Abstract
In this piece we examine educational gaps among Iraqi refugee students while living in Iraq and while in transitional countries, challenges resulting from those educational gaps since they have arrived in the United States, and Iraqi students’ needs to overcome their challenges for school adjustment. Thirty Chaldean Iraqi refugees who attended various high schools in the greater Detroit area, their parents, and their teachers participated in interviews and focus groups. Educational gaps in Iraq are due to precarious conditions involved in access to schooling, and threats and dangers experienced as Chaldean religious minorities. Gaps in transitional countries are due to lack of access to schooling due to residency restrictions, discriminatory treatment, and financial difficulties. Iraqi students are highly anxious about academic failure and their ability to obtain a high school diploma. We recommend educational policies and practices that might best address the serious problem of educational gaps.
Keywords
Introduction
Gaps in the formal schooling of refugee children are important, and they have both short- and long-term consequences for children’s resettlement into a hosting society, not to mention return to their countries of origin should circumstances and conditions allow (Collet and Bang, 2016). Using a qualitative approach, we focus in this study on the causes of gaps in schooling that Iraqi refugee children have faced both in Iraq and in transitional countries, the consequences these gaps have for their schooling in the United States, and ways schools might best address education gap-related challenges Iraqi students face. In the US context, we particularly examine Iraqi Chaldean refugees in the Greater Detroit Area (GDA). Chaldeans are Christians of the Chaldean Catholic Church, which originated from the Church of Assyria and Mosul in 1681. They form the majority of Iraq’s Christians (BBC, 2008). Following a review of the literature concerning Iraqis’ schooling in Iraq, in transitional countries, and in the US, we provide a discussion of our methods and then a presentation and discussion of our results, organised by our research questions. In our conclusion we examine what remains a problem and what changes could be made concerning the causes of education gaps and the consequences of such gaps in the three schooling contexts examined, and we provide some thoughts about the implication of our study for school policy and practice both in the US and abroad.
Iraqis have now attained the rather unfortunate status of ‘protracted displacement’, and this time in exile has allowed us to examine how their very regrettable sufferings in Iraq have carried over into their settlements in near diaspora regions (neighboring states), and then, for a small percentage, secondary settlement within regions of the far diaspora (primarily Western states). As a result of the 1991 Gulf War and the 2003 US invasion, Iraq has now entered its somber 20th anniversary of distress and instability (Al-Qdah and Lacroix, 2011). Due to the conflict and US invasion, over 1.6 million Iraqis have fled their homes to seek safety, with most resettling in the northern area regions (Wong, 2007; Zangana, 2008). Approximately 1.8 Iraqis have crossed into foreign soil with the hopes of relief and safety, mostly congregating in Jordan, Syria and Egypt (Al-Qdah and Lacroix, 2011; Weiss-Fagen, 2009). As Iraqi families restart their lives and begin to negotiate their survival in a new country, children are often the most vulnerable to negative outcomes from the transition (Qumri, 2012). Entire age cohorts of youth who find themselves in a country in conflict tend to experience interruptions in schooling, if not an elimination of their schooling altogether (Collet and Bang, 2016; Collet, 2011; BBC News Africa, 2011), and yet, in accordance with the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, education is a human right, whether the child is a refugee or not (Qumri 2012). A total of 59 million children are out of school worldwide according to a 2015 UNESCO report (Out of School Children Data Release, 2015). As well, according to a UNICEF report on Iraq refugees, in 2010, 200,000 additional children were not attending school compared to the 2003/2004 data. Seventy-four percent of these children were female (Griffiths, 2010).
Bang’s previous (2017) work involving a larger quantitative analysis showed that Iraqi refugee students’ educational gaps in war zone and transient countries greatly affect their schooling adjustment as well as their marginalisation in the host culture. The results of the present qualitative investigation show that Iraqi refugee children are at risk of missing enormous amounts of information and knowledge due to the barriers and stresses they face. ‘Educational gaps’ are time periods when students have their formal schooling interrupted due to situational or personal reasons. Many Iraqi refugee students have been forced to ‘drop out’ of school due to the dangers of traveling to school in war zones, transience as they flee from Iraq, economic hardships they face in their new environments, legal barriers in asylum countries, and severe discrimination suffered within their hosting societies as some other reports showed (El-Shaarawi, 2015; Fouz, 2016; Human Rights Watch, 2006). Educational gaps can be detrimental to students as students must at once make up for the knowledge they have missed while also advancing in their studies, which often deters them from fully reintegrating into schools. The Iraq students reported their anxiety toward these educational gaps that can leave students permanently disadvantaged in terms of their earned credentials and their basic knowledge of and literacy with various essential subjects.
How educational gaps are created and sustained
The production of insecurity and lack
In Iraq, the US invasion and subsequent collapse of security within the state has resulted in mass internal displacement as well as refugee flows. Perhaps the most measurable negative outcome of the conflict in Iraq is the deterioration and destruction of infrastructure. Notably this includes public institutions such as schools, which were made centres for soldiers and then attacked as targets (Ismael, 2008). Students ceased attending schools because schools ceased being schools (Dudley, 2013). Other students discontinued their schooling due to the dangers of traveling to school buildings. The threats that kept students at home ranged from rape, extrajudicial assassinations, kidnappings, shootings at check points, car bombs, roadside bombs, mortar rounds, and the more general carnage caused by death squads, militias, and an ever-increasing number of gangs (Shoeb et al., 2007; Zangana, 2008). Students who have remained in Iraq have prioritised their lives over their schooling, and have not taken the risk of being vulnerable to these threats outside in the streets. This lack of security has made female students the most likely to stay home from school (Zangana, 2008). For families who have left Iraq, conflict has often followed them across national borders. The on-going war in Syria, where many Iraqis have resettled, has also resulted in massive school closures (Dudley, 2013).
The psychological impacts that such conflicts have on children and youth are astounding. When Iraqi refugee children do reintegrate into schools, they are often faced with the challenges of psychological distress due to their multiple exposures to traumatic events. Studies have further shown that gender plays a role here. For instance, Arnetz et al. (2013) found sex to be a significant predictor of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), where females suffer more from the condition than do males. On the US schooling side, according to Nykiel-Herbert (2010), teachers often feel incompetent in assisting refugee children who have experienced trauma, and tend to pity refugee students rather than empower them. Further, in his discussion of the educational development of refugee students, Patnaik (2014) mentions a ‘lack of belonging’ and difficulty adjusting to the cultural environment as major academic barriers (Patnaik, 2014: 105). As well, trauma increases the delay of the student to get up to speed with academic materials (Trentacosta et al., 2016), and it requires attention by people trained in the area of PTSD counseling and psychiatric support. Our particular study reflects the findings of Patnaik as well as Trentacosta et al., and we can state quite confidently that trauma has indeed contributed to the educational gaps the Iraqi refugee students we spoke with face.
