A Delaware-based found that a substantive increase in young immigrants leads to sizable academic gains for students who were already in English learner programs or who had graduated from them. 

And at a time when immigrant students are portrayed as a drain on U.S. schools, researchers also found that those who had never been enrolled in English learner programs were not significantly impacted. Their performance improved, but by a negligible amount. 

Researchers analyzed student-level administrative data from Delaware covering 125,500 fourth through eighth graders enrolled in public schools between the 2015–16 and 2018–19 school years. They note the timeliness of the study, which was published last month in Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Educational Research Association.

President-elect Donald Trump, who won decisively in his re-election bid against Vice President Kamala Harris Tuesday, regularly lambasted immigrants in  throughout his campaign and promised mass deportation of the estimated 11 million people living in the U.S. without legal immigration status.

“What are the effects of immigrants on communities?” asked David Figlio, professor of economics and education at the University of Rochester, in a recent interview with ����Ӱ��. “Especially those that are ‘new immigrant destinations’ that have not historically had large numbers of foreign-born residents? This paper directly addresses one of the most important potential mechanisms through which immigrant students might affect incumbent students — the consequences of increased linguistic diversity in the classroom.”

Delaware’s share of immigrants increased by 65% between 2000 and 2010 — and by 53% between 2010 and 2019, according to the study. Likewise, the number of English learner students in Delaware public schools increased seven-fold over the past two decades. 

Researchers say the share of English learners in the public school system soared from 2% in 2000 to 11% in 2019: The increase accounted for about half of the overall enrollment growth in Delaware public schools in that timeframe.

Umut Ozek, a senior economist at RAND, said a sudden increase in newcomer students can test schools: their needs might call for added social and academic support. 

But, he said, these findings should assuage concerns by state and federal policy makers that large upticks of newcomer students are overwhelming school districts and degrading classroom achievement, saying such conversations must be rooted in fact. 

“We don’t want these debates to take place in vacuums,” he said. 

Conservative forces have long considered , the 1982 Supreme Court decision that prohibits schools from turning away students based upon their immigration status. 

Politicians in several states are already targeting these students. Oklahoma schools Superintendent Ryan Walters demanded — — a nearly for what he claims is the cost of educating “illegal immigrant children.”

“Under your supervision, the costs in education due to illegal immigration have risen astronomically,” he wrote. “Your failed oversight and efforts are a direct cause of the current crises Oklahoma and other states now face. Oklahoma taxpayers, schools, teachers, and parents should not bear the burden of your failings.”

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said two years ago that Plyler should be revisited: A politician introduced legislation that would bar undocumented students from public school. A state representative in made similar remarks earlier this year. 

RAND researchers are not entirely sure why current and former English learners benefit from the arrival of newcomer students but cite three possible explanations: First, they say, immigrant students often trigger increased funding for schools, money that could be particularly helpful to existing English learners. 

For example, if the English learner population reaches a particular threshold, schools might hire additional staff to support these students. Second, a marked uptick of newcomers in the classroom might prompt teachers to use more effective strategies to serve this population, a change they might not have made if their numbers remained small. 

Finally, researchers say, English learners in receiving schools tend to be more academically motivated and can also help their peers feel less isolated. 

This is just one of a handful of studies these researchers have conducted in this area. 

, centered on Florida and published in April 2023, found that the presence of immigrant students has a positive effect on the academic achievement of U.S.-born students, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds. 

in 2018 focused on the impact of Haitian newcomers on existing students in Florida: Researchers found ​​no evidence of negative effects on incumbent students’ school outcomes after the young immigrants arrived. 

Thousands of miles from home, the group of new New Yorkers walks a few hundred steps.

Attached to a trilingual church and food bank, the campus of VOICE, a K-8 charter school, has become a refuge for newcomer families seeking asylum and new lives from mostly Spanish-speaking countries including Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador and Peru, as well as Pakistan and Egypt, among others.

“Many of them are living in temporary housing and struggling to find work. The families are under a lot of pressure … It’s just a huge amount of change,” said VOICE social worker Kim Moglia.

