Introduces the immigration story throughout American history and describes the Longitudinal Immigrant Student Adaptation Study (LISA) as it applies to the pathways of immigrant youth in America today. The immigration experience is frequently driven by parents who have a desire to improve their children’s futures and pin that improvement on academic engagement; its success is often grounded in family and social networks. Less than optimal schools — those that are segregated, overcrowded and/or understaffed, or have violence and bilingual issues — present a particular dilemma to achieving improvement for immigrant families. Learning English creates its own set of problems due to background characteristics, age, cognitive aptitude, motivation, exposure to other native speakers and the quality of English-language instruction. Case studies on immigrant children in the American education system describe four scenarios: declining achievers, low achievers, improvers, and high achievers. Immigration policies are a bundle of contradictions that ebb and flow depending upon public focus; the future success of immigrant children in American education will be determined by reexamining and clarifying these policies.