A state of transience
Iraqis who flee their country by land often relocate to Jordan, Syria, Egypt, and Lebanon with intentions of only staying for a short time period. This mentality of temporality is a main contributor to why families do not see the point in enrolling their children in school in these host states (Al-Qhad and Lacroix, 2010; Knell, 2013; Weiss-Fagen, 2009). However many families end up staying much longer than anticipated, thus increasing education gaps. Their waits are prolonged due to the overwhelming refugee numbers faced by the offices of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and lengthy waits to process legal documents for resettlement in a third western country (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 2007). This protracted stay in countries of first asylum is often due to refugees’ expectations of being resettled abroad. Yet only 3% of all refugees globally are resettled every year (Sanders and Smith, 2007). Iraqi refugees often consider their time spent in neighboring countries as a transitional phase rather than one of long-term settlement. For instance, Iraqi refugees in Egypt think of their stay as a temporary and transitional period, even if they have been in the country for an extended time (El- Shaarawi, 2015). Refugees in Jordan as well seek settlement in a third country, or simply hope to go back home. The overall instability of families who leave Iraq and travel to Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, and Syria does not have a positive impact on children’s education, and many times worsens educational gaps. If the children are able to make it to the United States, they still lag behind their domestic peers by approximately two years (Nykiel-Herbert, 2010).
Confronting status barriers in neighboring countries
Legal status is by far the most important and overriding factor determining the wellbeing of refugees within their hosting societies. Status has direct and indirect effects on all aspects of Iraqis’ lives in these states, from perhaps the clearest case of legal presence, to right to work, to access to health care and education. As the short review below demonstrates, the legal status of Iraqi refugees varies, at times quite significantly, between Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, and Syria.
Jordan is signatory to neither the 1951 United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, nor its 1967 Protocol. In 1998, Jordan signed a Memoranda of Understanding (MoU) with the UNHCR. The MoU outlines major principles of international protection, including the Convention refugee definition, and the principle of non-refoulement, or non-forcible return. Under the MoU, refugees may stay in Jordan for a limited but renewable period (Collet, 2010; Stevens, 2013). With respect to domestic law, entry by all non-nationals is governed by Law No. 24 of 1973 Residence and Foreign Affairs, and by bilateral agreements with neighboring Arab states. Under this legislation all nationals from Arab countries of the Gulf and Mashreq (Egypt included) are relieved from visa requirements. However, Iraqis are exempted from this. In addition to having a visa requirement, from 2007 onward, Iraqis have been asked to present a new G-series passport upon entry into Jordan, which is very difficult to obtain (Stevens, 2013). With respect to employment, most Iraqis cannot work without permission from the Ministry of Labor. Although in 2011 there were efforts to allow Iraqis into certain positions to work legally, the number of Iraqis who actually benefited from the concession was limited, and with a high unemployment rate already existing in the country, most Iraqis have been forced into living on their own resources (Stevens, 2013).
In terms of schooling, based on a Royal Decree, from 2007 onward Iraqi children have been allowed to enter the public schools. Yet the decree has not prevented some state schools from still barring Iraqi children to attend without special permission. Furthermore, Iraqi families had until 2008 been expected to pay for annual school fees (Collet, 2010; Stevens, 2013). Even when Iraqi children are in schools, they still encounter considerable challenges. Al-Qdah and Lacroix (2011) for instance speak to a lack of trained and qualified staff within Jordan’s schools that might help refugee children’s advancement. She specifically notes: [a] lack of specialised educational staff and of parental monitoring and follow-up, and a lack of monitoring and follow-up of teachers and principals by the Ministry of Education (as well as) unqualified school counselors who lack basic knowledge about the behavioral problems of Iraqi students (Al-Qdah and Lacroix, 2011: 526).
As a consequence of many of the above factors, Stevens (2013) notes that a ‘large number of Iraqi children have missed vital periods in their education’ (Stevens, 2013: 27).
Like Jordan, Lebanon has not ratified the 1951 Refugee Convention and is thus not beholden to the primary instrument regarding refugee status in international law (Law Library of Congress, 2013). The UNHCR recognises all Iraqi nationals from central and southern Iraq as refugees on a prima facie basis, but it does not register them under the MoU that it has with Lebanon because it cannot guarantee resettlement for all Iraqi refugees within 12 months of their registration, as the MoU would require. Alternatively, the UNHCR issues Iraqi refugees with certificates. Yet the certificates do not exempt Iraqis from penalties if they have entered the country illegally, or have retained an illegal presence in the country (and it is very difficult for Iraqis to enter Lebanon legally) (Human Rights Watch, 2007). Hence, Iraqi refugees live a precarious existence in Lebanon with respect to legal status. Their condition is exacerbated by the fact that few Iraqis are able to find a Lebanese employer willing to sponsor their application to regularise their status in the country, and even fewer, according to Human Rights Watch, can satisfy all the necessary requirements and pay all the required fees. Iraqi children are able to access public schooling in Lebanon, but school conditions are hampered by overcrowding and lack of resources, as well as a lack of appropriate curricula for refugee children. In fact, most Iraqi children who do go to school attend private rather than public schools, where tuition and related school costs present additional barriers to initial as well as continuing enrolment. As well, some Iraqi refugee families will choose to send their children out to work instead of sending them to school (Human Rights Watch, 2007).
Egypt is different than Jordan and Lebanon in that it is signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention, and in May 1981 ratified both the Convention as well as the 1967 Protocol. However, and critically, Egypt made reservations to five important Convention provisions; namely, Article 12(1) regarding personal status, Article 20 regarding rationing, Article 22 regarding access to primary education, Article 23 regarding public relief and assistance, and Article 24 regarding labor legislation and social security. Although Egypt made a reservation to Article 22, Section 1 of the Convention, which denies refugees the right to admission to public schools, and in 1992 the Egyptian Minister of Education issued a Ministerial Degree allowing refugees from Sudan and the children of Sudanese, Jordanian, and Libyan political asylum seekers to attend public schools. Iraqis, however, were not a part of this decree (Law Library of Congress, 2013). With respect to residency, refugees in Jordan generally receive a three-year renewable residence permit. However, although refugees do retain rights to employment within the country, Egyptian work permits are quite difficult to attain. Article 11 of the Ministerial Resolution 390 of 1982 (issued by the Ministry of Labor) requires proof from the employer that no Egyptian national is available to do the work before a permit may be issued (Law Library of Congress, 2013). Among the domestic legislative initiatives regulating the legal status of refugees and asylum seekers in Egypt included Law 154 of 2004, which prohibit the children of foreigners born on Egyptian soil from acquiring citizenship.
