Supported and Unsafe

Abstract

We draw upon the case of Seacrest High School to show that the extensive, physical separation of U.S.-born and immigrant students, as well as targeted supports for immigrant students absent similar attention to the rest of the student body, undermine the conditions necessary for a safe school. Seacrest community members expressed conflicting and conflicted perceptions concerning the extent to which immigrant students should receive differential treatment and the extent to which they should be physically isolated. These perceptions, which evoked concerns about fairness and educational efficacy, put the school’s legitimacy into question and threatened its ability to ensure safety. Despite misgivings, the structure was insulated in part by a web of racial stereotypes about Asian immigrant and African American students. We conclude that educational practices for English language learners should be evaluated by their effects on school culture and particularly on school safety.

Keywords

immigrant students school safety English language learners sheltered instruction racial stereotypes

Despite the great responsibilities public schools have historically been given to meet the academic and social needs of immigrant youth, they have been provided with little direction as to the best ways to put these mandates into practice (Cremin, 1962; Fass, 1989; Fix & Passel, 2003; Garcia, Kleifgen, & Falchi, 2008; Lee, 2005; Olsen, 1997; Suarez-Orozco & Suarez-Orozco, 2001; Tyack, 1974; Wiese & Garcia, 2001). During the 1960s and 1970s, a number of new policies regulating language assistance to immigrant students were enacted that set parameters for instruction and educational access, yet they stopped short of providing guidance for implementation (Garcia et al., 2008; Wiese & Garcia, 2001). Left largely on their own, schools have adopted a range of educational structures to serve their English language learners (ELLs) with variable success (Garcia et al., 2008).

Although the effects of different forms of instruction on ELLs’ acquisition of English and development of content knowledge have been studied at length, their effects on school culture, and particularly on school safety, require further investigation. School safety, one aspect of school culture,¹ not only contributes to a positive academic experience and ensures the absence of physical harm, but it also indirectly affects academic performance. Specifically, the constant stress of feeling unsafe at school takes away from the mental energy that can be expended on academics (Bryk, Sebring, Allensworth, Luppescu, & Easton, 2009; Devine, 1996; Metz, 1978; Skiba & Sprague, 2008; Suarez-Orozco, Suarez Orozco, & Todorova, 2008). Prior research has shown that immigrant students often report feeling fearful at school and typically attend schools with frequent incidents of violence (Lee, 2005; Olsen, 1997; Suarez-Orozco & Suarez-Orozco, 2001; Suarez-Orozco et al., 2008); however, the extent to which the structure of ELL instruction may contribute to these perceptions and to a lack of safety remains largely unexplored. How do educational structures designed to serve the academic and social needs of immigrant students affect school culture in general and school safety in particular?

In this article, we examine one school’s approach to serving its immigrant students and how it fostered student conflict and eroded the conditions necessary for safe schools. We draw upon the case of Seacrest High School² (hereafter referred to as Seacrest) because it aptly illustrates how school safety can be undermined by organizational structures that are designed to help immigrant students when they create resentment and feelings of unfairness among the rest of the student body. To meet the academic and social needs of its immigrant students and to provide the mandated supports for ELLs, Seacrest physically isolated these students onto a separate floor—into what became known as the ESOL³ or “newcomer” academy. The official purpose of this separation was to provide a setting for sheltered language instruction where immigrant students could be taught in English with other ELLs. We draw upon qualitative and quantitative data collected over the course of 1 school year to reveal the conflicting and conflicted perspectives that staff, students, and parents had regarding Seacrest’s approach to serving its immigrant students. Our analysis calls attention to two areas of contention that characterized the school community’s ambivalence: (1) to what extent immigrant students should be given differential treatment and (2) whether immigrant students should be physically separated from or integrated with other student groups in the school. These questions were highlighted in the wake of a violent incident at Seacrest that left many recent immigrant students injured and fearful. It also left the Seacrest community questioning how its isolated ESOL academy may have contributed to the conditions that led to this incident. We argue that both real and perceived disparities between the mainstream and ESOL academies contributed to resentment and perceptions of unfairness that strained relations between U.S.-born and foreign-born students. Despite misgivings within the school community, the academy structure was preserved in part by a web of negative stereotypes about the U.S.-born, African American students and positive stereotypes about the foreign-born, East Asian immigrant students. We conclude by suggesting that structures put in place to support immigrant students must be evaluated partly by their effects on school culture and by how they contribute to the conditions necessary for school safety. As the case of Seacrest demonstrates, educational structures that involve the extensive separation of immigrant and U.S.-born students and the targeted provision of resources for ELLs as other students’ needs lack similar attention must be particularly scrutinized for their potential to foster student conflict.

Literature Review

Public Schools’ Responsibilities to Immigrant Youth as Nonnative English Speakers

Mandates to provide services for immigrant students have focused on English language acquisition. It is the prohibition of national origin discrimination Under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that ensures language supports so that all students have equal access to the curriculum. While the manner in which ELLs should be provided with English language support is actively contested, the need for students to know English is widely accepted. English proficiency is strongly predictive of academic performance for immigrant students in the United States (Suarez-Orozco et al., 2008). In school, the experiences of immigrant students, most of whom come from Asia or Latin America, are mediated by their classification as ELLs (Fix & Passel, 2003; Suarez-Orozco et al., 2008).

During the second half of the 20th century, the introduction of programs and pedagogical practices to support nonnative English speakers was brought about by the confluence of efforts by immigrant advocates, politicians looking to gain favor with a growing Latino population, a Cold War national security strategy that sought to convince developing countries of the U.S.’ fair treatment of minorities, and legal provisions achieved by the Civil Rights Movement for nondiscrimination and equal educational opportunity (Garcia, 2005; Skrentny, 2002; Wiese & Garcia, 2001). Although isolated states and school districts offered bilingual education programs—primarily in German and Spanish—since the colonial period to accommodate the heritage and preferences of local communities, it was not until the 1970s that programs for nonnative English speakers became more widely available in schools throughout the United States (Wiese & Garcia, 2001). The Bilingual Education Act (BEA) was passed in 1968 as an Amendment to the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). The law was later buttressed by the Equal Educational Opportunities Act (1974) and the Supreme Court’s Decision in Lau v. Nichols to ensure that nondiscrimination based on country of origin was guaranteed under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Since its inception, the BEA has been amended and reauthorized, most recently under the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) where its name was changed to the English Language Acquisition, Language Enhancement, and Academic Achievement Act.

