ABSTRACT
Life in the primary grades is extremely difficult for immigrant students. Immigrant students were placed in reading groups with the poorest English readers in their classes. The difficulty is that many primary classrooms have become non-English environments where the majority of students speak languages other than English. The relationship between socioeconomic background and success in schools has been investigated in many ways with many populations. Schools are organized to teach students the knowledge deemed important by educators or, in many cases, by politicians. A student’s first language and first-language orthography were predicted to have an affect on the way in which the student learned English. Oakridge Reception and Orientation Center was designed to serve as a center that immigrants, regardless of first language, would find inviting and hospitable. Most studies of immigrant achievement focus on measures that describe their responses to standardized test instruments. Such measures define groups in decontextualized terms that often marginalize individuals.