At the time of writing this article and in the context of its on-going civil war, Syria has been seen more as a place people flee from, rather than flee to. Indeed, the countries discussed above have now become near diaspora states for high numbers of Syrian refugees. Indeed, Syrians now outnumber Iraqi refugee populations in both Jordan and Lebanon. Like Jordan and Lebanon, Syria is not signatory to the 1951 Convention, and, similar to the two countries, UNHCR is also responsible for conducting Refugee Status Determination in Syria (International Catholic Migration Commission, 2013). Despite the above, following the US-led invasion of Iraq, Iraqis refugees in Syria were offered protection by the Assad government. Iraqi refugees could work, and children could attend school. However, conditions since 2003 have steadily if not precipitously worsened. Country conditions have forced some families to even encourage their daughters to work in prostitution. The harsh living conditions have also led to the spread of child labor (Al-Miqdad, 2007). Where schools are still open and functioning there has been a steady rise in enrolment, which has led to classroom overcrowding. The inability of schools to absorb more pupils has likely led to a rise in school drop-out rates (Al-Miqdad, 2007). The civil war in Syria has in fact led to many Iraqi refugees being ‘twice displaced’, initially from Iraq to Syria, and then again from Syria to neighboring countries, including Lebanon and Jordan (International Catholic Migration Commission, 2013).
Other types of ‘statuses’ have also presented significant obstacles to Iraqis’ schooling in these hosting states. For instance, in Jordan, a Sunni majority country, both Iraqi Christians as well as Shi’a Muslims have encountered discrimination by both their fellow students as well as teachers (Collet, 2011; Human Rights Watch, 2006; Qumri, 2012). The language of instruction in schools has additionally emerged as a challenge for Iraqis. Human Rights Watch (2007) for example reports that the language of instruction in Lebanon for key subjects such as mathematics and sciences is not in Arabic, but rather English or French, and most Iraqi refugee children do not have nearly the language proficiencies to comprehend these lessons. Education documentation status has presented a challenge to school enrollment, as some schools in the region require education certificates for admission. For example, in Lebanon schools have required Iraqis to produce education certificates in order to enroll in secondary school, and many Iraqi families had been (understandably) unable to acquire these certificates before fleeing Iraq. Residency status also plays an important role in education in Lebanon, as Iraqi families must demonstrate residence in order for their children to take the state exam for the baccalaureate. Unfortunately, this requirement excludes nearly all Iraqi children from taking the exam (Human Rights Watch, 2006).
The impacts of education gaps: Iraqi refugees in the United States
Iraqi refugees entering the American school system have been through more than many of their classmates may go through in a lifetime. They must now push forward, and learn a new language, culture, and way of living. As noted, many Iraqis are behind in schooling in the US because of lost school years in Iraq as well as in transitional countries where it was either too dangerous or too expensive to attend school, or where the labor of children became a survival necessity (Collet, 2011; Davis, 2003; Macleod, 2006; Qumri, 2012; Williams, 2007; Wong, 2007; Zangana, 2008). Many times Iraqi children are also missing important school documents, which has resulted in a lack of transfer credits (Collet, 2011; Zehr, 2010). In relation, language barriers typically exist, so full explanations from parents regarding missing records may not be easy to generate (Collet, 2011). Language barriers among students can also cause poor grades, not only from a lack of English, but also from an inability to explain important cultural issues. Regarding the latter, Nykiel-Herbert (2010) for instance provides the story of a girl who refused to read a book in school. The teacher tried to help her but at a certain point the girl would just stop. Eventually the teacher found out that because the book depicted a dog being washed inside a household, the girl felt uncomfortable reading it. Many Muslims believe that dogs are dirty and should not be bathed in the same location that humans are cleaned (Nykiel-Herbert, 2010). This appeared to be assumed knowledge on the part of the student, but clearly unknown on the part of the teacher.
Study purpose and research questions
In a larger study, Bang (2017) examined Iraqi refugee students’ risk and protective factors that might be related to school adjustment including PTSD, acculturation, resilience, and self-esteem as well as educational gaps and length of staying in the US. Bang (2017) conducted bivariate correlations and multiple regression to examine factor relationships predicting school adjustment among 100 Iraqi refugee high school students in the Detroit metropolitan area. The results showed that the educational gaps (negatively) were the strongest predictors for school adjustment, whereas educational gaps were positively related to students’ marginalisation (Bang, 2017). However, the analysis left more questions about Iraqi refugee students’ voice on what, why, and how educational gap have affected their school adjustment and what challenges they have faced in the US schools due to their educational gaps.
Thus, in this piece we provide a further qualitative investigation of how the participants perceive their educational gaps and subsequent impacts on their schooling.
The questions for our study are as follows:
What were the reasons for educational gaps these Iraqi refugee students experienced while living in Iraq?
What were reasons for the educational gaps these Iraqi refugee students experienced while in transitional countries en route to the United States?
What are the consequences of education gaps for schooling in the US, and what defines these Iraqi students’ needs to overcome their challenges toward their better adjustment to US schooling?
Method
Study context, participants, and data collection procedure
The study was conducted between 2012 and 2013. We obtained full Human Subjects Review board approval. One-hundred Iraqi refugee students ranging from 14 to 20 years old (mean: 16.23; SD: 1.49) who attended various high schools in the greater Detroit metropolitan area participated in the study. All students were Chaldean Christians. Metro Detroit has the world’s largest population of Chaldeans outside of Iraq, with an estimated population exceeding 120,000 people (Chaldean American Chamber of Commerce, 2015). According to the Chaldean American Chamber of Commerce, Chaldeans have had a presence in Detroit as far back as 1920, having been drawn to the area by both its auto industry and its small business opportunities for immigrants. Since the war in Iraq, the population has experienced a constant influx of Christian refugees who have fled religious persecution. The regrettable persecution of Chaldeans in Iraq, which was heightened in the aftermath of the US invasion, and has only become worse with the advent of the so-called Islamic State of Syria and Iraq (ISIS), constitutes a principle reason for our particular focus on them. It brings into sharper focus educational gaps as experienced by a specific minority population, which we hope will become evident in our presentation findings.
