For decades, ELs have been defined by what they lack, with schools focusing on their challenges. English-first policies reinforce the notion that ELs are problems to fix rather than students with valuable assets.

And yet, decades of research show that multilingualism is not a barrier, but a benefit. Students who speak more than one language develop stronger cognitive flexibility, better problem-solving skills and higher levels of academic achievement. Bilingual students also have and bring critical global skills our country needs.��

across the U.S. also proves that two-way, dual-language programs can not only narrow the academic gap, but in some instances fully close it. Longitudinal studies show that multilingual learners often outperform their English-only peers in math, literacy, and graduation rates once reclassified.

If multilingualism builds stronger students and communities, then schools must treat it as the asset it is. That means adopting curricula that support both language development and content learning, instead of watered down instruction. 

Rhode Island proves what can happen when schools invest in their EL community. the state experienced the largest percentage growth in its EL population, which now makes up. Instead of lowering expectations, state leaders changed how they approached curriculum and support by considering the needs of their EL population.

As a result, students who achieved English proficiency now meet or even outperform peers who are native English speakers on . According to the , in 2018 and 2019 ELs who had achieved higher English proficiency scores also earned higher ELA and math scores than their English-only peers. When provided with quality and opportunity, ELs don’t just catch up, they surpass expectations.��

California has seen similar outcomes, and with its upcoming opportunity to adopt new materials, the state could see even greater results. In California, are ELs and an another 910,000 have achieved English proficiency. That is one in three students who are either learning English or have successfully done so.

of students in California reveal that by eighth grade,  ELs who have mastered English outperformed their non-EL learning peers in math, attendance and other measures.

For the first time since 2014, California is adopting a new math curriculum and conducting a follow-up literacy materials adoption in the coming year. Leaders have the rare opportunity to demand materials that serve ELs from the outset, allowing these students to engage in complex texts and tasks. Instructional materials should support that and not treat them like an afterthought.

The English learner status is intended to be temporary. With high-quality materials providing intentional language support, students can grow. Unfortunately, shows that students who don’t reach English proficiency by eighth grade face negative consequences, such as being misidentified for special education. They have lower academic achievement and attendance numbers and have a greater risk of falling behind and off track completely for graduation.��

Contrary to perception, student outcomes improve when strong curricula are used consistently and effectively. Materials do not need to be “dumbed down” for English learners. Research and classroom experience shows that when materials are designed for them, they benefit all students in the classroom.

These students aren’t less capable, but the education system has failed them. This is why it is essential to provide schools with quality educational materials that support both language and content and value the assets and strengths of multilingualism. 

We cannot allow the push for English-only policies to overshadow the years of data and research around the power and potential of speaking more than one language. To do so is to deny opportunity to millions of students and to weaken our collective future. Multilingualism is one of America’s greatest strengths. Our schools and curricula should reflect that truth.

Newcomer centers opened to ease immigrant students’ transition to school? Closed. 

Hiring new English language learner teachers? Suspended.

These are among the tangible effects of the Trump administration’s targeting services and supports that go toward educating more than 5 million English language learners in the nation’s K-12 public schools.

And there are other, more subtle changes: Many newcomer students, in light of the president’s aggressive deportation campaign, are now too afraid to answer simple questions, the type that not only shed light on their lives but give insight into their academic needs. 

“I’m hesitant to have all the conversations about country of origin — conversations that celebrate diversity and create a community culture of inclusion — because now if you ask a kid ‘Where are you from’ or ‘Where were you born’ you visually see their walls go up,” said Texas teacher Tammy Ingraham Baggett.

Through multiple directives, the Trump administration has gutted the Education Department, including its Office of English Language Acquisition, leaving it with just . The administration rescinded critical guidance on earlier this year while the president’s proposed 2026 budget to support multilingual learners in the classroom. 

Alejandra Vázquez Baur, a fellow at The Century Foundation, a progressive think tank, and director of the , a coalition of over 150 educators, researchers, and advocates from 35 states, said such cuts would have a “substantial, devastating impact.”

Her organization joined forces with another group, Immigrant Connections, to ask educators this past summer to describe what would be sacrificed. Oklahoma, which would lose $6.4 million in funding, would no longer be able to meet multilingual learners’ needs, education leaders said. 

The state would lose valuable school programs, professional development and family engagement geared toward these students — including translation and interpretation services. Likewise, Virginia, Vázquez Baur said, could lose $17.5 million, which would bring about a cascade of cuts, including tutoring for English learners and critical support for students who have gaps in their education. 

“And we know when we lose funding for some groups of students, it hurts all students because resources are pushed to the very edge,” she said. 

Teachers whose multilingual learner programs have already been axed are giving away their textbooks online, hoping they could be of use in another location, and some schools have suspended hiring new English learner teachers, unsure of how many students will show up and attend these classes, immigrant student advocates tell The 74. 

Schools could be further hampered in serving these students by the federal government’s recent retreat from its monitoring and oversight role. Without that, Vázquez Baur said, it’s up to states to hold themselves accountable for meeting their legal obligations to educate these children.

She expressed hope that educators will continue to follow the old directives, even in states that support Trump.

“Politics have taken over many state legislatures — including some state agencies — but at the district level, no matter what state you’re in, people are committed to supporting these students,” she said. 

JoAnne Negrín has worked with multilingual learners in New Jersey for much of the past three decades. She’s retired from her full-time post and now serves as a consultant.

