Refugee High School: Media Coverage of Recent Arrivals In American Schools

Alexander Russo:

This past weekend, the NYT Sunday Magazine presented a package of words and images about refugee students in American schools, titled The New High-School Outsiders. Focused some of the roughly 1,300 refugees attending Boise, Idaho schools, it includes an overview essay, photographs, and profiles of a handful of Boise students who graduated high school last spring.

It’s not the first story focused on refugees in American schools — and, given the arrival of unaccompanied minors from Central America and refugees from the war in Syria, it’s unlikely to be the last. As the Times story notes, roughly 85,000 more refugees will be resettled this coming year, in 190 cities. Many of them will be school-age children who are legally entitled to a free public education. An August story from the Times showed the 231 towns where 10,000 Syrian refugees have already been settled over the past four years — many of them in mid-sized cities like Boise, rather than large hubs for immigration.

The combination of novelty, fear, and curiosity all but ensures that there will be many more refugee student stories during 2016-2017. The two main questions consider as the school year unfolds are (1) whether districts are providing refugee children an education that’s at least as good as the one they’re providing longtime students, and (2) are media outlets producing nuanced and accurate coverage of the experience?