Carolyn Sattin-Bajaj, Associate Professor at UC Santa Barbara’s Gevirtz School, is a co-author—with Adam Strom (Re-Imagining Migration) and Veronica Boix Mansilla (Harvard University)—of the EdResearch for Recovery brief “Supports for Students in Immigrant Families.” The brief (available online), released by the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University and Results for America, addresses important COVID-related challenges facing policymakers, educators, and parents.
Key findings of the brief “Supports for Students in Immigrant Families” include:
- New modes of schooling create new concerns and exacerbate existing challenges around privacy and immigration status.
- Schools that provide information about immigrants’ legal and educational rights and available services and offer educational assistance and guidance can be instrumental in supporting documented and undocumented immigrant students’ school engagement and success.
- Schools that take steps to embrace and incorporate the diversity of languages, identities, cultures, and family practices represented in their communities benefit from increased engagement and cross-cultural learning.
As the pandemic continues, the task of supporting students becomes ever more difficult. Education leaders face an unprecedented challenge as students return to school this fall. Based on a developing list of questions from policymakers and practitioners, the EdResearch for Recovery Project taps top researchers from across the country to develop evidence briefs to inform recovery strategies.
Carolyn Sattin-Bajaj is an Associate Professor in the Department of Education at the Gevirtz School. Her research focuses on issues of educational access and equity for immigrant-origin youth and other historically underserved student populations. Her work includes exploratory qualitative studies of immigrant and homeless families’ school choice behaviors; experimental research to develop and test interventions to reduce educational inequities; and studies of school leaders’ responses to xenophobia in schools and society and their sense of preparedness to address the consequences of immigration enforcement and racism for their school communities.
Sattin-Bajaj’s work has been funded by the William T. Grant Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, the Smith-Richardson Foundation, the Heckscher Foundation for Children, the New York Community Trust, and the American Educational Research Association. Carolyn is author of Unaccompanied Minors: Immigrant Youth, School Choice, and the Pursuit of Equity (Harvard Education Press, 2014), Matching Students to Opportunity: Expanding College Choice, Access and Quality (co-editor with Andrew Kelly and Jessica Howell, Harvard Education Press, 2016), Blueprint for School System Transformation: A Vision for Comprehensive Reform in Milwaukee and Beyond (co-editor with Frederick M. Hess, Rowman & Littlefield, 2013) and Educating the Whole Child for the Whole World: The Ross School Model and Education for the Global Era (co-editor with Marcelo M. Suárez-Orozco, New York University Press, 2010). Sattin-Bajaj earned a Ph.D. and M.A. in international education from New York University. Prior to earning her doctorate, she worked on secondary school reform at the New York City Department of Education.