Negrín said she has worked hard to identify newcomer parents so that they could fill much-needed positions in the school system, their Ukrainian and Spanish language skills in great demand as the local immigrant population increased in recent years. 

“We were perennially short on classroom aides,” she said. “And parents needed jobs to get settled. So, I started helping them through the process and getting aides in every school that needed them. It was a win for all. We solved a staffing issue, the parents got a paycheck, we got school-level language assistance and the kids got to have a parent in the building while they acclimated.”

But Negrín worries this effort could be lost: She’s particularly concerned about a Venezuelan woman and her husband who were recently hired by the district as bilingual math and science teachers. 

“I spent hours over Zoom helping them sign up for assessments and then walking them through New Jersey certification,” she wrote in a Facebook message. “At that point, I told our HR director to make them his first, best offer because they would soon figure out how valuable they are. He brought them in for around $70,000 each. Now, two years later, they own a home, have pets, they’re part of the community, and they are happy and settled in.”

But it’s they will be permitted to stay. 

“I hate this not only for these teachers, but because I don’t know what the district will do if it loses them,” she said. 

Amy Halsall, a teacher in Indianapolis, said her school has not received funds for professional development so conferences are not being offered — or educators are required to pay for it themselves. 

“We normally have funds for supplies and materials and that is on hold,” she said. “Due to funding cuts and federal policies where parents have to reveal their status, our district is not offering adult ESL classes. We have to be very creative in how we help.”

And newcomer students to her school are scarce, she said: There were just two this year compared to 10 last year. 

Perhaps the greatest loss to Ingraham Baggett’s district, she said, was of the newcomer centers, which were, until recently, thriving inside nine of the district’s 12 high schools. 

Each campus served 20 to 50 such students, she said, with 250 total and four to six teachers per site. Ingraham Baggett, the longest-serving biology teacher in the program, piloted the science courses, wrote most of the curriculum materials and led districtwide training sessions throughout the year for her colleagues. 

“This year I got a phone call in August from my principal, two days before going back to school. The entire district had less than 30 high school New Arrival Center program students enrolled,” she said. “They were consolidating the program. All those program teachers had to be reassigned. Only three got to go to the new campus to continue.”

She said many students who qualify for the services refuse to participate, afraid of being identified as new immigrants. 

“They’re declining services to be less easily identified by ICE, which means they’re missing out on an amazing start to a successful education,” she said. 

Gabrielle Oliveira, an associate professor of education at Harvard, who spent years researching the educational outcomes of immigrant children for her , said every critical program cut, every staff member let go or reassigned represents another lost opportunity for immigrant children as they and their families feel the walls closing in around them. 

School leaders, she notes, are living through a difficult moment. Long established and trusted programs for newcomer students are suddenly politicized, morphing their existence into an unintended statement, an opposition to a president who has frequently — and educators. 

“It’s this slow burn that has been happening,” Oliveira said. “It comes in all of these different ways. You start to cut that lifeline. Not only are the programs not available, but the people who are able to tell parents about it, distribute the information, inform them … that has been the biggest worry.”

Despite decades of research and advocacy around differentiated instruction for English learners, many curriculum publishers continue to design products around a “grade-level box” that assumes a uniform level of language proficiency and background knowledge. These one-size-fits-all materials often meet state standards but rarely meet the needs of English learners who exist at various points along the language acquisition continuum.

The core problem is this: Curriculum is often written with the assumption that all students in a classroom are functioning at the same academic and linguistic level. But a fifth-grade classroom may include learners with the reading comprehension of a kindergartner in English — despite having strong critical thinking skills in their home language. Conversely, another EL student might speak English confidently but struggle with writing structured essays or understanding figurative language.

Curriculum that doesn’t account for these variations forces teachers to do heavy lifting to retrofit materials, spending hours supplementing, modifying, and differentiating lessons that were built on narrow assumptions.

highlights this disconnect between mainstream curricula and EL needs, calling for instructional models that integrate language and content instruction explicitly. Unfortunately, many commercial curricula still , treating EL modifications as afterthoughts or add-ons, rather than essential design principles.

Another oversight is the belief that language proficiency progresses evenly across all domains: reading, writing, speaking, and listening. In reality a student might excel at oral communication while struggling to read grade-level texts or write a coherent paragraph. Yet, curriculum materials rarely provide scaffolded support for this reality. Instead, they often label students generically with little nuance.

This oversimplification of curriculum design can lead to gaps in instruction, often because of a failure to understand the difference between acquiring a language and learning one, as well as limited clarity on where these processes overlap. Teachers may unintentionally misjudge a student’s language proficiency, assuming a higher level based on conversational fluency or underestimating a student’s capabilities simply because they are quiet or reserved.

This challenge is when instructional decisions rely more on perception than on a clear understanding of state-identified proficiency levels — especially when curriculum materials are not aligned with those levels and fail to include explicit recommendations and strategies for integrated language development and strategies.

Beyond language proficiency, curriculum content can also miss the opportunity to tap into students’ cultural and linguistic assets. Students come with a wealth of lived experiences, knowledge, and perspectives that could enrich the classroom environment, what researchers describe as “.”&�Բ�����;

Yet, many curriculum materials approach ELs as blank slates to be filled, rather than as contributors with valuable voices. Sadly, these supports often appear as surface-level add-ons — like generic sentence frames or generalized translated glossaries — rather than as integrated approaches to equitable, meaningful content access.

