One day this July, two dozen leaders from various immigrant communities here gathered in the Glencliff High School auditorium to learn how public education works in this fast-growing southern city.
They were from Bhutan, Colombia, Egypt, Ethiopia, Mexico and many other countries. And they had lots of questions. Why do some schools provide transportation but others don’t? What’s a “charter” school? Why are the results of students’ English-language assessments reported only in English? A man named Mamane, from Niger, asked what may be the most elemental but perplexing question in all of U.S. education: Why is it that two nearby schools teaching the same curriculum can show vastly different results?
VIP speakers, including the chairwoman of the Board of Education, were on hand to provide some answers. In five hours of presentations, they offered what added up to a beginner’s course on Nashville’s public schools, adult education and where to find resources. There were no tests to pass, but the pupils in the auditorium had an important job to do: to take this information back to their communities and serve as a go-to resource for other immigrants who may have the same questions.
[For more of this story, written by Christopher Swope, go to http://www.citylab.com/politic...rce=nl__link6_112316]
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