slovak Mothers Struggling to Maintain Children s Heritage Language in North Carolina 241 Marta McCabe vi

7 IMMIGRATION AND EDUCATION IN NORTH CAROLINA AND THE IMPLICATIONS TO THE NATION This book brings together 11 chapters by 17 scholars who represent a wide range of educational expertise and professional views related to educating immigrant children and youth in North Carolina. Some of these contributors have been leading scholars in the field, while others are emerging scholars who add fresh voices to this research domain. All have extensive current experience working in educational institutions in North Carolina. The intended audience for this volume includes teachers, educational leaders and policy makers, scholars, parents, community leaders, and concerned citizens in North Carolina and nationwide. This volume is not exhaustive, and there are many unsettled arguments and lingering questions put forward by the book s chapter authors. Yet, this is an initial attempt to contribute to the discussion of immigration and education in a single state, a new gateway state in the U.S. South. The book attempts to answer these two related core questions: 1. What promises and problems, challenges, and opportunities do North Carolina and its school systems face when acting on practical and policy issues regarding the education of the rapidly increasing number of enormously diverse immigrant students? Are the educational institutions able and willing to serve the needs of these newcomers? 2. What differences exist between the temporary and long-term solutions and the simplified and the more-comprehensive solutions? Given these differences, what are the future directions, in terms of providing equality and equity in education for immigrant students, perceived by scholars, educators, education leaders, immigrant students, families, and communities in North Carolina? The following questions provide readers some examples regarding the specifics related to the above two core questions: a. Who are the immigrant students in North Carolina? In what ways are the characteristics of immigrant students and their families different in new gateway states than they are in traditional gateway states? With the arrival of unprecedented numbers of immigrants from Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean during the last several decades, how has North Carolina received and integrated substantial streams of non-white, non-european voluntary immigrants into its communities? Are the social, political, and economic experiences of Asian and Latino/a students living and schooling in this state qualitatively different from the experiences of Caucasians, African Americans, and Native Americans? Based on the differences, vii

8 what special needs do immigrant students and their families have? How receptive are government agencies, communities, and schools to the needs of immigrant students? b. How will U.S. schools integrate the newcomers? What have schools done to encourage the integration of newcomers with longer-term residents and with already-established immigrants? What role can communities play in helping culturally diverse children do well in school? How should schools and communities perceive and provide educational opportunities to and for undocumented immigrant students? c. What are the common agreements and disputes regarding school and classroom practices, and what dilemmas and paradoxes are associated with the laws and policies regarding the education of immigrant children? While the 11 studies engage these questions to various extents and at different levels across disciplines and fields, all provide one clear and resounding no to the question: Are we adequately preparing immigrant students as well as all students in North Carolina to participate productively in a global economy and democratic society? The common theme that emerges from these studies strongly suggests that the changing demographics of the state s children have clear implications for public schools, which must continually reinvent themselves in a changing world. Depth, Breadth, and Analytical Lenses This book is positioned to begin to answer the above-mentioned questions, as the strength of this volume lies in its depth, breadth, and critical analytical lenses. The focus on a single state and the qualitative nature of most of the chapters provide depth each of these studies is highly focused on specific groups. For example, Chapter 3 (by Green, Perreira, & Ko) addresses the particulars of adolescent Latina/o youths, and Chapter 9 (Cervantes-Soon & Turner) focuses exclusively on Latina mothers of students enrolled in two-way immersion dual-language classrooms. By deeply exploring multiple contexts within a single state and focusing on a specific education issue, policymakers, teachers, teacher educators, and education leaders may be in a better position to make effective pedagogical and policy recommendations for the state. The different types of studies, methodological approaches, theoretical orientations, and participant selection decisions provide the breadth of the volume. Excepting demographic and historical policy studies, most studies in this volume are qualitative empirical studies. However, there was still a wide range of methodological approaches from single case designs to open-ended surveys, extensive classroom observations, and individual and focus group interviews, etc. The emphasis on qualitative research in this volume is telling, as there is much to explore in this new gateway state. The breadth of the volume is also evidenced in the study participants. We focused our attention on students (immigrants and viii