Through the Long Island City school’s proximity to temporary housing and a growing reputation among families, the school is serving 267 migrant students this year, the most of any charter school in New York state, according to federal Title III funding. 

Today, the population comprises nearly a third of VOICE’s student body, and staff are urgently finding ways to support the students and their families living in eight neighborhood shelters and others in Manhattan and parts of Queens.

But legal experts and child advocates warn a new city policy after 60 days will jeopardize the types of connections being built at schools like VOICE, the most stable place in their lives right now.

“The idea that in the middle of the school year, they would be transitioning housing and then having to start all over again — it worries us,” principal Franklin Headley said. 

“They would have to make new friends, new relationships with the teachers … We have the momentum, even in these first two months, to continue with the children that have come to us,” he added. 

Throughout New York City, an estimated 21,000 migrant students have joined the public school system since last summer, according to the Department of Education. In the latest waves, nearly all children have been younger, in K-3 grades or not yet school aged, educators and social service staffers told ����Ӱ��.

While there is room — DOE school enrollment declined by more than 120,000 students in the last five years — the newcomers are experiencing some of the highest levels of need. 

Even with the housing concern mounting, VOICE staff has continued to look for ways to work with the new students. To learn from schools serving similar populations, staff traveled cross-country to San Diego over the summer, and are now finishing installation of large washer-dryers for families to use to encourage attendance and remove the financial burden.

School-wide, required music classes help with language acquisition. Newcomers who are struggling are paired with a buddy who speaks their native language. In hallways, it’s not uncommon to hear whispered Urdu and Portuguese. Teachers regularly use keywords, explanations and translated materials in Spanish. 

Staff have also taken to small innovations — altering seating charts so newcomers build friendships and teachers can spot if anyone is struggling; bringing in a led by retired players; using the app Language Line to translate messages to families about progress; hiring an art therapist full time.

At VOICE, some students are getting their first introduction to the classroom. 

“You hear with your eyes” 

Noticing that many are starting without prior schooling or written literacy in their native languages, ELL teacher Jasmine Calderon leads small groups to build on foundations.

Here, a group of 10 first graders practice saying and writing the letter “p,” as they work through the alphabet to begin phonics, how letters interact with each other to make sound.  

Because many newcomers aren’t yet used to school life, she gently reminds them to tune in, singing their names and instructing them to pat their heads as they watch and listen for the sound of “puh” in her sentences. 

“We’re moving our bodies in a certain way, there’s visuals there for you … You’re going to start to connect what you hear with what you see,” Calderon said, explaining how she helps students see the importance of watching her closely, especially if they don’t understand the words.

 “I tell them all the time, ‘you hear with your eyes.’” 

Building blocks for new language

Across the hall, in a second-grade classroom, a row of books greets students as they walk in, including Dear Primo: A Letter to My Cousin, about two boys growing up in the U.S. and Mexico.

Settling into desks for a career planning activity, students dream of being rock stars and astronauts. When language feels out of reach, they draw.

Posters and tools to support reading and writing acquisition deck the walls: sentence starters, strategies that can help make sense of vowel sounds.  

In third grade, students break down plots into beginning, middle and end in graphic organizers, a tool teachers have utilized more frequently to help build fluency.

“Even if they’re not at the point where they’re reading the words,” Calderon said, “at least they’re engaged in some type of work. We found that having them draw something was more engaging than just giving them the book and taking observational notes.” 

The power of music 

The new population has pushed VOICE, founded in 2008, to emphasize music, singing and social-emotional learning, to find a renewed purpose in its mission. 

In required music classes, which supports language acquisition, students shed the nerves that can accompany things like reading aloud.

“You don’t have to be thinking about producing language, you’re just singing along, and then work on pronunciation and things like that there. You’re not taking the same kind of risk as constructing a sentence,” Headley said. 

In a room brimming with guitars and laughter, students sing a good morning song featuring at least six languages. Alongside a refrain from their teacher’s guitar, they collectively sing out a common greeting:
“Valentina, Valentina, Valentina, how are you?” 

