Andrew Harnik/AP/File

Demonstrators protest against the White House travel ban in April as the Supreme Court heard arguments about whether the ban on travelers from seven mostly Muslim countries and North Korea violates immigration law or the Constitution. On Tuesday, the justices ruled 5-to-4 to uphold the ban.

In one of its most significant decisions of the year, the United States Supreme Court today upheld President Trump’s travel ban executive order, ending litigation that has spanned almost the entire Trump presidency and three versions of the executive order itself.

In a 5-to-4 vote along ideological lines, the high court reversed a lower court injunction blocking the order’s implementation, finding that the order both fell within the broad powers delegated to the presidency in immigration and national security matters and did not violate the Constitution’s prohibition on the establishment of a single religion. The travel ban has been widely criticized since it was first implemented, a week after Mr. Trump took office, as being an effort to legally implement his campaign promise of “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.”

In a fiery dissent read from the bench this morning, Justice Sonia Sotomayor accused the majority of hypocrisy in how it defended the Constitution’s religion clauses and equated the court’s decision with its infamous Korematsu decision in 1944 declaring the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II constitutional – a decision the majority justices Tuesday took the historic step of expressly rejecting in their decision. Another dissent by Justice Stephen Breyer encouraged lower courts to examine how the Trump administration applies the executive order moving forward – in particular the case-by-case exemptions the order allows for – features that could lead to more litigation.

Ultimately, however, amid the maelstrom of litigation and controversial statements made by Trump and members of his administration on the motivations behind the executive order, the Supreme Court elected to defer to the significant authority given to presidents on immigration and national security issues.

“The presidency is an institution that is due certain respect and deference, which the court afforded it,” says Josh Blackman, an associate professor at the South Texas College of Law in Houston.

“The court acknowledged that President Trump and candidate Trump said some pretty awful things about Muslims,” he adds. “But [it] said on balance, the president’s prerogatives in national security are so significant, that the court can’t disregard his justifications for the travel ban.”

Law that ‘exudes deference’

The Trump administration implemented the first version of the travel ban in the first month of his presidency. Even as the legal justifications for the travel ban executive order have been steadily refined with each version – the order just upheld by the high court, in particular, is based on a months-long global review by federal agencies of different countries’ immigrant vetting processes and information sharing – each version has been grounded in a specific section of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). The section in question says the president can suspend the entry of any class of immigrants whenever it “would be detrimental to the national interest.”

That section, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion, “exudes deference to the President in every clause.”

Calling the state of Hawaii’s (the plaintiffs in the case) interpretation of the president’s authority under the INA “cramped,” he added that “no Congress that wanted to confer on the President only a residual authority to address emergency situations would ever use language of the sort” in the law.

The Trump administration also provided a more detailed reasoning for its executive order than previous administrations have, Chief Justice Roberts added. While President Bill Clinton’s executive order suspending the entry of individuals from Sudan was only one sentence, and President Ronald Reagan’s executive order suspending the entry of immigrants from Cuba was five sentences, the third travel ban executive order, running 12 pages, “thoroughly describes the process, agency evaluations, and recommendations underlying the president’s chosen restrictions.”

The efforts the administration took with its global review was of particular significance, according to Clete Samson, a former prosecutor at the Department of Homeland Security’s special immigration court.

“This comes down to what the data showed, what the efforts the administration undertook to examine the vetting procedures of all countries showed,” he says. “I don’t think it’s really that shocking.”

Muslims in the US, however, said Tuesday’s decision reinforced a message that they weren't “real” Americans.

After the travel ban was implemented, “each day … it felt like I was being sent a message [that] people like me were no longer welcome here,” Mohamad Mashta, a permanent resident of the US and a plaintiff in an earlier travel ban lawsuit, said on a conference call organized by the American Civil Liberties Union.

His Syrian wife was barred from entering the country during the first travel ban. After courts blocked that version, she was able to obtain a visa, but today, he says, “this decision made us feel like we are second-class people.”

Avenues for more litigation?