Although a vast body of research recognizes that students learn a second language more effectively when fluency and content understanding has been previously or is concurrently developed in their first language (see, e.g., August & Shanahan, 2006; Cummins, 1979, 1981, 2000; Ferguson, 2006; Fillmore, 1991; Garcia, 2005; Garcia et al., 2008; Genesee, Lindholm-Leary, Saunders, & Christian, 2006; Ramírez, 1992; Riches & Genesee, 2006; Rolstad, Mahoney, & Glass, 2005; Slavin & Cheung, 2005; Thomas & Collier, 1997, 2002), the law that purportedly protects ELLs’ access to the school curriculum was never designed to enforce a particular approach to language instruction. As the rights and protections for ELLs expanded, schools were expected to respond to policy mandates with little guidance or support for implementation (Garcia et al., 2008). This lack of guidance has not only made the educational approach for ELLs vulnerable to shifts in the local and national political climates toward immigration, but also has resulted in considerable variation among states and school districts in the policies and practices used to serve the needs of ELLs and in their degrees of success (Garcia et al., 2008; Olsen, 1997; Suarez-Orozco & Suarez-Orozco, 2001; Wiese & Garcia, 2001). While some districts encourage first language preservation with English acquisition, others enforce English-only immersion. At the time that the study took place, Seacrest’s district employed several different models that ranged from full isolation in a separate school, to sheltered ESOL classes, to complete immersion in an English-only classroom with a teacher’s aide.

Research assessing the various educational structures designed for ELLs focuses on English language acquisition and content knowledge development, and it tends to overlook how particular practices impact the school context more broadly—the central concern of this article. While a few studies have shown that approaches involving extensive physical isolation may preclude the opportunity for immigrant students to develop their English through social interaction and deter friendships between U.S.-born and foreign-born students (Olsen, 1997; Suarez-Orozco et al., 2008), their focus has remained on the experiences and outcomes of ELLs. The impact of language supports beyond their direct effects on ELLs is important to consider as research shows how school culture, including school safety, affects academic performance (Cohen, McCabe, Michelli, & Pickeral, 2009). ELLs are typically educated in schools where U.S.-born, native English speakers are also present, and there is no reason to assume that services designed for the ELL population have no effect on the educational experiences and outcomes of the rest of the student body. As ELLs are increasingly enrolled in underresourced urban schools where the U.S.-born population tends to have intensive academic and social needs (De Cohen, Deterding, & Chu Clewell, 2005; Fix & Passel, 2003; Gándara, Rumberger, Maxwell-Jolly, & Callahan, 2003; Orfield, 2001; Suarez-Orozco et al., 2008), understanding the impact of ELL supports beyond the ELL student population is even more vital.

Educational Structures and the Conditions for School Safety

Challenging the assumption that disorder and violence are due to the behavior of particular students, research has shown that educational structures can have a great effect on school safety (Bryk et al., 2009). This relationship is mediated by perceptions about the school’s legitimacy as an educationally effective and fair institution (Arum, 2003; Durkheim, 1961; Metz, 1978; Noguera, 2003). When schools lack institutional legitimacy, their authority to enforce rules is undermined. In these cases, students often engage in noncompliant or resistant behaviors that threaten school safety (Arum, 2003).⁴ Similarly, staff members who question their school’s legitimacy because they perceive it as acting unfairly or inadequately educating its students may lack the sense of authority necessary to maintain order in the school building.⁵ Perceptions that the school’s educational structures are effective and fair are, therefore, important conditions for school safety.

The perception that schools are not adequately educating students has been linked to particular educational structures and practices in prior research. For example, there is some evidence that when schools adopt a disengaging, narrow focus on test preparation in response to high-stakes accountability policies, students lose faith in the educational effectiveness of their school and subsequently partake in noncompliant behavior (Nolan, 2011). Although disorderly behavior in school has often been attributed to oppositional dispositions to education (Fordham & Ogbu, 1986), a vast body of research has found that student noncompliance is better understood as resistance to a school environment and pedagogical practices that are unresponsive to students’ learning styles and identities (Carter, 2005; Fine, 1991; Lee, 2005; Noguera, 2008; Nolan, 2011; Valenzuela, 2005). In this sense, the prevalence of noncompliant and disorderly behavior is one indicator that the educational structures in a school are problematic or inadequate (Metz, 1978; Nolan, 2011; Roderick, 2003). Noguera (2003) explains that schools and students are parties to a social contract, and when students believe that schools have breached the agreement by failing to adequately educate them, they respond by breaking their end of the bargain to be compliant with the school’s rules.

The perception that a school is fair is not only influenced by the actions of individual teachers and administrators, but also by the school’s organization. Leveled tracking, whether within or between classrooms, may lead to the feeling that resources, opportunities, and teacher attention are inequitably distributed (Rubin & Noguera, 2004). Tracking, as well as physical separation in general, also has a strong effect on students’ identity formation and their choice of peer group, encouraging divisiveness within the student body and noncompliance among students who are put in groups marked as academically or behaviorally deficient (Ferguson, 2000; Metz, 1978; Rosenthal & Jacobson, 1968; Tyson, 2011; Weinstein, Gregory, & Strambler, 2004).

This empirically and theoretically grounded understanding of the relationship between educational structures, perceptions, and school safety drives our methodological approach to understanding the impact of Seacrest’s ESOL academy on school safety in this article.

Method

Data Collection

In the 2010–2011 school year, we conducted a study of Seacrest High School’s school culture as part of a larger research team. We had been asked by Seacrest’s district to conduct the study in order to better understand the factors that led to the violent incident involving Asian immigrant and African American students the previous year. We collected both quantitative and qualitative data through observations, interviews, focus groups, and a student survey, and we reviewed Seacrest’s administrative data on attendance and discipline. We sought to include all members of the Seacrest community in order to construct a comprehensive case study.

Three field researchers gathered data at the school site over the period of a few weeks, during which they captured both perceptual and behavioral data through observations, interviews, and focus groups. Observations in classrooms and school spaces (e.g., cafeteria and hallways) followed a semistructured protocol designed to better understand pedagogical practices and school-based relationships. We conducted 26 classroom observations, each in a different teacher’s classroom, and 31 school-space observations. Each observation lasted approximately 1 hr.

Fifty-three teachers, six administrators, 15 staff members (e.g., counselors and safety agents), four supplementary service providers (e.g., after-school program directors), 35 students, and nine parents participated in focus groups or individual interviews. Focus group and interview protocols sought to capture participants’ typical daily experiences, as well as their perceptions of academics, safety, and school-based relationships. All instructional staff members were asked to participate in a focus group during a common planning period, and parent focus groups were held after school in various languages (English, Vietnamese, Chinese, and Spanish). Staff members who were interested in participating but were unavailable during a scheduled focus group were offered the opportunity to be interviewed individually at a more convenient time. We targeted school leaders, specifically the principal, the security director, the deans, and academy leaders, for individual interviews because of their unique responsibility and disproportionate influence over the organization of the school. Student focus groups spanned all grade levels and academic programs within Seacrest. Native Vietnamese-, Chinese-, and Spanish-speaking students were able to participate in focus groups facilitated by researchers who shared their first language. Each of the 24 focus groups and 10 individual interviews lasted approximately 1 hr and were held in locations throughout the school building convenient for participants.

