Emergent Bilingual Newcomers: Fostering Culturally Responsive Welcoming Practices and Integration into School and Community

Abstract

Newcomers to the United States face numerous obstacles. This article examines the perceptions and practices of school personnel in one Texas K–12 school district concerning culturally responsive leadership (CRL) and school practices for emergent bilingual (EB) newcomer students with refugee backgrounds. The two research questions guiding this paper include (1) What are the perceptions of K–12 school personnel about the policies, programs, and practices that shape the experiences of EB newcomer students with refugee backgrounds? and (2) How do K–12 school personnel perceive and practice culturally responsive leadership to create inclusive schools for EB newcomers? Despite robust scholarship on refugee education and culturally responsive leadership (CRL), less is known about how school personnel interpret policy and organizational constraints and subsequently translate those interpretations into everyday leadership and pedagogical practices. Following a qualitative case study research design, this study used interviews, focus groups, and vignette discussion prompts with teachers, administrators, and district representatives to show how personnel interpreted policy, categorization, and accountability pressures and how they reported responding through welcoming, relational, and culturally responsive practices. Findings are reported at the level of personnel perceptions and reported practices rather than student outcomes. The study offers practical implications for schools and districts seeking to better support the integration of EB newcomer students with refugee backgrounds into schools and communities.

1. Introduction

International displacement is a global phenomenon with 117.3 million displaced people as of mid-2025 (UNHCR 2001–2026). Human displacement has grown due to political instability in precarious states, war, violence, and natural calamities (USA for UNHCR 2024). A fear of violence or persecution based on an individual’s gender, race and/or political beliefs means many are unable to return to their countries, communities, and ways of living. Recent global migration data further confirms that forced displacement continues to intersect with broader patterns of international migration, reshaping educational systems worldwide (United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs [UNDESA] 2025). For example, education in refugee camps is frequently uneven, disjointed or non-existent (Arar and Örücü 2024), and out of 27 million refugees across the world, only 1 percent receive a third country resettlement opportunity (International Rescue Committee [IRC] 2023).

The U.S. is home to almost 20% of the world’s international migrants and is one of 29 countries that takes in refugees who want to start over. U.S. refugee admissions and resettlement capacity have fluctuated sharply in recent years, creating uncertainty for schools and communities receiving newcomer youth (International Rescue Committee [IRC] 2023; USA for UNHCR 2025). According to the USA for UNHCR (2024), seven out of ten refugees in 2023 came from five countries: Syria, Venezuela, Ukraine, Afghanistan, and South Sudan.

Dryden-Peterson (2016a) posits that refugee education exists at the intersection of globalization, and displacement fundamentally transforms the objectives and opportunities of schooling across various contexts, including classrooms. Schools are very important institutions in society that can help immigrant families with their educational and social needs. These families may not have many resources, have not had much or any access to formal education, and face structural barriers to fully participating in society (Arar 2020; Arar et al. 2025b). Research about the “contexts of reception” for immigrant integration in U.S. society demonstrates that how schools and communities structure their support systems significantly shapes newcomer students’ academic trajectories and sense of belonging (Hopkins et al. 2019; Lowenhaupt and Reeves 2015). According to North American and European critical scholars of refugee education, how refugee students and families are treated in schooling systems is not neutral. Education policies can reproduce racist nativism and white supremacy despite claiming to promote “integration” or “inclusion” (Koyama and Turan 2024). Newcomer integration is therefore shaped not only by student and family characteristics, but also by layered policy climates, organizational routines, and institutional mediation. This tension between structural constraint and school-level response frames the analytical focus of this study on how school personnel interpret these organizational and structural conditions and translate them into everyday practices, impacting newcomers’ integration in U.S. schools.

Humanizing approaches to immigrant and refugee youth emphasize belonging, dignity, and relational care as foundational to educational integration (Bajaj et al. 2023; Brezicha and Miranda 2022). With migration patterns changing all the time, it is more crucial than ever for U.S. schools to have leaders who are fair and responsive (Arar et al. 2025a). Although student populations in U.S. schools have changed significantly, educational structures and support systems have not always kept pace. Koyama (2025) argues that education is viewed as a hope of refugees; nonetheless, the institutionalized and bureaucratic systems of the school, which are controlled by the law and operational processes, can hinder their potential to fulfill the safety, stability, or mobility duties. Schools may not have the right plans or resources to help new students adjust socially and academically, and teachers may not have the support or structures they need to help immigrant students fit in better (Aleghfeli et al. 2025; Arar et al. 2025b; Guo-Brennan and Guo-Brennan 2019). The inequities that hinder refugee integration are largely connected to systemic racism, discrimination, language barriers, exclusion based on the sociocultural factors, and the absence of culturally responsive support, (Chadderton and WiscHumanizing approaches to immigrant and refugee youth emphasize belonging, Kirksey and Sattin-Bajaj 2023; Bajaj et al. 2023). Critical refugee education scholars further warn that schools can position refugee youth through assimilationist and utilitarian logics that privilege compliance and employability over agency and self-determination (Koyama 2024; Koyama and Turan 2024).

Although the need for courageous and humanizing leadership has been identified in previous scholarship, the empirical evidence is still limited regarding how this leadership is exercised in specific policy and organizational contexts. Three gaps are especially relevant. First, structural analyses of refugee education often foreground policy regimes and racialized discourse but pay less attention to how school personnel experience and interpret these conditions in daily work. Second, scholarship on leadership and culturally responsive leadership (CRL) identifies normative commitments and leadership dimensions, but less often shows how those commitments are enacted under policy, accountability, and bureaucratic constraints. Third, relatively little qualitative work traces the evidentiary chain from school personnel interpretations of policy climates to their reported leadership and pedagogical practices. This study addresses these gaps by examining how school personnel in one Texas district interpreted the policies, programs, and practices shaping the experiences of EB newcomer students with refugee backgrounds, and how they described enacting culturally responsive leadership in response.

This study asks the following two questions: (1) What are the perceptions of K–12 school personnel about the policies, programs, and practices that shape the experiences of EB newcomer students with refugee backgrounds? and (2) How do K–12 school personnel perceive and practice culturally responsive leadership to create inclusive schools serving EB newcomer students with refugee backgrounds? In this study, we use the term “emergent bilingual” to highlight students’ linguistic strengths, consistent with practices in states such as Texas and Illinois (Kanno et al. 2024; Piñon et al. 2022) and to align with this study’s asset-based and culturally responsive framework, illustrating how language categorization influences institutional expectations and integration pathways.

2. Literature Review

Research indicates that the policies of immigration and education differ greatly in the way they are intended to operate and in the way they actually do (Dryden-Peterson 2016b). Comparative analysis shows that fragmentation of policies in national contexts leads to unfair access to education by immigrant children (Dogutas 2025). Aleghfeli et al. (2025) assert that precariousness and disinterest in the experience of refugee students remains detrimental to the sense of security and long-term pathways. In the U.S. federal, state, and district policies can poorly align, creating gaps that do not consider refugees’ realities on the ground. Speaking to these gaps, there are three main types of research on how to educate refugees and immigrants: (1) structural-policy analyses, (2) institutional and relational barriers to integration, and (3) leadership and pedagogical responses. Each strand offers valuable insights; however, they are often analyzed in isolation, leading to inadequate exploration of the interconnections between policy contexts, leadership interpretation, and classroom implementation. In state contexts characterized by heightened immigration enforcement regimes, restrictive legal frameworks, and intensified surveillance practices affecting immigrant communities, schools with stricter immigration enforcement frequently encounter issues related to student engagement and trust, thereby exacerbating the system’s vulnerability (Yammine and Lowenhaupt 2021). This structural scholarship highlights these macro-level constraints, yet rarely examines the methods by which school actors interpret and navigate these forces.