Roberts noted in the majority opinion three other features of the travel ban that “support the Government’s claim of a legitimate security interest”: the fact that Iraq, Sudan, and Chad (all Muslim-majority countries) had been removed from the order; that the order includes “significant exceptions” for certain categories of foreign nationals; and that the order creates a waiver program through which immigrants can be granted exemptions from the order.

But if any part of the travel ban could still be vulnerable to future litigation, it’s those sections.

“If the administration isn’t careful and it doesn’t honestly apply those waivers and exceptions, then it's going to perhaps lend itself to another challenge down the road,” says Mr. Samson, now an attorney with the Nebraska-based law firm Kutak Rock.

Justice Breyer’s seven-page dissent, joined by Justice Elena Kagan, suggested that could already be the case, and urged lower courts to investigate.

“If the Government is not applying the Proclamation’s exemption and waiver system, the claim that the [order] is a ‘Muslim ban,’ rather than a ‘security-based’ ban, becomes much stronger,” he wrote. “Unfortunately there is evidence … that the Government is not applying the [order] as written.”

He noted that in the order’s first month only two waivers were approved out of 6,555 eligible applications, according to a State Department report, and that only 258 student visas – another exempted class – had been granted to students from banned countries in the first quarter of 2018, “less than a quarter of the volume needed to be on track for 2016 student visa levels.”

Breyer cited a few specific cases as well:

• A Yemeni girl with cerebral palsy was denied a waiver but, after her case was included in an amicus brief presented to the high court as part of the case, was subsequently approved.
• A report from the US Embassy in Djibouti stating that officials were instructed to grant waivers “only in rare cases of imminent danger.”
• A sworn affidavit filed by a consular official in a separate case asserting that he and other consular officials “were not allowed to exercise that discretion” and grant waivers, and that the waiver process is “window dressing.”

“While this is but a piece of the picture, it does not provide grounds for confidence,” Breyer wrote. “The Court’s decision today leaves the District Court free to explore these issues.”

High court hypocrisy?

While Justice Breyer’s dissent addressed possible avenues for future litigation, Justice Sotomayor’s dissent tackled the majority’s arguments head-on.

Joined by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, she began by writing that the Supreme Court had failed with its decision “to safeguard that fundamental principle” of religious neutrality enshrined in the Establishment Clause.

Listing more than a half-dozen examples of outside statements made by Trump or members of his administration, both before and after his election, displaying anti-Muslim bias behind the order, Sotomayor accused the majority of not only using a “highly abridged account” of those outside statements, but of also being hypocritical in how they used those statements to resolve the question of whether the travel ban violated the Establishment Clause.

“The Court recently found less pervasive official expressions of hostility and the failure to disavow them to be constitutionally significant,” she wrote, referring to the justices’ decision three weeks ago that a Colorado court had displayed impermissible religious animus towards a cake-shop owner who had refused to make a wedding cake for a gay couple.

“The court’s tolerance of anti-religious sentiment as the impetus for the travel ban is utterly inconsistent with its ruling in the Masterpiece Cake Shop case,” writes Avidan Y. Cover, director of the Institute for Global Security Law & Policy at Case Western Reserve University School of Law, in an email. “Ignoring the government’s disfavoring of Muslims is hard to square with the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause – it’s an unpardonable sin.”

An important difference can be found in the status of person making those “official expressions of hostility” however, according to Professor Blackman.

“The key factor in that case was that some obscure Colorado bureaucrat showed animus toward religion,” he says. “Here, this is the president of the United States, and this is such an important institution that there’s deference showed to the president that would not be due to a random person in the Colorado government.”

The majority went even further in its favorable treatment of the Trump administration, applying only “rational basis scrutiny” to the Establishment Clause question, the most lenient form of judicial review a court can exercise.

“The court’s opinion reflects a near-slavish deference to the President in the national security-immigration sphere,” writes Mr. Cover. “It’s unclear what limiting principle the court would employ to ever cabin the president’s actions in this sphere. The court has previously held that a state of war is not a blank check for the executive, but in tolerating outright religious bigotry as the basis for the travel ban, the court permits the national security trope to operate as an endless line of credit for the president.”

