Educational Opportunities and Immigrants Essay

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Immigration in America

Education is important in American society because it is a pathway by which success is achieved. The traditional theories that attempt to explain academic success can be divided into various groups, such as deficit thinking, which suggests that the reasons one succeeds or does not succeed are found within the person; other theories are based on economic conditions, social conditions, or a combination of both. Then there are also theories that look at the role of the method of education that is used and its function in academic success. These theories highlight the role that various factors play in whether one is successful or not in academics -- in short, all of them shed light on parts of the issue but individually, they all come up a bit short in explaining the whole phenomenon. Thus, it is important to take critical approaches to the idea, and to look at social, economic, political and cultural reasons for success or the lack thereof.

Educational opportunities are not all equal. As the California Package shows, there are rules in place that support certain groups' educational advancement while not supporting others. In the case of the California Package, the state of California has cleared some obstacles keeping immigrants from taking advantage of educational opportunities available to non-immigrants. Prior to this package, these opportunities (such as in-state tuition) were not available to them. So it is clear that not all opportunities are the same. This can be seen in school districts too. Various regions across the U.S. are affected by poverty and poor academic achievement (the achievement gap). This is the result of problems in society and economic-social status issues that are related to school achievement, school funding and the role that the federal government plays in providing assistance to schools that meet benchmarks.

Second-generation Americans attend urban area schools, which can be divided into good and bad districts. The good districts are more likely to have expensive housing as families are willing to pay more to ensure that their children can attend the best schools in the area. Poorer neighborhoods are likely to have less desirable schools in their districts. Second generation families that do not have the money to afford expensive housing are more likely to have to send their children to the less desirable schools because they cannot afford the housing in the better school districts. Second generation families are more likely to struggle with developing stable income streams and may not be fully integrated into white collar positions in the labor force, or they may have succeeded in developing their own businesses and become fully incorporated into the white middle-class. It all depends upon the type of success that the family has had in coming to America.

Structural mechanisms reproduce educational opportunities in the same way that standardization in curriculum provides opportunities: the federal government sets a standard that schools have to meet, and that standard includes curriculum guidance and if goals are met schools are able to continue to receive funding. This is an example of how a structural mechanism within the state apparatus works to establish opportunities in education. At the same time, there can be negative effects of this type of apparatus and its structural mechanisms: socio-economic conditions can prevail in certain regions that negatively impact academic performance. The achievement gap can widen as a result of broken homes or as a result of both parents having to work and no one being around the house to help the child with school work.

Cultural explanations can be provided that help to explain differential patterns of education attainment by race/ethnicity -- but of course structural explanations can be provided as well, as seen above.

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The reality is that there is typically a mix of the two, which is what explains the achievement gap and the differential patterns (Vallejo 195). Family obligations that Asians and Mexicans face as a result of their culture certainly play a role in the development of their children and the opportunities that are created for them academically speaking. However, the "immigrant narratives" must avoid offering simplistic answers to complex phenomena, otherwise the methods taken to address the issues will not yield substantial results (Vallejo 195).

This feeds into the model minority stereotype and how it allows problems associated with minorities and immigrants to fester. The model minority stereotype refers to the expectation that the archetypal minority should achieve in every situation across the board. It terribly reduces the individual to a type and limits the potential or overlooks the issues that the individual might have or might be facing. Instead of addressing individuals on a case by case basis -- in which environmental and familial factors are considered -- it places a generalization upon a population that is then used to set policy and standards in place that can detrimentally impact whole communities as a result.

Immigrant selectivity refers to the process of selecting research data of particular immigrants and using it to transpose a picture that is meant to represent the whole when in reality it only represents a small percentage of immigrants (Lee, Zhou 6). This type of selectivity is bad for research and for policy makers because, as has been explained above, it does a disservice to the reality of a situation by limiting one's context and not allowing one to see the whole truth but rather only nuggets of truth and information meant to be the whole package.

Thus immigrant selectivity relates to disparities in educational attainment because it serves to provide the framework for which standards are set, funds are allocated, work is divided up, expectations are developed, help is provided, communities are shaped, families are engaged, and so on. Everything is related in the sense that one variable impacts another and all together the variables go to make up the whole situation, the total reality. In such a situation, a critical theoretical approach is more essential than an approach in which immigrant selectivity results.

Asian immigrant hyperselectivity for instance results in Asians over-representing a demographic in terms of how they score in certain areas of education or in how their culture reflects values. When a research sample selects mainly from an Asian group it throws off its scores and results and presents an image of data that does not accurately reflect an entire immigrant population or even racial or ethnic tendency. From being unassimilable to being exceptionable, the hyperselectivity of Asian immigrants has played a fundamental role: it has produced a narrative in which Asians are conceived of as being brilliant, humble, hard-working and driven. This contrasts with the former narrative in which they were viewed as sneaky, treacherous and disloyal (a WW2 narrative).

In conclusion, labeling immigrants and creating generalized narratives for them is a sure-fire way to limit one's actual path to finding solutions. Reality has to be discovered on a one-by-one basis instead of on a one-size-fits-all basis. It may take more work….....

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