9 non-immigrants), educators (teachers of different grade levels and specialties, school administrators, etc.), parents and communities (Latino/a, Korean, Arab American, Czech-Slovakian, etc.), different content areas (social studies, foreign languages/heritage languages/esl, etc.), and a wide range of urgent issues, such as language policies and institutional supports (or lack of one or both) for English language learners and heritage language learners, identity deconstruction and reconstruction, and undocumented immigrant teens self-support and advocacy. The scholars also nested their studies in both traditional and nontraditional locales of educational research. While some contributors focused their data collection in K 12 schools, others identified participants in universities. Others collected data through ethnic communities (Allman), non-educational organizations including grassroots activist organizations (Parkhouse & Freeman), and a community group of Czech and Slovak speakers (McCabe). While each chapter deals with a specific target group and topic, the authors are linked by a motivation to learn more about immigration and education issues in North Carolina. Collectively, they offer insights from scholars linked by their commitment to inform and empower educational stakeholders in this state, as well as immigrant students and families, in order to improve educational experiences and socialization for all students. It is our hope that this critical dialogue will continue to promote discussion and examination of these timely and relevant issues. Theoretically, all chapters echo some similar contextual themes: Power and institutional and individual bias toward immigrants and their children in new gateway states in the U.S. South. In terms of the analytical lenses, the authors draw on several critical frameworks, including ecological models of educating immigrant students, critical race theories, Chican@ identity, subtractive and additive schooling, transnationalism/identity studies, and many others. In terms of additive schooling, each chapter adopts theoretical dispositions related to resource orientations. That is, authors designed their studies using frameworks that recognize the structural barriers that disadvantage immigrants in new southern gateway states but also position immigrant youth, families, and communities as possessing and utilizing valuable resources to promote educational access and achievement. This contrasts with the deficit perspectives of immigrant youth and families, who are often portrayed adversely in political discourse and the media and are reified in educational communities. We organized the 11 studies in this book into three sections to promote critical dialogue by analyzing and critiquing the process, policies, and implementation of policies through carefully examined examples of successful and not-so-successful programs and practices in various areas. Section I is The Demographic Context and Historical Backgrounds of Immigration and Education in North Carolina; Section II is Immigration, Immigrants, Schools, and Communities in North Carolina; and Section III is Language Education and the Translinguistic Community. In Section I, two chapters frame the demographic context and historical background of the book. They remind readers to reconsider the role of the school, ix

10 in light of changing demographic realities and historical context, and help readers contextualize the studies and convert their understanding of the findings into critical discussions. In Section II, five chapters relate to how immigrant individuals and groups negotiate, re-negotiate, and act regarding their education within the social, political, and cultural contexts of North Carolina as a new gateway state. These studies documented actions including reflection, accommodation, and resistance in order to support disenfranchised and marginalized groups in some cases and encourage the innovation and empowerment in boosting children s educational participation and achievements in other cases. In Section III, four chapters relate to language education and the translinguistic community. The entire section is about the strengths and struggles of learning English and maintaining, sustaining, and reacquiring heritage languages. Section I: The Demographic Context and Historical Backgrounds of Immigration and Education in North Carolina In Chapter 1, three researchers (Rong, Hilburn & Sun) document the timing, scale and residential contours of the new immigration wave to North Carolina since 1990s, establishing the impacts of Latino/a and Asian newcomers in state public school systems. Drawing data from the United States Census and state agencies, their chapter focuses on the impacts of new immigration on North Carolina a new gateway state with little or no immigrant population before 1980, but had the fastest increase rate of immigrant population in the United States during the decades of Their study highlights the impacts of the demographic changes to the make-up of its population (traditionally White and Black and nativeborn), focusing on nativity and race/ethnicity. They suggest the demographic shift has brought new dynamics into the existing social and demographic structures and has had profound impacts on the educational systems of North Carolina. To briefly enumerate the immigration-induced population changes in North Carolina in the last 25 years, their chapter provides a demographic context for the studies included in this book. The second chapter (by Shofer) is a historical document analysis of a critical juncture in the NC state s history as it relates to ESL services for newcomers. As the North Carolina legislature did not take action in the moment when state s demographics were shifting dramatically, there were a series of cascading negative effects on the state and individuals. Shofer highlights both the political and philosophical reasons that the state would not fund ESL services as well as the changing contexts that eventually forced the states leaders to begin funding ESL albeit late and often under sourcing the program. Shofer s chapter lays a strong historical foundation for conceptualizing the chapters that follow. x

