Chapter 15: Patrick Stays Silent: East African Refugee Transition in American Education

This chapter examines education policies including the Consent Decree of 1990, No Child Left Behind, and Every Student Succeeds Act in order to critique the models and norms of education they have established in Florida. The goals of these policies were to ensure linguistically diverse students’ rights to education in public schools. However, in the context of an increasingly diverse student body, budget cuts due to administrative prioritizations, and the introduction of new educational policies, does the Consent Decree of 1990 maintain its standards of free and equal education for all students? In my research with refugee students from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), I have found current policies to have negative effects (e.g., mental and social) for Black refugee students with diverse linguistic, cultural, and historical backgrounds. I conduct classroom observation, interviews, employ anthropological and educational theories, and review policies to highlight barriers to graduation among Black refugee students in underfunded schools.