National Center on Immigrant Integration Policy

Commentaries

November 2022

Apprenticeship Programs Are a Promising Solution to Bring More Multilingual Workers into Early Childhood Field

Photo of a preschool teacher reading to students.

Allison Shelley/EDUimages

Shortages of workers continue to plague early childhood education and care (ECEC) systems across the United States. With the field already struggling to effectively serve young children in families that speak languages other than English, apprenticeship programs offer a promising solution to bring more—and more multilingual—workers into early childhood careers.

Fact Sheets

October 2022

Dual Language Learners: Key Characteristics and Considerations for Early Childhood Programs

A group of preschoolers listen to a story

Allison Shelley/EDUimages

How many Dual Language Learner (DLL) children live in your state, and what share do they comprise of all children under age 5? What languages are most commonly spoken in their households? Answers to these and other questions that are critical to the design and implementation of early childhood programs that reach all children equitably are presented in a series of state-level data fact sheets.

Policy Briefs

October 2022

Overlooked but Essential: Language Access in Early Childhood Programs

A mother and toddler walking into a school

iStock.com/Fly View Productions

Dual Language Learners (DLLs)—young children with a parent who speaks a language other than English at home—benefit greatly from early childhood programs, but they also enroll at lower rates than their peers. This policy brief looks at federal and state language access policies that aim to make such programs more accessible to DLLs’ families. It also examines persistent gaps in participation and ways to address them.

Commentaries

June 2022

How State Assessments Became and Remain a Driver for Equity for English Learners

Image of two students in a classroom, one with a laptop

Allison Shelley/The Verbatim Agency for EDUimages

While the pandemic has given a boost to efforts to water down or limit end-of-year state assessments of students in K-12, this commentary notes the importance of testing to drive equity for the nation's 5 million English Learners and ensure that they are not overlooked or that resources and support services are misdirected from where they are needed.

Reports

May 2022

English Learner Testing during the Pandemic: An Early Readout and Look Ahead

Side view portrait of young man and two other students taking a test

iStock.com/SeventyFour

In addition to upending daily life in the classroom, the pandemic has affected how states administer annual assessments to their students—disrupting a key means of collecting data on new or growing learning gaps that demand attention. This report explores how states have approached testing English Learners during the COVID-19 pandemic, and what 2020-21 assessment data can and cannot tell us.

Policy Briefs

May 2022

Cultural Competency Secrets to Success with Immigrant and Refugee Families: Spreading and Adapting 2Gen Working Practices

Parents and their young child at a naturalization service.

Kelsey Bell/U.S. National Archives

As the United States becomes more diverse, changes in the cultural makeup of communities can challenge longstanding practices in human services delivery. This brief explores strategies service providers can employ to build their understanding of and responsiveness to the cultures of the communities they serve, leading to better outcomes for immigrant and refugee families.

Featured

English Learners and the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA)

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) includes a number of new requirements for the education of English Learners (ELs), including standardized criteria for identifying EL students and inclusion of English proficiency as a measurement of school quality. Resources on this page can help inform decisions such as how quickly schools must improve and how states can intervene with struggling districts.

Featured

ELL Information Center

The English Language Learner (ELL) Information Center provides informative fact sheets, maps, and state-level data resources that chronicle the demography and trends of immigrant families and their children.

Recent Activity

Multimedia March 11, 2020 Expert Podcast: Understanding How English Learners Count in ESSA Reporting	Policy Briefs March 2020 Which English Learners Count When? Understanding State EL Subgroup Definitions in ESSA Reporting By Julie Sugarman
Commentaries March 2020 The Public-Charge Rule: Broad Impacts, But Few Will Be Denied Green Cards Based on Actual Benefits Use By Randy Capps, Julia Gelatt and Mark Greenberg	Multimedia February 12, 2020 An Uneven Landscape: The Differing State Approaches to English Learner Policies under ESSA
Reports February 2020 The Patchy Landscape of State English Learner Policies under ESSA By Leslie Villegas and Delia Pompa	Multimedia January 23, 2020 Employment Services for Refugees: Leveraging Mainstream U.S. Systems and Funding
Policy Briefs November 2019 Health Insurance Coverage of Immigrants and Latinos in the Kansas City Metro Area By Randy Capps and Ariel G. Ruiz Soto	Commentaries October 2019 Health Insurance Test for Green-Card Applicants Could Sharply Cut Future U.S. Legal Immigration By Julia Gelatt and Mark Greenberg

Pages

Fact Sheets December 2016 The Costs of Brain Waste among Highly Skilled Immigrants in Select States By Ariel G. Ruiz Soto, Jeanne Batalova and Michael Fix	Reports December 2016 Untapped Talent: The Costs of Brain Waste among Highly Skilled Immigrants in the United States By Jeanne Batalova, Michael Fix and James D. Bachmeier
Reports November 2016 Serving Immigrant Families Through Two-Generation Programs: Identifying Family Needs and Responsive Program Approaches By Maki Park, Margie McHugh and Caitlin Katsiaficas	Reports November 2016 A Study of Pregnancy and Birth Outcomes among African-Born Women Living in Utah By Jane M. Dyer and Laurie Baksh
Reports November 2016 The Nutritional Health of Young Refugee Children Resettling in Washington State By Elizabeth Dawson-Hahn, Suzinne Pak-Gorstein, Andrea J. Hoopes and Jasmine Matheson	Reports October 2016 Mental Health Risks and Resilience among Somali and Bhutanese Refugee Parents By B. Heidi Ellis, Erin N. Hulland , Alisa B. Miller, Colleen Barrett Bixby, Barbara Lopes Cardozo and Theresa S. Betancourt
Fact Sheets October 2016 Immigration to the Heartland: A Profile of Immigrants in the Kansas City Region By Randy Capps and Ariel G. Ruiz Soto	Reports August 2016 Funding an Equitable Education for English Learners in the United States By Julie Sugarman