The participants were recruited through a liaison within the Iraqi community in metro Detroit, as well as personnel at a large public high school in the area. Parents of participants were contacted by the researchers during a teacher and parent conference at the school, or they received information from a community radio station about the study and contacted the community liaison. After obtaining parents’ consent and students’ assent, participants completed a survey, which took about 30 min (both English and Arabic versions were available). The survey included items pertaining to transition countries, months, and years of education gaps (mean: 9.98 months; SD: 16.20; range: 1–96 months), length of stay in the US (mean: 19.65 months; SD: 16.64; range: 1–60 months), and schooling challenges, as well as items regarding acculturation issues, resilience, and PTSD. Iraqi refugee students who participated in the study have educational gaps between 1 and 96 months.
Thirty Iraqi refugee students (ages 15–20), 18 parents, and two teachers participated in either an individual or focus group interview, which took 40–60 min to complete. 16 students were male. Eight mothers, six fathers, and one brother as a caregiver also participated; all were Chaldean Iraqi. Both teachers were female. One teacher (white, non-Iraqi) taught an English Language Learners (ELL) class; the other (Iraqi-American) was a former ELL teacher who currently works as a reading specialist. For all parties, we used semi-structured interviews. Interview questions included students’ (or parents’ and teachers’ perception on the students’) educational experience in Iraq, transitional countries, and schooling challenges in the US. Interview questions for students also addressed interactions with classmates, and coping with challenges to their schooling in the US. Interviews for parents addressed their perceptions of the extent to which their children had adjusted in the US and how their children were dealing with challenges. Interviews of teachers addressed their perceptions of Iraqi students’ school life, challenges the students faced, and obstacles they encountered when supporting the students. Two Arabic and Chaldean speakers who also speak English translated and helped Iraqi students and their parents when needed.
Results and discussions
Based on the research questions, we identified themes that provide insight into Iraqi refugee students’ educational gaps, and challenges to schooling in the US. The challenges categorised below are based on both geography and chronology (in Iraq, in transitional countries, and in the US). In Iraq and transitional countries, the themes mainly describe the educational gaps students have experienced. In the US, the themes demonstrate the effects of educational gaps on students’ secondary schooling as well as the students’ anxiety regarding their future.
Education gaps in Iraq
We identify four dominant themes here: trauma experienced in war zones, trauma for girls, being Chaldean in Iraq, and lack of school documentation. Whereas our presentation and discussion of findings related to trauma and lack of school documentation both underline and contribute to the existing research, the theme ‘being Chaldean in Iraq’ adds something new, and draws attention to the importance of attending to specific population characteristics when examining the causes of education gaps.
Trauma experienced in war zones. The fear of danger constitutes a tremendous stress among people in war zones, and this fear often manifests later as PTSD. A parent recalled one circumstance by saying ‘The education went downhill. Taking our kids to school was a fearful thing to do.’ A student also recalled ‘Like… I went one year to school to [in] Iraq. Then I can’t go because a lot [of] bad person [people] take student[s] to do bad things to them.’ A parent also recalled the war zone by saying ‘After we came back from Lebanon, the environment and life in Iraq was really bad and dangerous, so they [his children] did not go to school.’
The testimony essentially verifies what we have known for some time about the unstable situation in Iraq. The conveyed challenges and obstacles for students and parents have not changed too much. For instance, in addition to the economic challenges for schools, now hundreds of Iraqi children are obliged to leave schools even before they leave their countries because of control by the so-called ISIS over regions and cities within the country (Ahmed, 2015). Moreover, by 2015, seven universities serving an overall number of 116,000 students had closed due to ISIS takeover. Hence, students in Iraq do not seem to have many choices when their only options are two basic hells: being a refugee, or joining ISIS (Ahmed, 2015). In his examination of mental health symptoms among Iraqi refugees, Jamil et al. (2007) additionally reported that Iraqi refugees are most likely to seek psychological care because of the tremendous effect of the war on their everyday lives. He also argues that most of those who do seek treatment largely display PTSD symptoms.
Trauma for girls. Confirming the work of Arnetz et al. (2013) as well as Bang (2017), some interviewees mentioned that female Iraqi refugee students are more likely to suffer from PTSD than their male counterparts. A parent said, For girl especially, for girl. She cannot [could not] go to school… Her concentration was getting poor right after the explosion she witnessed, so she would study a lot but she was unable to comprehend everything due to the images and the explosion that she witnessed… Um, there was [were] a lot of threats and my daughters were not able to go to school.
As noted, the experience of trauma has a significant effect on a child’s ability to function effectively at school. For instance, some studies report that trauma, in general, has particularly adverse effects on the study of academic subjects requiring high levels of concentration such as grammar, mathematics, and physics (Dyregrov, 2004). Refugee populations, in particular, experience disruption in school adjustment due not only to cognitive and learning difficulties, but also emotional and behavioral difficulties (Kaplan, 2009).
Being Chaldean in Iraq. A lot of Iraqi students and their parents have not only suffered from general war zone dangers (bombing, dangerous and unsafe environment, no food for survival) but Chaldeans, as a minority and persecuted religious group, have also suffered from being kidnapped, or from threats of being attacked or kidnapped. For some parents, being Christian was the main reason to leave Iraq on top of the war. A few interviews from students and parents revealed that some Muslim Iraqis think that Chaldeans have connections with Americans so they should have money. Thus, they kidnapped Chaldeans or threated to harm them to get money. A parent recalled: There was a lot of threats and my daughters were not able to go to school… they come and they knock on our door. My youngest daughter opened and they said either you guys gonna give us money or within 15 days we’re gonna kill all of you… Even the company I was working for was receiving threats… they [the company] were employing Christians.
Chaldean women are easily recognizable in Iraq because they do not wear hijabs. Hence they became easy targets of threats and violence. A parent said, ‘When I found that out, that he [their child] was being harassed by students and teachers there… that they forced him to convert… when I found that out, I pulled him [out].’ In a student focus group interview a student said ‘The last years in Iraq, education become very bad. The people became “hate Christian people” …like that. That’s why we didn’t go to school in Iraq.’ The persecution of Christians in Iraq unfortunately has only intensified with the presence of ISIS.