A student school climate⁶ survey was administered in the middle of the academic year, and all students had the option of completing it during one class period. The survey was comprised of field-tested and newly designed research-based measures of safety, belonging, academic engagement, discrimination, fairness, and academic aspirations. The questionnaire was translated from English into Spanish, Khmer, Vietnamese, and Chinese in order to accommodate the linguistic diversity at Seacrest. Of the approximately 700 students at Seacrest, 428 completed the survey. As evidenced by a comparison to demographic data reported by the school district, these 428 students were representative of the total student body in terms of race, ethnicity, and immigrant status. Participation in the study is summarized in Table A1 in the appendix.

The diversity of methods and the inclusion of a large and representative sample of the school community provided the ability to thoroughly test findings for their frequency and significance. Moreover, the combination of perceptual and observational data allowed us to juxtapose and explore the relationships between structures, behaviors, and beliefs.

Data Analysis

Statistical software was used to descriptively analyze the administrative and student survey data. We disaggregated the data by several demographic factors, including race, gender, immigration status, special education status, primary language, and country of birth. In this article, we draw upon our comparison of U.S.-born and immigrant students’ survey responses that capture differences in perceptions concerning academics, school-based relationships, multicultural understanding, and safety at Seacrest.

The qualitative data from observations, interviews, and focus groups were coded with the assistance of Atlas.ti. The data were initially deductively coded for constituency (e.g., student, parent, teacher, administrator), academic program (e.g., ESOL academy, mainstream academy, grade level), and evidence that spoke to different components of school culture (e.g., safety, academic engagement). The entire data set was subsequently coded inductively, during which we identified an extensive list of themes that emerged from the data. In this article, we draw heavily upon three themes that arose inductively: (1) understandings and explanations of the violent incident that occurred the previous year; (2) perceptions of immigrants and of the education of immigrant students; and (3) perceptions about race and ethnicity. We rely primarily on evidence from the perceptual data (from focus groups and interviews), given the theoretically and empirically established understanding that perceptions mediate the relationship between educational structures and school safety (see Literature Review section). Our analysis adheres to this framework by assessing the impact of the ESOL academy on school safety through an examination of perceptions in the school community.

Background

Seacrest is a comprehensive high school located in a major urban center of the United States. Its student body is comprised primarily of low-income, East Asian recent immigrant students and low-income, African American students. Of the total enrollment, 51% self-identify as Black or African American, 28% self-identify as Asian, and 10% identify as Hispanic or Latino. There are more than 12 languages represented among the student body, and less than 50% of the student body primarily speaks English at home. After English, Chinese is the most widely spoken home language, followed by Vietnamese, Spanish, Khmer, and Nepali. Seventy-three percent of the ELLs self-identify as Asian.

Seacrest is overseen by one administrative team; however, the student body is divided into different academies: four mainstream academies, distinguished by grade and theme, and one ESOL academy that houses all of the sheltered classes for ELLs on one floor of the school building. The separation of the ESOL and mainstream academies effectively separates the U.S.-born, primarily African American, and immigrant, primarily East Asian, students. All of the students share the gymnasium, auditorium, library, and cafeteria, as well as Seacrest’s support staff of counselors, after-school program providers, and security officers. The school building is much larger than is necessary for 700 students, and several rooms remained empty and locked at the time that the study took place.

The Incident

During the academic year prior to the study, a violent incident occurred at Seacrest. The event was chaotic, and reports differed as to which and how many students were involved. The conflict was portrayed by the media and generally accepted by the local and national public as African American students physically targeting East Asian, recent immigrant students over 2 days. According to police reports, the African American students involved were primarily 9th and 10th graders, and most of the Asian students who were targeted had been in the United States for less than 1 year. Several Asian students involved required immediate medical attention, and Asian students across the city expressed fear and reservations about attending school for several months after the incident. While the media reported the incident as a racial conflict, our study suggests that the incident may be better understood as the result of tension between immigrant and U.S.-born students.⁷

According to the student survey we administered the year following the incident, most students felt safe at Seacrest. Seventy percent of the students agreed or strongly agreed that they felt safe at school. However, when disaggregated by immigrant status, the data reveal that U.S.-born students felt more secure. While 75% of U.S.-born students agreed or strongly agreed that they felt safe at school, only 60% of immigrant students reported feeling safe. Within the Asian population at Seacrest, the difference between the U.S.-born and immigrant students who reported feeling safe was more than 20% points. With nearly half of the foreign-born Asian students reporting that they felt unsafe at Seacrest, understanding factors that affect school safety is essential.

Results

Our analysis of the data revealed that staff, students, and parents at Seacrest had conflicting and conflicted perspectives regarding the school’s approach to meeting the academic and social needs of its recent immigrant students. The community members expressed views characterized by two tensions: whether immigrant students should be given differential treatment or should be treated the same as all other students and whether immigrant students should be physically separated from or integrated with other student groups. Their ambivalence highlighted how the ESOL academy undermined the conditions for school safety, as the school’s ability to effectively and fairly educate all its students came into question. As we explain in the Literature Review section, such perspectives are a threat to the school’s legitimacy and, thereby, its authority to garner student compliance and to maintain order. Indeed, our study reveals that the school’s isolated ESOL academy contributed to the conditions in which the violent incident between Seacrest’s Asian immigrant and African American students occurred. Despite misgivings regarding the school’s organizational structure, the physical separation of the immigrant and U.S.-born students was insulated in part by negative stereotypes of the U.S.-born, African American students and positive stereotypes of the East Asian, immigrant students.

Differential Treatment of ELLs

Immigrant students at Seacrest were provided with targeted academic and social supports, and they had access to structures designed with their particular needs in mind. Most of these supports were located in the ESOL academy on one floor of the school building. While many community members agreed that immigrant students had specific needs that necessitated unique services, there was also evidence that such differential treatment, especially in the absence of similar attention to the rest of the student body, led to perceptions of unfairness and resentment.