In a rhyming solo, Valentina responds: “I’m tired, I’m happy, and I hope that you are, too.” 

Soccer: A language of its own 

From choir to soccer practice, the school’s newcomer students are building social connections that transcend language barriers and help their ability to show up in the classroom.

For Jah, a seventh grader who speaks seven languages originally from Burkina Faso in West Africa, playing soccer brings him back to some of his favorite memories. VOICE helped him with the largest barrier: buying turf shoes.

Migrant student athletes perform better in-season than out, according to Matt Coleman, middle school and athletic director. Eighth-grade leaders help translate plays for their teammates. The 15-minute walk back from the park is never silent. 

“They’re talking and that’s what I’m trying to get them to do, just communicate with each other,” he said. “If it’s in Spanish or English, it doesn’t really matter.”

To support alum that go on to play soccer in high school, athletic staff juggle calendars to make good on a promise to attend one of each of their games. 

The soccer program, open to students of any gender, and its connection to local parks and people is one way students find “opportunity within the community, which can get overlooked,” in brainstorming ways to support migrant students, said soccer coach Dominic Van Bussell.

Keeping culture in the room 

To Genesis Bolanos, who teaches at least 10 newcomers across two periods of seventh-grade math, using students’ home languages in the classroom is what makes all the difference, especially for kids who are sometimes only weeks into living in a new country. 

In her classes, students work with translated materials provided by the school, allowing them to focus on math without being penalized for their budding English literacy. 

Bolanos said the approach is too-often resisted. Her last Queens charter school wouldn’t allow students and staff to speak Spanish, which contributes to a “loss of shared culture.” 

Because VOICE encouraged teachers to try out ideas to support the newcomer population, like hosting a Hall of Nations to get to know foods and traditions from students’ home countries, Bolanos switched up the seating arrangements to lessen isolation. 

“In seating them together, they build their own friendships and have their own communities apart from adults, which is obviously what we want,” said Bolanos, a first-generation Ecuadorian-American.

Some newcomers, just a few weeks in, have started to ask to follow along with English materials, keeping their Spanish sheets as a reference point as they learn integers and foundational arithmetic. 

“This is just what newcomers deserve,” Bolanos said. 

“Something we couldn’t predict” 

Some newly enrolled VOICE charter families, after beginning a relationship with the school over the summer, were moved without warning cross-city to shelters in Jamaica, Queens just days before classes started, forced to find other schools.

“That’s something we couldn’t predict, that the city made a decision to start moving people,” principal Headley said. “… I didn’t understand why families would [be ordered to] leave this housing, which is close to the subway and close to facilities.” 

The practice of moving families with little notice has continued into the school year, according to . 

Mayor Eric Adams’s administration has limited migrant family stays in Manhattan hotel shelters run by Humanitarian Resource and Relief centers, home to about 15,000 students, to 60 days. The majority of families, staying in shelters run by the city’s Department of Homelessness Services, .

City officials did not return requests for comment.

, threatening to uproot them from their one place of stability.

That stability was so important to one VOICE family with four children, that they commuted to the school two hours each way after being moved to a Coney Island shelter, the southernmost tip of Brooklyn. 

“Those kids, including a kindergartner, wouldn’t give up,” Headley said tearfully. He and other staff ultimately traveled to Coney Island to help the family find a nearby school. 

The city’s 60-day policy stance, he added, will require schools to take on that kind of “placement work” after moves.

“If that’s what it takes, that’s the reality,” Headley said. “… We have to make sure that they’re OK — that they’re going to be some place where they feel comfortable and safe.”

All photos by Marianna McMurdock

Long before he arrived in the U.S. at age 16 with just $20 in his pocket — and longer still before he rose to prominence as New York State’s 2019 Teacher of the Year — Alhassan Susso would watch and learn how his grandmother in Gambia helped others.

She had tremendous influence in the community because she knew everyone’s story, he said, and used those deep connections to work toward a greater good. 