The research also suggests that the U.S. immigration regulations, as well as the strategies advocating the assimilation of immigrants, can. intensify unequal chances. As an example, critical refugee education research illustrates how policy discourses of “integration” and “support” can coexist with bordering, racist nativism, and generations of white dominance in school (Chadderton and Wischmann 2025; Kasper et al. 2025; Koyama and Turan 2024). Immigrant youth can experience systemic racism and discrimination based on the language, socio-economic status, sociocultural exclusion, ethnicity, immigration status, and support; they and their families may also face food insecurity and resource shortages (Arar 2020; Crawford et al. 2025; Bajaj et al. 2023; Guo-Brennan and Guo-Brennan 2019, Ishimaru 2020). Families may have financial challenges, not yet have social contacts, and may face potential antagonistic attitudes from the new host communities. There may also be high discrepancies in refugee parents’ education levels and levels of community support (Bajaj et al. 2023; Beck 2023; Kaur and Szorenyi 2022). These intersecting pressures can undermine family stability and students’ educational continuity.

Kaukko et al. (2025) contend that refugee education must transcend assimilation, focusing instead on fostering the ability to “live well in a world worth living in,” emphasizing dignity and agency above mere conformity. Schools and communities that welcome and support immigrant youth and their families can help them become part of the culture by making sure that all students can grow and be healthy in environments that are fair and welcoming (Arar 2020; Guo-Brennan and Guo-Brennan 2020). However, creating these kinds of spaces is hard and requires good leadership and teaching, especially in schools with refugees and asylum seekers (Crawford et al. 2024). Relational, material, and structural factors continue to obstruct the acknowledgment of the rights and humanity of refugees. While refugee and newcomer students in the US, as in many other countries, come with numerous assets, including resiliency, perseverance, and rich language repertoires (Arar et al. 2025a), integration in schools can also be challenging.

While some institutional and structural barriers to newcomer integration have been identified, much of the literature talks about barriers generally and does not speak to how institutional leadership practices ameliorate these situations. Students with interrupted formal education (SIFE), emphasizing the necessity of specialized instructional and socio-emotional support frameworks (Hos 2020). Yet, in U.S. schools, educators can lack (1) information about students’ past educational and social experiences, leading to their misplacement; (2) language support for language-diverse students; (3) academic, emotional, and socials support for students; (4) experience working with diverse populations; (5) the ability to communicate with parents due to language barriers; and (6) funding to implement integration. Emergent bilingual students may go through a “silent period” where they manage intricate communicative strategies, but educators may misconstrue this period as student disengagement (Kan et al. 2025). Teachers’ ideological stances also affect the experiences of multilingual learners in the classroom (Uzum et al. 2025). Students may find it difficult to build trusting relationships with teachers, even though strong relationships between teachers and students are linked to students’ perseverance and academic performance (Arar et al. 2025c; Ostorga and Farruggio 2020). These institutional limitations highlight the need for a paradigm that links structural limits to leadership actions.

2.1. Culturally Responsive Leadership for Integration

Culturally Responsive Leadership (CRL) serves as this study’s guiding conceptual framework. CRL emphasizes leadership that recognizes students’ cultural and linguistic assets, interrogates inequitable systems, and builds inclusive environments through relational, instructional, and organizational action (Khalifa et al. 2016; Lopez 2016; Wang et al. 2022). In refugee education contexts, this orientation is especially important because school leaders must often navigate competing pressures: accountability requirements, bureaucratic categorization, family needs, and students’ linguistic, cultural, and socio-emotional adjustment. A key part of this is developing CRL approaches, concepts borne from the desegregation movement in the United States (Gay 1975; Ladson-Billings 1995). Paris and Alim (2017) extend this conversation by arguing that schools must sustain—not merely respond—to the cultural and linguistic practices of minoritized communities. Thus, culturally responsive and culturally sustaining approaches overlap in their commitment to affirming community knowledge, language, and identity. Culturally responsive leaders practice introspection about their positionalities and collaborate with families and communities to foster inclusive environments (Khalifa et al. 2016), criticizing unfair systems while developing care, critical consciousness, and liberation. Recent global academic work has made the idea of culturally responsive leadership even more complex. Brown et al. (2022), utilizing data from four European nations, illustrate that culturally responsive leadership necessitates the management of conflicts between national policy directives and local diversity contexts, thereby positioning leaders as facilitators of equity within intricate governance frameworks. A critical examination of the CRL literature contends that culturally responsive leadership ought to be regarded not merely as a compilation of practices, but as a transformative framework that interrogates power, privilege, and systemic inequities embedded within educational structures (Wang et al. 2022).

In studies, relational trust is identified as a fundamental element of CRL that helps develop inclusive settings and collective responsibility between leaders and educators, students and their families (Banwo et al. 2022). This is consistent with the literature that views CRL as more of symbolic rhetoric, but a system of relationships, which influences belonging and participation. Further studies indicate that CRL activities are in the realms of relational, curricular and institutional aspects. Additional research shows that CRL works across relational, curricular, and institutional areas. Leaders implement CRL by fostering trust, creating a protective environment, developing culturally relevant curricula, and promoting reciprocal family involvement (Gay 2000; Khalifa et al. 2016; Crawford and Hairston 2022). In the classroom, CRL changes how teachers expect students to behave and how they can participate. Culturally responsive settings have been shown to improve student agency and engagement (Anyichie et al. 2023), while using local knowledge systems and new ideas can help students learn about other cultures.

In refugee-serving contexts, leaders may also be required to negotiate institutional boundaries and respond to exclusionary frameworks (Koyama and Kasper 2021; Chadderton and Wischmann 2025). Collectively, this scholarship positions CRL as a mediating framework linking policy interpretation, relational trust, and classroom engagement. However, fewer studies have empirically examined how school personnel interpret policy and organizational pressures and how those interpretations are connected to reported leadership enactment within a single district setting.

This study fills that gap, CRL guided both the formulation of the research questions and the design of the interview and focus group prompts. Specifically, RQ1 focused on personnel perceptions of policies, programs, and practices shaping newcomer experiences, while RQ2 examined how participants perceived and reported enacting culturally responsive leadership through personal awareness, inclusive pedagogy, and leader professionalism.