According to our observations and participant reports, pedagogical practices and classroom culture varied between the mainstream academies and the ESOL academy. Academic engagement, one aspect of classroom culture, was higher in the ESOL academy. Academic engagement, comprised of both behavioral engagement—attention to and compliance with academic tasks—and cognitive engagement—mental absorption in academic tasks—was assessed on the student climate survey through multi-item measures. Measured from 0 to 4, with a rating of 3 marking the threshold for a well-functioning school, students overall at Seacrest reported their behavioral engagement at 3.1 and their cognitive engagement at 2.9. Disaggregated by immigrant status, however, the data show that foreign-born students were more academically engaged than U.S.-born students, with foreign-born students measuring their behavioral engagement at 3.3 and their cognitive engagement at 3.0 and U.S.-born students reporting their behavioral engagement at 3.0 and their cognitive engagement at 2.9.⁸

The disparity in academic engagement may have been related to the differences in pedagogical approaches in the ESOL and mainstream academies. Several staff members stated that ELLs demanded a more creative pedagogy that engaged all senses. One science teacher explained that he adjusted his teaching style in ESOL classes by using more models and, when he was short on equipment, by using his own body as a model, such as running around the room to demonstrate how energy works. In another classroom, we observed a teacher playing music to teach students poetry. These efforts on the part of teachers were largely absent from the mainstream classrooms populated primarily by African American students. In those classrooms, we observed pedagogy that was teacher-centered and often included students completing worksheets or textbook review questions independently and silently.

Classroom discipline also varied between the ESOL and mainstream academies. Behaviors that were punished or criticized in mainstream classrooms were often lent understanding in ESOL classrooms. In one ESOL classroom, almost all of the students did not complete their homework, and one student explained that they were unaware of the assignment. With a smile and shrug the teacher said “it must have been lost in translation,” and then she spent the first 20 min of class allowing the students to complete the homework in groups. While students in one ESOL class used their cell phones openly in front of the teacher, in two mainstream classes we observed students’ cell phones confiscated when visible or being used.

Moreover, teachers of ELLs appeared hesitant to quiet their students. In one ESOL class, the teacher proceeded with her lesson while more than a quarter of her students talked among themselves in their native languages. Such permissiveness of student talk may in part be explained by the ESOL teachers’ hopes that ELLs are practicing English. In one ESOL classroom, the teacher asked the students to be quiet as they completed an assignment, but then added, “I hear English over there… good!” In mainstream classrooms, in contrast, students talking during the lesson were reprimanded and corrected repeatedly.

Outside the classroom, additional supports were available to meet immigrant students’ needs. On the ESOL academy floor, Seacrest had a resource center for new immigrants, which was staffed by a multilingual team and hosted students throughout and after the school day. The center was funded by a local organization that assists recent immigrants with English language acquisition, education, employment, and social services as they adjust to life in the United States. Despite the coordinator’s insistence that the resource center was open to all students, our observations of the space, as well as student reports, suggest recent immigrant students were the primary visitors.

In the aftermath of the incident, the differential treatment of ELLs increased as the school and school district implemented a number of reforms intended to ensure the immigrant students’ safety. These efforts were driven in part by external assessments focused on the experiences of Asian immigrant students as well as by the testimony of Asian immigrant students and their advocates at public hearings. One safety agent reported that several security officers had been fired for referring to Asian students as “Dragon Ball” or “Bruce Lee.” Information that had previously been distributed to parents in English only was translated into several languages. Students were newly able to report incidents of harassment or violence in their native language with the assistance of staff members recently hired for their language skills or translators brought in from the district level. One counselor summarized the school’s new responsiveness to the ELLs: “we’re much more sensitive to problems regarding the Asian students now, every little thing that happens, we get on it.” Although the efforts to address the needs of immigrant students and families arguably addressed real shortcomings in the school’s practices, the fact that similar reforms were not enacted elsewhere in the school added to the perception that the school was acting unfairly.

While reforms made in response to the incident, including school-wide reforms, were primarily concerned with the experiences of immigrant students, the needs of other students were relegated. For example, following a school basketball game, several African American students were attacked while sitting on a school bus (by other African Americans). One student was beaten so severely that he required hospitalization. Yet, despite the severity of the incident, no additional measures to address the lack of safety at sporting events were enacted. In a previous analysis, we explain that the new reforms were often more symbolic than effective, focused on improving public perception (Garver & Noguera, 2012). Immigrant students, particularly Asian immigrant students, felt significantly less safe than their U.S.-born peers despite the efforts made to protect them. Therefore, it is important to note that although services, supports, and structures existed at Seacrest with the specific purpose of serving immigrant students, ELLs did not necessarily thrive or directly benefit. Nonetheless, such efforts can have a great effect on perceptions, irrelevant of their outcomes.

Accordingly, the perception that immigrant students received preferential treatment was intensified following the violent incident. The differential treatment of immigrant students and the costly reforms made in their name after the incident did not go unnoticed. One African American 12th grader expressed a sense of injustice over the seemingly unequal distribution of resources:

You got all these cameras and guards up here now…They paid millions of dollars for all of this security and we don’t even have books…We still don’t even have all our books for statistics class…Some of the books are ripped up and we have to share…How come what we need doesn’t count?

An African American student who felt her privacy was infringed upon by the new pervasiveness of surveillance cameras claimed that “the cameras went up for the Asians.” Another mainstream student attuned to the heightened attention given to immigrant students after the incident wondered: “people get jumped everyday, why didn’t y’all put that on national TV, I know many people that jump Black people all the time” (although we found no evidence to support this perception). In addition, an African American 12th-grade student was upset that several security guards were fired after the incident: “switching the security was wrong because we had a bond with the security guards and they just switched them.” Repeatedly, we heard complaints that the U.S.-born students felt disregarded by the reforms made in the interest of protecting the immigrant students. These feelings of resentment contributed to the perspective that the school was unfair, and they reveal that the school’s efforts aimed at keeping immigrant students safe may have, in some cases, had the converse effect of putting them at risk.

Community members who were conflicted about the differential treatment of ELLs, most of whom were affiliated with the mainstream academies, tended to advocate for the uniform treatment of students. One administrator told us that he was worried about being perceived as overly concerned with the welfare of the Asian immigrant students while ignoring the needs of others. He explained: “I don’t want to keep my Asian kids any safer than I want to keep the African American or the white kids…I want to keep them all safe, because they’re all my responsibility, they’re all my students.” Seeming to sense the feelings of resentment brought on by the response to the incident, another administrator insisted that all students are treated identically:

If there was an assault, the student would be treated like anyone else that assaulted a student in the school…One thing I didn’t want to do is create an atmosphere where it seems like immigrant students or Asian students were untouchable because then that leads to more tension…I didn’t want to create an environment where folks felt like…they’re putting in all these extra things for the Asian kids, but they’re not doing it for us, so if we do something…it’s okay, but if we touch them, then we automatically get kicked out. So we have been strict across the board with everybody. We’ve been very, very strict across the board.