Incorporating culturally sustaining pedagogy and leveraging students’ lived experiences and languages as legitimate background knowledge is not just essential for curriculum design but crucial for for all students.

Prioritizing the following actions in curriculum design can lead to more effective materials —ones that yield positive results, reflect classroom realities and genuinely align with teacher student needs.

• ��Build in multiple entry points for varying language proficiencies

Curriculum should reflect students’ diverse linguistic and academic starting points, not just simplified versions of the same material. allows English learners to engage meaningfully with rigorous content, rather than being sidelined or underestimated. 

• ��Provide professional development for teachers working with English learners
  Training for EL instruction should be treated as essential, not optional, in curriculum rollout. Equipping teachers with a of how students develop across all four language domains — speaking, listening, reading, and writing�� — helps them recognize that proficiency varies by domain and provides the perspective and tools needed to scaffold effectively.��

• Treat home languages and cultures as priorities and integral instructional resources, not afterthoughts
  Thoughtfully embedding these elements into curriculum design and materials strengthens student identity, builds relevance, and deepens engagement—making learning for all students. For instance, teachers can encourage the use of home languages when possible for brainstorming or initial drafting before transitioning to English

• Embed actionable teacher guidance
  Recommendations and multi-step approaches�� should be woven directly into lesson content — not tacked on as end-of-book appendices or vague disclaimers. Providing empowers teachers to adapt instruction in real time based on students’ language proficiency—not just grade-level benchmarks. Curriculum companies should offer strategies tailored to the specific content demands teachers are navigating. That can include callout boxes and in-line prompts within each lesson.

Curriculum companies must recognize that English learners do not come in a standard size, and their learning cannot be boxed into tidy grade-level expectations or neatly matched from one proficiency level to another. As classrooms become more multilingual and multicultural, this reality must be reflected not only in the lessons teachers deliver but also in the materials and products they are given.

English learners should not be a footnote, but a foundational consideration in how we build and deliver educational content.

In a released today, the foundation and its offshoot, , scored state education departments on whether and how they define immigrant students, collect and report data on their educational progress and fund programs that support them. 

They assigned grades to all 50 states and Washington, D.C., based upon their findings: None won a mark above a C+. Forty-two states ​scored between C- and D- and five —��Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Montana and West Virginia —��earned an F.

The results come as the Trump administration continues to zero in on this vulnerable student population as part of its multibillion-dollar immigration crackdown: Young people have been arrested, detained — in the case of one Los Angeles teen this month, at gunpoint — and deported. 

The federal government also recently directing schools to accommodate English learners. Immigrant advocates are pleading with state lawmakers to push back by showing their support for these students and better preparing teachers to meet their needs.

“We are witnessing a sinister daily attack on our immigrant neighbors from a federal government bent on stripping immigrants’ access to work, health care, educational opportunities, and even their sense of safety,” said report co-author Alejandra Vázquez Baur, a foundation fellow who heads its National Newcomer Network. “All students show up with a twinkle in their eye, excited to learn — newcomers included — and states need to do more to support them.”

The Century Foundation, founded as the Co-operative League in 1919, recommends states develop specific and consistent definitions for this population, which includes refugees, asylum seekers, unaccompanied minors and migratory children. 

In an effort to better serve this diverse and largely growing student body — there are more than inside the nation’s K-12 public schools — agencies must also collect and publish data on key indicators about their educational experiences, including years in the United States, English proficiency, home language, prior schooling and academic outcomes. Such data points might include school engagement, participation in clubs and sports and any behavioral issues that could arise in school, the foundation concludes.

State education agencies should use the data to inform funding formulas, the report recommends, and to create a newcomer-specific funding structure that supplements federal money. This additional aid should provide support for students in their first few critical years in the public schools system, “with transparent reporting on its use and impact.”

The report highlights the scattershot nature of data collection across the country: 17 states collect no discernable data on immigrant students at all. Twenty-two compile such information to determine eligibility and maintain compliance with federal earmarked for English learners. 

Eight states collect data that might include newcomers, but it isn’t differentiated or used to determine how supports are allocated. Only four have clear definitions of the term “newcomer” and consistently collect robust data about these children. 

requires all districts to submit what it calls Recent Arrivers data and uses the information for federal reporting and to allocate Title III funds, according to the analysis. collects disaggregated immigrant student data annually and later divides it by subgroup, while state, according to the researchers, requires districts to track all eligible English learners in their student information systems and report key data points like birth country and U.S. school enrollment date. 

But outdoes them all, the study shows: It publicly reports disaggregated English learner data by year, including counts and percentages of immigrant, refugee and migrant students, among other groups, and breaks down this data by district, home language and ethnicity. The state, population , had less than residents in 2023. Nearly 84% were of working age. 

“This is exemplary,” the report notes of North Dakota’s approach, adding it allows for a clearer understanding of the diverse needs within this student population and supports targeted interventions for many children, including those with limited or interrupted formal education.

The report cites the unevenness of young immigrants’ educational experience, as they sometimes move between districts striving for stable housing. 

“When these programs differ across district lines within a state, this group of often highly mobile marginalized students may not qualify for comparable services when they move, and their new schools may not receive the resources they need to properly serve them,” the report reads. “State education agencies have the unique opportunity to address these inconsistencies to best support all students, including newcomers.”