“She could recount seven generations of their families,” Susso said. “As a result, people listened to everything she said. I realized, if I know someone’s story well, I’m able to speak to them and understand them.”

Susso’s roots in his South Bronx school community do not stretch back quite so far but the 37-year-old social studies teacher has had a deep impact that spans from his current to his former students, their families and the impoverished neighborhood that surrounds them.

“He knows that we need him,” said Berena Cabarcas, Susso’s principal at International Community High School. “He is committed to our population.”

Susso’s students have stories that closely resemble his own. Soon after landing in Poughkeepsie, New York and being placed in 11th grade, Susso’s living arrangement with an older brother evaporated. He found himself on his own, working at a local grocery store to pay rent, squeezing in school and scrambling to do more than just survive.

Susso’s students, all of them in this country for less than four years and 99 percent living below the poverty line, come from across the world, with a majority hailing from Latin America, French West Africa and the Middle East. Taken together, they speak dozens of languages — including Wolof, spoken in Senegal; Fula, common in West Africa; French and Spanish — but are united in their struggle for assimilation and the fight for a better life. 

“What they share is being new to this land and trying to figure out how to successfully navigate that,” Susso said. “My job is to help them weave through some of the complex challenges they might face and make sense of their new home.”

Adama Bah, a 17-year-old senior who hails from Guinea, takes inspiration from her teacher’s lived experience. Repeated hardships and a series of personal tragedies meant that Susso had to set aside his own ambitions in America to help his family back home, delaying him from graduating college and beginning his career until his late 20s. 

“If he did it, then I can too,” Bah said, adding that every step she takes toward success creates a model for her younger sister. 

Susso starts his immigrant students on the path to college and future accomplishment in his now-famous Morning Class, an 8 a.m. gathering whose exceptional results are part of the reason he was named Teacher of the Year. Meeting an hour before school begins, he imparts lessons on everything from time management to personal finance, from mastering mindsets and emotions to creating vision boards and crystallizing goals. Students also get intensive instruction on interpersonal communication skills and leadership.

“I was writing an essay for a college class and was really struggling,” said senior Anarosa Encarnacion. “He teaches us to improve our writing and communication every day. But you need to come with a specific question: He makes you think about your work. You can’t just ask for the intro or the hook. You have to be specific.”

In 2015, when the class was first offered, 29 students attended and all went on to college, Susso said. The following year, 42 attended the class and 40 went to college. The Morning Class has since been replicated by his fellow teachers and is now a required course. While other factors are also at work, International Community High School’s graduation rate went from just to the year before the pandemic. 

One part in a community process

Graduating and going onto college can change the trajectory of a student’s life — and their families. But there are also pressing needs in the larger community, including persistent poverty and the threat of crime, that require here-and-now solutions.

To that end, Susso has paired his classroom work with broader efforts across the community, partnering with outside organizations like , which works to empower low to “no-income” immigrant women; , which seeks to curb violence in the Bronx and beyond; and the which collaborates with designers, educators, advocates and students to explain complex policy issues. Susso’s students work — and learn — beside him in these campaigns that broaden their world view and uplift their neighbors. 

Susso helped Sauti Yeti develop a curriculum meant to promote healthy relationships and combat teen pregnancy and allowed the organization to collect data from his students who agreed to serve as a focus group. That information then helped to inform workshops for women and girls all over the Bronx.

Students volunteered for years to organize Peace December’s annual conference, setting up the meeting space, serving as ushers and absorbing critical messages meant to help combat the crime that sometimes prompts their fearful parents to keep them indoors. 

“In Africa, we get to be outside, be kids and play around,” said Amy Samb, a 17-year-old senior from Senegal. “Here, you can’t: There are always cars coming … and there is so much violence, (parents) would rather us be in the house. We don’t really get to be kids.”

The Center for Urban Pedagogy invited Susso’s class to examine several urgent issues, including immigration. For that project, he had his students fan out into the South Bronx to interview residents about the undocumented: Their efforts culminated in a pamphlet students distributed throughout the community explaining the rights of U.S. citizens and non-citizens. 