Lack of school administration. Due to the war, even within Iraq families could not always obtain the necessary documents they needed for schooling, which affected their children’s education gaps. Reflecting the deterioration of the educational infrastructure earlier discussed, one parent recalled that her daughter could not go to school for one-and-a-half years in Iraq, saying ‘When I moved to the north (of Iraq) she (daughter) could not register. She had to wait for her paperwork from Baghdad[,] which was delayed for six months.’ We see in fact that the lack of school documents presents one of the education gap issues that remains persistent across the three contexts we examine (Iraq, transitional countries, the US).
Education gaps in transitional countries
The most frequent transitional countries the populations we interviewed stayed in were Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, and Syria. Some respondents also transitioned through Turkey. In this section we again identify four major themes. They are: religious and other discrimination as refugees, financial difficulties, school access and continuation problems, and language barriers. As with the previous section, our study findings both reinforce as well as contribute to the present literature on the causes of education gaps by providing some nuance to understanding the difficulties this particular Iraqi population has faced.
Religious and other discrimination as refugees. Interviewees discussed discrimination by either people and/or systems in transitional countries. One parent stated; ‘I felt there was discrimination in school. And I couldn’t put the kids in school.’ A student in a focus group interview said that he entered school in Jordan but they [fellow students] told him that if he did not convert to Islam, they would kick him out. Another type of discrimination was rejection by students in the hosting country because Iraqis were refugees. A student went to a school for only one year while in staying in Lebanon for three years. When she attended school, however, she was constantly asked why she was there by Lebanese students, not because they were curious, but because they were hostile and held prejudices toward refugees. Anti-immigrant and anti-refugee sentiment is, of course, not uncommon within country contexts suffering from other kinds of instability (e.g. economic), and the overcrowding of schools within Lebanon (and related drains on existing school resources) due to the enrolment of refugees may well play into these types of aggressions.
On the religious side, most Christian Iraqi refugees flee from Iraq to neighboring countries that are dominant Muslim. Thus, the potential for religious discrimination against them continues, depending on the country if not the country region within which they find themselves. Where such discrimination occurs, it may well contribute to education disruptions or gaps. Human Rights Watch (2006), for example, reported discrimination suffered by Iraqi Christian refugee children in near diaspora countries such as Jordan, noting bullying in schools, and accusations of being ‘Americanised’ and traitors. Moreover, in the same HRW report parents mentioned that being Shi’a was often a basis for discrimination. Such fears of Shi’a Iraqis as a potential national security threat within Jordan are not uncommon, including their operating as ‘fifth-columnists’ (Kymlicka, 2007), or as collaborators with neighboring enemies.
Financial difficulties. Financial difficulty presents a significant obstacle among refugee parents when it comes to supporting their children’s education. Often times, parents have no other choice than having their children work so that the family can survive. A parent said that they stayed in Lebanon for a year but three of their children worked to help their family before they came to the US. Significantly, many if not all of the students who did not go to school in transitional countries worked. A student who was in Lebanon for two-and-a-half years worked the entire time. All the children who reported to us that they worked were boys. It is not impossible that some girls within our study may have also worked, including work as prostitutes (or approached to work in this industry) while living in transitional countries. However, with respect to the latter, we would not have expected either the girls or their families to have told us this.
Our findings regarding financial difficulties again largely mirror the literature. Legal and residency status clearly affects the employability of Iraqi refugees in neighboring countries, and many times children must work (often illegally) to help out. Lack of financial resources also impacts children who are in school. For instance, some Iraqi children in Turkey have to miss school because the Arabic schools that exist in the country are very expensive and target only upper-class refugees. In addition, they are only available in big cities, which excludes those Iraqis living in the peripheral or rural areas (Daoud, 2015). El-Badri (2012) also discusses the effect of financial circumstances on the situation of Iraqis in Turkey. He finds that the lack of support from the international community as well as the Turkish authorities restrict asylum requests to only wealthy refugees.
School access and continuation problems. School access and continuation emerged as another strong issue reverberating with the existing research. Turkey, for example, requires three years of residency before refugees may enroll in school. A parent experienced this, and reported, You cannot put your kids in school in Turkey. You have to have some kind of three years permanent residency to be able to put the kids in school, the regular school… So even though there are thousands and thousands of refugees in Istanbul, they cannot officially enroll their kids in school without residency.
Another parent also mentioned that schooling had discontinued for their children: They used to attend like, in a centre, called Karitaz. It’s a centre to learn [the] Turkish language so people can be accustomed to [and learn] the culture. And they [the children] speak [Turkish] very well… They used to take [the children to] recreational activities. There was… a priest [to] take the kids to places [like] historical sites. [To] some recreational activities.
Also with respect to school continuation difficulties, another parent complained about their children’s education experience and lack of caring at the individual level in Turkey; ‘The teachers are so hard, you know. The[ir] technique… I have a son that [is] supposed to go to 4th grade. They put him in kindergarten.’ In another country context, a student who went to a school for one year in Lebanon explained to our translator: ‘She wants me to explain why she, why the school [was] just one year, like she said, when she finished primary school there. She had to go to a school which was far from their home, and there’s no transportation. Yeah. So that’s why she went for just one year.’ Many of our study participants also reported residency requirements in both Jordan and Egypt that had prevented them from registering their children in schools, again echoing the extant research (Al-Qdah, 2010; Human Rights Watch, 2006; El-Shaarawi, 2015; Ibrahim, 2008).
Language barriers. Language barriers were also one of the many issues students in our study dealt with while in transitional countries. For example, in Turkey the official language is Turkish and not Arabic. Some other schools in Turkey used English as the primary language of instruction. These circumstances not only prevented children from enrolling in schools, but also from working. In another case, a female student had stayed in Lebanon for a total of three years but had attended school for only one of them. An interpreter translated the student’s testimony: Yeah, she went there for one year, but she said that she didn’t understand that much…not because they didn’t teach that good [but] because I think they teach in English. So that’s why she didn’t understand the language. So it was so hard for her to understand.
A parent also talked about the language issue by saying ‘The younger one, I put him in school, but they were teaching him [in] French. The original language in Lebanon is Arabic and French.’ A second parent confirmed that although Lebanese speak Arabic, they (Iraqis) somehow feel like it is a different language, perhaps due to the particular dialect used within the region. This parent said ‘…cuz in Iraq, it wasn’t like Lebanon, you know, it was just different. It’s a different country, so different everything. They weren’t the same thing [at all]. Different teachers. Different language.’ Another parent explained a different type of education gap by saying, Lebanon starts English [education] as a second language from 1st grade. My daughter was held one school year behind [because of this]. She was supposed to be in 3rd grade. But they gave her the exam [and] she was able to pass it as a second grader.