A historic rejection

Addressing Sotomayor's statement that today’s travel ban decision had “stark parallels” to the high court’s infamous Korematsu decision, Roberts responded directly to the dissent.

Writing that Korematsu “has nothing to do with this case,” he then went on to make the historic pronouncement that the 1944 decision “was gravely wrong the day it was decided, has been overruled in the court of history, and – to be clear – ‘has no place in law under the Constitution.’ ”

For Sotomayor, the Supreme Court’s refusal to encroach on the presidency’s immigration and national security made Korematsu highly relevant to the travel ban decision.

While “this formal repudiation of a shameful precedent is laudable and long overdue,” she wrote, “it does not make the majority’s decision here acceptable or right.”

“By blindly accepting the Government’s misguided invitation to sanction a discriminatory policy,” she added, “the Court redeploys the same dangerous logic underlying Korematsu and merely replaces one ‘gravely wrong’ decision with another.”

“Our Constitution demands, and our country deserves, a Judiciary willing to hold the coordinate branches to account when they defy our most sacred legal commitments,” she continued.

Staff writer Peter Grier contributed to this report.

Around the world, the number of refugees and internally displaced people continues to rise – now estimated at more than 68 million people, with more than a third of them refugees forced by conflict across international borders.

In response, the United Nations’ member states are negotiating a new pact on migration that aims to improve the world’s response to the mounting crisis.

All of the UN’s 193 members, that is, save one: the United States.

The US under President Trump is sitting out the talks on an area of international policy where it long took the helm: It set an example as the largest resettler of refugees and largest donor of funds to meet the needs of the displaced, and as the world’s most powerful country it cajoled others to follow its lead and adopt its humanitarian values.

The Trump administration announced in December that concerns over potential infringements on national sovereignty and border security compelled it to pull out of the negotiations, which are set to deliver a new Global Compact for Migration by the end of the year.

The compact – like the Paris climate accord that the US under Mr. Trump withdrew from last year – includes no mandatory measures but seeks to offer guidelines and principles for orderly and safe migration and humane resettlement of refugees.

But now the US withdrawal from the global migration talks – especially in the wake of the 2017 numbers released for World Refugee Day last week showing a worsening crisis – is raising new concerns about the impact of the US turn on migration issues.

Are other countries stepping up to fill the void left by the US, or are countries taking a cue from Trump’s America and stepping back from the world’s refugees and displaced?

International migration experts say they’re seeing some of both – in a country like Canada welcoming more refugees than in past years, for example, or on the other hand, in a country like Hungary matching Trump’s anti-immigrant posture and imposing harsh new anti-migrant measures.

“If you looked at the world’s response to the migration crisis through the lens of the United States’ actions and policy prescriptions, you’d get a pretty distorted view of the broader context and mobilization,” says Craig Mokhiber, director of the New York office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

As chair of the migration task force within the compact negotiations, Mr. Mokhiber says he’s seeing not just countries but nongovernmental refugee organizations, faith-based groups, the private sector, and municipalities come together to hammer out an accord.

“So the US,” he says, “is very much an outlier.” But then he adds a caveat:

“On the other hand, it’s true that a few countries have rejected international law and humanitarian norms since the crisis began,” he says. “And that’s where the US response to all of this becomes very worrying,” he adds, “because when a very powerful country and traditional leader bows in any way to disrespecting human rights, others can be tempted to say, ‘We can follow this powerful leader’s example and do the same.’ ”

'The world does feel very different'

Others, too, say they see both trends happening. But they worry that the sheer weight and influence of the US in an international issue like refugee resettlement and migration policy could have a dire impact over time.

“It is difficult to overestimate the impact that the rhetoric and policies of the Trump administration are having on so many levels around the world on efforts of international organizations and humanitarians to address the challenges of this ongoing crisis,” says Eric Schwartz, president of Refugees International in Washington.

The crisis of migration and rising numbers of refugees is not that different from just two years ago, Mr. Schwartz says, when all UN members (including the US) signed a “New York Declaration” on migration launching the current “compact” negotiations. At the time, then-President Barack Obama assembled world leaders to unveil a US pledge to resettle more refugees (110,000 in 2017) and to implore others to follow the American example.