2.2. Conceptual Perspectives

Culturally responsive practices can be applied by the leaders and other K–12 educators to enhance access to and opportunities of newcomer students. To clarify how broader policy and social conditions shape school practice, this study also draws on ecological systems theory (Bronfenbrenner 1979, Tudge et al. 2022) which helps conceptualize refugee integration as occurring within interacting and nested systems: microsystems (e.g., classrooms and peer relations), mesosystems (e.g., school-family partnerships), exosystems (e.g., district policies and immigration enforcement climates), and macrosystems (e.g., national migration regimes and racialized discourses). As noted earlier (Brown et al. 2022; Banwo et al. 2022; Wang et al. 2022), culturally responsive leadership works across these ecological layers by balancing policy needs, building trust between people, and making culturally sustaining pedagogies (Paris and Alim 2017) part of everyday life in institutions. Consequently, leadership is defined as a relational and structural practice performed across systems, rather than as an individual characteristic. In this study, ecological systems theory helps situate the multi-level conditions affecting newcomer integration, while CRL helps explain how school personnel interpret and respond to those conditions in practice.

In the context of working with immigrant-background populations, a CRL approach incorporates asset-based perspectives on emerging bilingualism (García et al. 2025; Ortiz et al. 2022), viewing multilingualism as a resource within students’ ecological contexts rather than as an individual challenge. When school leaders normalize and support asset-based linguistic ideologies, teachers may also shift what they expect from students in terms of participation, communication, and learning. The conceptual framework appreciates the importance of cooperation within and between sectors. Education of refugees cannot be done only by schools; rather, the integration requires the collaboration of community networks, social organizations, and local institutions (Bonney et al. 2021). Crawford and Hairston (2022) also mentions that establishing relationships within the community is crucial to equity-based leadership in the places that offer services to immigrants to seal the information gaps and establish trust.

Because refugee integration unfolds within contested political contexts shaped by immigration policy change, securitization, and racialized discourse, the framework directs attention to how leadership may either reproduce or mediate these pressures at the school level. Figure 1 therefore presents CRL as a set of relational, pedagogical, and professional practices through which school personnel respond to the conditions affecting EB newcomer students with refugee backgrounds. Figure 1 incorporates cultural responsiveness as the strategies and practices that a school leader and educators can implement when working with newcomers and refugees (Arar 2020; Horsford et al. 2011; Khalifa et al. 2016; Lopez 2016).

As shown in Figure 1, the analysis organizes CRL into three dimensions: (1) personal awareness, referring to leaders’ self-reflection, values, and moral stance toward marginalized students; (2) inclusive pedagogy, referring to supports for culturally and linguistically responsive teaching and schoolwide inclusion; and (3) leader professionalism, referring to advocacy, collaboration, and the organizational work of building equitable systems with internal and external partners. These three dimensions were used to interpret participants’ reported practices under RQ2.

3. Research Design, Methods and Context

3.1. Texas Policy Context and Programs for Emergent Bilinguals

Texas uses language assessment tests to determine Emergent Bilingual (EB) status (Texas Education Code 2021). One out of five students in the state is an emergent bilingual (EB; Texas Education Agency 2023c). More than 120 languages are present in the public schools. The majority are Spanish speakers, but Texas also has large populations of Vietnamese and Arabic speakers. In 2019, Texas House Bill 3 provided new funding sources for dual language programs and early education; however, it funded bilingual education at approximately 55 percent. Federal funding supplements district resources.

In 2023, the Emergent Bilingual Education Plan by the Texas Education Agency (TEA) highlighted three priorities: grow dual language programs, enhance the identification of EB students and increase the number of certified bilingual educators. In the 2024–2025 school year, TEA published statewide micro-credentials of bilingual/ESL educators, and updated Language Proficiency Assessment Committee (LPAC) guidance and a pilot process of an “EB Progress Monitoring Dashboard” in line with House Bill 1605 (2023) reforms. Texas requires teachers in dual language programs to be bilingual certified, but financial costs on teachers and the focus on testing have constrained recruitment and retention (Texas Education Agency 2023a).

The state has four approved bilingual education models that include: (1) dual language two-way, (2) dual language one-way, (3) transitional bilingual late exit, and (4) transitional bilingual early exit. LPAC comprises a campus administrator, a parent representative, and a bilingual teacher to decide whether a student is EB. Parents can agree to use or decline services. Two additional state-approved ESL programs exist. One is ESL content-based, and the other, ESL pull-out (Texas Education Agency 2023a). The most commonly used model in Texas is ESL pull-out (Texas Education Agency 2023c). These policy mechanisms (classification, placement, assessment, accountability, and program design) directly informed RQ1, which focuses on personnel perceptions of the policies, programs, and practices affecting EB newcomer students with refugee backgrounds.

3.2. Galveston Independent School District

Galveston Independent School District (GISD) is a district located in Galveston, off the Gulf of Mexico. The city of Galveston has experienced severe hurricanes within the past two decades, reducing its population. It has opportunities for immigrant and refugee-background families and students in Galveston through different industries establishing or increasing their operations. The community embraces education and provides students with practical experiences through provision of job sites. EB newcomer students, including those with refugee backgrounds, have their progress and well-being monitored in school regularly.

GISD was selected as the study site due to its high numbers of refugee and immigrant students. The selection criteria were as follows: the proportion of EB, including the refugee ones, in primary and secondary schools in GISD. GISD has a population of about 7041 students with 74 percent from low-income backgrounds. Nearly 22 percent attend bilingual/ESL programs. By 2025, the number of EB enrollments increased to 24 percent (GISD 2025). The labor force has been largely white, though this district prioritizes ESL certification. By 2025, 98 percent of teachers working in GISD achieved ESL certification (GISD 2025). These features made GISD an appropriate case through which to examine how policy and organizational conditions were interpreted and enacted in concrete district routines.

3.3. Newcomer Centers

The district has 12 campuses with two newcomer programs at the middle and high school levels. Due to the changing local demographics and the arrival of refugees, GISD created two newcomer programs to provide services to ELL and newcomer students. One targets the high school students between the grades 9–12 and the other targets the middle school students between the grades 5–8. The programs were meant to be transitional programs of study where language development was done rapidly through research-supported sheltered instruction, providing high-intensity listening, speaking, reading, and writing in English. The high school newcomer program also has certifications, like automobile mechanics and cosmetology classes and licensure programs. Medical laboratory certification programs are provided in collaboration with the University of Texas Medical Branch. The district also collaborates with Galveston Community College and the exposure of the careers of electronics, culinary and other associate degrees.

3.4. Research Context

This paper is a case study of the Galveston Independent School District (GISD). We used exploratory case study methodology (Yin 2018), appropriate for studies that seek to “retain a holistic and real-world context, especially when the boundaries between phenomenon and context may not be clearly evident,” and when the research involves a “complex social phenomenon” (p. 15). Previous research has examined the experiences of refugee newcomers in U.S. K–12 schools. Nonetheless, there exists a deficiency of research regarding the interpretation and implementation of culturally relevant pedagogy (CRL) by school personnel to assist EB students with refugee backgrounds, as well as how these personnel interpret the policies, programs, and practices that govern their educational processes. The unit of case study analysis comprises school personnel in one district.

