Faced with high emigration rates and shrinking, aging populations, the Baltic states—Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—are exploring different ways to lure back nationals who have emigrated and establish or solidify ties with members of the diaspora. Of the three countries, Estonia is proving the most successful, while Latvia appears to be ignoring the looming demographic crisis and lacks an immigration plan.

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A reflection by MPI's co-founder, Demetrios Papademetriou, as he takes leave from his day-to-day role at MPI on the challenges and opportunities ahead for international migration systems over the next few decades. After opening remarks, Papademetriou engages in a conversation with incoming MPI President Andrew Selee about the trends and realities confronting policymakers and publics.

Amid ongoing debates about the costs and benefits of free movement, this MPI Europe webchat examines big-picture trends of East-West migration; considers possible policy responses at regional, national, and EU levels to alleviate some of the challenges; and reflects on realistic actions that could be taken under the incoming European Commission.

Across Europe, grassroots efforts have emerged in the wake of crisis that draw members of the public into the process of receiving refugees and supporting their integration. This policy brief examines the many forms community-based or private sponsorship can take, what benefits such approaches may hold for European communities, and the tradeoffs policymakers face in their implementation.

One of the major challenges Canada faced during its extraordinary push to resettle 25,000 Syrian refugees during a four-month period was to find housing for these newcomers. This report explores how the government, resettlement case workers, and private citizens tackled this challenge—balancing cost and location, access to services, and more—and how lessons learned can improve refugee housing practices for other countries going forward.

Seasonal worker programs in the European Union have a long history, but have yet to find the sweet spot of working for migrants, employers, and countries of destination and origin alike. This policy brief explores some of the challenges common to these programs—drawing on examples in Europe, Australia, and New Zealand—and highlights promising practices.

Marking the release of an MPI brief, experts on this webinar examine the key features of English Learner (EL) instructional models and discuss state- and district-level approaches to supporting schools in implementing effective EL program models, with a particular focus on what is being done in New York and Madison Wisconsin. 

To successfully integrate, immigrants and refugees need a variety of skills and knowledge—from English proficiency to understanding how school systems and local services work. Yet the adult education programs in place to support them have narrowed in scope. This policy brief proposes a new instructional model, English Plus Integration, to help states more comprehensively meet the diverse needs of their adult immigrant learners.

At a time when the U.S. refugee resettlement system is facing unprecedented challenges, innovative and cost-effective tools for supporting refugee integration are in demand. This report explores how a two-generation approach to service provision could help all members of refugee families—from young children to working-age adults and the elderly—find their footing.

WASHINGTON — Rapid arrivals of humanitarian migrants in Europe and North America have been matched by an equally unprecedented outpouring of public support. As offers to volunteer and donate pour in, many have asked whether this generosity can be harnessed to ease pressures on overburdened receiving communities and service providers. But using volunteers to meet the longer-term integration needs of resettled refugees and recognized asylum seekers is not an automatic salve: it requires thoughtful training and investment to be effective.

WASHINGTON – Four years since the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) was signed into law, all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico have developed accountability plans that include blueprints for serving English Learners (ELs), as well as measuring these students’ progress and being accountable for their outcomes. This marked a significant development, as EL performance was previously not well integrated with factors that determined whether a school was performing well or poorly.

WASHINGTON – The federal Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015 (ESSA) requires states to publicly report annual performance and graduation rates for students in a range of areas, breaking out results for subgroups with unique characteristics, including English Learners (ELs). The objective is to help schools identify and close achievement gaps experienced by historically underserved groups of students.

Experts share how states have approached Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) implementation, and areas where the law and state efforts to support English Learners can be improved.

All 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico have developed blueprints to meet their commitments under the Every Student Succeeds Act—including requirements that aim to raise the profile of English Learners (EL) in state accountability systems. This report breaks these plans down, comparing the significant diversity of approaches taken on everything from EL identification to tracking academic achievement.

States publish a wealth of data about their English Learner students’ academic achievement and other outcomes such as graduation rates. But the answer to the question “Who is an EL?” is not always the same. This brief explains how the EL subgroup varies across states and types of data, and why it is important to understand these differences when making decisions about how ELs and schools are faring.

