Quick, name something the U.S. and Mexico have in common.
Chances are that “K-12 students” didn’t come to mind, but the truth is that both countries share millions of students each year. Mexican experts estimate that as many as half a million U.S.-educated students, in fact, are attending schools in that country, while in the U.S., as many as a tenth of schoolchildren are the offspring of Mexican immigrants. And, in both countries, the border-crossing students struggle to adjust to an education system that is markedly different from the one they left behind.
That’s why researchers from both countries got together last week for a first-of-its-kind conference on “The Students We Share.” Held in Mexico City, the event was sponsored by the Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derecho Civiles at the University of California, Los Angeles, in collaboration with the American Educational Research Association; Mexico’s national educational research association, the Foundation for Child Development, Arizona State University, and Mexico’s education secretary.
See this link for more information on the conference, which was aimed more at building some cross-country research relationships than sharing findings. For background on Mexico’s education system, check out this interesting story by my colleague Mary Ann Zehr.