English learners nationally had a , as of the 2019-20 school year, compared to the 86% national average.  

At a moment when anti-immigrant fervor was beginning to build in this country, The 74 last year tested the enrollment practices of more than 600 high schools, attempting to register a 19-year-old newcomer who spoke little English and whose education had been interrupted. More than 300 schools refused to register him — including 204 denials in the 35 states and the District of Columbia where high school attendance goes up to at least age 20.

Vázquez Baur said newcomer students are here to stay and their presence predates the laws guaranteeing them educational access, including the 1982 Supreme Court case, Plyler v. Doe. The quality of their education, she said, will determine not only their opportunity but the health and well-being of their communities.

“Newcomers students are in our classrooms regardless of what our president says,” she said. “They are valuable neighbors and students. They become valuable leaders in their communities. Especially at this moment, it is the states that are on the front line against the federal government.”

Everyday teachers and school counselors are seeing students of all ages grapple with the stress and uncertainty caused by their migration or immigrant experience. How could we reassure them that they belong when the leaders of our country are saying otherwise?

Amid the federal climate of cruelty, billions in possible budget cuts for K-12 education, and threats of mass deportation, we can find some answers to these daily questions close to home. As educators from the City University of New York – Initiative on Immigration and Education (CUNY-IIE) we have created for aspiring and in-service educators in our state.��

These ad-hoc solutions will certainly help when the school year resumes. But they are not enough. With the federal government poised to cancel funding for programs that include support for English learners, it will be up to the states to step in to provide programming and access for all their students. 

Here in New York, we are calling on the state legislature in Albany to enact two bills in the upcoming session that will codify the support for our immigrant students and better prepare educators to meet this moment. 

Currently, educator preparation programs in New York State do not require content on immigration policy and law and their intersection with education. Thus, many educators feel unprepared to teach and support immigrant-origin students effectively. This must change.

Last session, Democratic State Sen. Robert Jackson introduced , with its counterpart bill, A8033, introduced by Democratic Assembly member Gabriella Romero. Both of these bills required colleges to include content on immigration policy and immigrant integration in all of their education programs. Educators would also be instructed on multilingual ways to educate students with immigrant origins.

The second bill, and A8034, introduced by the same lawmakers, required continuing education for teachers and administrators  related to trauma-informed practices to support immigrant students. This legislation aimed to ensure that teachers are regularly updated on best practices to work with students who may be bringing trauma inflicted by immigration into the classroom. 

Although these bills did not pass committee consideration in this recent legislative session, their passage in the upcoming session would ensure that our teachers, administrators, and school counselors are better equipped to serve immigrant students. If these measures are enacted, New York would become one of the first states to mandate immigration as a topic for educators, setting a standard for education programs nationwide. 

In turn, this would signal to other states, particularly those with large immigrant populations, that it’s essential to enact similar measures to ensure educators are fully equipped to teach immigrant-origin students. 

The teaching of immigration and the immigrant experience impacts us all, as the literacies of citizenship are part of the very core of our Constitution, and the mapping of our country’s history. Teaching about U.S. immigration and the immigrant experience is about sustaining and amplifying our democracy, and it is particularly imperative in spaces — in and outside of the classroom — where immigrant voices may not be at the center.

While we wait for New York state lawmakers to do what’s right – and necessary – CUNY-IIE will continue to offer resources to better prepare teachers in preK through 12^th grade. A bilingual third-grade teacher in Washington Heights authored the CUNY-IIE professional development module titled “.” The module can be used by schools across the state so that educators can learn to recognize and respond when immigrant students may have experienced trauma.  

On the higher education level, CUNY-IIE has also produced a guide for professors who prepare teachers. In the fall, our team will release this multimodal immigration-focused resource that higher education faculty can consider for their coursework, regardless of their educational subfield.  

Our program also brought together 10 education faculty members from across the CUNY and SUNY systems. They redesigned their course syllabi to ensure immigration is included, because almost all educators work with immigrant students. The faculty members also developed an immigrant-focused assignment. One instructor is planning to have students research the history of a new or longstanding immigrant group in their region.

This is, of course, all triage. We’re responding as best we can to the daily onslaught of deportations, immigration restrictions, and purposefully cruel measures of this second Trump administration. Because immigrants continue to be a central part of New York state communities, the education of children who were born here to immigrant parents or who recently settled here must be a priority. 

We have already started this work because we see the urgent need. Now it’s time for lawmakers to create systemic changes for our education system to ensure that teachers are prepared and immigrant students are not an afterthought.  

Saugus’s policy change goes against a torrent of federal and state initiatives aimed at limiting educational access to newcomers, particularly those in the country illegally. The Trump administration has detained and deported K-12 students and recently barred undocumented preschoolers from Head Start and older students from career, technical and adult education. In many states, those federal directives have been put on hold pending a Sept. 3 hearing.

The Saugus school registration requirement was challenged in court last year by Lawyers for Civil Rights, Massachusetts Advocates for Children and Anderson & Kreiger LLP. The state attorney general’s office also aided in the effort. 

“We are ecstatic,” said Erika Richmond Walton, an attorney with Lawyers for Civil Rights, who added that her group will continue to monitor school enrollment to ensure every family can register “without fear or unnecessary hurdles.”