For analytic clarity, we use “emergent bilingual (EB)” to denote language-service identification, “newcomer” to denote recent arrival or enrollment, and “refugee background” to denote trajectories of forced displacement that may or may not map neatly onto a single legal category. Our primary analytic population is EB newcomer students with refugee backgrounds. When participants used broader terms such as “immigrant,” “refugee,” “asylee,” or service labels such as EB, SPED, RTI, GT, or McKinney–Vento, we interpreted those references in context and only included them analytically when they were clearly relevant to the focal population. This clarification is important for the transparency of the evidentiary chain.

4. Ethics Approval and Informed Consent

This study involved human participants and was conducted in accordance with the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki (1975, revised 2013). Ethical approval was obtained from the Institutional Review Board (IRB) at Author 1 and 2’s institution. Informed consent was obtained from all participants involved in the study prior to participation. Participants were informed about the purpose of the study, procedures, voluntary participation, confidentiality measures, and their right to withdraw at any time without penalty.

4.1. Participants

Participants were purposive and convenience sampling. There were 19 people in the sample, including two principals, two assistant principals, three counselors, six teachers (including ESL and classroom teachers), and six district-level staff (e.g., bilingual/ESL coordination, multilingual education leadership, refugee family support, attendance liaison, professional development, and central office administration) (see

Table 1. Participants Demographics.

Pseudonym (Age)	Gender	Years of Experience	Role	Type of School/Department
Roberts (52)	M	19	Principal	High School
Hartley (46)	M	15	Assistant Principal	Primary School
Silvia (41)	F	16	Counselor	High School
Julia (44)	F	17	Principal	Primary School
Jessica (32)	F	11	District Bilingual/ESL Coordinator	District/Primary
Liza (51)	F	21	Homeroom & ESL Teacher	Primary School
Laila (38)	F	14	ESL Teacher	High School
Mandy (37)	F	12	ESL Teacher	High School
Toni (39)	F	13	ESL Teacher	High School
Brian (44)	M	17	Assistant Principal & ESL Teacher	High School
Marcela (36)	F	6	Refugee Family Support Coordinator	District
Paula (45)	F	15	Director of Multilingual Education	District
Maya (34)	F	10	Community and Attendance Liaison	District
Edward (5)	M	20	Central Office Administrator	District
Patrick (47)	M	18	Administrator	District
Tabitha (43)	F	16	Professional Development Lead	District
Niara (30)	F	8	ESL Teacher	Primary School
Carolina (33)	F	9	Classroom Teacher	Primary School
Ronald (46)	M	18	Former School Counselor; Faculty	Former K–12/Higher Ed

). All of the administrators and district-level leaders had graduate degrees (M.Ed. or higher), and four participants had doctoral degrees (Ed.D. or Ph.D.). All teachers had at least a bachelor’s degree and were certified by the state. Eleven had master’s degrees in education or a related field, and all of the ESL teachers were certified to teach ESL. We do not claim that this sample is representative of GISD personnel. Rather, the sample was designed to provide role-based variation relevant to the two research questions.

4.2. Data Collection

Data collection methods included one-on-one interviews and focus groups. There were two focus groups (n = 10 participants in total across both groups) and nine individual semi-structured interviews (n = 9), resulting in a total of 19 distinct participants. Participants were not repeated across formats. Short follow-up clarifications were used only to confirm factual details and were not analyzed as separate data sources.

Nine participants from different school and district roles (e.g., administrators, counselors, teachers, and multilingual education staff) participated in individual interviews. Two focus groups, each with five participants, were assembled to obtain cross-role discussion among personnel such as ESL teachers, a counselor, campus administration, and a classroom teacher. Interviews and focus groups were conducted using a semi-structured protocol. The protocol included eight main questions aligned to the two research questions (see

Table 2. Research questions and main interview questions.

Main Research Questions (MRQ)	Interview Question No.
MRQ1: What are the perceptions of K–12 school personnel about the policies, programs, and practices that shape the experiences of EB newcomer students with refugee backgrounds?	(1) How do district/state policies (e.g., LPAC, testing timelines, documentation requirements) shape the enrollment and placement of EB refugee newcomers? (2) How do accountability expectations influence decisions about assessment, placement, and course credit? (3) How do labeling and coding practices (EB, SPED, RTI, etc.) affect students’ experiences? (4) What district or school programs (e.g., welcome centers) most shape integration?
MRQ2: How do K–12 school personnel perceive and enact CRL to create inclusive schools for EB newcomer students with refugee backgrounds?	(5) What does culturally responsive leadership look like in your role? (6) Can you describe a time you mediated or adapted a policy to better support EB refugee newcomers? (7) How does professional learning and collaboration support inclusive practice? (8) How are refugee families and community partners engaged?

Note. Questions were used across individual interviews and focus groups. The two vignettes were used as standardized prompts prior to the protocol to elicit comparable reflections on enrollment/placement and family orientation scenarios; vignette responses were analyzed alongside interview/focus-group data.

). A doctoral research assistant facilitated the sessions. Respondents in the focus groups, were presented with two standardized vignettes (approximately one page each) to serve as discussion prompts. Vignettes were employed to (a) provoke analogous reflections among participants, and (b) reveal how personnel interpret policy requirements, categorization practices, and leadership responses in realistic contexts. Vignette 1 illustrated the mid-year enrollment of an English learner student with a refugee background and insufficient documentation; Vignette 2 portrayed a family orientation situation characterized by interpretation deficiencies and accountability deadlines (assessment and placement pressures). Before moving on to the interview protocol questions, participants responded to these situations. Responses to vignettes were examined in conjunction with interview transcripts as narrative data. Following the vignettes, the conversation transitioned to the guiding inquiries regarding the integration of refugees within both school and classroom settings. To strengthen methodological transparency, the vignettes were not treated as a separate instrument producing a separate analytic dataset. Rather, they functioned as standardized prompts embedded within the focus groups to elicit comparable reflections on policy, placement, and leadership practice.

4.3. Data Analysis

The interview transcripts were transcribed by a doctoral research assistant, and double-checked by the second author. Data analysis followed the four stages outlined by Marshall and Rossman (2012): organizing the data; generating categories, themes, and patterns; testing emergent themes; and searching for alternative explanations. Analysis proceeded in two phases. First, we used deductive coding aligned with the two main research questions and, for MRQ2, with the CRL dimensions of personal awareness, inclusive pedagogy, and leader professionalism. Second, we used inductive coding within and across these categories to identify emergent themes and subthemes. Analytic memos documented how coded segments related to MRQ1 (policies, programs, and practices shaping newcomer experiences) and MRQ2 (perceptions and reported enactment of CRL). We then developed thematic matrices linking representative excerpts to codes, categories, themes, the relevant research question, and, where applicable, the relevant CRL dimension. This process strengthened the transparency of the evidentiary chain from raw data to interpretation.

Coding was guided by the principles of comparative analysis (Strauss and Corbin 1998), involving continuous comparison across coded segments within emerging categories and subcategories. We strengthened credibility through method triangulation across individual interviews, focus groups, and standardized vignette prompts, and maintained an audit trail (analytic memos and codebook iterations) documenting links from raw excerpts to codes, categories, and themes. We also used peer debriefing among authors (including transcript verification and secondary review of coded themes) to check consistency and reduce interpretive bias (Marshall and Rossman 2012). Given the specific district context and purposive sample, the findings are not intended for statistical generalization. Rather, readers may consider their transferability to comparable educational settings.