At Seacrest, treating students fairly was often equated with submitting them to the same strict discipline practices (See Garver & Noguera, 2012). While our observations in classrooms revealed that teachers were generally more lenient with ELLs, the security staff that patrolled the hallways of Seacrest seemed to embody the spirit of ‘strictness for all.’ Although the students we observed being restrained (sometimes handcuffed) by the safety agents and brought to the security office were primarily African American, Asian immigrant students’ bags were scanned and searched, their items (e.g., lighters, matches, flashlights, workout weights) were confiscated, and they were forced to reveal their school IDs upon random request similar to all other students. (In Garver & Noguera, 2012, we describe in more detail the proliferation and effects of uniform, strict policies and procedures implemented after the incident.) While efforts to make discipline and security practices more consistent across the student body may increase perceptions of fairness, extreme strictness and the belief that sanctions are grossly disproportionate to student behavior (e.g., handcuffing) can undermine a school’s legitimacy (Arum, 2003). Therefore, attempts to establish fairness through increased strictness may have been misguided in the pursuit of school safety.⁹

Other staff members, especially those affiliated with the ESOL academy, defended the provision of differential academic supports for the recent immigrant students. When asked what she would do if there was an incident outside the ESOL academy, one ESOL teacher explained, “I’m sorry if everybody agrees or not, but for me…I help my students who have come to the United States for the first time.” Teachers’ commitment to and concern for the needs of immigrant students serves as an important source of support and advocacy (Stanton-Salazar, 1997; Stanton-Salazar & Spina, 2003); however, it can potentially reinforce divisions and foster resentment when framed in opposition to the needs of other students at school.

Real and perceived differences in the treatment of immigrant and U.S.-born students put the school’s educational effectiveness and fairness into question and, thereby, threatened the conditions necessary for school safety. As schools make targeted efforts to meet immigrant students’ academic and social needs and to fulfill their responsibility for providing language supports to ELLs, differential treatment absent similar attention to the rest of the student body is potentially problematic.

Physical Separation of ELLs

At Seacrest, the provision of differential services and supports to immigrant students frequently entailed the physical separation of immigrant and U.S.-born students through the academy system. The isolation of the ESOL academy on one floor of the school building meant that ELLs had few meaningful, structured, or adult-supervised interactions with the mainstream academy students, who were primarily African American. According to some Seacrest community members, this physical separation was necessary to meet the educational and social needs of the immigrant students, while others worried that the academy structure led to divisiveness within the student body. Aside from the tension that came as a direct result of the structure, the community’s ambivalence toward the ESOL academy questioned the school’s legitimacy as an educationally effective and fair institution and, in turn, undermined school safety.

The separation of students by academy was reinforced by the regulation of student movement throughout the building—a set of policies and practices that determined who could be where at which time. One Latino student believed that he and his Latino friends had been unfairly turned away from the newcomer resource room even when they had the necessary pass:

They kick us out because…Latino people cannot be in that room…Even if we have a pass, they tell us to go to another classroom, or go somewhere else. But as soon as we walk out of the door and someone else comes in…they let them in…even if they don’t have a pass. That’s what gets us mad, cause we have to have a place to chill in, and they came in without passes, without people asking them why there are here. This kind of gets us mad.

This student expressed anger and resentment around the practices that delineated where students were allowed to be in the school building. His impression that staff in the resource room treated Latino students inequitably put the school’s fairness into question.

Administrators hired after the violent incident attempted to eliminate the suspicion that mainstream students met when walking on the ESOL academy floor; however, changing entrenched practices proved to be difficult. As one administrator explained, security officers and teachers often reported mainstream students they spotted on the ESOL floor even during passing periods. One administrator told us:

People were screaming on the walkie-talkie “there are kids on the floor”…but there are supposed to be kids on the floor, what are you talking about? Later, I asked one “what are you implying, that there’s students on the floor that don’t belong here, what do you mean they don’t belong here, they go to school here.” The kids should have access to any part of this building as long as they are not causing trouble.

This administrator’s comments indicate that he was attuned to the issues of fairness that arose with barring mainstream students from the ESOL academy floor, and he aspired to have students feel welcome in all parts of the school building.

Even without the explicit disciplining of student movement, some community members pointed to the academy structure as inciting tension within the student body. A school counselor explained how a sense of resentment grew out of the isolation of the ESOL academy:

It became a nicer floor…it seemed a little more well-kept, it was shinier and it’s also closest to the cafeteria so the rest of the students incur this jealously of the students who have the nicest floor in the building. They’re the first ones in line in the cafeteria because they get there quicker…And I think that grew, that jealousy grew into this tension.

Accordingly, a mainstream academy student seemed to transfer her resentment about the ESOL academy to negative perceptions about the immigrant students: “they think they’re better than us…they have their own floor.” An African American 12th grader expressed a more sympathetic perspective of the immigrant students, but she also attributed tension within the student body to the ESOL academy. She suspected that the ESOL students felt unsafe in the school, but credited these feelings to their isolation:

Maybe if they were able to interact with us more, they would see that we’re really not bad people…Like when they walk through the hallways, they be acting like they’re scared to walk through the hallway. We’re not going to do anything to them…I think it’s because the school—like they treat them like they babies…They are isolated.

This student’s structural critique undermines the school’s legitimacy as a fair institution. Moreover, her comment illustrates that students notice if one group appears to be sheltered within the school, and they may feel uncared for or even criminalized in comparison.

Indeed, several staff members, ELLs, and immigrant parents openly derided the behavior of the “American” students in the mainstream classrooms. They justified the physical separation as necessary for protecting immigrant students from their U.S.-born peers and for insulating their learning from the American students’ disruptions. One ESOL service provider advised teachers to separate American and Chinese students in the classroom: “I think it’s better…I hope the teacher can separate them, or allow the student…to transfer to another class.” Another ESOL teacher explained:

There is a cultural conflict between the immigrants and the American kids when it comes to sitting in a classroom…Some of the kids are absolutely crazy. I have had students drop out…because of the fights…My first two years here, there were a couple of terrific kids that came to the school and they just couldn’t take it. They just drop out of school because of the American kids’ language or rudeness. It’s rough, it’s rough.

Not surprisingly, the perspectives expressed by the educators were echoed by many of the students. Several ELLs told us that physical separation not only facilitated the provision of differential supports but also offered students a safer environment. One ELL explained that student groups avoided each other in order to prevent conflict: “as far as tension, they try to avoid to like socialize with each other…they really try to have no problems, so they stay with their groups.”