Pages

Video, Audio

December 17, 2015

Using Data to Improve Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) Services for Immigrants and Refugees

A webinar discussing fact sheets that compare the characteristics of immigrant and native-born residents that are relevant to understanding needs for adult education and workforce training services in the United States and the ten states with the largest immigrant populations.

Video, Audio

October 27, 2015

Young Refugee Children: Their Schooling Experiences in the United States and in Countries of First Asylum

In this webinar, the authors of three papers on the experiences of refugee children present their findings, with a focus on how such experiences affect their mental health and education.

Video, Audio

October 22, 2015

Serving Newcomer Immigrant and Refugee Students in Secondary Schools: Comparing U.S. and European Practices

This webinar examines the challenges facing educators and policymakers in Europe and the United States as they attempt to meet the needs of immigrant and refugee students who arrive during their middle and high school years.

Event PH 2015.10.15_UnaccompaniedMinors (3)

Video, Audio

October 15, 2015

Unaccompanied Child Migrants in the United States: How Are They Faring?

Marking the release of an MPI brief, this webinar examines data on where unaccompanied child migrants are being placed in the United States, how they are faring in immigration courts, what services are available to them, and how U.S. communities are adapting to their arrival.

Video, Audio

October 8, 2015

Variations in In-State Tuition, Financial Aid, and Scholarship Policies for Unauthorized Youth

This webinar discusses the different policies that states have on unauthorized immigrants and in-state tuition, financial aid and other benefits, and the implications for unauthorized immigrant youth seeking two- and four-year college degrees.

Recent Activity

Expert Q&A, Audio

March 11, 2020

Expert Podcast: Understanding How English Learners Count in ESSA Reporting

This podcast features a discussion between MPI's Margie McHugh and Julie Sugarman about how to understand the varying composition of states' English Learner (EL) subgroup under ESSA, and why understanding these technical differences matters when making decisions about how ELs and schools are faring. They also talk about different groups of ELs: newcomers, students with interrupted formal education, and long-term ELs, and data collection around these different cohorts.

Policy Briefs

March 2020

Which English Learners Count When? Understanding State EL Subgroup Definitions in ESSA Reporting

States publish a wealth of data about their English Learner students’ academic achievement and other outcomes such as graduation rates. But the answer to the question “Who is an EL?” is not always the same. This brief explains how the EL subgroup varies across states and types of data, and why it is important to understand these differences when making decisions about how ELs and schools are faring.

Commentaries

March 2020

The Public-Charge Rule: Broad Impacts, But Few Will Be Denied Green Cards Based on Actual Benefits Use

While the Trump administration public-charge rule is likely to vastly reshape legal immigration based on its test to assess if a person might ever use public benefits in the future, the universe of noncitizens who could be denied a green card based on current benefits use is quite small. That's because very few benefit programs are open to noncitizens who do not hold a green card. This commentary offers estimates of who might be affected.

Video, Audio, Webinars

February 12, 2020

An Uneven Landscape: The Differing State Approaches to English Learner Policies under ESSA

Experts share how states have approached Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) implementation, areas where the law and state efforts to support English Learners can be improved, and findings from the compendium, The Patchy Landscape of State English Learner Policies under ESSA.

Reports

February 2020

The Patchy Landscape of State English Learner Policies under ESSA

All 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico have developed blueprints to meet their commitments under the Every Student Succeeds Act—including requirements that aim to raise the profile of English Learners (EL) in state accountability systems. This report breaks these plans down, comparing the significant diversity of approaches taken on everything from EL identification to tracking academic achievement.

Video, Audio, Webinars

January 23, 2020

Employment Services for Refugees: Leveraging Mainstream U.S. Systems and Funding

On this webinar, experts and state refugee resettlement program leaders discuss activities that can be key parts of a broader strategy for sustaining and improving employment services for refugees, including partnerships with experts in workforce development strategies, access to federal workforce development funding, and other policies and resources.

Policy Briefs

November 2019

Health Insurance Coverage of Immigrants and Latinos in the Kansas City Metro Area

Latinos and immigrants are at least twice as likely to lack health insurance coverage as the overall population in the Kansas City metropolitan area. This gap that has significant implications for the region, as Latinos and immigrants will form an ever-growing share of the area’s labor force and tax base amid anticipated declines in the native-born, non-Latino population.

Commentaries

October 2019

Health Insurance Test for Green-Card Applicants Could Sharply Cut Future U.S. Legal Immigration

A new Trump administration action requiring intending immigrants to prove they can purchase eligible health insurance within 30 days of arrival has the potential to block fully 65 percent of those who apply for a green card from abroad, MPI estimates.

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