These data undergird the fact that even when the children in our study were able to attend some amount of schooling while in transitional countries, they still experienced disrupting factors. Patnaik (2014) as well as Hauck et al. (2014) take up the particular issue of language barriers by noting that such challenges and resulting school disruptions present significant obstacles for refugee children in the US not only with respect to academic development, but also (eventually) to finding a position in the labor market.
Consequences of education gaps for US schooling
In this section we address the themes of PTSD and schooling; culture; values and educational practices; placement problems and the fear of academic failure; school staff views on the effects of education gaps; school staff’s lack of student understanding; students’ uncertainty regarding their futures; and, finally, support being offered from schools. We find in particular that our discussions of culture, values, and educational practices as well as students’ uncertainty about their futures provide unique perspectives to the literature. This section provides information that is missing in Bang’s (2017) analysis. In particular, placement problems and fear of academic failure are more directly from students’ lack of formal education in Iraq and transitional countries. Teachers’ interviews also support the students’ lack of school experience, which might affect their schooling and subsequent marginalisation.
PTSD and schooling. Many Iraqi students in our study stopped attending schools right after the Iraq war erupted so as to avoid life-threatening dangers (bombing, kidnapping, and other violence). Many students watched other people dying and bombs exploding in front of them, and some (non-Muslim) were threatened with forced conversion to Islam or were kidnapped for ransom. These traumatic experiences not only hindered their ability to attend schools, but also interrupted the way they see things and their ability to adjust. One parent complained about his son, but did not know what went wrong: My younger son is not doing good at all. His behavioral and emotional state has changed. He’s getting in trouble a lot. The school has called me already three times last week complaining about him. He’s bothering [others] and he’s having issues with other kids.
The interview represents learning problems experienced by the students, such as the ability to control their behavior as well as maintain concentration. The second interview directly connects concentration problems to trauma experienced as a result of the war. Both these conditions may well threaten students’ abilities to acculturate as they negatively impact their self-confidence. Stress matters significantly here. For instance, in interviews of Iraqis refuges in Charlottesville, Virginia regarding possible causes of PTSD, Hauck et al. (2014) listed worries about their loved ones (outside of the US) as a reason for their considerable stress.
Culture, values, and education practices. Although Iraqi refugee students and their parents appreciate the supports they receive in US schools, sometimes the discrepancies between their culture, values, and education practices make them think that US education is not as rigorous as the education they had received in Iraq. Some students think that Iraqi education was more rigorous because they learned a lot and had to study harder to cover all the materials from front to back. Parents also thought that American teachers are ‘too soft’ and do not emphasise discipline enough. A parent explained that why he thought Iraqi education was better:
In Iraq, the education was much better than here.
The way of teaching, I believe in Iraq, is better than here.
That’s what I was gonna ask.
We have in Iraq, discipline and teaching.
Here, I believe, there is no discipline and no teaching.
We are struggling with the younger ones… There’s too much freedom here. And [in] our culture, we have a red line [to cross], but with them [teachers in the US, they] don’t have a red line.
We teach one thing at home, but when they go to school, they see something else due to peer pressure.
In class, um, there’s no control or authority of the teacher over the kids.
The kids usually get up…they move around in the class, and the teacher doesn’t do anything. This is out of control.
One parent also complained about a lack of school uniforms by saying: I don’t see uniform[s] in public school. I [saw] there is in Catholic school…That way the girl don’t have to pay attention to putting make-up [on] and all that. She’ll put [on] her uniform. Back home in Iraq, they are all uniform.
Another parent talked about problems regarding grading and communication with teachers, although the parent felt the issues were getting better the longer they stayed in the US: ‘When we first came in, [we] were complaining about a teacher and the way they grade. However, now they are much better [although we are still] struggling with communication.’
It is interesting that among the many school challenges that Iraqi families encountered while in transitional countries, these particular concerns regarding academic rigor, classroom discipline, and school uniforms did not emerge, and this may reflect a type of constant across the schools within Iraq’s neighboring states or the near diaspora. Hence these particular types of concerns seem unique to the US context. As part of his study examining the experiences of Iraqi refugees in the US, Patnaik (2014) for instance discusses major academic barriers that might influence the educational development of refugee students, including the difficulty of adjusting to a new cultural environment or what he called a lack of a ‘sense of belonging’ (Patnaik, 2014: 105). In an interesting and perhaps unexpected way, we might say that the above factors (rigor, discipline, uniforms) contribute to a sense of belonging, and, in the US case, of separation.
Placement problems and fear of academic failure. This theme may be the most direct schooling issue in the US related to education gaps in Iraq and transitional countries. When Iraqi students enter the US school system, they are sometimes placed in a class (generally ESL classes) in the middle of the semester rather than when the semester starts. Additionally, although students’ grade level placement is lower than what they would be if they had gone through regular education without any interruption, a lot of times their placements may still not accurately reflect their true academic level, considering their education gaps. Because the high schools that the students attend have told them that they will not accept students who are older than 19, many of the students in our study worried about being expelled from school if they did not finish the credits they needed to. One parent for instance said; ‘My son was born 1994. He’s 19…the schools [have] refused to register him.’ Some students who are not accepted by public secondary schools go to a local alternative high school run by Iraqi Americans. A student explained the reason he went to this alternative school: ‘Oh, because I was to register in [masked] high school, but they refuse because I am 18 years old.’
Not being able to receive an education and not being able to obtain the diploma they need for getting a job is a major issue among Iraq refugee high school students. If Iraqi refugee students come to the US at a younger age (i.e.; primary school age), they will more quickly adjust and get up to speed with their peers, whereas, clearly, if they come to the US in high school with extant education gaps, it is much more likely that they will experience these particular problems. In some cases, American schools require Iraqi refugee students to bring a diploma earned in Iraq in order to give them a chance to graduate. Yet this is unrealistic, considering that they are refugees. Iraq is at war, and schools cannot realistically expect Iraq students and their parents to bring official documents to prove their education in Iraq, and they should be sympathetic to families only in partial possession of school documents. One parent said, My son is [doing] well. And his classes are good and he’s now, I believe, in regular classes, but still he was told if he doesn’t bring these certificates of these how far he has gone, he would not be able to continue here.
Another parent said the following:
My son, they put him in 11th grade and he’s supposed to graduate, but he’s not gonna be able to because he’s 18. He’s not gonna be able to graduate unless he brings all his paperwork from Iraq. That’s his challenge.
Does that paperwork exist?
They’ve requested it from Iraq.
