Latino Immigrant Students' School Experiences in the United States: The Importance of Family-School–Community Collaborations

IntroductionThere are currently 41.3 million immigrants living in the United States (U.S.), 11.7 million of whom are unauthorized (Passel, Cohn, & GonzalesBarrera, 2013; Zong & Batalova, 2015). Latino immigrants make up 47% of the foreign-born population (Motel & Patten, 2011), and demographers predict that by 2020, 30% of all U.S. children will be children of immigrants (Capps, Fix, Ost, Reardon-Anderson, & Passel, 2004; Note: Throughout this article, "immigrant" refers to first-generation immigrant youth and children of immigrants.) This article will summarize the literature on perhaps the most important setting outside the family that will influence the development of these youngest members of immigrant families-school, and it will address the ways in which schools can be places of connection and belonging for immigrant children and youth, particularly when those schools effectively partner with families and the community. This article (a) reviews risk and protective factors for immigrant youth; (b) explains the social ecological model of immigrant child development, which underscores the impact of various levels of context (including school and family) in influencing developmental trajectories; (c) summarizes research on immigrant students' educational experiences from preschool through secondary school; and (d) offers recommendations for building strong family-school-community partnerships for immigrant students. Throughout the article, the heterogeneity in school experiences among immigrant students of different legal statuses (their own and their parents) will be highlighted.Protective and Risk Factors for Immigrant ChildrenDespite significant obstacles experienced by many immigrants, and notwithstanding the vast heterogeneity across and within Latino immigrant groups, newcomer parents often bring strengths that are conveyed to their children in ways that can positively affect school performance and can be harnessed in developing partnerships among schools, families, and communities. For example, many Latino immigrant parents, families, and children demonstrate considerable resilience, that is, the capacity to survive physically and psychologically in circumstances requiring strengths and determination, and to possess the psychological flexibility to adapt to a new lifestyle (Carreon, Drake, & Barton, 2005; Trueba, 1999). In Latino families, cultural norms and values that emphasize family obligations, warmth, and reciprocity (familismo) and strong connections with others (personalismo) may provide Latino immigrant children with an abundance of high-quality relationships with immediate and extended family and friends; such relationships can act as a buffer to the negative effects of poverty (Lansdale, Hardie, Oropesa, & Hillemeier, 2015). Children in Latino immigrant families are more likely to live in two-parent households, which has positive effects on children's educational outcomes (Hernandez, Denton, & Macartney, 2008). Research has also highlighted cognitive benefits of multilingualism, such as higher levels of executive functioning, including attentional control and cognitive flexibility (Bialystok, 1999).Despite these individual and environment-level protective factors, Latino immigrant children are more likely to experience several risk factors when compared with nonimmigrant children, and these risk factors put them in jeopardy of poor academic performance (Lahaie, 2006). For example, children in immigrant families are 1.5 times more likely than children in U.S.-born families to grow up poor; 26% live in a linguistically isolated household, where no adult speaks English well (Hernandez & Cervantes, 2011); and nearly one-third of children in immigrant families have a mother who has not graduated from high school (Hernandez & Napierala, 2012). Children in immigrant families are generally more likely to attend underresourced schools (Suarez-Orozco, Bang, & Onaga, 2010), and immigrant youth are also more likely than nonimmigrant youth to attend larger, more segregated schools, with a higher proportion of students in poverty and with more safety problems at the school (Crosnoe, 2005). …