S9/E6: Ensuring Refugees and Newcomers Receive the Education They Deserve with Jo Napolitano

Highest Aspirations

What are some flawed perceptions of immigrant and refugee students and how can these impact the education they receive? What policies or district practices have been barriers to newcomer or immigrant students receiving the full extent of education promised to them by law? How is “moving students through” the education system without adequate support or learning such a major missed opportunity for both them and their communities?

We discuss these questions and more with the author of “The School I Deserve” Jo Napolitano, who spent nearly two decades reporting for The New York Times, Chicago Tribune and Newsday before winning a Spencer Education Fellowship to Columbia University in 2016 in support of her reporting on immigrant youth. Her first book, The School I Deserve: Six Young Refugees and Their Fight for Equality in America, will be published by Beacon Press in Spring 2021.

Napolitano has reported on many topics throughout her award-winning career, including crime and science. But education remains her primary focus, and for good reason: It was the only means through which she would escape poverty.

Born in Bogota, Colombia, Napolitano was abandoned at a bus stop by her birthmother when she was just a day old. Placed in an orphanage, she nearly died of starvation before she was adopted by a blue-collar family from New York. She was raised by a single parent and is a first-generation college graduate having earned her bachelors from Medill at Northwestern University. She believes no child’s life should be left to chance.

Download the episode transcript here.

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