Most of the world’s refugees come from the same countries in conflict as a few years ago, with Syria, Afghanistan, South Sudan, Myanmar, and Somalia accounting for about two-thirds of refugees in 2017.

Pepe Marin/Reuters

Spanish rescue members carry babies, part of a group intercepted aboard dinghies off the coast in the Mediterranean Sea, upon arrival at the port of Motril, southern Spain, June 26, 2018.

“But the world does feel very different – and to my mind that is attributable almost exclusively to the rhetoric and policies coming out of Washington,” says Schwartz, a former assistant secretary of State for population, refugees, and migration. “American leadership has always been a powerful catalyst on all these issues,” he adds, “and now it’s not there.”

There are also signs that the “different feel” extends to publics, including in the US. Polls show a majority of Americans still support receiving refugees and immigration generally, but in falling numbers. And in Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel has seen her support wither as she has championed immigrant assimilation in the wake of the large refugee influx of recent years.

If anything, Schwartz says the Trump administration’s rhetoric and actions – from the Muslim travel ban that the Supreme Court upheld Tuesday and a steep reduction in the number of refugees to be resettled in the US to presidential warnings of an “infestation” of immigrants – are enabling the world’s worst actors, from Hungary to Myanmar.

“Can you imagine a George W. Bush being complicit in the nationalist, antidemocratic, and anti-migrant rhetoric coming out of Europe right now?” Schwartz says.

Conservative discord

Even some quarters generally supportive of the Trump administration and its initiatives are balking at the tough stand on refugees. The Heritage Foundation in Washington last year issued a paper calling for a strengthening of the US refugee admissions program, even as the Trump administration was drastically reducing resettlements.

“We are certainly concerned about security, and we understand the need for thorough vetting [of refugee resettlement applicants], but we also believe there is a clear US national security interest to continue to resettle refugees,” says Olivia Enos, a specialist in migration and human rights issues at Heritage and one of the authors of last year’s report.

The slow pace of resettlement that could result in fewer than 20,000 refugees gaining approval to enter the US this year is an “area of disappointment,” says Ms. Enos. The average intake of refugees in previous years – falling generally between 40,000 and 60,000 – made the US the global leader on refugee issues and allowed it to “promote our core values, including assisting the world’s most threatened and neediest,” she says.

Noting that the Heritage team has taken its report and its concerns over the refugee program to the White House national security staff and to some congressional offices, Enos says, “We’re hopeful that with some reform and strengthening of the program, the administration can in coming years get closer to the more typical numbers for refugee resettlement.”

SOURCE:

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

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Jacob Turcotte/Staff

Whether or not that happens, other experts say the key to addressing the rising rejectionist mood toward refugees and migrants globally will be vigorous campaigns to debunk the many myths that have taken root concerning refugees – from the dangers they pose to the jobs they take and the public resources they drain.

“What we’re up against are these proliferating distortions and propaganda around immigrants, so to counter that we are advocating a global effort based on the two pillars of evidence and values and built on the framework of international law that we’ve been building since World War II,” says the UN’s Mokhiber.

The “myths” include the terrorism risks and economic hardships that refugees pose, he says, “when we know from data that all of this is misinformation and false.” No refugee in the US has committed a deadly terrorist act at least since the 9/11 attacks, which did not involve refugees.

Refugees International’s Schwartz says his organization and others in the migrant advocacy community are anxious to work with the Trump administration “whenever we can.” He cites Trump’s supportive comments for the government of Bangladesh’s resource-stretching accommodation of more than 600,000 Rohingya refugees, and says, “We’re going to encourage this president and work with him when the opportunity arises.”

Canada provides a model

But in the absence of traditional US leadership on the migrant issue, Schwartz and others say that other countries and organizations are stepping up.

Heritage’s Enos says Canada is providing a model for the US and others ­– not just by accepting more refugees, but through a resettlement program that encourages private-sector and even individual-citizen sponsorship of refugees and emphasizes the role of assimilation in successful resettlement.