Neither district officials nor multiple Saugus school board members responded to The 74’s requests for comment. They’ve stated previously that their enrollment procedures followed the law. 

Richmond Walton said the school’s turnaround came as a shock: In a recent admissions policy directive, it omitted the census clause. The instead centered on proof of residence and the district’s desire to ferret out anyone not living within its borders.

“It did come as a surprise to me,” she said. “It was a fight we had been fighting for well over a year.”

The new development in the Saugus case coincides with the state’s recent adoption of the , which affirms the educational rights of immigrant children and students with disabilities. Undocumented students’ right to attend school is already enshrined in the landmark 1982 Supreme Court decision Plyler v. Doe, but that ruling is under attack in some conservative states.��

“This law comes at a time of rising federal threats to civil rights,” Massachusetts Advocates for Children said about the state’s initiative, which was signed by Gov. Maura Healey on Aug. 5. “While federal protections for immigrant students and students with disabilities are in jeopardy, Massachusetts has taken a bold stand to ensure that those rights remain protected here at home.”

In Saugus, Walton said the district required families to fill out a census form as part of a local headcount conducted every year. In order to comply, she said, they had to get the document from town hall. Once they did, she said, the town would initiate an inspection of their living quarters. 

A family with an elementary-aged child was barred from completing the form because they were heating their home with space heaters, she said. In another case, one family was doubled up with another, and the one that sought to enroll a child was not the leaseholder, which disqualified them. Both were eventually allowed to attend school when Massachusetts Advocates for Children intervened.

Adam Strom, executive director of Boston-based , said the district’s reversal is critical.

“It protects something fundamental: every child’s right to attend school,” Strom said. “No student should have their education held hostage by discriminatory policies.”

Students of all ages have been targeted for deportation across the country since the start of the year. Some have been in federal detention for weeks, with while others have been . 

Earlier this summer, on his way to volleyball practice was detained by immigration agents before winning his release. 

The Saugus school district served in 2023, up from 2,297 in 2021. Nearly 30% of the student body was identified as Hispanic or Latino two years ago, up from 20.6% in 2021. 

Just under 10% were English learners in 2023, up from 6.3% two years prior. 

The school superintendent’s secretary, Dianne Vargas, told The 74 a year ago that the census requirement was waived for incoming immigrant students.��

But, she said then, the district did require other forms of paperwork meant to protect these students’ welfare so the district could “make sure they are with a parent or guardian — that they actually have someone who is caring for them so we don’t have doubling up and people aren’t passing children around.”&�Բ�����;

This story was originally published by . for their newsletters.

Funding cuts. Raids near campuses. Exclusion from programs like Head Start and career training. For months, the Trump administration has been chipping away at the rights of students without legal status in public schools.

Could the administration take away those students’ right to free public school entirely? Experts say that may be the next step.

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“People have worried about this for a couple decades, but this is different,” said Patricia Gándara, education professor and co-director of the Civil Rights Project at UCLA. “Right now we have to be extremely vigilant. These people will stop at nothing.”

A 1982 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, , guarantees all students, regardless of immigration status, the right to a free public education in K-12 schools. But last year the conservative Heritage Foundation to overturn the ruling and for states to charge tuition to immigrant families, even if their children are U.S. citizens. The rationale is that schools spend billions of dollars educating those students — money that instead should be spent on students who, along with their parents, are native-born U.S. citizens.

Project 2025, also published by the Heritage Foundation, .

Such a policy would have an outsized impact in California, where nearly half of the state’s children have at least one immigrant parent, according to the .

“This would have tremendous negative impacts,” said Megan Hopkins, chair of the education department at UC San Diego. “For starters, we’d have a less educated, less literate populace, which would affect the economy and nearly every other aspect of life in California.”

Tuition for noncitizens

Plyler v. Doe stemmed from a case in Texas in the early 1980s. The state had passed a law allowing schools to charge tuition to students who weren’t citizens. The Tyler Independent School District in Tyler, Texas, a small city about 100 miles southeast of Dallas, was among the districts that tried, triggering a lawsuit that eventually brought the case to the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, arguing that children who aren’t citizens are entitled to equal protection under the law. Still, the ruling was close — 5 to 4 — even though the court was more liberal than it is today.

Since then, the ruling has been mostly forgotten. But there have been occasional attempts to restrict immigrants in schools, in California and elsewhere. In 1994 California , which banned immigrants living illegally in the U.S. from receiving public benefits, including access to public schools. A federal court blocked it before it went into effect.

In 2011, Alabama passed a law requiring schools to collect students’ immigration status. That law was later blocked by a federal court. In 2022, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and that states should not have to pay to educate students without legal status.

Since the Heritage Foundation published its report, about a half-dozen states have attempted to pass laws that would allow schools to charge tuition to noncitizens. None passed last year, but advocates said they plan to keep trying.

Route to Supreme Court

They’re likely to have a sympathetic supporter in President Donald Trump, who’s so far followed many of the policies put forward by Project 2025. In the past few months, his administration has amped up immigration arrests and said it would no longer honor schools as safe havens from enforcement. It also cut (although later reinstated after states sued) funding for migrant students and barred students without legal status from Head Start, adult education and career and technical education.

The issue could land before the Supreme Court in at least two ways. A state could pass a law allowing public schools to charge tuition, leading to a lawsuit which could end up before the Supreme Court. Or Trump could issue an executive order that could also trigger a lawsuit.

Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley Law School, said some of Trump’s actions, such as barring children without legal status from Head Start, is already a violation of Plyler.

“There’s no doubt that the Trump administration has increased pressure on Plyler,” Chemerinsky said. “Certainly, what Trump is doing could lead to cases that would get to the Supreme Court. Could this court overturn Plyler? Of course they could. … all it would take is five justices wanting to overrule it.”

Even if it’s not overturned, the current policy shifts have had a chilling effect on schools and immigrant families, said Hopkins, at UC San Diego. in communities experiencing immigration crackdowns, which has caused academic repercussions for some students and widened the achievement gap between Latino students and other groups. A recent report by Policy Analysis for California Education found that Latino students and English learners fared worse in math and English in the wake of immigration arrests in their communities, and reported a significant increase in bullying at school.

Hopkins also said the policies aren’t especially effective. If the goal is to encourage immigrants to return to their home countries voluntarily, research has shown that doesn’t often happen. After Alabama passed its anti-immigrant law in 2011, many families simply moved to Mississippi.

‘Our biggest fear’

In Monterey County, the new policies have led to widespread fear and confusion among immigrant families, said Monterey County Office of Education Superintendent Deneen Guss. Attendance has dropped not only in schools, but at community events as well.

To support families, schools have been hosting “Know Your Rights” information nights (in-person and virtually), encouraged parents to submit child care plans to schools in case a parent is arrested, given out booklets in Spanish on how to help children experiencing anxiety, and provided .

But when the Trump administration announced it was barring students without legal status from Head Start, “that gave me pause,” Guss said. “That made me think they really were going after Plyler. That’s our biggest fear.”

She worries about the impact that would have on families, as well as school staff who would suddenly be responsible for checking students’ citizenship paperwork. Currently, schools don’t ask for students’ immigration status.

“Educators’ jobs are hard enough,” Guss said. “Our job is to give children the best possible education. Don’t make us become immigration officers. It’s a position we do not want.”

She’s been urging parents, and the public, to stay informed and speak out. Regardless of whether the Supreme Court overturns Plyler, anti-immigrant policies are almost certain to continue, with devastating consequences for students.

“You can’t sit back and pretend everything is going to be OK,” Guss said. “People need to ensure their voices are heard. And we have to fight for our kids.”

This article was and was republished under the license.

On Friday, undocumented immigrants, banned from Head Start and career and technical education programs and adult education earlier this month,��were granted��a reprieve through Sept. 3 in the 20 states — and the District of Columbia — where attorneys general fought the Trump administration’s recent directive to kick them out, according to��. The U.S. Department of Justice, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the U.S. Department of Education, and the U.S. Department of Labor all agreed to the delay.

From cradle to career, President Donald Trump has launched a comprehensive campaign to close off education to undocumented immigrants, undercutting, advocates say, the very reason many came to the United States: for a chance at a better life. 

Preschoolers without legal status are now banned from Head Start and older students and adults without papers are blocked from career, technical and adult education. Some states are rescinding in-state college tuition for those here illegally and K-12 schools are being targeted by the president’s sweeping immigration enforcement crackdown

The affecting Head Start enrollment was released July 10. The federally funded early education program was created in 1965 to help underprivileged children succeed in school.

On the same day, the U.S. Department of Education shut the door on older undocumented students and adults hoping to gain job skills, earn dual enrollment credits or learn to read. Education Secretary Linda McMahon : “Under President Trump’s leadership, hardworking American taxpayers will no longer foot the bill for illegal aliens to participate in our career, technical, or adult education programs or activities.”

The nation’s K-12 public schools, filling the vast middle between early education and college and careers, have been leveraged in the administration’s aggressive, deportation effort with federal agents arresting and detaining students and . 

These and other enforcement tactics have terrified newcomer families to the point that some students are , prompting educators to suggest a solution that was once unthinkable: a return to remote learning.

“I know districts are contending with, you know, ‘Do we move to the hybrid approach that we learned how to do back in the pandemic in the fall so that students are not subject to ICE raids by just walking in the classroom door?” Amy Loyd, head of CTE and adult education under former education secretary Miguel Cardona, told The 74.

has already started offering this option, a nod to the numerous barriers undocumented young people already face in pursuing higher education. Cost is among the most pressing; these students . 

The financial hurdle was alleviated when at least two dozen states, often with bipartisan support, extended in-state college tuition to local high school graduates who lack legal status. These policies, some in place for decades, are now under attack by the Trump administration. 

The president in the spring saying the policies needed to stop because they offered more affordable in-state tuition rates “to aliens but not to out-of-State American citizens.” In June, the justice department sued to end the practice, setting students adrift. Within hours, the voluntarily agreed to abolish its program, the oldest in the country. 

was first to act, moving to eliminate in-state tuition for undocumented students in February. 

Augustus Mays, the vice president of EdTrust, an equity-focused advocacy group, called out the bigger picture in reacting to the CTE and adult education restrictions earlier this month. 

“Let’s be clear: this move is part of a broader, deeply disturbing trend,” he said in a statement. “This is not about protecting taxpayers. It’s about punishing students. This administration is choosing to weaponize policy against hope itself.”

On July 23, the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights , including the University of Miami and the University of Michigan, for offering scholarships to undocumented students protected by the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which gives them the right to live and work in this country. The inquiries will examine whether granting scholarships to DACA recipients discriminates against American-born college-goers.