School staff views on the effects of education gaps. Although Iraqi students reported that they receive a lot of support from schools in the US, due to their educational gaps (ranging from 1 month to 96 months: mean = 9.98 months, SD = 16.20 months), it remains difficult for them to follow formal instruction in US schools. Their core knowledge of each subject might not be at the level expected of their age and grade level. As well, periods of absence from the formal culture of school means absence from socialisation into the normative behaviors and rules students are expected to follow. This exactly shows why there exists a strong relationship between educational gaps and school adjustment (negative) and marginalisation (positive) (Bang, 2017). The following is a teacher’s response about refugee students’ education gaps:
From students, what kind of challenges do you see? Why, how and in what ways have they struggled in school?
It’s a variety of things. If I look at my students who…have just come to the country, we have many who, as you know, [have] never [even] been to school or haven’t been to school in such a long time that they don’t know how to, you know, adjust to the environment of a classroom. Sitting, you know, raising your hand, and things of that nature. Those things come. But they don’t know how to study. They don’t know how to review their work. And so … you have to show them how to hold the pencil, how to use a highlighter. Things that you wouldn’t think of…those are always things that we sort of skip over, but [which actually] take the most time. [Such as] forming of the letters.
School staff’s lack of understanding. It is understandable that the teachers and administrators are overworked in these schools. Their lack of understanding regarding what these refugee students have gone through, and their lack of understanding regarding the education gaps the students have, also makes it hard for them to be sympathetic. A teacher who teaches English-as-a-Second-Language courses and understands the students more than other teachers because she is the first one who welcomes them said, I think because our staff does not know how to accommodate or modify it. The student, it is put on the student and the student is never going to succeed, so they do feel a sense of “why should I try? It’s impossible for me to complete the tests ahead, why should I even try?” So yes, I think many of our students feel that way.
She said further: For example, yesterday an English teacher came up to me and said, “I have these two ELL students in one of my classes who don’t, uh, they don’t get it. Literary analysis, I told them 10 times. They have no idea what they’re doing and they are telling me they are just going to give up. They’ll just take the F. And I’ve done everything.” And I said to this teacher, “You have been doing the same thing again and again and you are still getting the same outcome so you have to change what you are doing to get what you want out of it. If you want the student to write a literary analysis you need to sit with that student and tell that student what every sentence should be and write it out for that student. Sentence one of your first paragraph will be this. And then the next time you do it the student will have a template.” A student can’t create something a student has never seen before.
This was particularly the case with respect to receiving assistance in understanding their classmates, lectures, and assignments. One parent responded: They’re having a hard time understanding how kids [can] make fun of somebody who doesn’t understand English. There’s no control. Let’s say the principal has to say “you can’t make fun of someone who doesn’t speak English or somebody who’s a refugee.” They are struggling that their kids are having this issue that people are making fun of them.
A teacher also supported this with the following comment: There is such a disconnect between my classroom and the counseling department and the administration building and who does ELL there. There is just such a disconnect between [them]. There’s no communication lines [sic]. The woman that does ELL, you know our ELL coordinator for the district, is also the Social Studies coordinator, she does something else. And she of course has 36 schools. And nobody’s on the same page about anything. So the kids come and they’re never ELPA [English Language Proficiency Assessment] tested, they’re in mainstream classes, [and] they just got here. And one counselor will say “We can’t put them in ELL classes until they’re ELPA tested.” And then another counselor will put them in right away and then they can’t get an answer from so and so. And then there’s the whole issue with, with credits, when the students bring their (transcripts). Have you heard this? The student will bring their report cards and they all have to be okayed by this one woman, our ELL coordinator. She has to review them and assign these students credits and different students will get different credits for the same thing, or no credits.
While in their transitional countries, many of the students in our study encountered significant shortages of qualified school personnel and offices equipped to work with refugee students, underlining the findings of Bang and Collet (2016) and Qumri (2012), as well as the reporting of Human Rights Watch (2006). Yet the above data indicate that even where there do exist such resources, there is no guarantee that they work effectively or to their full potential. As noted further below, this has important implications regarding future school policies and practices.
Uncertainty regarding future. A sense of ‘uncertainty’ is a cumulative phenomenon, and thus encompasses many of the themes addressed above. Due to their education gaps and the impact of these gaps on their schooling within the US, students are greatly apprehensive about their graduation and their future. Some of them could not get into the public school system at all or receive a high school diploma, and have found themselves attending alternative high schools. One student said in the interview: I’m 18 years old. I came here to America 10 months ago and I don’t know what to do. I need to find a job, but also I don’t want to be a worker for all my life cuz, I want to graduate from school, but I don’t know how to.
Another student also worries about her future:
The credit[s], you know how to complete high school, you need certain credit[s]? So she has this year and next year, but her credit[s are] not going to be completed and she’s worried they’re going to kick her out of the school without finishing her credit[s] and she’s not gonna have a high school diploma, which is happening to too many, I want to mention it to you, to too many kids. How [are] we gonna correct that?
During the student focus group interview, students also said the following:
We’re 17 years old. We can’t graduate.
We can’t bring enough points to graduate. And even if we’re able and we could study and work hard and everything…we can’t graduate because we can’t bring the points.
Another student, also distressed about this issue, stated ‘I’m worried about … everything gonna go away for nothing, like it did in Iraq. I was trying and trying and having good grades and it [will] go away. It doesn’t count. I’m worried about that.’ These interview data indicate that gaps in education greatly affected Iraqi refugee students’ fear of failure in securing a high school diploma that may lead to securing their future, or at least serve as an important steppingstone toward their successful integration into US society. Other descriptions of Iraqi students in the US, such as Mary Ann Zehr’s (2010) work regarding Iraqi refugees in California, have reported similar sets of issues
Support from school. Despite all of the challenges we have so far discussed, the participants we interviewed also generally felt that they have been provided both personal and material support from their community as well as the state, including human resources such as interpreters, community liaisons, teachers, and some monetary compensation from the state. They are appreciative of the support they have received. Especially, many students are very appreciative and positive about their schooling in general. A student said: I am attending [masked] High School. It’s good for me. The teachers help me a lot and after school, many teacher[s] stay after school and they help me. We have…one person, [an] Iraqi teacher we go [to], and [can] ask him anything we want [to if] we don’t understand.
Many parents also have heard from their students that the teachers are generally very supportive. A parent said: ‘The teachers are very good, they are helping him a lot. They spend time with him.’ A student specially praised a teacher: It’s him. His name is Mr. Chuckovic [pseudonym] … He helps the refugees a lot. Helping them. Other students, they just come for his help from other classes. They don’t have him [as a teacher]. He helps me. He helps not only me, he helps other[s].
