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Literature examining the context of reception reveals how various structural and cultural factors shape newcomers' experiences, and thus their opportunities for integration. Fewer studies explore how school districts are situated in this broader context of reception, or how district policies and practices for newcomers are enabled or constrained by the local context. This study draws on a zones of mediation framework to examine how external forces mediated districts' approaches to serving growing numbers of immigrant and refugee newcomers. Analysis of interviews with 57 stakeholders from across three districts revealed that the presence or absence of community-based support networks, as well as the extent to which local policies and perceptions emphasized inclusion, mediated districts' programmatic approaches. Implications for district and community leaders are discussed.

With the 2015 passage of the "Every Student Succeeds Act" (ESSA), the oversight of language policy in U.S. schools shifted from federal to state governance. Although the education of students officially designated as English learners (ELs) has historically been grounded in federal law, we argue that ELs' educational experiences are also largely influenced by societal attitudes toward immigrants and immigration. Using a critical policy analysis (CPA) approach, we examine how 12 states' immigrant policy contexts are associated with the EL educational policies articulated in their ESSA implementation plans. We find that states' demographic and immigrant policy contexts combine to produce four distinct approaches toward EL education, from departing to approaching equity.

District and school leaders face the challenge of designing and implementing supports for immigrant newcomers who have recently arrived in the US, speak little English, and are unfamiliar with the US school system. This study draws on 117 interviews with educators in six purposefully-sampled school districts across the country to examine the factors that shaped newcomer educational services across grades K-12. Findings reveal that, although district leaders held particular ideals around positive and negative equality that aligned with their policy designs, how these policies were implemented depended on organizational capacity and resources, as well as school-based perceptions of newcomer needs.

In this introduction, we establish why school leaders must be attentive to how the organization of educational programs for English Learners impacts the degree to which they are segregated or integrated. We preview each article in the special issue and clarify the contributions that these pieces collectively make to research and practice. We argue that taken together the articles make the case that school leaders must balance separation and integration in a way that fosters equity of opportunity and affirms English Learners' multilingual and multicultural identities.

This paper explores the context of reception for immigrant students and English learners in one medium-sized suburban school district in the northeastern United States. Using qualitative methods, the authors describe how, despite a troubling context of reception emerging from a normative and political community context that harbored resentment toward the new immigrant population, a community-based organization whose members served as boundary spanners between the school district and the community helped prompt district leaders toward more equity-minded policies. Given increasing culturally and linguistically diverse student populations in suburban school districts across the United States, findings from this paper have important implications for community engagement and school district policymaking.

In the context of shifting demographics and standards-based reform, school districts in new immigrant destinations are charged with designing infrastructures that support teaching and learning for English learners (ELs) in core academic subjects. This article uses qualitative data and social network analysis to examine how one district in the midwestern United States organized EL instruction. After describing the district's infrastructure for elementary EL education, we examine how this infrastructure supported teachers' work practice--the practices in which teachers engage with one another--as operationalized around instructional advice and information networks. Findings reveal that teachers' opportunities to learn about EL instruction varied significantly by the school subject and that these differences were directly related to the way in which the district built its EL educational infrastructure.

Newcomer young men confront numerous obstacles that limit their chances for attainment and achievement. Using social and cultural capital frameworks and a case study methodology, this article examines how four Latino newcomer young men navigated an urban U.S. high school. It reveals how teachers and a counselor cultivated capital and how the young men leveraged this capital, thus challenging traditional depictions of Latino immigrant adolescents and highlighting the importance of belonging for these youth.

Maria was a fifth grade student when the authors met her in a study of immigrant child-language brokers. Her family immigrated from a farming community in Mexico to a Chicago suburb where there were limited bilingual resources. Maria's mother did not speak fluent English, and Maria's teachers did not speak Spanish, so Maria often served as a translator during parent-teacher conferences. How did Maria navigate her role in an event often considered the cornerstone of home-school communication (Hanhan, 1998)? In this article, the authors share what they learned from their longitudinal research, which is reported in more detail in previous studies (see Garcia-Sanchez & Orellana, 2006; Orellana, 2009). They hope these recommendations will help teachers understand the complexities of translation, and how to facilitate parent-teacher conferences when their students serve as translators. (Contains 1 footnote.)

With the 2015 passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), the oversight of language policy in U.S. schools shifted from federal to state governance. Although the education of students officially designated as English learners (ELs) has historically been grounded in federal law, we argue that ELs' educational experiences are also largely influenced by societal attitudes toward immigrants and immigration. Using a critical policy analysis (CPA) approach, we examine how 12 states' immigrant policy contexts are associated with the EL educational policies articulated in their ESSA implementation plans. We find that states' demographic and immigrant policy contexts combine to produce four distinct approaches toward EL education, from departing to approaching equity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Newcomer young men confront numerous obstacles that limit their chances for attainment and achievement. Using social and cultural capital frameworks and a case study methodology, this article examines how four Latino newcomer young men navigated an urban U. S. high school. It reveals how teachers and a counselor cultivated capital and how the young men leveraged this capital, thus challenging traditional depictions of Latino immigrant adolescents and highlighting the importance of belonging for these youth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]