Although there was considerable diversity among ELLs, with over 40 nationalities represented, grouping them together was never described as problematic. In fact, intergroup contact among various immigrant groups was seen as beneficial while intergroup contact between immigrant students and African American students was viewed as dangerous. Several students and educators reported that having the opportunity to meet and get to know students from around the world in ESOL classes resulted in higher levels of tolerance and multicultural understanding. This finding was reflected in responses to the school climate student survey. Overall, students at Seacrest measured their level of multicultural cohesion at 2.4, falling below the 3-point threshold. However, foreign-born students reported a statistically significant higher level of multicultural cohesion at 2.6 as compared to U.S.-born students whose multicultural cohesion was rated at 2.3.

Those who advocated for the separation of students in order to maintain a safe environment were often accused of “sheltering” the immigrant students. Although “sheltered instruction,” the education of ELLs in a classroom comprised only of ELLs, is one widely used approach to English language support, the term sheltering has taken on meanings that are not strictly about instruction or curriculum. An administrator who resisted the idea that the mainstream students were a threat to the immigrant students explained: “people felt the need to shelter, or keep kids separate, because they were worried about the violence.” Sheltering indicated that students were being kept isolated for reasons other than their academic needs, such as safety concerns.

The extent to which immigrant students were and should be “sheltered” was a point of contention among the staff, students, and parents at Seacrest. A frustrated administrator explained:

Students are being sheltered in ESOL classes who should be mainstreamed because they have scored…advanced or proficient [on the state standardized test]…why are they still in ESOL? Why are you sheltering them still? Some of those kids read and write better than our homegrown kids. So now what came first—was it the violence against immigrants or the sheltering?

This administrator went on to defend targeted supports and services for immigrant students, but described the long-term sheltering of immigrant students in the ESOL academy as creating a “hard line track” that entails the inequalities and disparities of leveled tracking that educational research has repeatedly revealed (Callahan, 2005; Meier, Stuart, & England, 1989; Oakes, 1985). Sheltering immigrant students carried a negative connotation for mainstream teachers, mainstream students, and the administration because it suggested that immigrant students’ physical isolation was rooted partly in nonacademic reasons that implied the U.S.-born African American students were behaviorally and intellectually deficient. In this way, the extensive spatial separation of ELLs called into question the ESOL academy’s educational purpose and the school’s fairness.

Although in mainstream media and culture, African Americans are marginalized and portrayed as an American subculture, at Seacrest, ‘American’ referred to U.S.-born or U.S.-raised students, who in this case were primarily African American. Previous research that has examined immigrant students’ understandings of what it means to be American found that whiteness was associated with Americanness, and while African Americans were understood as being American, they would only be referred to by immigrant students with a racial qualifier and never as purely American (Lee, 2005; Olsen, 1997). Our study of Seacrest, in contrast, suggests that immigrant students’ understanding of Americanness is at least in part contingent on the particular school context and its demographic makeup. While other studies have found that immigrant students associate whiteness with Americanness and want to acculturate quickly, at Seacrest acculturation to America was seen as largely undesirable—a finding closely connected to the negative, racialized perceptions of Seacrest’s U.S.-born students.

Racial Stereotypes Preserve Educational Structures That Undermine School Safety

Despite misgivings regarding the isolated ESOL academy—including the concerns of several central school administrators, the educational structure remained in place. The preservation of the isolated ESOL academy was likely due to several factors. As we have pointed out elsewhere, the school’s preoccupation with intensifying security and ensuring immigrants’ safety after the incident contributed to the neglect of concerns related to school culture (Garver & Noguera, 2012). In addition, one administrator hired after the incident wanted to distribute the ESOL classes throughout the building; however, he reported receiving pushback from teachers who preferred the academy structure because it facilitated common planning time and concentrated resources for ELLs in one place. Another administrator suggested that dissolving the ESOL academy would generate a “political firestorm,” as it would be unpopular with the Asian and immigrant advocacy communities that had an increased presence at Seacrest following the incident.

In addition to these factors was the prevalence of negative stereotypes about African American students and positive stereotypes about Asian, immigrant students. These stereotypes served to defend the presence of the ESOL academy and were also perpetuated by the ESOL academy structure—each reinforcing the other. Other research has similarly shown that policies related to the education of ELLs respond to popular opinion regarding immigrants rather than to research regarding best practices (see Literature Review section). Seacrest provides an example at the school level of how stereotypes about immigrants and African Americans fortify policies despite their questionable educational value and fairness. In this way, racial stereotypes can undermine the conditions necessary for safe schools. In this section, we lay out a web of perceptions that reinforced the ESOL academy despite misgivings about its legitimacy as an effective and fair educational structure.

Staff members who were particularly sympathetic to the immigrant students and advocated for their needs often called upon positive stereotypes of Asian students, as most of the newcomer immigrant students came from Asia. Research has shown that positive stereotypes of Asians, captured in the characterization of Asians in the United States as the “model minority,” divert attention from Asian students who struggle academically or need behavioral supports, leaving a population of academically low-performing Asian students invisible (Kim, 1999; Lee, 1996). Moreover, all stereotypes, including those that are positive, reinforce the notion that particular attributes and behaviors are innate to particular racial or ethnic groups, and, thereby, strengthen stereotypes in general, including those that are negative (Kim, 1999). Hence, Lee (1996) explains how the myth of the model minority applied to Asian students serves to reinforce negative stereotypes of African American students and to uphold the U.S. racial hierarchy with whites at the top and African Americans at the bottom, similar to the constellation that Kim (1999) refers to as “racial triangulation.” Accordingly, teachers have been found to express an increasing disregard for immigrant students as they take on some of their African American peers’ styles, habits, and expressions (Lee, 2005; Suarez-Orozco et al., 2008).

Many of the perceptions of the mainstream academy were tied up in negative generalizations about African American students’ behavior. In a focus group, parents of recent immigrant students generalized that African American students were badly behaved and responsible for the threats to their children’s safety. When asked who was bothering his child at Seacrest, an Asian immigrant parent responded “Black students.” The acknowledgment of immigrant Asian students’ vulnerabilities and their victimization in the 2009 incident reinforced negative characterizations of African American students, as exemplified by this mainstream advanced placement teacher’s comment: “The publicity…and voice that the Asians got for themselves was huge, and the kids that were bullying them realized they couldn’t get away with it any more…the only fights I’ve seen are Black on Black in here, which are going to happen anyway.” While negative stereotypes of immigrant students attracted much attention, especially following the 2009 incident (e.g., the firing of security officers who used racialized nicknames with Asian immigrant students), little concern was shown toward these negative perceptions of the African American students—revealing one group’s derision as the unquestioned status quo.