5. Findings

Two questions guided this study, namely: (1) What are the perceptions of the K–12 school personnel about the policies, programs, and practices that shape the experiences of EB newcomer students with refugee backgrounds in a Texas school district? and (2) How do K–12 school personnel perceive and practice culturally responsive leadership to create inclusive schools serving EB newcomer students with refugee backgrounds? Findings are reported at the level of personnel perceptions and reported practices; we do not infer student outcomes beyond what participants described. Throughout the findings, when participants use broader terms such as “immigrant,” “newcomer,” “refugee,” or service labels such as EB, SPED, or RTI, we interpret those references carefully in relation to the focal analytic population of EB newcomer students with refugee backgrounds. Five broad themes emerged (See

Table 3. Central Themes and Subthemes the Study.

Themes	Subthemes/Categories
1. Challenges With Identifying Emergent Bilingual Newcomers	Reliance on legal and bureaucratic definitions (refugee vs. asylee)
	Accumulation of multiple labels (EB, SPED, RTI, GT, McKinney–Vento) Identity “flattening” through coded language (students discussed through acronyms instead of names) Over-identification and misidentification (e.g., SPED referrals triggered by trauma or language acquisition rather than disability)
2. Pressures to Quickly Assimilate and Test Refugee Students	Rapid enrollment and accelerated assessment timelines (within 30 days) State accountability demands and credit-accrual pressures Misalignment between test expectations and students’ linguistic & socio-emotional readiness Limited instructional differentiation beyond ESL pull-out (narrow assimilation-focused support)
3. Welcome Centers: Potential and Missed Opportunities	Academic, linguistic, and psychosocial stabilization functions Importance of first impressions and relational welcoming
	Academic, linguistic, and psychosocial stabilization functions Importance of first impressions and relational welcoming
4. Enacting Culturally Responsive Leadership Through Learning and Community-Building	Educator belief, cultural humility, and motivation as catalysts for change Professional development (PD) as a mechanism to shift mindsets and practices Cross-role collaboration (teachers, principals, counselors, liaisons, coordinators, EL specialists) Positioning “agents of change” to advocate, model practice, and support schoolwide transformation
5. Nurturing Community and Learning From Refugee Communities	Building belonging and community as foundational to learning Creating intentional dialogue with refugee families and community partners Decolonial/asset-oriented pedagogy: honoring diverse ways of knowing and interpreting experiences Listening to refugee voices and educating colleagues; advocacy against misconceptions

Note. Table presents central themes and subthemes generated through thematic analysis of interviews and focus groups with K–12 school personnel.

below).

5.1. Challenges with Identifying Emergent Bilingual Newcomers

Participants regularly characterized the centrality and the hassles of labeling students. Administrators and teachers not directly involved in classroom teaching would use the legal and bureaucratic categories to discuss youths from refugee backgrounds. Indicatively, Principal Roberts, framed the difference between refugees and asylees using legal categories with a significant focus on federal definitions and documentation requirements, saying:

A newcomer who is not only learning a new language but also is a refugee is someone who had to leave their home country, as they feared to be harmed in it and cannot retrieve it. By the U.S. legislation, an asylee is one who arrives at one of the entry points of the U.S. or is already living in the country and would be harmed should he or she be required to go.

The example of a participant’s dependence on legal terms prefigures federal definitions for what a refugee and an asylum seeker is; it carries the danger of reducing an educators’ focus to legal status. With a focus on legal definitions and categories, discussions about newcomers may become more about compliance and student placement than about their languages, histories, and assets. Students may not be viewed as adolescents with complicated identities and learning patterns but as immigration categories. Other participants expressed who work closely with immigrant students expressed similar concerns. Jessica, an elementary teacher and district bilingual/ESL coordinator, spoke about how students with refugee backgrounds often appeared in the system under myriad categories:

The same student would appear in our data systems as EB (emergent bilingual), SPED (special education), RTI (response to intervention), GT (gifted and talented) and McKinney Vento simultaneously. In our meetings, we sit down and people begin referring to them as the EB kid, or the SPED newcomer or that McKinney-Vento student rather than addressing them by their names.

She stressed that as much as these codes are intended to organize the services, they may flatten the students, saying, “It feels like we’re talking in acronyms more than we’re talking about who this child is, what languages they bring, and what they’re already good at.” Jessica emphasized that refugee students are just like any other student in life; their lives cannot be segmented into administrative terms.

A refugee family support coordinator, Marcela, also mentioned that labeling can spill into over-identification and misidentification of students, remarking,

There’s a pretty high number of refugee kids as well as immigrant kids who are basically placed in special education. Sometimes [students] needed the support; other times, it would happen because individuals would confuse or misidentify or over-identify students.

Leaders at the central office admitted they were under stress to see that coding and documentation were up to the state and federal expectations. Mabel, an assistant superintendent, recounted how she felt urgency at the district level,

From the central office standpoint… they wanted us to immediately see where you can place these students… ‘We need you to do a pre-assessment, a post-assessment. Where can you place them?’”

Equally, Paula, director of multilingual education, pointed out the bureaucracy of categorization: “We had to figure out… how do we categorize a kid? Or how do we code a kid? There is a specific definition… and we must make sure we have the proper documentation if we’re going to categorize a kiddo as a refugee or asylee.”

Jessica, Marcela, Mabel and Paula’s stories illustrate how labeling practices, which should be used to organize services, reproduce deficit views of refugees and emergent bilingual students. The findings suggest that labeling practices, when routinized and compliance-driven, may contribute to deficit-oriented interpretations, as evidenced in participants’ accounts of acronym-based identification and over-referral to services and programs that may not be appropriate for them. With the compiling of various codes (EB, Special Education (SPED), Response to Intervention (RTI), Gifted and Talented (GT)), teachers can occasionally start addressing learners by their tags, not by their identities, strengths, or life experiences. When routinized and compliance-driven, labeling practices may distort professional judgment and reinforce deficit interpretations. While participants described these dynamics as harmful, this study does not claim causal determination; rather, it documents how educators interpret and experience these classification routines within their local context.

It points to leaders’ focus on professional development learning that incorporates culturally and linguistically responsive identification processes, involves cross-disciplinary collaboration, and creating environments where newcomer students are not referred to by label, but as learners.

5.2. Pressures to Quickly Assimilate and Test Refugee Students

Participants also stressed they experienced a rush to integrate refugee newcomers into the school system and adjust them to Texas accountability demands. Several participants noted some form of systemic urgency: resettled refugee students were supposed to attend school within 30 days of their arrival in the U.S., and very soon after that, they would need to engage in standardized testing with their peers. Administrators remarked they had to move fast to meet accountability deadlines, and make sure that students started getting course credits. Mabel, the assistant superintendent, explained, “From the central office standpoint… they wanted us to immediately see where you can place these students… ‘We need you to do a pre-assessment, a post-assessment. Where can you place them?’” Others, like Paula (Director of Multilingual Education) and Maya (Community and Attendance Liaison) indicated a sense of urgency was imposed on them, but students required time to adapt. Paula explained the intensive bureaucratic pressure around classification, noting, “We had to do all the research… how do we categorize a kid? Or how do we code a kid?… We have to make sure that we have the proper documentation if we’re going to categorize a kiddo as a refugee or asylee.” Educators working with EB students especially felt the pressure to have refugee children quickly acculturated into the education system, but saw conflict between bureaucratic schedules and attending to the developmental, linguistic and socio-emotional needs of students. Marcela criticized the premature evaluation and inadequate knowledge of refugees’ lives as a source of rather dangerous errors leading to oversubscribed special education referrals. Marcela felt similarly, explaining, “There’s a pretty high number of refugee kids… who are basically placed in special education. Sometimes [students] needed the support; other times, it would happen because individuals would confuse or misidentify or over-identify students.”