Around the world and in the US in particular, Mokhiber says, one salutary effect of the US leadership retreat has been a “massive mobilization” of other actors, from migrant advocacy organizations and faith-based groups, to local governments and mayors and large and small businesses.

One example: the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, an association of Catholic sisters that lamented the Trump administration’s “misguided” decision to pull out of the refugees and migrants compact negotiations. In response, it has redoubled its longtime advocacy of immigrant and refugee communities.

“All of these groups and individuals have stepped forward to pick up the slack where national governments have come up short,” Mokhiber says. “The challenge they face is that in a growing number of places they are in a struggle for the soul of public policy.”

Jonathan Rosero knows who’s got his vote in Maryland’s Democratic primary for governor.

Still, he’s excited that the top two contenders for the nomination are black.

“It would be making history that we might have an African-American governor,” says Mr. Rosero, a local veterinarian, as he waited for Ben Jealous to make an appearance at a get-out-the-vote event in Langley Park last week. “It doesn’t hurt to have those kinds of choices.”

Mr. Jealous, a former NAACP president, and Prince George’s County executive Rushern Baker emerged in a June 10 poll as frontrunners in the state’s crowded Democratic primary field.

Their showdown Tuesday comes on the heels of Stacey Abrams’s momentous nomination last month as the first black female gubernatorial candidate in Georgia. And it follows a series of historic wins by minority candidates in 2017, including African-American lieutenant governors in Virginia and New Jersey. Many of these wins were propelled by a strong turnout among black voters.

Together, political analysts say, they signal what could be a shift in the Democratic Party’s strategy as the nation’s electorate grows increasingly diverse: Instead of prioritizing white swing voters, who wound up electing President Trump in 2016, why not focus more on energizing black voters, like those who twice handed Barack Obama the White House? 

“There will be some point when the gains of appealing to minority voters – either by making appeals to them directly in a more effective way or by nominating or supporting a candidate they identify with – start to outweigh the losses or potential losses of white voters,” says Matt Mongiello, a political scientist at McDaniel College in Westminster, Md. “[Democrats are] trying to figure out if this is that moment.”

Governorships are especially key if Democrats want to gain more influence at the state level. Republicans currently hold 33 governor’s mansions and 56 percent of all state legislative seats. A win for Jealous, Mr. Baker, or Ms. Abrams in the fall would not only flip their states at the gubernatorial level, they say; it would also help prove to black voters that the party is invested in building coalitions that include leaders who look like them.

“Nobody is saying that [governors] should always be African American,” says Andra Gillespie, who teaches political science at Emory University in Atlanta. “But … when this only happens once in a blue moon, it does raise larger questions about whether or not blacks, when they’re running for office, are taken seriously as leaders, especially in states where Democrats routinely hold power.”

Running for statewide office is challenging for any candidate. Local officials need only appeal to a city or county, and even members of the US House of Representatives have only to worry about their district. A governor – or a senator – has to speak to the concerns of an entire state and all its diversity.

For black candidates, that challenge is compounded by electoral makeup. Most states are still majority white and none is majority black. “From a purely numbers standpoint, you can’t get voted into office just on the black vote,” Professor Gillespie says. Even in a state that’s, say, 30 percent African-American, a black candidate will have to put together a non-black coalition that’s willing to support him or her, she says. That’s a challenge in Deep South states, where African-Americans make up a significant part of the electorate, but where Republicans outnumber Democrats.

Even blue states have struggled to place black candidates in statewide office. Voters have only ever elected 10 black US senators and two black governors – Doug Wilder (D) of Virginia, who served from 1990 to 1994, and Deval Patrick (D) of Massachusetts, in office from 2007 to 2015.

Bias a major hurdle

Analysts say bias, both real and perceived, is a major hurdle. Some voters simply don’t want to vote for a candidate because of their race or gender. More often, however, people will decide not to support a minority candidate because they think that person’s chances of winning are slimmer, Professor Mongiello says. Voters may think: “ ‘I don’t want to waste my vote or money on a candidate of color in a state where people are not going to accept that,’ ” he says. “That [attitude] adds up.”