While some generalizations that cast African American students in a negative light were explicitly stated, others were veiled in popular stereotypes that have historically been used to describe and deride African Americans. For example, several staff members and immigrant parents attributed dangerous behavior that threatened immigrant students’ safety to bad parenting or single-parent households. One teacher attributed the behavioral issues at Seacrest to the loss of traditional family structures: “you don’t really have that extended family…you have younger mothers.” An immigrant parent also points to parenting to explain why his children feel unwelcome around other students at Seacrest: “I don’t know if it’s because the school doesn’t teach them or maybe the parents, but they’re not respecting as human beings…so we kind of feel afraid of them, like the way they act, sometimes they’re just yelling, yelling, yelling.” This racially coded language (Haney-Lopez, 2006) allows individuals to degrade African American students and families without the use of explicitly racial language, which is considered politically incorrect in the contemporary, American color-blind culture (Bonilla-Silva, 2006; Kim, 1999).

One ESOL staff member referred to a recent African immigrant in the newcomer academy as African American while critiquing his behavior:

Some of the Chinese students told me that this one African American student, the only one African American student in class, he always interrupts them…sometimes calls them names…because some of the Chinese students just entered, they’re new immigrants…that student always touches them, calls them names…interrupts…so three of the Chinese students tell me they don’t like to sit with this student.

When the interviewer tries to clarify why there was an African American student in the newcomer academy by suggesting, “so was it an African child, not African American,” the ESOL staff member responds, “yeah, yeah, he is the only Black student.” This quote reveals the conflation of skin color and perceptions of behavior. It also indicates the strength and pervasiveness of negative stereotypes of African American students’ behavior—so powerful that disruptive behavior by a student who is not African American, such as the African student in question, can transform him or her into an African American in the eyes of others.

The Asian immigrant students, in direct contrast, were stereotyped as respectful and motivated. One teacher, who was enthusiastic about working with immigrant students, explained that he switched to teaching ESOL because general education was “too hard,” a sentiment that previous research has found to be common. Teachers report specifically that they enjoy teaching immigrant students because of their compliant behavior (Suarez-Orozco et al., 2008). In an interview, a counselor lauded the academic commitment of the immigrant students by comparing it to a lack of motivation among American students:

Most of the immigrant students who are in the ESOL classes realize that they need to get an education and that is the only reason why they are here in this country. The students that grew up in this neighborhood have a very difficult time seeing their goal at this school. It is almost as if they do not want to be here and only come to school since it is required by law.

Parallel to these beliefs, several ESOL staff members and ELLs perceived standards as higher in ESOL classes. One ESOL teacher explained:

We’re tougher graders here in ESOL than in the rest of the building definitely…and the kids say that also…They get very disappointed in the other classes…Nothing is going on, they’re not being challenged, the teachers are not doing anything…The students that we have for the most part really came for education, for freedom, for a better life, and they want to work, they are not afraid to do it, they’re not afraid of being challenged. I think for the most part, they really…want to get into college, they want to get into some higher education.

Surrounded by beliefs that favorably compared immigrants to African American students and embedded in an educational structure that discouraged personal relationships that could counter such perceptions, it is not surprising that students expressed similar stereotypes. As Olsen (1997) explains, part of the Americanization process for immigrant students is to be racialized, to take their place in the American racial hierarchy, and to understand where other races fall. One administrator understood teaching American racial categories to immigrant students as part of his job so that they could report the race of individuals involved in incidents of victimization:

They can’t really identify distinguishing features among different groups yet, because you don’t know the groups. That’s why some people say, “oh, everyone looks alike”…but when you’re around them you start to see the differences—in the features and everything like that. And that apparently went a really long way.

This administrator is reinforcing racial categories, as if they are innate, rather than part of American culture, which is implied in the need to teach them to newcomers. The fact that the immigrant students had to learn the significant phenotypic characteristics that define racial categories in the United States clearly illustrates how such differences are not self-evident. Accordingly, social and cultural reproduction theory has emphasized that teachers teach more than the curriculum; they teach racial categories, what and who is good and bad, and where racial groups fall along the continuum of good to bad (Lee, 2005; Olsen, 1997; Van Ausdale & Feagin, 2001).

Central to the process of cultural reproduction at Seacrest was teaching the Asian immigrant students that they are categorically different from and academically and behaviorally superior to the African Americans students—a lesson that reinforced and was reinforced by the physical isolation of the ESOL academy. Asian immigrant students, as all students, possess their own agency that would warn against any conclusion that beliefs are directly replicated from teachers to students (Willis, 1977). However, immigrant students are especially reliant on school-based adults to teach them the behaviors and dispositions of their new cultural environment (Suarez-Orozco & Suarez-Orozco, 2001).

As newcomers come to learn that African Americans are viewed as badly behaved, dangerous, and academically unmotivated and that Asian immigrants are perceived as hard working and academically driven, they begin to uphold and reproduce the racial inequalities that are pervasive in the United States. One immigrant student in a focus group described how his personal experiences with bullying at Seacrest led him to generalize about African Americans: “they be bullying and everything…I’m not trying to be racist but the majority is all African American…if I see African Americans, I don’t trust them.” This student’s statement is interesting in that it shows his adoption of a negative view toward African Americans and also reveals that he has been socialized enough to the American racial order that he caveats his statement by denying being racist. A recent immigrant student in the same focus group generalized a bad experience with an African American friend such that he held all African Americans responsible for his mistreatment:

You should not trust them because they’re two-faced…I talked to them, I trusted them, I told them most of my stuff like my mom is the only who support us because my dad died 10 years ago so I kind of told them that…I guess they know where I lived, and they go to my house, they broke the window. (emphasis added)

One ELL described the differences between ESOL and mainstream classes, mirroring the distinctions drawn by the teachers:

I like the ESOL classes…but in other classes like most of them are Americans that don’t pay attention…They struggle in class, they don’t listen to the teacher…[In ESOL classes] we work a lot, we work hard. The same teacher tries to be better, not like in the regular classes.

Another student, with a more sympathetic framing of U.S.-born students’ behaviors added:

I see the same difference but…I believe they act the way they act because they don’t really think they can do it themselves so they just sit there…They sit there and disturb class. It irks me…I try to listen to what the teacher is saying and they’re sitting there talking.