Laila, an ESL teacher, was critical of the Texas academic testing system, pointing out system impediments for new EBs, and expectations they learn academic English instantly. Toni, an English teacher in high school, shared similar sentiments, perceiving that Texas testing policies presuppose newcomers’ immediate English proficiency. Participants talked of the importance of newcomer bilingual students having time to acquire a new language while maintaining their heritage language. The teachers felt that pressures to fast-track assimilating and testing refugee students to be a factor impeded culturally responsive instruction. Liza, another ESL teacher, highlighted that early testing demands for EBs and creates setbacks to high school graduation. Though Liza’s criticism resembles the participants such as Toni and the student participants who spoke about TELPAS and STAAR tests as overwhelming. Administrators, on the other hand, recommended instant evaluations to ascertain placement and commence course credits. Mabel reiterated, the pressure was to “immediately see where you can place these students… because they have to start receiving credit.” Jessica, district bilingual/ESL Coordinator, emphasized this administrative need for quick data collection: “I think a lot depends on the paperwork we receive when they’re enrolling.”

Participants reported pressure to enroll large numbers of refugee children as quickly as possible and to press them to graduate promptly which was often based on standardized tests and neglecting the special needs of refugee students. Pull-out sessions were the main method for language acquisition. Participants stressed the importance of providing time to learn new language to the newcomer bilingual students and at the same time appreciating the native languages of students. Teachers identified an absence of intentionally differentiated instruction designed for refugee EB students and felt hindered in using culturally responsive instruction by pressures to assimilate and test refugee students rapidly. Participants expressed a sense of conflict between systemic urgency and the developmental needs of students. Administrators felt pressured to meet accountability requirements of the state that demanded rapid evaluations and placements, which they perceived as inevitable bureaucratic burdens.

5.3. Welcome Centers: Potential Places for Inclusion and Missed Opportunities

Participants cited welcome centers as relevant, although unequal, institutions to orient EB refugee students and their families toward schooling in the United States. Teachers referred to such centers as possible academic stabilization, linguistic, and psychosocial help centers. Liza, a 13-year-old ESL primary teacher and the head of a homeroom, envisioned the welcome center being the place where the refugee students could start their learning process in a more scaffolded setting:

… some kind of welcoming center or school where all refugee kids can start… so they can fill in some of the gaps… and be there between a year or two years… Then they can go [to their area schools] with more confidence and they’re not so far behind.

From a district-level perspective, Edward, an administrator, underscored the value of a central orientation site: “[Our district] established a welcome center, where all refugees go for an orientation to the district and school life in the United States.” In his remarks, the welcome center was seen by the district as a systematic dedication to reception, steadiness, and coherence. Patrick, another administrator, extended this idea by emphasizing that even districts without dedicated centers could adopt similar practices by training school office staff, noting, “If you don’t have the benefit of having a welcome center… train your office staff to be that welcoming center. At every school, the office staff are so critical for that first impression.” These accounts reflect how participants perceived infrastructure as programmatic and relational. Initial impressions, either in a centralization hub or at a school reception desk, were regarded as having a decisive influence on how families could have an early, positive experience in U.S. schools.

Meanwhile, participants noted some missed opportunities. Some mentioned that welcome center orientations mainly targeted the immigrants generally as opposed to the refugee-specific issues. Silvia, a school counselor in the same building as the welcome center noticed that the orientations did not always provide specialized information and proper interpretation for families which had gone through forced displacement. She responded by creating her own orientation program at the resettlement office with interpreters:

I don’t know if you can ever give enough orientation for something like that. The school systems are intense, and there are so many rules and regulations you have to consider. So, it’s a pretty tall order to expect students to get it right away or for families to understand.

Silvia’s story highlights the structural and linguistic limitations of the current district orientation. It also illustrates the complexity of the U.S. school system and the inability to use one-size-fits-all solution. Smaller districts may be unable set up full-scale welcome centers. Hartley, the primary school assistant administrator, reiterated a need to train school-based staff to serve welcoming practices, implying that decentralized leadership and capacity-building of the school sites were the primary factors to make the refugee students receive more equal treatment. Hartley’s recommendation was consistent Patrick’s; that office staff in every school ought to be trained to execute the role of an opening center if there was no viable, dedicated option. This perception augurs a view of shared leadership and capacity-building at school locations in lieu of a district hub.

Participants identified and deliberate possibilities on how to make the K–12 education more responsive, better, and inclusive to students- and where and how to initiate this process, including repositioning educational goals. Mandy, a summer learning GISD instructor, explained,

During the summer sessions, we grapple with the purpose of educating refugees… Are we primarily teaching academic content, focusing on social and behavioral skills, or simply introducing them to the routines of the school environment, like how to sit and interact with others, regardless of their background? Our approach varies widely.

Toni, an ESL teacher, also questioned the exact goals of the refugee education. Ronald questioned the larger goals as well, remarking,

This goes down further than refugees to lead one to consider what the society is and what we are doing in it. It raises the question whether the society is something to be worked on, in which every person is a participant, or it is something to follow the norms, which are established: whether a person is a Texan, American, or Dutch citizen.

Together, participants viewed that welcome centers and other similar programs can become effective locations of academic, psychosocial, and civic preparation when strategically planned in terms of the refugee-specific outcomes. Where programming failed to differentiate needs, however, respondents believed that valuable chances to receive targeted support, trauma-oriented orientation, and valuable integration were lost. CRL includes the manner in which programs and welcome centers are run, their intended audience, how they respond to the unique experiences, and needs of refugee students.

5.4. Responding to Systemic Barriers: CRL and Professional Learning

The second research question concerned the perceptions and CRL practices of K–12 staff members in an attempt to establish inclusive schools to which emergent bilingual refugee students can belong. Participants stressed CRL is not only an ideological position but complex practices performed under the pressure of conflicting demands.

Interviewees’ accounts reflect a broader pattern across participants, who framed transitional “welcome” structures as critical for addressing learning gaps and supporting smoother integration into mainstream classrooms. This perspective underscores an understanding of welcome centers as spaces for academic stabilization, language development, and psychosocial support—mechanisms that may ease students’ transition into U.S. schooling. Value was placed on relational and cultural aspects of welcome centers Edward, a district administrator, noted the systemic importance of having a central orientation site: “[Our district] established a welcome center, where all refugees go for an orientation to the district and school life in the United States.”

