Immigrant students risk lag in e-learning
Schoolwork is tougher for families with limited English, resources
In their small apartment in the Gulfton area, third grader Yousuf Durrani and his three siblings have been trying to keep up with schoolwork with just one computer. It’s a slow device their father bought 10 years ago in Afghanistan.
It hasn’t been easy. “It’s like difficult because we all do assignments in one computer, and they have like a lot of assignments to do, so it takes a long time,” said the 8-year-old Sutton Elementary student who is in an English as a Second Language program. He also said the laptop needs to be constantly charged, requiring even more time.
“You constantly have to do a lot.”
The novel coronavirus forced the closure of campus
es throughout the school year in Texas and most states, compelling districts to turn to online instruction. For many immigrant students like Yousuf, whose families face economic hardship and often lack technology, online instruction can be a challenge. The distance learning also presents language barriers for many immigrant parents who were expected to become home-school educators overnight.
Naqui Hernández, a Guatemalan mother with limited English language, sometimes wonders if her two children are actually studying as they tell her. They use a mobile phone for classroom assignments, because they don’t have a computer.
She has a 9-year-old daughter in the fourth grade at a Houston ISD school in the Sharpstown neighborhood where they live, and a 14-year-old son in seventh grade who attends a YES Prep charter school. Both have been in English Learners’ programs and the mother is concerned about their progress.
“I see them a little slower on school things,” Hernández said. “Now that they are home, I feel that’s not very good for my kids.”
The difference
Once school does reopen, the challenges brought by COVID-19 will affect immigrant students and American children from immigrant families at a greater scale than other students, said Bob Sanborn, president and CEO of Children at Risk, a research and advocacy organization that ranks Texas public schools.
“We are going to have a ‘coronavirus lag,’ and we know that it’s going to be a significant lag,” Sanborn said.
Sanborn explained that, during summer, students typically lose some of what they’ve learned, commonly referred to as brain drain. The pandemic has magnified the problem, he said, for immigrants or their parents who are learning English. Those concerns become apparent during conversations he’s had with educators.
“They could be as much as a year behind other children when they finally get back to school,” Sanborn said.
More than 40 percent of the children in the Houston area and 34 percent in Texas have immigrant parents, according to a study by the think tank Urban Institute, using census data from 2018. The majority of those kids are U.S. citizens, live in low-income households and their foreign-born parents have been in the country for at least 15 years. . About one-fourth of the immigrant parents have less than a high school education.
More than 17 percent of American-born children with immigrant parents in the Houston metro area have limited English proficiency, a proportion that increases to 39 percent for foreignborn kids.
“The technology in most (of their) homes consisted of a smartphone or portable tablet, (and) most educational systems are not compatible with those particular devices,” said Liz Garza-García, with the Texas Association for Bilingual Education.
Garza-García added that English learners and immigrant families face other obstacles when trying to access online curriculum, troubleshoot problems and check grades provided in a language they do not commonly speak.
“The transition to e-learning left many students and their parents in the dark because of a lack of training,” for them, she said.
The pandemic also adds to the heightened hostile environment for immigrants, both legally and illegally in the country, said Debbie Ortiz, spokesperson with the Association for the Advancement of Mexican Americans.
Some students in immigrant households have already disappeared from their teachers’ radar, she said. The organization sponsors the George I. Sanchez Charter School campuses, where the majority of students are from immigrant families. About 10 percent of the students are unaccounted for, after many attempts to contact them, she said.
“Some of them are not in stable home environments; their parents may have been deported,” Ortiz said. They just helped a 17-year-old student pay rent, with a donation, for a place where he takes care of a younger sibling after their father was deported during the pandemic. Their mother died last year.
Educators believe that others may have been forced to look for work as their families lose income and studying takes a back seat.
At HISD every school has a specialist to address students’ social and emotional needs, said interim Chief Academic Officer Yolanda Rodríguez. “If a family within a school needs support, they can assist.”
Rodríguez also said the district launched several initiatives during the pandemic to serve students in English Language Learners programs and immigrant parents. The resources include TV classes, a webinar for parents and a hotline to answer questions.
Kids out of the radar
Parents like Hernández are trying their best. She said she has managed to communicate in Spanish with her children’s teachers by text message, the only digital tool she has learned to use.
“You know, I was only able to go to school until sixth grade,” she said.
For parents with limited English, education and access to technology, one organization is trying to help.
“It’s a huge burden for these parents,” said Aisha Siddiqui, founder and executive director of Culture of Health — Advancing Together, which provides tutoring for disadvantaged school children in Houston.
Sometimes the tutors become the computer techs as well.
“OK, (can) you see the button at the bottom left? ... OK, you’re going to press on that, and the camera’s going to switch,” said Rosaly Rosario, a bilingual volunteer tutor, recounting a conversation she often has with struggling parents. That process alone, while simple for many, can consume a good part of her tutoring sessions, before she can get to the math, reading and homework.
“It’s been rough,” said Rosario, who is graduating in May from the University of Houston. “But families are very grateful for the work that we’re doing to help them.”
Experts like Sanborn said that Texas should prepare for an extraordinary upcoming school year to bring kids back up to speed, with special programs such as intensive tutoring targeting the most impacted and vulnerable students.
“Districts are all trying to do their very best, but there are inconsistencies across the board,” Sanborn said. “Some just don’t see the urgency of this. We are fooling ourselves if we think what we are doing is going to be enough.”
Yousuf, who is being tutored by CHAT, said he is eager for this period to end.
He used to be excited about school, but not anymore, after the long hours of classwork with limited resources.
“My teacher told me that you have to do one online work, and then two more, and then I do one and work a lot, and then I forget about the other one,” he said. “And then my brother comes to the computer and I can’t.”
“I don’t like this,” he said.
“They could be as much as a year behind other children when they finally get back to school.”
Bob Sanborn, CEO of Children At Risk