The repetition of positive stereotypes of Asian immigrant students and negative stereotypes of African American students in the data provide evidence for why the ESOL academy may have persevered despite misgivings that threatened the school’s legitimacy and, thereby, its ability to ensure safety. The elevation of immigrant students and the denigration of African American students buttressed an approach to serving ELLs that involved extensive physical separation. Understood as one factor that fortifies educational structures, racial stereotypes can undermine the conditions for safe schools.

Conclusion

In this article, we explore the impact of educational structures designed to meet the academic and social needs of immigrant students on school safety. We draw upon a case study of Seacrest High School to show that an approach involving the extensive physical separation of U.S.-born and immigrant students as well as targeted supports for immigrant students absent similar attention to the rest of the student body undermines the conditions necessary for a safe school. Our analysis of Seacrest is driven by a theoretical framework that links educational structures to school safety through the perceptions of school community members. As previous research on school safety has shown, perceptions that a school is fair and effective at educating its students are necessary conditions for a secure learning environment (Arum, 2003; Durkheim, 1961; Noguera, 2003).

Seacrest community members expressed conflicting and conflicted perceptions concerning the extent to which immigrant students should receive differential treatment and the extent to which they should be physically isolated. These perceptions, which evoked concerns about the fairness and educational efficacy of the ESOL academy, threatened the school’s institutional legitimacy and thereby its authority to maintain order and its ability to ensure safety. Despite misgivings about the ESOL academy, the structure was insulated by several factors, including a web of racial stereotypes about Asian immigrant and African American students.

Past research on educational structures designed for immigrants has been limited to understanding their effects on educational outcomes and experiences for ELLs. In studies that have begun to explore effects beyond academics, such as the prevalence of ELLs’ friendships with U.S.-born students, the focus has remained on immigrant students (Lee, 2005; Olsen, 1997; Suarez-Orozco et al., 2008). We broaden this body of literature in order to better understand the influence of educational structures designed for immigrant students on the whole school environment—including its impact on U.S.-born students, school culture in general, and on school safety in particular. Considering that immigrant students typically do not attend schools in isolation and that their peers often have high needs (Fix & Passel, 2003; Suarez-Orozco et al., 2008), an understanding of the impact of ELL instructional approaches beyond immigrant students is critical.

In an earlier article, we employ Seacrest as a case study to demonstrate how a concentrated focus on school security neglects other educational goals, specifically educational engagement and a positive school culture (Garver & Noguera, 2012). In this article, we approach the relationship between learning and safety from a different point of view, exploring how one particular approach to instruction impacts school climate and safety. The relationship between ESOL educational structures and school safety is particularly important to understand, as immigrant students tend to report feeling unsafe at school (Suarez-Orozco et al., 2008). Feeling unsafe detracts from the mental attention available for academics and, as a result, student performance suffers (Bryk et al., 2009; Devine, 1996; Metz, 1978; Suarez-Orozco et al., 2008). In many cities in the United States, immigrant students have the highest drop-out rates (Rumberger, 2011; Suarez-Orozco et al., 2008). Our study suggests that approaches involving extensive physical isolation and targeted supports absent comparable attention to U.S.-born students are likely to create an unsafe environment. The very efforts made to support ELLs academically may be hindering their performance indirectly through a threat to school safety.

Future studies that compare different approaches to serving immigrant students matched to perceptions about educational effectiveness and fairness are needed to better understand the connection between particular educational structures and safety. Research-based understandings of this relationship are vital, as factors such as racial stereotypes and the political climate toward immigration can preserve potentially problematic programs.

Generalizability

Although the generalizability of findings from one school is limited, comprehensive case studies allow for a deep understanding of the interactions within institutions and of the mechanisms that connect actions to outcomes that are often invisible in research with large sample sizes. The finding that the ESOL academy undermined the conditions for school safety may not hold true in all schools; however, the relationship we highlight between ELL educational structures, perceptions, and school safety is applicable to other settings.

Moreover, Seacrest resembles the majority of schools in which immigrant students are enrolled today. Newcomer immigrant youth are predominately from Asia or Latin America,¹⁰ and they typically enroll in urban public schools where their U.S.-born peers are African American and second and third generation immigrants (Fix & Passel, 2003; Suarez-Orozco et al., 2008). Suarez-Orozco and his colleagues refer to the schools immigrant youth typically find themselves in as “fields of endangerment” because many possess characteristics that undermine academic achievement, including limited resources, high drop-out rates, low attendance rates, low academic expectations, frequent incidents of violence, inexperienced and underqualified teachers, high teacher turnover, and outdated and dilapidated facilities (De Cohen et al., 2005; Fix & Passel, 2003; Gándara et al., 2003; Orfield, 2001; Suarez-Orozco et al., 2008). Like Seacrest, schools often must negotiate the needs of immigrant students with inadequate resources and supports.

Implications for Policy

As schools like Seacrest strive to meet the academic and social needs of immigrant students, and figure out how to do so with few resources and vague policies mandates, school leaders are frequently unsure about the best course of action. In such a context, it is hardly surprising that they struggle to balance considerations about how to deliver appropriate instruction with the impact that particular educational structures may have upon the quality of student relationships and school safety. Absent research-based policy guidance, schools are likely to adopt and maintain approaches to serving ELLs that complement perceptions about the local immigrant and U.S.-born communities, as we demonstrate in this article. Mandates passed down to schools concerning supports for ELLs and immigrant students should provide additional guidance on the best practices established by research.

Until such guidance is provided, educational structures designed for immigrant students should not only be assessed and chosen by schools and school districts based on their effects for ELLs, but also by their effects on the whole school environment, and particularly on school safety. School districts can supplement the small body of research concerning this relationship by administering their own school culture surveys and analyzing them for perceptions concerning fairness and educational efficacy. Approaches that involve extensive physical isolation of ELLs and differential treatment absent similar attention to other students should be scrutinized for their potential to undermine the conditions necessary for a safe school. While it may be required to separate ELLs at certain times to allow for the provision of targeted supports, school schedules should be designed to encourage the integration of U.S.-born and immigrant students. Research on efforts to detrack high schools has shown that it is possible to create structures and programs to meet the needs of students with different academic abilities without segregating schools from within (Rubin & Noguera, 2004). Building community and promoting positive relationships between U.S.-born and foreign-born students can be accomplished in extracurricular activities, electives, and other shared spaces, if a deliberate effort to integrate students is established as an explicit goal.

Footnotes

Appendix

Table A1.

Summary of Participants.

Participant Group	Focus Groups	Interviews	Total Participants
Teachers	6	1	53
Administrators	1	1	6
Staff (e.g., counselors, deans, police)	3	6	15
Supplementary providers (e.g., after-school staff)	1	1	4
Students	9	1	35
Student questionnaire			428
Parents	4	0	9

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

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