Language Barriers Prevent Immigrant Parents
from More Involvement in Kids' Education
Maura Fogarty
New York
A new survey of New York's public school system finds that language
barriers are preventing immigrant parents from being adequately involved
in their children's education.
According to the report, called Denied at the Door, immigrant parents
who wanted to be more involved in their children's education often
faced obstacles due to their limited English skills. The two main
sponsors of the survey, the New York Immigration Coalition and Advocates
for Children, say New York city schools are not doing enough to effectively
communicate with parents.
They cited some of the study's findings: nearly half of
the parents surveyed said they never or rarely receive written information
from schools in a language they can read, and more than half of the
respondents said they never or rarely receive oral intrepretation of
school-related information in their native tongue.
Margie McHugh, Executive Director of the New York Immigrant
Coalition says the survey's findings underscore a troubling lack of
access for immigrant parents.
"We are talking about hundreds of thousands of students
whose parents cannot be actively involved in their education unless
we have a translation and interpretation system that meets their needs,"
she said. "We do not have anything like that system now. We have
occasional isolated translations of a few documents here and there.
We do not have anywhere near the system we need."
The study, which surveyed nearly 1,000 parents, is the
largest done so far in New York. The sponsors say New York schools are
breaking federal, state and local laws by not providing interpretation
and translation services, especially when a huge proportion of the city's
population is composed of immigrants.
Ana Cartagena knows first hand what it is like to be shut
out of her children's education. As an immigrant from Puerto Rico who
doesn't speak English, Ms. Cartagena spoke of how she has struggled
to be involved with her daughters' education.
"My daughter's school wanted to transfer her to english
classes from bilingual classes. I went to talk to the principal about
this who told me that I should find someone to translate for me and
that if I wanted to know what was going on in with my daughters in school
I needed to learn English," she said. "My lack of English
does not indicate a lack of love or concern for my children."
The survey also found that more than a quarter of the
parents said they had signed school-related documents, such as disciplinary
notices, in English without understanding the documents.
Another parent, Hyochong Kang who speaks Korean and has
two children, says she rarely receives written information from her
children's schools in her native language.
"It's really difficult for recent parents who just
moved here for them to be getting notices just with a stamp saying important
information, please translate," said Hyochong Kang. "That
is not good enough."
Sponsors of the study say in other parts of the country,
such as Los Angeles and Seattle, programs are in place to help immigrant
parents participate more actively in the schools. They are calling on
New York city officials to set up a centralized translation and interpretation
unit as well as provide simultaneous translation equipment at parent-teacher
meetings.
Advocates of the changes say if Spanish and Chinese interpretation
and translation services were offered, it would meet the needs of 75
percent of the immigrant parents. They say the programs would cost between
$5 and $7 million a year.
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