The Center later shifted its focus to food stamps and the minimum wage. Just as he did with immigration, Susso required students to ask community members, including local business owners, about the proposed hike to $15 an hour. Such exchanges are critical, Susso said: His students cannot properly work on behalf of others unless they understand their needs. Just as his grandmother did. 

“The people you are advocating for,” he said, “you want them to be part of the process instead of subjects of the conversation. It is always important to talk to community members to find out what they think about the issue we think they need help with. Instead of being the expert on this issue, you are learning about it and providing meaningful feedback.”

The comfort of keeping in touch

Some 100 former students showed up at the school on the day that Susso was announced . Among them was Fatou Boye, 24 and a preschool teacher at P.S. 96 in the Bronx. 

Boye graduated from high school in 2016 and credits her former teacher for helping her identify and work toward her goals, particularly through his Morning Class.

“It made me who I am today,” she said. “I’m very responsible because of the Morning Class. I learned time management, budgeting, finance, how to be successful in college, how to be accountable for my time.”

Susso and his students are bound together for life, which is why so many remain in contact long after graduation. Six years post-high school, Boye still considers Susso a trusted mentor.

“It is mandatory for me, at least once or twice a month, to call him, keep him updated about my life, what I’m thinking of doing,” she said. “He gives me advice … and when I’m stressed and need to release, I just call him. I keep in touch because of the comfort. With all of his experience, he has a lot to bring to his students.”

Boye still makes vision boards for herself and shares them with him when she’s done. And Susso has helped her in other ways, too, she said: As the only girl in her family, Boye was accustomed to soaking up everyone’s attention, a tendency that made her a less than ideal classmate. Susso noticed this and found a way to reset her thinking, she said. 

“He really helped me understand people,” Boye said. “When I was in high school, he printed out a book for me: We went through it for hours, talking about it. Slowly, he started molding me into a better person to interact with my classmates. To this day, when he reads a good book and he likes it, he’ll share it with me.”

Susso wants his students to collaborate with their peers and help others — the Morning Class also has a community service component where students have volunteered at area homeless shelters and raised money for cancer research. But he also desires for these young people to discover their own agency and capacity to be leaders.

“At some point in life, whether you’re a parent, a teacher, a boss at some organization, the president of a country,” he tells his students, “ you will be either a manager — managing every little thing people are doing, including your children — or you become a leader, in which you develop the skill of influence.”

In addition to offering life lessons inside the school, Susso has helped untangle misunderstandings at home. In one instance, a family was worried that their teenage daughter’s new job would jeopardize their food stamps. The girl, one of Susso’s students, enjoyed the responsibility and the money that came with it: She was heartsick when her mother pressured her to quit. 

“After school, I went to the house to speak to the mom, and … at the end of the conversation, she had a better understanding,” he said. “Her daughter was not making enough for the family to no longer qualify for aid.”

That same student is now a Ph.D. candidate at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, conducting research on bone marrow treatment. 

‘I know there are no accidents’

Two weeks before Susso’s high school graduation, he learned his grandmother, who had raised him and his siblings, had no place to live after her roof collapsed. 

Though he was slated to begin community college in the fall, he put that dream on hold to pick up a second full-time grocery store job: For six years, he worked 4 p.m. to midnight at one location and midnight to 8 a.m. at another.

The schedule was grueling but allowed him enough money to build a house for both his grandmother and his mother. Finally, with that mission complete, he enrolled in college in 2008 when he was 23 years old. But that summer brought new tragedy: His 19-year-old sister contracted Hepatitis B and needed to come to the United States for treatment. 

But the only way she’d be granted a visa was if the family could secure $25,000 toward her medical care. The situation seemed hopeless until one of Susso’s managers at Stop & Shop — he came from modest means but worked hard and saved money over the course of many years — offered to help. 

“To my surprise, he said, ‘I’ll bring you the money tomorrow because there should never be a price tag on a human life,’” Susso recalled.

