Unaccompanied Minors: Immigrant Youth, School Choice, and the Pursuit of Equity Paperback - 2014

From the rear cover

School choice--now a pillar of education reform in the United States--is widely touted as a strategy for addressing educational inequity. Yet efforts to implement school choice can exacerbate, rather than counteract, inequities. Unaccompanied Minors takes a close look at the experience of immigrant students and their families navigating New York City's mandatory high school choice program and outlines strategic steps schools and districts can take to guide families form all backgrounds through the choice process.

"With a humane and intelligent eye, Carolyn Sattin-Bajaj delivers unparalleled insight into the challenges and opportunities for using choice as a tool to promote greater equity in the era of mass migration. Unaccompanied Minors is a must-read for researchers, policymakers, and educators who care about immigrant students and educational equity in the twenty-first century." -- Marcelo M. Su�rez-Orozco, Dean and Distinguished Professor of Education, UCLA Graduate School of Education & Information Studies

"This timely book explores how faulty assumptions and weak implementation mean that for too many poor children, school choice only reinforces educational inequity." -- Charles M. Payne, author of So Much Reform, So Little Change

"Unaccompanied Minors reveals critical and fundamental misconceptions about the power of 'choice' to transform American schooling. Carolyn Sattin-Bajaj allows readers to peer into the deep chasm that separates policymakers' assumptions about parents, students, schools, and choice from the lived reality of families engaged in the critical high school selection process. Unaccompanied Minors underscores the important work yet to be done to ensure that the American Dream remains accessible to all." -- Erin Horvat, associate professor of urban education, Temple University

"Unaccompanied Minors gives us an eye-opening look behind the curtain of New York City's lauded--and mind-bogglingly complex--system of high school choice. Anyone interested in making choice work for all students should read this important book." -- Sean P. Corcoran, associate professor of educational economics, New York University

Carolyn Sattin-Bajaj is an assistant professor and codirector of the Center for College Readiness at Seton Hall University.