11 Section II: Immigration, Immigrants, Schools and Communities in North Carolina Chapter 3 (by Green, Perreira, & Ko) is a qualitative study that focuses on firstgeneration adolescent Latina/o youth in North Carolina; in particular, how the youth articulate their relationships with peers, parents, and teachers and how these relationships come to bear on their socialization and academic engagement and achievement in schools. This study provides insight into the interactions between the highlighted relationships and the social contextual factors of a new gateway state. The authors provide recommendations to teachers, parents, and school leaders each of which is aimed at blurring the boundaries of divisions between immigrant and native-born students in schools and moving towards bicultural integration. The recommendations for teachers are particularly helpful for practitioners and teacher educators, especially those recommendations related to what the participants termed good or bad teacher behaviors and developing collaborative teacher-parent relationships. Like Green, Perreira, and Ko, Chapter 4 (by Allman) also forefronts the perceptions of a marginalized group of newcomer youth in North Carolina. The author examined a sub-set of data collected from a six-month critical ethnography with thirteen, second-generation Arab students in a Muslim community school in North Carolina. Data includes extensive classroom observations and individual and focus-group interviews. Allman presents students counter-stories used to resist and challenge three anti-muslim and anti-arab American discourses in their school and community. While Chapters 3 and 4 focused on social contexts with student participants in and out of schools, Chapter 5 (by Hilburn) addressed the policy contexts of schools with teacher participants. Using open-ended survey responses based on the additive acculturation vs, subtractive practice model, the researcher sought to ascertain the ways in which social studies teachers conceptualized, interpreted, and critiqued macro- and micro-policies related to immigration and education. He found that participants were generally supportive of inclusive and mainstreaming practices for ESL students and adopted resource orientations to heritage language maintenance; yet, most participants attributed the academic trajectories of immigrant youth to cultural orientations to education, rather than to structural factors or policy. These conflicting responses may be related to the dissonance between teacher beliefs about the most effective practices for immigrant youth and the macro- and micropolicies related to immigrant youth and schools. His recommendation for teacher educators and school leaders to become social networkers in order to connect preservice teachers and community-based resources to support newcomers content knowledge, English acquisition, and heritage language maintenance could prove to be beneficial to those teachers with greater resource orientations than the schools in which they currently work. xi

12 Chapters 6 and 7 are connected in their focus on higher education. The first relates to the fight for tuition equity and the second relates to one student s exploration of his Chicano identity within the contexts of an institution of higher learning in a new gateway state. These chapters not only engage higher education policies, contexts, and lived experiences, they also bring into focus the agency and action of first and second generation immigrants with various legal status in North Carolina. Chapter 6 (by Parkhouse & Freeman) explored the political contexts of education and immigration in North Carolina. The researchers concentrated their inquiry on members of a youth activist organization that fights for tuition equity for undocumented youth. Interestingly, they found that their four participants took political action through protests, contacting representatives, and other methods, even while being denied full political access such as in-state college tuition and voting privileges. The very policies meant to deny political access have instead developed, at least for their participants, the impetus to become involved in politics. Their chapter complicates traditional notions of civic action and suggests that youth can be politically agentic, even when constrained by undocumented status and curtailed access to higher education. Parkhouse and Freeman contend that teachers and schools can support youth civic activism to fight for tuition equity and suggest practical ways for education leaders to do this. While Chapter 6 addressed the fight for tuition equity to provide access to higher education, in Chapter 7 Carillo nests his qualitative study with a participant currently enrolled in higher education. His single-case design treats the reader to his participants journey to negotiate his Chicano identity in a prestigious university in a new gateway state. His participant, Jose, compares and contrasts his new home in North Carolina with his former home in a mostly Latino area of California. This move, as well as his experiences in higher education, served as an impetus for his identity dilemmas and initiated his exploration into Chicano identity. Carrillo argues that schools and universities could do a better job of moving beyond monolithic conceptualizations of immigrants, for example, by promoting Chican@ studies at universities. Section III: Language Education and the Translinguistic Community Chapter 8 is refreshing since not all Spanish-speakers participate in ESL services. Many, like those highlighted in Randolph s chapter, enroll (or are placed) in Foreign Language courses. Randolph s chapter is a case study of the foreign language faculty at one high school and the ways the faculty approached teaching mixed foreign language Spanish classes classes with both English speaking students learning Spanish as a foreign language and heritage Spanish speakers taking the course to maintain proficiency in their heritage language. In studying the mixed class dynamic in one high school, he identified differentiation strategies as well as constraints to those strategies. He also determined the perceived and observed benefits for foreign language learners and heritage language maintainers (Spanish speakers); benefits that more strongly favor foreign language learners who were English speakers. xii

