“I am a teacher, not a Border Patrol agent” - from “Understanding Plyler’s Legacy: Voices from Border Schools” by Nina Rabin, et al., 2007
School Opening
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Plyler v. Doe (1982) that children of undocumented workers have “the same right to attend public primary and secondary schools as do U.S. citizens and permanent residents.” And, like other students, undocumented students are required under state laws to attend school until they reach a legally mandated age. As schools open, it is a good time to take stock: do educators, family and community members in your district have the information they need to protect children’s rights? Here is a link to the School Opening Alert to help you share the information.
Starting the School Year off Right: Support for First Year Teachers. “Students attend class more often where they have strong relationships with their teachers and when they see school and their coursework as…important for their future.” - Consortium on Chicago School Research
How can schools set the stage?
Listen in to: “School Change Strategies,” a conversation with IDRA president & CEO María Robledo Montecel, PhD on how schools, communities and coalitions can build capacity to improve student outcomes. Hear “Supporting First Year Teachers” and “Coaching and Mentoring New Teachers,” two new IDRA Classnotes podcasts featuring senior education associates Adela Solis, PhD and Linda Cantu, PhD, that offer practical actions schools can take to support new teachers and strategies for new teachers during their first days with their students.
Join us! for an Introductory Seminar on the IDRA Coca-Cola Valued Youth Program to learn about how this award-winning dropout prevention program can help you keep students in school. The seminar will take place on October 21, 2009, in Houston, Texas. To learn more, visit the IDRA website or register online now.
You may also want to visit the Toolbox (below) for “advice I wish I’d been given at the start of school” from IDRA professional development specialists, who are former classroom administrators and teachers.
Hutto Closing…though detention to continue
When IDRA was asked by the ACLU to assess educational quality and access for children at the T. Don Hutto Family Residential Center—a medium-security prison in Central Texas that had been converted into a detention center for families seeking asylum—we found abysmal conditions. IDRA found learning conditions were “inappropriate to the minors’ level of development, [that] basic academic competencies [were] not adequately taught and English language learning curriculum [was] not in compliance with Texas state requirements.” Hutto was in violation of Flores v. Meese
(1997), which requires that children in immigration custody be placed in the least restrictive setting possible and guarantees their basic educational rights. As Barbara Hines, director of the Immigration Law Clinic at the University of Texas School of Law, had found, children at Hutto were made to wear prison uniforms, “cooped up in cells for most of the day…and [receiving] only an hour of so of lessons” (article in The Economist
). In response to these conditions, a broad cross-section of concerned family, community, education and legal advocates called for change. This summer, the Obama administration committed to ending family detention at Hutto. Outcomes like these affirm the possibility that working together, people can make a dramatic difference in educational opportunities for youth.
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