Virtual Commons - Bridgewater State University

Lightning Round: Intentional Inclusion: How the Canadian Education System is Shrinking the Achievement Gap for Immigrant Children

Moakley Auditorium

Immigration is a pivotal and persistent topic in the U.S. and Canada. Immigrant children are not educated in isolation but rather in the same classrooms as their counterparts in the U.S. and Canada. Yet the experience of learning for immigrant children in Canada as compared to the U.S. is vastly different. Nearly 30 percent of all public-school students in Canada are immigrant children; within three years of arriving in Canada’s public schools, PISA tests show that migrant children do as well reading and math as native-born children (Cardoza, 2018). While the U.S. system of education for English Learners lags behind Canada, it is fixable and there is much that we as educators can learn from the Canadian system. This lightning round presentation will share my review of the current literature surrounding immigrant student achievement in Canada and the initial lessons to be learned for U.S. educators.