WHAT IS THE CHALLENGE WE FACE?
REFUGEE ILLITERACY. At FORA, we focus on serving refugees who come to the United States whose entire families are illiterate. Because receiving countries pick and choose which refugees they deem desirable, many refugees who are seen as “less desirable” (for example, those without an education or those who are sick) sit and wait, and wait and wait. And while they wait, their health worsens, and their children grow up without receiving an education. The bitter irony is that these “passed over” refugees are being overlooked precisely because of the abuse and denial of rights they suffered in their previous homelands. Undeniably, welcoming illiterate refugees requires detailed preparation, especially because refugees arriving in the United States with extreme deficits in formal education are particularly vulnerable to school failure. Unlike newcomers who have had the benefit of education in their native languages and whose parents attended elementary school, students from illiterate families have to learn an understanding of how school works in addition to literacy and English. One recent study found that children with no or interrupted schooling are “20 percent to 50 percent less likely to meet proficiency standards on fourthand eighth-grade reading and math tests, and... take over a year longer to test out of English language learner status [than students learning English who do not have interrupted schooling].”
And then we must consider the students’ parents. Refugee parents, like all other parents, must be empowered to interact with their children’s teachers and to understand what is expected of students after school hours and during the summers (as well as to help their very young children begin to read at home). But refugee parents are hamstrung if they do not speak commonly spoken languages in the United States or read or write in any language. Seventy-seven percent of adult refugees in the United States are characterized as LEP-upon-arrival [“Limited English Proficient,” another way of saying ‘functionally illiterate in English”], 19% more than in the 1980s. The situation does not improve much after arrival. Because refugees so often come to the United States focused, of necessity, on financially supporting their families, they have limited time for learning English or furthering their education. The logistics of obtaining essential educational inputs can be overwhelming. Just five to ten percent of refugees “advance their education once in the United States…. a sign perhaps of the U.S. resettlement program’s heavy emphasis on” rapid employment, as well as limited support for refugee education and language instruction.
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