The 2016 U.S. presidential election marked a time of deep political divide for the nation and resulted in an administrative transition that represented a drastic shift in values and opinions on several matters, including immigration. This article explores the implications of this political transition for immigrants’ K-16 educational experiences during President Trump’s administration. We revisit literature on school choice and the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA)—two policy areas where the most significant changes are expected to occur—as it pertains to immigrant students in the United States. We identify areas where there is limited scholarship, such as the unique educational experiences of various minority immigrant subgroups, the interplay between race and immigration status, and immigrant students in rural areas. Recommendations are made for policy and research.

Adequately preparing youth to enter the civic spheres of adulthood has emerged as an issue of concern in recent years due to widening civic empowerment gaps tha...

This article examines Homeward Bound, a political education youth organizing program for Vietnamese immigrant youth in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Inspired by Paulo Freire’s critical pedagogy theory, the program sought to empower learners to challenge their pre-existing knowledge and experience of interracial relations. Drawing on data from observations, interviews, and document reviews, we describe the process by which the program shaped Vietnamese immigrant youth’s critical consciousness of Vietnamese/Asian-black interracial tension. While some participants expressed apprehension and prejudice toward African Americans, particularly in the early days of the program, by the end, participants demonstrated knowledge retained from lessons and activities on the shared history of Vietnamese immigrants and African Americans. Participants also identified roots of and offered solutions to interracial tension. This study illuminates the role of immigrant youth organizing programs in resolving interracial tension in multiracial contexts.

This study examines how Vietnamese high school leaders interpreted and implemented policy changes of the Vietnamese National High School Examination—a nationally standardized exam that determines whether students may graduate from high school and attend post-secondary education. The research found that at the national level, the policy is highly prescriptive, with expected uniformity and fidelity in implementation; however, at the same time, it is vaguely worded and inconsistent. At the local level, how school leaders interpreted the new policy varied according to their knowledge, experiences, values, and beliefs, making their implementations deviate from the original policy’s intent. Their policy interpretation and implementation were also shaped by systemic inequities in academic rankings and educational resources of schools that they led.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine the nature of socially distributed leadership in Denmark and the USA, specifically teacher and staff leadership practices distributed in schools.Design/methodology/approach: This study used a confirmatory factor analysis and a second-order factor analysis to examine elementary USA and 0–9 Danish school educators’ responses to the Comprehensive Assessment of Leadership for Learning.Findings: Findings from this analysis of leadership practice demonstrate (1) different approaches to teacher and staff leadership in Denmark and the USA; (2) the importance of a collaborative approach to developing and maintaining professional learning communities in schools in both contexts; and (3) different patterns of leadership practice that broadly reflect the local structure and approach to school leadership while responding to external policy demands.Originality/value: Drawing on the globalization scholarship, which acknowledges the connection between global policy development and local spaces of implementation, this comparative international study allowed us to examine how policy ideas are parlayed into practice through the use of a shared assessment of leadership practice. The results of this study suggest that while the work of teacher and staff leadership is important and something that educators in Denmark and the USA are engaging in to advance the overall instructional mission of their schools, the approaches taken in each context are different and reflect a local-level negotiation between contextual cultural norms and policy expectations.