Amid ongoing debates about the costs and benefits of free movement, this MPI webinar examines evidence from the EU-funded REMINDER project on different types of East-West mobility. Speakers examine big-picture trends of East-West migration; consider possible policy responses at regional, national, and EU levels to alleviate some of the challenges; and reflect on realistic actions that could be taken under a new European Commission.

Experts share how states have approached Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) implementation, areas where the law and state efforts to support English Learners can be improved, and findings from the compendium, The Patchy Landscape of State English Learner Policies under ESSA. 

This podcast features a discussion between MPI's Margie McHugh and Julie Sugarman about how to understand the varying composition of states' English Learner (EL) subgroup under ESSA, and why understanding these technical differences matters when making decisions about how ELs and schools are faring. They also talk about different groups of ELs: newcomers, students with interrupted formal education, and long-term ELs, and data collection around these different cohorts.

Lisa S. Rotenstein
Oct 1, 2012; 30:138-150
Features

Christine A. Beebe
Jul 1, 2011; 29:123-126
Practical Pointers

When Shaka Senghor and Ebony Roberts ended their relationship, they made a pact to protect their son from its fallout. What resulted was a poetic meditation on what it means to raise a child together, yet apart. In this moving and deeply personal talk, Senghor and Roberts share their approach to co-parenting -- an equal, active partnership that rolls with the punches and revels in the delights of guiding their child through the world with thought and intention.

In five northern U.S. states, black students comprise more than a fifth of ELL enrollment.

The rocky shift to remote learning has exacerbated inequities for the nation's 5 million English-learners. An army of multilingual liaisons work round the clock to plug widening gaps.

Experts recommend emphasizing language skills, avoiding assumptions about ability based on broad student labels, and focusing on students’ strengths rather than their weaknesses.

"In communities most devastated by COVID-19, academic achievement is pretty far down on the priority list—this is the reality," says Wyoming state chief Jillian Balow.

The STEM School shooting underscores the huge challenges educators face in keeping students safe, even as fatal and injurious gunfire inside K-12 schools remains statistically rare.

Experts recommend emphasizing language skills, avoiding assumptions about ability based on broad student labels, and focusing on students’ strengths rather than their weaknesses.

Five California educators last week filed a lawsuit seeking to stop the state's top teachers' union from collecting dues through mandatory paycheck deductions.

Mary Jackson's story is among those depicted in the book "Hidden Figures," which focused on the lives of black women who worked as mathematicians and engineers for NASA during the Space Race. Before landing there, Jackson worked as a math teacher in Maryland.

A new study says that problems surrounding child-care hurt Georgia parents economically in many ways including in turned down promotions and having to cut back on work and school hours.

"It is timely that the higher education sector examines paths forward to address and indeed engage in the new environment in which it will work in the future. This fellowship explored two approaches to engage students more deeply in their education. The first approach is generally termed 'interdisciplinary studies' where students define their own program of study; the second approach focuses on topic structure where students are given a wide range of choice and in effect can build a topic that suits their interests."--Page iv.

"This study contributes to the limited evidence available on how invitational narrative approaches are used in the domestic and family violence field. It focused on invitational narrative ways of engaging and working with men who perpetrate domestic and family violence. Focusing on the processes and skills of practice embedded in invitational narrative ideas enabled the examination of different ways of engaging men that have the potential to lead to sustained change. Accordingly, the main aim of this study was to explore invitational narrative ways of working in order to build an understanding of the processes and skills that engage men and enable behavioural and attitudinal change." --Executive summary (page 6).

This paper sets out three challenges to the creation of a future for Indo-Pacific states and peoples consistent with the visions of a ‘free and open Indo-Pacific’ (FOIP) expressed by Japan, India, the US and Australia, and now by the ASEAN outlook on the Indo-Pacific. It also describes a path for states to operate in an environment of coercive Chinese state power that seeks to influence how states relate and how they operate within their domestic boundaries.