A coalition of educators, researchers and advocates on Wednesday launched the National Newcomer Network Policy Platform to encourage support for newly arrived students to the U.S. and to make recommendations for their civil rights protections and services.
The recommendations call for federal legislation and dedicated state funding to support wraparound services for students, including a proposal to strengthen newcomer case manager roles in school districts in partnership with community-based organizations.
The network was created in 2022 by Next100 and Californians Together, two nonprofit organizations, and now includes a coalition of over 100 members representing 30 states. It is based at The Century Foundation, an independent think tank.
The network refers to newcomer students as a linguistically and culturally diverse group of recent immigrant youth, refugees, asylum seekers, unaccompanied minors, migratory children and students with limited or interrupted formal education. These students may have varying levels of English proficiency and not all will be English learners, the network said.
There were about 1 million immigrant students in the U.S. during the 2017-18 school year, according to the most recently available federal data.
While some school districts have programming in place to welcome newcomer students and address their needs, other districts haven't built this capacity, according to the network. That raises equity concerns regarding students' academic, linguistic and social-emotional development, it said.
“This platform is just the beginning: educational equity is the right of every single student in the country, and we are going to continue fighting for solutions until that is a reality,” said Alejandra Vázquez Baur, a fellow at The Century Foundation and co-founder and director of the National Newcomer Network, in a statement.
The platform recommends:
- Developing and improving statewide intake procedures for newcomer students through targeted funding. Technical assistance should be provided to districts to implement this guidance.
- Authorizing funding for federal pilot programs to develop and expand instructional models for secondary students who are newcomers.
- Creating guidelines within the Education Department's Office of English Language Acquisition for how administrators can best support newcomer students.
- Requiring the Education Department to monitor the implementation of student programs and teacher training.
- Designating federal funds to assist states in disaggregating data to support resources to meet the needs of newcomer students.
"This platform provides a roadmap to ensure that our nation’s policies and investments meet the needs of newcomer students," said Xilonin Cruz-González, deputy director at Californians Together and co-founder of the National Newcomer Network, in a statement.
OELA told advocates last fall that better data collection and resources for schools serving newcomer students is being planned. Additionally, the Education Department, last year, updated a newcomer toolkit to help state, district and school leaders support students who are multilingual, immigrants and refugees.