The above statement highlights the perceived level of commitment to structured reception practices on the part of the district, an indication that a centralized welcome process has the potential to create consistency, a sense of clarity, and belonging along with the newcomer families.

Julia, a principal, outlined being the leader in supporting immigrant and refugee learners by placing them in dual language classrooms, introducing them to the culture of studying in the United States, and providing guidance and psychosocial support to them. She stressed the need for staff to be better informed so they could communicate more effectively with families and students, noting that “schools need to be better informed so they’re able to communicate to our families and… our students.” Her remarks indicated that the knowledge, access to language, and relational communication are the three key dimensions of culturally responsive leadership.

Participants also stressed that sustainable change that fosters more inclusive practice usually happens through passionate individuals and small groups of teachers, principals, or coordinators that are highly vested and risk-takers. However, teachers’ beliefs and motivation could act as impediments. Niara, a teacher, pondered how colleagues were usually limited by lack of familiarity and not lack of care: “Sometimes we blame teachers not caring about students… Some of them might be willing to learn, but because they’re not familiar with everything that is going on, they don’t even know how to help.” Maya, a community liaison, highlighted that change must be collective. Many teachers, she noted, “don’t even know who to ask to help these children,” revealing how institutional silos impede collaborative problem-solving.

The study respondents mentioned professional development (PD) as a fundamental tool to change of beliefs and practices repeatedly. Edward claimed that beliefs cannot just transform naturally in districts: “We can’t hold our breath until people’s beliefs change. So, you need agents of change to go out and initiate and put those thoughts in people.” Tabitha shared this sentiment, whereby she used the idea of the district leaders strategically involving the department heads, professional learning community (PLC) leads, and the influential teachers in making monumental changes that would be felt uncomfortable by others: “If we’re making a substantial change on a campus that may make people uncomfortable, we reach out to our department heads, PLC leads, and influential teachers, because they’ve undergone a change in their belief system and are fully committed.”

The possibilities and limits of PD efforts were demonstrated by Marcela, the Refugee Family Support Coordinator. Her team also had a strong cultural and linguistic background and was not trained professionally in pedagogy and teacher education:

Professional development emerged as a critical component of the work, particularly given that staff were not initially prepared for educational roles. Participants noted that many did not have formal backgrounds in education, as their primary responsibilities centered on providing support services, interpretation, and translation. However, through collaboration with English Learner specialist teachers, they were able to develop and deliver professional development initiatives.

Her story showed the importance of cross-role collaboration, in which refugee support staff and instructional specialists collaborated to create PD that leveraged on each other.

Overall, these descriptions indicate that CRL in the district entailed (a) identifying and labeling systemic obstacles, (b) instilling the faith in student potential and teacher ability to learn, (c) developing the mechanisms of collaborative PD, and (d) placing the so-called agents of change in the position of models and advocates of new behavior. The participants conceptualized culturally responsive work as continuous, relational and collective, which demanded the participation of courage, humility and institutionalization.

5.5. Nurturing Community and Learning from Refugee Communities

Throughout the findings, the participants highlighted that fair education of EB students of refugee background demands community nurturance at school and prioritize refugee voices. Brian observed that the educational system often prioritizes academic metrics at the expense of community-building, noting that pressures around grades and test scores can overshadow “efforts at integration, at becoming a part of the greater school community.” He proposed belonging, not achievement, as a foundation. Ronald argued that, “a feeling of belonging is at the root of an emancipatory framework for refugee education,” underscoring the idea that community-building must be ongoing rather than a one-time event. He suggested establishing more deliberate points of interaction between support organizations, nonrefugee parents, refugees, and local communities.

During a discussion, Brian asked, “Do we truly aspire to be a melting pot, or do we want to honor and preserve the cultural practices that each individual brings?” Toni was keen on ensuring that the needs of everyone are met in a culturally sustainable way, pushing towards the preservation of cultures. Similarly, Carolina, a classroom teacher, explained the difficulty of not reproducing colonial narratives in curriculum and pedagogy. She urged colleagues to “acknowledge that everyone interprets actions and words differently… [and that] those interpretations should be valued and embraced in classrooms as enriching learning experiences.” In her remarks, she emphasizes decolonial, asset-based methods where the cultural knowledge of refugee students is central to classroom instruction. However, Brian questioned the efficiency of top-down policies that require teachers to be culturally proficiency could further strain teachers already loaded with responsibilities.

Some participants emphasized that teachers and educators should be out there to listen to refugees and their families and then apply whatever they learn to enlighten their colleagues and break the stereotypes. Toni also looked back to herself and stated that she did not start learning about refugee education until she entered a graduate program and started maintaining dialogue with others. She found it “quite surprising” how little discourse existed around refugee students in everyday school conversations. Liza similarly questioned how systematically schools facilitated communication between parent/family liaisons and classroom teachers so that educators could “understand what’s going on” with families and respond appropriately. Ronald’s experiences as a former school counselor, however, said that his job allowed him to see virtually every student in the school on a fairly regular basis, giving him a wide perspective on the academic, emotional, and social difficulties faced by the refugee students. He and others hypothesized that counselors and liaisons have a privileged perspective that may educate everybody in the school–assuming that there are mechanisms in place to disseminate that knowledge.

Carolina explained her work as going beyond merely disproving the myths about refugees and instead doing proactive advocacy. She spoke of “consistently [advocating] for understanding the significance of accepting individuals who are forcibly displaced,” and educating others about why it is morally right for the US to continue accepting refugees and how communities benefit. Mandy, an ESL teacher, similarly expressed a desire “to see teachers exhibit more empathy and gain an understanding of the backgrounds from which children come.” However, everyone was convinced they were well prepared to inform others about refugees’ experiences. Some participants, especially those not teaching in the classroom, also stressed the importance of teaching the teachers the impact of forced displacement on the families and how such experiences influence student behavior and involvement in school. Marcela recognized the constraints of the initial capacity of her team to offer such professional learning:

Professional development became essential despite staff lacking formal educational backgrounds. Initially focused on support, interpretation, and translation, they partnered with English Learner specialists to co-develop and deliver training.

Marcela’s story represents one of the main systemic contradictions: refugee assistance staff usually possesses a great cultural and linguistic background but have no formal pedagogical education, making cross-role cooperation the only way to achieve professional growth.

One implication from participants’ views is that learning together in the context of refugee communities should be intentional and sustained, an essential aspect of culturally responsive leadership. Teachers like Toni and Mandy demonstrated that empathy and understanding develop when a teacher engages actively in intentional dialogue with refugee families, and when experiences are centered in professional learning. Individuals like Ronald and Marcela showed that closeness to refugee students provides worthwhile information, but all entire staff may not benefit. In closing, participants emphasized that belonging and sustained dialogue with refugee communities are foundational to culturally responsive leadership. However, without intentional structures for cross-role learning and family engagement, advocacy remains individualized rather than systemic.

