Chapter 7: Schools at the Crossroads of Competing Expectations

Schools are at the crossroads of competing expectations about their core duties and responsibilities. Educational systems are on the frontlines of demographic changes as well, having to balance multiple and competing demands on them. Among all community systems, the schools are often the first to be affected by a swelling of the ranks of refugees and immigrants. Furthermore, although the ostensible mission of schools is to deliver education, they are often assigned a much larger role in their community: to prepare immigrant children and their families to live and work in the country they have entered and in some way accommodate to its culture. This chapter uses a midsized community in the United States to explore the issues that schools around the globe are facing as they wrestle with the dual roles imposed upon them. The chapter ends with a call for a focus on how schools can better integrate and advance their dual roles of educator and acculturator, providing education to all children as well as promoting social inclusion of immigrant youth and their families.