The result is a self-fulfilling prophecy: When voters hesitate to cast a ballot for a candidate because he or she seems less likely to win, it decreases the candidate’s actual chances of winning. And candidates, especially those already holding elected positions, often know that and avoid running altogether. Why risk losing?

Former Georgia Rep. Denise Majette (D) did it, surprising everybody in 2004 by running for a Senate seat vacated by Zell Miller despite a lack of name recognition and statewide fundraising apparatus. Though she became the first black woman to be nominated for the US Senate in Georgia, she lost by 20 points to Republican Johnny Isakson in the general election. “She hasn’t held political office since,” Gillespie says. “That’s the risk.”

For some, the only way to break that cycle is to have more black candidates running and winning. In his book “Brown Is the New White: How the Demographic Revolution Has Created a New American Majority,” Steve Phillips contends that the Democratic Party has failed to capitalize on Obama’s example, and has taken for granted the notion that black voters will always stick with Democrats.

“Blacks supporting Democrats is not a given,” says Mr. Phillips, co-founder of the San Francisco-based political organization Democracy in Color. “This policy of benign neglect poses a real danger.”

But others argue Democrats ignored working-class whites to their detriment in 2016, and that continuing to do so while focusing more on African-Americans just doesn’t add up. While black turnout for Hillary Clinton was lower than it had been for President Obama, she also did terribly with whites without a college degree, losing them by 31 points, according to a report by the Center for American Progress.

“If Clinton had replicated the black turnout levels enjoyed by Obama in 2012, she still would have lost the 2016 election, because the other shifts against her were so powerful,” Ruy Teixeira, co-author of the report, writes for Vox.

Midterms as a test case

The results of the 2018 midterms are likely to have a big impact on which way Democrats will go in 2020 and beyond.

“You have Stacey, you have Ben, you have Andrew Gillum [running for governor] in Florida ... all in the mold of Obama and what he was able to accomplish in terms of inspiring progressive, multiracial coalitions,” Phillips says. “These races are a test of the progressive movement, in terms of its ability to broaden its conception of leadership and who people are looking for.”

The candidates themselves know what’s at stake. “It speaks well for Maryland and the diversity of the state,” Baker says at a campaign stop in Randallstown on the last day of early voting.  

In a phone interview, Jealous draws from history: “Doug Wilder showed us how to win these things: you build a bigger, more robust coalition than most people think is possible,” he says. “And today you have a rising generation of leadership who understand that the path to taking back the country is through our states.”

The hope, however, is that in 2018, voters – especially Democratic voters – will care more about what candidates bring to the table than the color of their skin.

“The fact that they’re both minority is icing on the cake,” says Rosero, the Jealous supporter, who himself is running for state office. For most voters, he says, the main question is: “ ‘This is what’s going on in my life: What are you going to do about it?’ Race, gender, all that is secondary.”

Benoit Tessier/Reuters

High school students start work on a four-hour philosophy dissertation, that kicks off the French general baccalauréat exam at the Lycée La Bruyère in Versailles, near Paris, on June 18, 2018.

It’s smiles and sighs of relief all around as Laetitia Lerner and Nicolas Genaille chat with friends and try to unwind after another grueling day of the baccalauréat – the French national high school exit exams. Even for Ms. Lerner and Mr. Genaille, who are only in their second to last year of high school, the testing has already begun. The results they get this year will contribute to their scores on the final exam after completing “terminale” – senior year.

“I’m very happy with how I did,” says Genaille, an hour after completing the science exam. The French written exam took place last week, with the French oral test scheduled for the first week of July.

“Now we’re going to have something to eat and relax,” says Lerner, a shy smile crossing her cheeks.

A year ago, Lerner and Genaille couldn’t have imagined themselves here, in high school, taking “le bac,” as the French familiarly call it. Genaille, 20, had lost all confidence in himself after dropping out of high school at 17, disenchanted with the traditional school system.

Lerner, 23, dropped out at 16 amid major family problems, which triggered a five-year period of depression. Both say the Microlycée de Sénart, an experimental high school one hour outside Paris in Lieusaint, saved them. 