6. Discussion and Implications

Supporting EB newcomer students with refugee backgrounds requires educational systems that move beyond compliance-centered procedures and attend to the relational, cultural, linguistic, and socio-emotional conditions shaping students’ lives. The findings revealed several interconnected dynamics: institutional labeling and categorization practices, pressures for rapid assimilation and testing, uneven welcoming structures, and efforts to respond through culturally responsive learning, collaboration, and community-building. Together, these dynamics suggest that state accountability routines can coexist with practices that leave insufficient time and flexibility to fully recognize the realities of students whose lives have been shaped by displacement, trauma, interrupted schooling, and multilingualism. This resonates with international studies that document how systems claiming inclusion may reproduce colonial and racialized structures (Arar and Örücü 2024; Arar et al. 2025c; Aleghfeli et al. 2025; Kasper et al. 2025; Koyama 2025; Koyama and Turan 2024). Importantly, our claims are limited to how personnel in this district perceived and described these tensions; we do not claim causal effects on students, nor do we suggest that all district actors interpreted these systems in identical ways.

6.1. Rethinking Labeling, Classification and the Construction of Student Identity

The findings showed a tendency to classify refugee origin students in stacked categories (e.g., “SPED”, “RTI”, etc.). Participants mentioned how these codes—initially to manage services— came to overshadow students’ strengths, identities and experiences. Consistent with existing literature (Kanno et al. 2024), the results imply that labeling activities can strengthen deficit-based views. Dependency on legal or bureaucratic categories, like the idea of a “refugee”, “asylum seeker”, or “newcomer”, also makes the ways of educators to interpret the needs of students narrower, prioritizing the adherence and paperwork over comprehensive learning paths (Guo-Brennan and Guo-Brennan 2019; Ishimaru 2020). This trend echoes Koyama’s (2024, 2025) argument that schooling and policy spaces create and place refugees as specific kinds of subjects.

There was some concern over misidentification and over-identification particularly into Special Education that resonated with national studies on the problems that educators were experiencing in decoding the behaviors of refugee students without the use of a trauma-informed or culturally responsive approach (Okilwa et al. 2021). Stacked labels are not only neutral bureaucratic processes; they are components of larger racialized and colonialization ones that categorize and control refugee-background youth (Chadderton and Wischmann 2025; Kasper et al. 2025; Koyama and Turan 2024). CRL must question the routinized classification procedures and find ways to shift the educators towards asset-oriented perceptions of students.

6.2. Navigating Systemic Pressures: Assimilation, Testing, and Misaligned Accountability

Participants reported strong institutional pressures to quickly assimilate refugee students and place them in coursework and evaluate them based on Texas accountability schedules, contradicting the linguistic development and socio-emotional needs of students. According to teachers, the expectations of standardized testing overlooked the complicated pressure borne by newcomers of refugees, which was corroborated by Texas-based research that recorded the unfair influence of high-stakes assessments on the emerging bilinguals (Palmer et al. 2014). Our results are also consistent with literature critiquing the “cruel optimism” of schooling in the US, whereby schooling is deemed a route to social mobility despite how systems of high-stakes accountability, strictly paced guides and supports offered by language make these promises hard to achieve, including for refugees (Koyama 2025).

Administrators also conveyed a sense of urgency to label students fast and get them into the system to gain course credits, but educators and counselors emphasized the negative aspects of rushing to place students without the benefits of orientation, trust building, or language acquisition. This discrepancy in the bureaucratic schedule and the developmental preparedness indicates a larger national conflict between the state accountability incentives and the educational demands of students with broken or brief formal educational experiences (Dryden-Peterson 2016a). Similar tensions are evident in international contexts when policies and legislative frameworks call on the speed of labor markets and national curricula without paying enough attention to refugees’ needs (Aleghfeli et al. 2025; Kasper et al. 2025). These patterns highlight the risks of assimilationist tactics, both in Texas and European systems, to recreate colonial relationships where the refugee population has to rush to adapt to the status quo (Chadderton and Wischmann 2025; Koyama and Turan 2024).

Study results indicate that slower and more holistic and responsive processes of assessment in consideration of the lived realities of students are needed, which is in line with culturally responsive literature in leadership that requires policy mediation, directed flexibility, and decision-making grounded in context (DeMatthews 2018; Khalifa et al. 2019). This can make refugee studies based on compliance-based logic shift to practices guided by safety, belonging, and meaningful participation instead.

6.3. Culturally Responsive Leadership as Relational, Communal, and Transformative

Teachers at different locations clarified that successful refugee education is based on inclusive school communities, which are founded on a sense of belonging, relational trust, and cross-cultural understanding. Participants repeated that integration cannot be taught in schools; it requires long-term and conscious efforts of community building which recognizes the languages, histories, and identities of students. CRL frameworks insist leaders act as bridge builders among schools, families, and communities (Horsford et al. 2011; Khalifa et al. 2016). Leaders must discern how education processes are bound up in colonial pasts and contemporary border practices rather than finding possibilities of solidarity and change within them (Kasper et al. 2025; Koyama and Turan 2024).

The participants also supported PD that aims at equipping teachers to meet the challenges of forced displacement, trauma, multilingualism, and cultural diversity. Refugee support coordinators noted that along with cultural and linguistic proficiency they came with a lack of pedagogical training, their work requires cross-role interactions and systems that facilitate staff-wide learning. These results are consistent with the studies suggesting that culturally responsive practice demands ideological dedication and building of professional capacity (Gay 2000; Paris and Alim 2017). Research in the Turkish context illustrates how knowledge, skills and dispositions can be used to prepare teachers and ongoing learning process in more organized and contextually relevant ways (Çelik et al. 2025).

Welcome centers were identified as crucial emergent locations of relational connection, even though participants found that, to a significant extent, the existing models presume a one-size-fits-all approach targeted at the immigrants generally and not refugees specifically. This is reminiscent of Arar and Örücü (2024), who conclude that schools in general have generic programs incapable of addressing the distinct traumas, legal environments, and educational backgrounds of youth with refugee backgrounds (Casellas Connors et al. 2025).

7. Conclusions

The results of the study affirm the fact that the EB refugee students need bold, equity-based leadership capable of shaking institutional inertia and harmonizing the schooling practices with the real world of students. In addition, participants recognize the necessity for equity-focused leadership to harmonize educational methods with the actual experiences and strengths of EB refugee immigrants. Labeling procedures may also perpetuate negative interpretations unless they are backed up by identification processes that are sensitive to culture and language. There needs to be a new balance between accountability requirements focused on speed and compliance and those based on student developmental preparedness, trust, and a sense of belonging. Structured professional learning that focuses on the experiences of refugees seems to be a good way to help teachers respond in a more humane and effective way. It is important to be careful when interpreting these results. Participants characterized CRL as a means of alleviating pressures related to accountability, labeling, and rapid assimilation; however, this study does not provide causal evidence that CRL modifies or mitigates structural constraints imposed by state accountability frameworks or standardized testing systems. Instead, the research shows how teachers see and try to deal with these limits in their own setting. The findings are also context-bound. This district had relatively high rates of ESL certification, institutional support structures, and formalized newcomer programming. Districts with fewer certified personnel, more limited bilingual programming, or weaker community partnerships may face different organizational realities. Future research should therefore examine CRL across diverse state policy environments, district resource conditions, and political climates, ideally through comparative and longitudinal designs that can better illuminate how leadership practices interact with structural pressures over time.