Such school support may well ameliorate, at least to a degree, PTSD among the students. For example, in a study of Iraqi refugees in the Detroit area, Trentacosta et al. (2016) argued that participants who had positive feelings about their schools and supportive relationships with their parents reported fewer traumatic stress symptoms. Yet the number of refugee students attending schools in the area we examined often far surpasses the amount of personal and material support that schools can provide. We provide some commentary on this in our closing remarks.
Conclusion and Implications
What remains similar, and what changes, when we examine the causes of education gaps and the consequences of such gaps in the three schooling contexts of Iraq, transitional countries, and the GDA? There are unfortunately some conditions that students have experienced in Iraq that have held stubborn and steady. Trauma, and its lingering effects, clearly stands as one of them. Our findings show that experiences of trauma while in Iraq do not dissipate during times in transition. In fact, most if not all of our evidence suggests that time spent in transitional countries likely only aggravated or in the least left untreated PTSD amongst the students we spoke with. For instance, student experiences of discrimination in schools, based on either or both religious and refugee status, certainly did nothing to help their extant PTSD. Nor can we imagine did the host of other conditions our participants had to endure while living in transitional countries, such as precarious status, poverty, and having to work instead of attend school. Another similarity, at least between transitional countries and the US, concerns negative relations between Iraqi and non-Iraqi students within the schools. Although we received no reports of explicit status or religious discrimination or bullying against Iraqi students in the GDA schools, we did hear of teasing based on language ability. Hence, although we can pretty confidently say that our student participants have been free from some of the most negative types of discrimination that they experienced in transitional countries, they have not been entirely immune from being subjected to other kinds of student harassment in the US. A third constant concerns lack of school documents. Our data show that such problems occurred amongst some of our participants in Iraq; definitely emerged in transitional countries; and then again surfaced in some cases in the GDA.
Such are some of the major factors we observe to be similar. What, however, of the differences? First and foremost, for all its societal as well as schooling challenges, the US offers legal protection to recognised refugees. The US joined the international refugee regime in 1968 by ratifying the 1967 Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees, and in enacting the Refugee Act of 1980, Congress signaled its intention to conform US refugee law to the country’s legal obligations (Fitzpatrick 1997). Once refugees are granted US protection, they are entitled to a Social Security card and employment authorisation. They may also qualify to receive state assistance, including cash, medical, housing, educational and vocational services. Refugee children can attend public schools in the US (Zong and Batalova, 2015). These are protections and provisions that may be taken for granted by many ‘native’ US citizens, but, as our study indicates, they clearly are not shared across the world, and they do represent the uniqueness of the US settlement context for our study participants. This being said, at the level of schooling, we can observe some perceived challenges in the GDA, and perhaps by extension the larger US context, that were present neither in Iraq nor in the transitional countries we looked at. We write ‘perceived’ here because the challenges we have in mind, notably, ‘lack of discipline in the schools’, ‘lack of rigor’, and ‘lack of school uniforms’ were challenges communicated by our parents and, perhaps not surprisingly, not by our students. These types of challenges do, however, relate to the larger dimensions of culture. It is, for instance, reasonable to assume that school teachers and students in transitional country contexts understood Iraqi students in particular ways that (non-Iraqi and non-migrant) teachers and students in the US cannot, or cannot easily. With the exception of Turkey, the transitional countries our study participants lived in and traveled through were part of the larger Arab world, and in this way broadly share cultural attributes and histories very foreign to the US. These things do matter when it comes to developing personal understandings of Iraqi refugee students in the schools. Interestingly, teachers in our study reported that the challenges of educational gaps among their Iraqi students were related to conventional practices of schooling such as ‘raising hands for questions’, ‘holding pencils’, and ‘not knowing how to study’. These were again different than US school challenges that some parents voiced. Challenges articulated from students’ perspectives mainly pertained to ‘catching up academically’ and ‘graduating’. This leads us finally to offering some thoughts about the implications of our study for school policy and practice in transitional countries as well as the US. With particular respect to transitional countries, access to schooling remains a major obstacle. In 2007, the UNHCR and UNICEF developed a joint appeal to get Iraqi children back to school in Syria, Jordan, and Egypt (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 2007), and continuing efforts with host governments such as these are critical, particularly with respect to access challenges pertaining to prior school documentation as well as residency requirements. At the same time, hosting countries should open further employment opportunities for Iraqi refugees, so that their children may be free to attend school instead of being compelled to work. Finally, in both transitional countries and in the US, there are good reasons for schools to serve as settings for mental health interventions for Iraqi children. As Tyrer and Fazel (2014) assert, schools constitute places that can potentially access large numbers of children as well as families, and the coordinated efforts of teachers and school staff can facilitate identification of children’s mental health issues, particularly as teachers and staff may observe children’s behavior across a range of both structured and unstructured school settings over short as well as long periods of time (Masia-Warner et al., 2006; Tyrer and Fazel, 2014).
With particular respect to the US, schools need to make their determination processes regarding placement and scheduling very clear to both refugee students and parents. The process of determining whether a refugee student is an ELL is different than the process of determining that student’s academic readiness, and school counselors should regularly check with teachers and students to be sure that the student is correctly placed in the appropriate class and is receiving the appropriate instructional support (Minnesota Department of Education, 2010). With respect to age requirements and secondary schools, students and families should also be aware of policies guiding schools, as these vary from state to state. For instance, in Michigan, the maximum age limit is 20; in Ohio, the maximum limit is 21; and the age limit in Indiana is 19 (Education Commission of the States, 2013). If a school is not abiding by state policy, parents and communities have legal rights to take action. Furthermore, states should develop effective accountability systems and oversight of ‘alternative’ programs that spring up to serve refugee students who have aged out of the public school system. Next, schools should make creative use of their student and community resources including the development of student-to-student tutoring and conversation programs, and community liaisons who may assist in vital translation services as well as help mediate cultural issues that arise. Finally, schools should develop specialised volunteer positions within their buildings to work with refugee students, such as an International Student Coordinator who can facilitate communications between administrative and teaching staff, and schools should make serious investments in the form of professional development training to help all their teaching and administrative staff develop a shared understanding of the past experiences and present needs and concerns of refugee children.
Footnotes
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was partially supported by the Faculty Research Committee Building Strength Grant at Bowling Green State University (grant no. 33000019).