Somali Immigrants & Charter Schools

This week the New York Times ran an article ‘Immigrants See Charter Schools as a Haven’ in which they focused on Somali immigrants living in Minneapolis. (Minneapolis is home to the largest Somali population in the U.S., and Columbus is home to the second largest.) Check out the slide show linked to the article. The article portrays the immigrant parents as wanting their children to develop strong dual identities (American and Somali) and multilingual competence, sheltered from American youth culture. Interestingly, the article does not mention that students study Arabic at the charter school.