Education without evidence: Gaps in data availability for refugee,asylee,and humanitarian migrant students in US schools

Abstract

The collection and use of empirical data for educational decision-making in the United States is required by the Every School Succeeds Act (ESSA) and the Results Driven Accountability mandate, but there is insufficient data available for one population, in particular: refugee, asylee, and humanitarian migrant (RAHM) students. As a result, the terms of these US federal programs are violated by all states, districts, and campuses who count refugee, asylee, or humanitarian migrant students among their populations. Evidence suggests that almost no standardized, publicly-available educational data is available for refugee, asylee, and humanitarian migrant students in the US, but what publicly-available and reported data is available is either so localized so that it can be neither replicated nor generalized or so aggregated that it cannot be disaggregated for analysis and decision-making.

Keywords

Refugee asylee migrant data gaps data analysis education policy

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