Ultimately, his sister’s visa application was denied and she succumbed four months later. Eight hours after her passing, Susso’s grandmother died of a heart attack. 

The young man was devastated by both losses, but also motivated to help those who found themselves similarly stranded.

“Looking back now, I know there are no accidents,” he said. “This was my first year of college. I stopped all of my classes to be back home with my family. And then when I got back to the U.S., it became clear what I wanted to study: I wanted to become an immigration lawyer.”

Susso earned a bachelor’s degree in political science and history from the University of Vermont and took his law school entrance exam, but a trusted advisor steered him in another direction. By the time he would defend immigrant kids in the courtroom, they’d be headed to jail or targeted for deportation, the advisor said. Perhaps, she suggested, there was another way to empower these children.

Susso considered her advice and reflected on the wisdom of Nelson Madela, who once called education “the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” 

Suddenly, a new plan revealed itself: Susso would become a teacher.

“My mission was clear: When these kids graduate, they have avenues to have a better quality of life that they mightn’t have otherwise,” he said.

A worthwhile journey

Susso’s students have already been accepted to numerous area colleges this year, with many aspiring to transfer to bigger-name schools once they master English. It’s what they hope will help build their legacy, a frequent topic in Susso’s Morning Class.

Some of his students arrived in the United States on their own. Others flew across the globe with a single, similarly aged sibling, reuniting with a mother or father whom they hadn’t seen in years.

Anarosa Encarnacion, the senior who was grappling wih her college essay, has already felt the sting of xenophobia in her new home, most notably when a man told her and her family as they dined in a restaurant that they should speak English. “I just stayed quiet,” said the teen, who came to the U.S. from the Dominican Republic.

Susso uses these instances as teachable moments, giving his students tools to navigate such painful interactions.

“One of the things we discuss is that the way people treat you has more to do with them than you,” he said. “Other people’s reaction to you is really not your issue.” 

Principal Cabarcas said many of the students Susso worked with would have dropped out or taken far longer to graduate without his intervention, including the chance to attend his Morning Class.

“It was relevant and meaningful,” Cabarcas said. “Students could put that knowledge to use right away. They really saw how it would affect them — both in the moment and in the future.”

She’s thrilled that the widely recognized social studies teacher has chosen to remain on staff, to make the two-hour commute each way to teach at her school and return to the community that needs him.

Susso has had many other job offers and could easily teach closer to home: The father of three still lives in Poughkeepsie because it’s near his wife’s workplace. But no school or neighborhood would have as high a population of newcomer students as his, he said. 

“Why do I commute four hours a day to teach them?” he asked. “It is a journey that is well worth it.”

Disclosure: The Walton Family Foundation provides financial support to both the Weave Project and ����Ӱ��.

Lead Image: Alhassan Susso stands with a group of his students in front of a mural outside International Community High School in the South Bronx. Left to Right: Alhassan Susso, Adama Bah, Habi Kane, Amy Samb and Anarosa Encarnacion. (Jo Napolitano)

Experts say teachers have not been adequately trained to spot these students’ gifts and that schools’ failure to recognize and grow their talent could turn them off to school entirely.  

Educators’ increased focus on English language learners comes as school districts around the nation reassess their elementary gifted and talented offerings after New York City’s program was by the outgoing mayor for its failure to include Black and Hispanic students. The program won a , though concerns about equity will likely remain.

Immigrant advocates in New York and elsewhere say English language learners’ exclusion marks a major loss not only for those who have been shut out, but for their families, communities and the nation at large.

While advanced programs at the elementary level are dubious — most major long-term academic gains — a student’s selection signals to schools, parents and the child that they have special gifts, boosting their confidence and exposing them to advanced materials.

Carly Spina, who taught English language learners inside Glenview School District 34 near Chicago for 15 years, said that in some cases, a child’s participation in gifted programming in their elementary years is a prerequisite for their enrollment in advanced courses in higher grades.

“It’s all about access,” said Spina, who now works with educators who serve these children statewide. “Our students deserve to be there.”

And it’s more than an ethical issue: It’s a legal obligation.  