“I lost a lot of motivation during the time I wasn’t in school; I was alone so much and not interacting with people,” says Lerner. “But at this school, no one judges you because we’ve all been through tough times.” 

Lerner and Genaille are part of a growing number of French youths turning their backs on France’s mainstream education system. A highly centralized order with a national focus on the baccalauréat that borders on obsession, French high schools have been criticized by many as being too rigid, hierarchical, and failing to appreciate each student as “a whole person.”

But while experimental schools – especially junior highs and high schools – remain on the fringes here and must constantly prove their worth, they are increasingly providing options to students who have failed to thrive in the mainstream system. They’re also challenging long-held notions about the importance of the national high school exit exam and what it means to succeed. 

“France is not a country with a wealth of innovative, experimental schools; they remain rare,” says François Dubet, director of studies in sociology at the School for Higher Education in Social Sciences (EHESS) in Paris. “But more often than not, these schools get good results because the students are motivated and the teachers are especially committed and present in students’ lives.” 

A non-traditional approach

There are currently just over a dozen experimental junior highs and high schools in France that are members of FESPI, a national federation that promotes innovative school choices. Unlike similar private, tuition-based establishments, which often serve a homogenous, wealthy demographic, these schools are public and free, falling under the tutelage of the French Ministry of Education. They must report student grades twice a year as well as the final baccalauréat results.

While some – like the Microlycée de Sénart – are geared toward bringing back students who have dropped out of school, others simply provide a fresh and more diverse approach to teaching. At the Lycée Autogéré de Paris (LAP), for example, students are not graded, can choose their own course schedule, and work with teachers on course schedules and school organization.

At the Collège Lycée Expérimental d’Hérouville Saint Clair (CLE) in the north of France, teachers are required to teach multiple subjects, which can bring a more complete picture of each student. And at the Microlycée, class sizes are limited to 15, students contribute to classroom cleaning, eat and do the dishes together, and have a say in how classes are run.

However, the starkest difference at these experimental high schools is, most notably, their approach to “le bac.” For most, it remains an option, not a requirement. And yet, says Olivier Haeri, an economics and sociology teacher at the Microlycée, passing the national exit exam is a goal for most students upon entering experimental schools.

“If we talk less about the bac, it gives it less pressure, less importance,” says Mr. Haeri. “But symbolically to have it is to feel ‘normal’ for many, or a way to repair something in their past. It shows students they can succeed educationally.”

One, all-important test

Unlike in the United States, where students receive a high school diploma upon completing courses with the option of taking entrance exams to get into college, France has no equivalent as such. The “bac” acts as both diploma and entrance exam, meaning that without it, getting into college is impossible and finding a job – even a low-level one – is a major challenge.

“The bac is very important in France, but in a negative sense,” says Mr. Dubet, the sociologist. “It doesn’t give you that much if you have it, but if you don’t have it, you lose a lot.”

Those without the prized exam suffer from high rates of unemployment. According to the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE), 48 percent of those without a diploma were unemployed in 2017. But perhaps more detrimental is the social stigma that comes with not passing it. During the week-long test, national radio broadcasts are dedicated to the subject and newspapers publish the topics of each day’s exam along with students’ results.

Around 88 percent of French high school students have consistently passed the bac since 2014. Experimental high schools include a range of statistics, with some outperforming the national averages and others hovering at around a 40 percent success rate. The inconsistent statistics could raise doubts about the schools’ effectiveness. But those involved in the system say results of the bac don’t show the whole picture. 

“These are students who would never have even taken the test if they had remained in the mainstream school system,” says Catherine Noyer, president of FESPI, and a biology teacher at CLE in Hérouville Saint Clair. One year, when a student had decided not to take the test just hours before the exam was to begin, Ms. Noyer went to her home, convinced her to take it, and drove her to the baccalauréat testing center.

“With this in mind, we can say that we have a 100 percent success rate,” she says.

Despite its relative importance in France, the most essential aspect of experimental schools is not getting every student to “pass the bac” but to help them regain their confidence in school.

“This is a system that looks at each student as a young person with his or her own story and abilities,” says Ms. Noyer. “They are citizens, individuals, and need to be considered in their entirety.”

