Our Impact
How does Internationals Network help immigrant students achieve their dreams?
Internationals Network amplifies the impact of the complex and proven Internationals model by creating structures and collaborative opportunities that build a strong and effective community of practice across our schools. By developing innovative services that provide critical support to our schools and enhance their capacity to effectively serve the recently arrived immigrant students served in our schools, Internationals provides consistent, timely, and focused support to affiliated International High School communities. This assistance is essential to the continued high performance of existing schools and to the successful creation of new International High Schools. The structures and collaborative interschool projects build community, raise understanding and utilize data to inform and adjust school and network practices.
How do we know that our work is achieving our goals? How do we measure the effect of Internationals Network for Public Schools?
Alumni success stories and testimonials from faculty, principals, students, parents and guidance counselors served by our programs provide anecdotal evidence. Numbers of students served in our schools, growth of schools and numbers of faculty and leaders supported, developed and retained through our programs, as well as numbers of national and international visitors including leaders from other schools and districts, researchers, and government officials, offer partial measures of the reach of our work.
Student and school benchmark data – student promotion and graduation rates, course pass, attendance and drop out rates, and college going rates, all favorably demonstrate the outstanding success of the Internationals Approach and our school support services and programs. Our greatest accomplishment is ensuring that through successful leadership transitions, our schools continue to graduate students at rates that more than double the rate for English language learners in our established regional network of NYC schools. Additionally, 90% of our graduates go on to college. Our developing regional networks are on track to achieve similar outcomes.
Research
Carola Suarez-Orozco, Professor of Applied Psychology at New York University’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, & Human Development and Co-Director of Immigration Studies @ NYU is conducting in depth research in a newly opened International High School as part of a larger study to document innovative practices and strong outcomes for children of immigrants. Some preliminary findings in Innovative Schooling Practices for Children of Immigrants: Lessons From Schools In New York & Sweden, a research project conducted with Margary Martin, Mikael Alexandersson, Tomni Dance, and Johannes Lunneblad, indicate the following innovative practices in International High Schools:
- interdisciplinary teacher teams responsible for small groups of students share planning time to allow for collaborative curriculum planning, and provide opportunities to discuss the individual needs of students that they serve
- students overwhelmingly feel safe and supported
- academic support and enrichment is provided in extended school day opportunities
- the schools have a strategic approach to help newcomer youth adjust to their new environs
- As each new student comes in, teacher teams meet to discuss the new student, and a series of assessments are conducted and discussed in order to develop the best plan for each student. The teachers meet with as many of the parents as possible
- All teachers in the school receive extensive training in language-development curriculum, where language learning is embedded across the entire curriculum. Writing is not simply an activity for language arts classes. Students are encouraged daily to write and use their developing language skills in every class.