Kristina Moon, senior attorney with the Education Law Center, said English language learners have the right to equal opportunity in all school programs.

“They cannot be excluded … just because they are not proficient in the English language,” she said, citing the federal .   

Those concerned about these students’ overlooked abilities are re-evaluating their methods. 

Jonathan Plucker, president of the , said schools around the country are beginning to abandon costly non-verbal gifted assessments for English language learners because they yield the same results as traditional verbal tests.

“We cannot figure out why that is the case,” Plucker said. “These districts are finding it’s expensive and they aren’t getting different data. For the life of us, we never expected that.”

‘We don’t have any talented students’

English language learners represented of students nationwide in 2018 according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Yet they accounted for just 2.4 percent of the nation’s 3.3 million gifted children that same year, the last for which such data is available, according to the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. 

While the data alone do not prove discriminatory conduct, the civil rights office said in a statement, members of the public who believe these students are being unfairly excluded are invited to on their behalf.

A survey by ����Ӱ�� of school districts across the country reflects the national disparity. While some managed to include a proportionate — or nearly proportionate — number of non-English speaking students in gifted programming, most included only a fraction of these children.

English language learners accounted for 18 percent of the student body in the Broward County Public Schools in Florida, but make up only 1.5 percent — just 39 of 2,607 children — in its gifted elementary program.

Other districts, including those in Prince George’s County, Maryland, and Florida’s Palm Beach, Brevard and Miami-Dade counties, report similar statistics.

Educators who work with gifted students are taking note and trying to make change. 

Their efforts coincide with a massive uptick in crossing the nation’s southern border now that immigration and pandemic-related restrictions have eased.

These students face numerous hurdles upon arrival: Educators often underestimate their intelligence and ability, working under the false assumption that they are somehow deficient or in need of remediation. 

What schools fail to realize, experts say, is that many of these children have already mastered multiple languages in their home countries, a reflection of their acumen.

“It is not rare for me to talk to a principal who says, ‘All of this is really important,’” Plucker said. “‘And I say, ‘What can we do to help you with your school?’ And they say, ‘Oh, we only have low-income Hispanic kids here. We don’t have any talented students.’”

Part of the reason for this, experts say, is schools’ overreliance on test scores as a means to assess student’s ability. 

English language learners often score low on state and other exams, but for some, it’s language, not a lack of brainpower, that holds them back. Experts say a child who earns low marks might still be gifted, but their skills need to be identified in other ways.

“We have all of this talent just sitting there,” Plucker said. “And the child isn’t benefiting from their own skills. That is a massive societal failure. We simply have to do better.” 

Amal Altareb, 20, knows what it’s like to struggle with a new language. She arrived in the United States from Yemen at age 11 unable to speak English. Determined to learn — she was a gifted student back home — she spent hours each night translating her assignments.  

“I pulled so many all-nighters,” said Altareb, who attended school in Memphis, Tennessee. “I was not giving myself any mercy.”

While some educators failed to recognize her abilities — her math teacher openly laughed at her homework because she so badly misinterpreted the instructions, she said — her English as a Second Language instructor, who spoke her native Arabic, knew she was gifted. 

“I have so much gratitude for him,” she said. “I would ask him questions from the beginning of the class until the end.”

Altareb scored high enough on her end-of-year math and science assessments to be placed in gifted classes the following year. She was even permitted to study Russian even though she had not yet fully mastered English, a reflection, she said, of her principal’s faith in her abilities.

“People believed in me after I proved myself,” she said.

The teen enrolled in college-level Advanced Placement courses in high school and went on to become valedictorian. 

She is now a political science major at Yale University. 

New, non-verbal tests use animation

There are only 137 English language learners in Prince George’s County Maryland’s gifted and talented program in grades 2-12, comprising less than 1 percent of the 11,560 participating students. Non-English speaking children make up 19.7 percent of the overall student population.

Theresa Jackson, the district’s supervisor of talented and gifted programs, said an additional 1,469 participants are former English language learners who have tested out of the program. Still, she said, their linguistic ability is typically not on-par with native English speakers. 