A focus on interaction

At the Microlycée, teachers place a large focus on bringing students out of their shell, teaching them how to interact with others again in addition to reassuring them of their intellectual abilities. They ask students when they want to be graded, but don't often do so at the start of the year.

Haeri says many have lost so much confidence in themselves – often due to negative experiences in the mainstream system – that they don’t believe teachers when they’re given positive feedback on assignments.

Lerner, who moved around the country often with her family growing up and attended multiple schools, says they all had a common thread for her.

“The traditional high school system is oppressive and individualistic,” she says. “If you don’t succeed, you’re basically cast out of society.”

Lerner says in her two years at the Microlycée, she has come to realize her unique abilities and the benefits of a positive, encouraging environment. If she passes her bac next year, she hopes to go on to get a master’s degree in sociology.

And Genaille, who arrived quiet and withdrawn at the beginning of the year, has now blossomed into a confident, articulate young person who is ready to show off his talents, says Haeri, his teacher. 

“I intend to pass the bac and then I’ll go from there – maybe working with people with difficulties or disabilities,” Genaille says. “I had the idea before coming to this school but it’s true that being in this environment has confirmed it for me.”

AP Photo

A guard walks by toys placed for migrant children by protesters as they march to Homestead Temporary Shelter for Unaccompanied Children, in Homestead, Fla. Foster care advocates say the government won’t likely be able to reunite thousands of children separated from parents who crossed the border illegally, and some will end up in an American foster care system.

The outcry that ended the Trump administration’s policy of separating immigrant families detained at the border has not stopped at that political victory.

Public rage may now be giving way to private compassion.

Take, for example, one fundraising campaign – the largest ever on Facebook – that took in $16 million over one week to support legal services for immigrants. A half million people contributed to that cause. Many other campaigns have brought in money or volunteers to aid the divided families.

This outpouring of compassion for the welfare of families in legal difficulties, however, can be seen with a much wider view. The entire United States, not only migrant families, faces a crisis involving government-sanctioned child separation.

Millions of kids need help each year in coping with broken relationships when a parent has been detained pending a court case, sentenced to prison, or stripped of his or her parental rights if it has been determined that the child has been abused or neglected. An estimated 5 million children have had a parent locked up during the course of their upbringing.

Greater support is needed for the range of responses to such separations, which include quality visits for kids with parents held in a jail or prison, or placement of a child with relatives or in foster care.

In particular, foster care needs the most attention, especially as many more migrant children will now be placed in such care if their parents are detained more than 20 days, as a 2015 court ruling requires, during processing for deportation or of their asylum claims.

Since 2012, the number of US children in foster care has risen 11 percent, according to a report by The Chronicle of Social Change last November, reaching an estimated 443,000. One of the main reasons for the increase is the nation’s opioid crisis. More parents are abusing drugs and neglecting their children. (The average time a child remains in foster care is 19 months.)

While a handful of states have increased the number of foster-care beds, at least half of the states have seen their capacity drop. Citing a foster-care crisis, the report states: “The notion of a national child welfare system, with coherent trends and corresponding lessons, is somewhat illusory.”

Fifteen states did not even provide enough data for the report to enable a conclusion about their bed capacity, perhaps a signal about the difficulties – and often tragedies – experienced in the foster care system.

Some children may have to be placed far from home, the report finds.

In addition, about 1 in 10 mothers and 1 in 50 fathers in state prisons have a child in the child welfare system during their incarceration. “Today, more children than ever are being raised by kinship caregivers – relatives and close family friends who step in when their parents can’t provide a stable home life,” states the federal Children’s Bureau.

Earlier this year, Congress did provide extra funding to allow state programs to intervene early in the case of troubled families, such as providing mental health care, in order to avoid taking children away. Keeping families together is always ideal. The interests of parents in the care and control of their children is one of the oldest liberties recognized by the courts.

More warm hearts are needed for children whose family bonds are broken. In a number of states, officials now plead for more households to take in foster kids and give them the essential experience of a stable home. Compassion is borderless, even while the US struggles over a migrant crisis at its border.