Publications
Publications
Authors: Rebecca Lowenhaupt, Paulette Andrade González, Jennifer Queenan, Edom Tesfa, and Dafney Blanca Dabach
Journal: American Journal of Education
Publication date: August 2025
Abstract: Immigrant-origin youth are placed at risk by large-scale upheavals that affect their contexts of reception, including disruptions to education caused by public health and natural disasters, as well as other crises. Here we examine how immigrant-serving districts were affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and district leaders’ responses. Drawing from a longitudinal study conducted in six immigrant-serving districts across the United States, we focus on a set of qualitative data from partner meetings with district leaders during the pandemic. We analyzed 10 recurring Zoom meeting transcripts, spanning the start of school closures in the spring of 2020 to the fall of 2021. In these meetings, we engaged in ongoing discussions to support planning and inform district leaders’ policy making. Through matrices and memoing, we generated and applied both thematic and open codes that we used to generate results. We show how the context of reception was fundamentally altered by pandemic disruptions and the variations across districts shaping district leaders’ responses. In particular, geographic location, existing infrastructure relevant to pandemic response, and local policy making differentially affected these contexts of reception. As they navigated these disruptions, district leaders employed sustaining, adaptive, and innovative practices to address the needs of immigrant-origin students and families during the pandemic. Understanding how district leaders respond and support immigrant-origin youth through crises continues to be relevant in our volatile world. We show how leaders addressed disruption and argue that understanding district leadership for immigrant-origin youth is important given the upheavals we anticipate in the years ahead.
Authors: Edom Tesfa, Rebecca Lowenhaupt
Journal: Voices in Urban Education
Publication date: February 2023
Abstract: All human beings need care, including professional caregivers such as educators. What happens when a global crisis places care providers' own care needs in conflict with their duty and desire to provide care? In this article, we apply care ethics to a school district's decisions regarding newcomer English learners (ELs) and their educators during the 2020-2021 academic year. Drawing on qualitative case study data from a larger multi-district, multi-state study, we examine how educators and administrators in a small urban school district in New England make sense of students' and educators' sometimes conflicting care needs during the COVID-19 pandemic. We argue that even school districts with clear commitments to equity and justice have their efforts severely limited by state and federal leadership's neglect of care/essential workers, youth, and marginalized groups. To end the ongoing pandemic and prevent future harm, we recommend that educational and political leaders prioritize human needs and relationships through a move towards "universal care."
Author: Edom Tesfa
Prepared for: Immigration Initiative at Harvard
Publication date: August 2023
Abstract: Since the 1990s, the Black immigrant-origin population in the U.S. has grown to over 4.6 million people. Roughly 20 percent of the Black population in the U.S. is of immigrant origin. Approximately one in every ten Black people in the U.S. is foreign-born, and another ten percent of the Black U.S. population has at least one foreign-born parent. A growing number of Black children in the U.S. are immigrants or the children of immigrants. As a minority within a minority, Black immigrants simultaneously experience invisibility and hyper-surveillance. Programs aimed at immigrant students and families may not be inclusive for Black immigrants, and programs aimed at the African-American non-immigrant community may also not recognize their experiences. Additionally, Black immigrant-origin youth and families, particularly those who are also Muslim, are at especially high risk of incarceration, deportation, and citizenship denial. Given these circumstances, it is crucial that educators understand how to meaningfully support Black immigrant youth and families. This brief is aimed at educators and school leaders who want to improve their work with Black immigrant students and their families.
Authors: Rebecca Lowenhaupt, Julie Yammine, Melita Morales, Paulette Andrade, Ariana Mangual Figueroa, Jennifer Queenan, Dafney Blanca Dabach, Roberto G. Gonzales, and Edom Tesfa
Prepared for: Immigration Initiative at Harvard
Publication date: August 2020
Abstract: Since 2018, the PIECE research team has worked in partnership with six immigrant-serving school districts across the country to identify promising practices to support immigrant-origin youth and work toward reducing the inequalities they face. They recently engaged their partners in conversations about their experiences to understand how educators in immigrant communities were experiencing and responding to the crisis. Based on two meetings in mid-May of 2020, this issue brief presents some initial findings from this research in progress. It addresses the following: how local contexts are influenced by and also shape COVID-19 trends; the impacts of COVID-19 on immigrant-serving districts; and the innovative, creative ways six school districts are adapting to the pandemic's school closures and connecting with communities.