Jackson said, too, that her school system is always striving to increase identification of historically underrepresented populations, including those students who receive free and reduced-priced meals, an indicator of poverty, in addition to Hispanic students and those who receive special education services. 

“I am not sure I will ever be fully happy, but we are inclusive of all sub-groups,” she said.

In Palm Beach County, Florida, just 1.9 percent or 84 children of 4,519 gifted and talented students were English language learners. Yet these children comprise more than 23 percent of the district’s elementary school population. The figures include the district’s

Walter G. Secada, vice dean of the School of Education and Human Development at the University of Miami, said many educators believe a child’s English must improve before they are identified as gifted.

But that’s untrue, he said, adding the narrative only serves as an excuse for teachers not to look for talent in this group.

“It locates the problem within the child and not in our delivery system,” he said.

Experts say schools’ role as gatekeepers to advanced learning can be problematic: Many campuses rely on teacher and parent referrals to identify gifted children, both of which lead to the exclusion of those just learning English.

Kathy Escamilla, interim executive director of the BUENO Center for Multicultural Education at the University of Colorado, Boulder, said newcomer families face unique challenges in communicating with their local schools and are often reluctant to push back, not wanting to seem disrespectful.

“Non-English speaking parents aren’t going to go to school and say, ‘I think my kid is gifted,’” she said. “They are much too humble and rely on the school to do those kinds of things.”

Spina, of Illinois, said some parents are required to write a letter explaining their position and win the support of other teachers, a difficult task for families who do not speak English.

The longtime teacher, has, in some cases, informed parents of their legal rights, helped them write rebuttals, accompanied them to meetings with school administrators and worked to make sure translation services were available.

“We have to embrace our space as change agents,” Spina said. “We have to advocate. If we are not fighting for them, we are not walking our walk here.”

English language learners’ exclusion from gifted programming is a long-standing but not unsolvable problem. Escamilla said schools can use high quality non-verbal assessments —  some have just been released — and better train staff to assess non-English speaking students through observation.

They can also use tests written in the child’s native language, she said.

Jack Naglieri, a psychologist and research professor at the University of Virginia, created one of the most widely used tests for assessing the ability of non-English speaking children.

He’s recently developed a new exam for this purpose, the first of its kind to use animation.

“There is no doubt in my mind we will find more children who do not speak English doing well on these tests,” he said. 

Quick to understand cultural norms

Marcy Voss of Kerrville, Texas, has spent more than 35 years working with or on behalf of gifted and bilingual children either as a teacher or an administrator. Like Plucker, she and Escamilla are aware of the shortcomings of non-verbal tests.

Voss said educators should look at a portfolio of work — not a single test score — in order to identify advanced English language learners. 

Voss said, too, these students should not be evaluated based on what they already know: Some have missed years of school in their home countries and simply didn’t have the opportunity to learn. 

She and many other immigrant advocates believe these children should be evaluated based on how well they comprehend new material — an approach some administrators have been slow to embrace.

“There are gifted students in this population,” she said. “I’ve seen them and they deserve to have their educational needs met.”

Whenever Voss is tasked with identifying a gifted child, she tries to understand the way their mind works, how quickly they catch on to new concepts and their ability to solve problems, she said.

With non-English speakers, she considers a number of additional factors, including how fast they learn the language.

Gifted English language learners might also adapt more easily to their new environment as compared to other newcomers — they might be quick to understand the cultural norms and nuances of their newly adopted country — act as ambassadors for other students and their own parents, all of which reflects their ability to make connections quickly, she said.

“They understand the hidden rules of order without having them explained,” said Voss, who facilitates the Emerging Leaders Program for the.

But even after they gain admission to advanced programming, English language learners can face nearly insurmountable obstacles: Many teachers of gifted and talented students don’t feel they need to make language accommodations for non-English speaking participants, Spina said.

Spina is sensitive to teachers’ time and workload, but will challenge those who shirk this responsibility, telling them, “You don’t get to opt out.”