13 Randolph makes practical suggestions to Spanish language teachers to improve daily instruction. He also suggests larger, systemic changes to the Foreign Language curriculum and course structures that could improve outcomes for Spanish heritage language speakers. Adult immigrants and their interactions with educational agencies and socialization draw together the last three chapters of the book. These chapters reveal that immigrant parents and immigrant adults everyday experiences related to language, culture, and belonging are simultaneously shaped by individual agency and the structural factors of living in North Carolina. In particular, each presents different perspectives related to the challenges, opportunities and perhaps most importantly, the personal and family decisions associated with heritage languages. In Chapter 9, Cervantes-Soon and Turner s qualitative study emerged from a larger study in an elementary two-way dual immersion program (TWI). Spending time in the school, they observed that although the school (and TWI philosophy) theoretically affirm both English and Spanish as equally valid languages, the Spanish-dominant students were noticeably more silent than their English-dominant peers. As they sought to understand this difference in participation, the teachers and the Latina mothers described this disjuncture in different ways. Cervantes-Soon and Turner draw upon the notion of mujerista pedagogies to analyze the ways in which the mothers narratives revealed their creative agency in negotiating multiple messages in ways that disrupted or challenged dominant constructions of who participants in classroom dialogue and for what reasons. Their key recommendation moving away from top-down, school-to-parent communication, and moving towards third spaces for organic and equitable dialogue between teachers and Latina/o parents could prove very beneficial to stakeholders interested in truly adhering to the philosophy of TWI. Chapter 10 (Jo & Lee) also relates to agency and decision-making; specifically, the motivations, contexts, and factors associated with second generation Korean- American adults choosing to acquire or sustain Korean. Their qualitative study with young adult Korean Americans identified that a language s affect is a critical factor for sustaining heritage language. In this case, the Korean language facilitated affective relationships to family members and co-ethnics. Likewise, transnational affect associated with Korea s influential international role and an interest in consuming Korean products contributed to facilitate action to acquire or sustain the heritage language. They found that regardless of their participants proficiency with the language, their participants increased transnational affect for their Korean heritage facilitated desire and action to increase their level of proficiency. This chapter, like the others, highlights the new gateway state context Korean ethnic communities are minimal in North Carolina and formal course offerings are rare. Thus, the language s affect, rather than structured formal educational opportunities, played a key role in sustaining heritage language. Conceptualizing a language s affect can be a useful heuristic for analyzing language sustainability for scholars in this research domain. Finally, the authors make the argument that heritage language xiii

14 sustainability may be a more appropriate term than heritage language maintenance, as second generation immigrants may not have a heritage language to maintain. Similar to Jo and Lee, McCabe challenges the term heritage language maintenance in Chapter 11. And similarly, she focuses on adults and the decisions they make regarding heritage languages. In this case, her participants are Czech and Slovak speaking mothers who wish their children to be bilingual. Using qualitative methodologies, she explores the day-to-day dilemmas faced by the mothers as well as the strategies used by the mothers to attempt to overcome the challenges. These challenges are particularly acute in new gateway states like North Carolina, where the mothers are trying to support heritage language sustainability for youth who speak an undersized and geographically dispersed language, without support of an ethnic community. Focusing specifically on Czech and Slovak immigrants in North Carolina, McCabe adds a much needed perspective to the literature. Why This Book Is Important The book editors believe each of the authors has grappled with certain issue(s) raised in their discussions, and that together and as a whole, they illustrate the impact of intersections and interactions between historical contexts (geopolitical, historical constraints), structural factors (power, policies and laws, institutions and organization), cultural issues (philosophies, ideologies, identities, beliefs, values, and traditions), and immigrant students characteristics (socioeconomic status, linguistics, race/ethnicity) on the development and implementation of educational practice and policies as well as institutional changes and reforms in North Carolina during the fourth wave of immigration. Furthermore, studying how North Carolina education systems and actors adapt to meet these challenges may offer valuable opportunities for researchers to understand the transition and transformation of educational systems in other new gateway states. Especially over the past three decades, the majority of immigrants entering North Carolina have been non-whites. This deconstructs the framework of the traditional hierarchical assimilation policies in recasting the concept of becoming Americans in a new gateway state. The trajectories of the children of today s immigrants will help educators think profoundly about how to support newcomers educationally. In this case, this book contributes significantly to major contemporary empirical and theoretical debates relating to educating immigrant children. We hope this preface sheds some light on these topics for our readers. xiv

15 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Thank you external reviewers, especially Paul Fitchett at UNC-Charlotte and Liv Thorstensson Davila at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for their review of several chapters. And thank you to the anonymous external reviewers for reviewing the entire book. I appreciate the support from the WR Kenan Jr Senior Faculty Competitive Leave Research Fund Award from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Xue A special thank you to Haley for being such a great daughter and big sister. And to my son Evan who has by every measure lived up to the meaning of his name, young warrior. Jeremy xv