“As we mark President Trump’s historic six months back in the White House, we are expanding our enforcement efforts to protect American students and lawful residents from invidious national origin discrimination of the kind alleged here,” Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor said in a statement.

The youngest — and the oldest — learners 

Sarah Orth is chief executive officer at the Blind Children’s Center, which was founded in Los Angeles in 1938. Its programs now include Head Start, which serves 85 early learners from birth to 5 years old.

“This move against Head Start is so egregious because infants and toddlers are the most vulnerable,” she said, adding she’s unsure how her program will identify and remove undocumented students. “Are the children who are already enrolled going to be grandfathered in or am I kicking the kids out next week? I have no idea. I have people on my staff who are crying because they are going to have to deliver this news.”

Orth said some families could never find the breadth of services their kids need in their home countries. She recalled one 4-year-old girl brought into the program by her parents, who were young and Spanish-speaking. Their daughter was visually impaired, had sensory issues and had not been exposed much to the outside world. 

“When they first enrolled her, dad would carry her from the car to the classroom and would never put her down,” Orth said. “If you tried to do that, she would lift her feet up because she didn’t know what was happening.”

Within six to eight months of enrolling in Head Start, the child was walking on her own — both indoors and outside — and playing with friends. As she grew in confidence, she was no longer “clinging to dad with the fear she had when she first came to us.”

Her parents also learned how important it was for her to have social-emotional connections, Orth said. 

An estimated 115,000 Head Start children and families could be impacted by the move to bar the undocumented. Together, they comprise roughly 16% of the program’s total 2024-25 enrollment, according to by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which runs the program. The federal government of Head Start’s cost, devoting to the program in 2023.

“For 60 years, this program has never required that kind of [citizenship status] validation or verification,” said Luis Bautista, executive director of the Los Angeles County Office of Education Head Start and Early Learning Division, which serves some 7,000 children and families. “This is just adding to the fear and confusion families are experiencing amidst all of the other actions out there — including immigration.”

He called Trump’s move “extremely unfortunate,” adding that he doesn’t agree with the president’s characterization of kids born on foreign soil. 

“I don’t consider a child — especially a 3-year-old — to be illegal in any way,” Bautista said, adding money devoted to young minds is well spent. “Ninety percent of brain development happens before age 5. That is where the investment should be.”

It’s unclear how many older students will be affected by Trump’s citizenship restrictions. participated in CTE in the 2020-21 school year, the most recent year for which federal data is available, according to the Association for Career & Technical Education. 

Congress each year sends some for competitive grants to support CTE efforts across the country. These programs, through their funding, are required to support nine “special populations,” including single parents, those with disabilities and English learners. 

Loyd, who is now CEO of the advocacy organization , said she’s concerned about Trump’s focus on higher education, including CTE programs, which she said help students from all walks of life.

“Basically, we are relegating high school students to entry-level, dead-end jobs,” she said. “It’s just mean-spirited and certainly consistent with the administration’s commitment to undermine the vital presence of immigrants in our nation. It’s so dehumanizing.”

The $715 million the federal government spends on adult education , adults and out-of-school teens 16 and older. The funding, among the $7 billion temporarily frozen by Trump this summer, covers a range of programs, including high school diploma equivalency, adult literacy and vocational job training for people with disabilities. 

The programs are run by . Many . 

An adult education teacher in Indiana told The 74 that the 300-plus immigrants in her program — many from Haiti, Guinea and Senegal — enroll to learn English and earn a high school diploma equivalency. Some of the younger students, she said, use the program to prepare for college while the older participants hope it will help them land better-paying jobs. 

The teacher, who asked not to be identified because she feared losing funding for her program, described her students as “the most respectful, grateful people I have ever met in my life.”&�Բ�����;

She said they respond with copious appreciation even for a gift as small as a pencil.

“I’ll say, ‘Just take it,’ and they will use it until it’s down to the nub,” she said. “They are just so eager to learn.”

Will Plyler be next?

The administration is changing the narrative around programs like Head Start and CTE, moving them away from their educational roots and the view that they were beneficial to the economy and casting them instead as federal public benefits. Undocumented immigrants are not eligible for such programs, including food assistance and non-emergency Medicaid.

Wil Del Pilar, senior vice president at EdTrust, asserted that this is part of a wider strategy by the president to scapegoat some of the country’s most vulnerable people.

“This is not a new trope,” he said, adding that German, Irish and other immigrant groups were similarly castigated upon their arrival to America, fueled by the notion that newcomers “are taking something that belongs to you, that they are getting a benefit you don’t receive.”

And while many of Trump’s initiatives are facing legal challenges — 21 Democratic attorneys general earlier this month over the and directives — the president has prevailed in his efforts on immigration. 

With each new announcement, immigrant advocates worry Trump could be inching closer to dismantling or undermining Plyler v. Doe, the landmark 1982 Supreme Court ruling that a child cannot be denied a public education based on immigration status. Some immigrant advocates fear his administration might try to argue that a free, public education is also a public benefit program — and so off-limits to undocumented K-12 students.

The U.S. is home to roughly undocumented residents. In 2021, the American Community Survey ages 5 to 17 who had been in the United States for three years or less, and another 1.5 million immigrant children living here four years or more, according to the Migration Policy Institute.

Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff and architect of the president’s immigration crackdown, searched for ways to undercut Plyler. In June, one of the authors of the conservative playbook, who has proposed challenging or overturning the ruling, became the Education Department’s newest . Both Texas and have recently tried to weaken K-12 protections for undocumented students.

Pamela Broussard, a Texas-based educator and advocate for English learners, said overturning Plyler “would betray the very principles upon which public education was founded.”

She maintained that education is a right — not a privilege — and that all students deserve to be supported in their learning.

“When any group of children is denied access to education, we create an underclass more likely to face poverty, unemployment and social marginalization,” she told The 74. “At its core, Plyler v. Doe affirmed that the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment applies to all people, not just citizens.”

As President Donald Trump has ramped up deportations, some immigrant students across New York have been too afraid to attend class in person. In response, some school districts have turned to virtual learning, a move the state’s Education Department is sanctioning, officials revealed last week.

“I will tell you in the sense of a crisis, we do have some districts right now … that are taking advantage and providing virtual instruction to our children who are afraid to go to school,” Associate Education Commissioner Elisa Alvarez .

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Alvarez shared with the board a the state Education Department issued in March clarifying that districts have the flexibility to offer online instruction to “students who may be unable or averse to attending school, including during times of political uncertainty.”

The memo further specified schools can tap online learning for immigrant and migrant students “who may be affected and reluctant to attend school in person due to concerns about their personal safety and security.”

Alvarez didn’t disclose how many or which districts were using the approach and for how many students. A state Education Department spokesperson did not respond to follow-up questions.

New York City public schools already have virtual options available and aren’t doing anything different for immigrant students fearful of attending school, a spokesperson for the city’s Education Department said.

Still, the disclosure from state officials highlights the ongoing fears some immigrant students are facing four months into the Trump administration and raises fresh questions about how their school experiences are being affected.

Shortly after taking office, Trump barring federal immigration agents from making arrests at “sensitive locations” including schools.

Migrant families staying in New York City shelters expressed acute fears during the week after Trump’s inauguration in January and , likely contributing to lower citywide attendance rates that week (though Mayor Eric Adams later ). Some city educators said they’ve seen attendance for immigrant students rebound since that first week.

City policy prohibits federal law enforcement agents, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement, from entering schools without a warrant signed by a judge, and Education Department officials have for how to respond.

At the state level, the Attorney General’s office and Education Department issued in March reiterating that state and federal law both compel districts to only permit federal law enforcement to enter schools under very limited circumstances.

Many school leaders have worked hard to communicate those policies and reassure anxious families. And immigration enforcement inside of schools has remained rare.

But some high-profile raids have targeted school-age children, including one in the upstate New York hometown of Trump border czar Tom Homan that swept up three students in the local public schools, . And there have been across the of parents detained by immigration agents right outside schools during drop-off time.

Under those circumstances, virtual learning could give schools a way to keep up some connection with students or families who might otherwise completely disengage.

But some New York City educators said they’re still working hard to convince fearful immigrant students to come to school in person, noting that virtual learning was especially during the COVID pandemic.

Lara Evangelista, the executive director of the Internationals Network, which oversees 17 public schools in the five boroughs catering exclusively to newly arrived immigrant students, said none of her schools have made the “purposeful choice” to engage fearful students through virtual learning.

“Virtual learning for [English Learners] was really challenging during COVID,” she said.

Alan Cheng, the superintendent who oversees the international schools as well as the city’s dedicated virtual schools, said he hasn’t seen any significant changes in enrollment or interest in online learning due to fear of in-person attendance among immigrant students.

And while virtual learning might be able to offer a version of the academic experience of in-person school, it’s harder for it to replicate some of the other services that schools provide families.

“Our schools serve much more than just the academic environment,” Cheng said. “They are really community schools, they provide health care, they provide plenty of other resources.”

This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. Sign up for their newsletters at .

was originally reported by Marissa Martinez of .��

Republicans would raise the child tax credit to $2,500 per eligible child in the tax-writing committee’s latest proposal. But the bill would also exclude millions of families from accessing the credit, including the country’s poorest households and immigrant or mixed-status families.

One provision of the bill requires a child’s parent or parents to have a Social Security Number, shutting out undocumented immigrants or those without work authorization, even when the child themselves has a Social Security Number. In mixed-status households, where one parent has a Social Security Number and the other doesn’t, the child is still ineligible.

Some estimates show this change could impact 4.5 million children alone. Coupled with proposals from other committees that restrict access to Medicaid or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), immigrant and mixed-status families face drastically rising costs, according to Ashley Burnside, a senior policy analyst at the Center for Law and Social Policy.

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“We’ll see more people having to make impossible decisions,” Burnside said. “As more families are arbitrarily restricted from accessing these critical health benefits, it’s going to result in a lot of hardship for people. That is going to make all of us worse off as communities.”

Many filers without Social Security Numbers use Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers (ITINs) to pay taxes, but would no longer be able to access tax credits under this proposal —��part of an administration crackdown on immigrants using public social services.

“Immigrant families, undocumented families, use ITINs to pay around $100 billion every year in taxes. The fact that they’re not able to benefit from any of these benefits intended for families undermines the idea that this is a pro-family, pro-worker provision,” said Kat Menefee, senior counsel for income security at the National Women’s Law Center Action Fund.

Through this proposal’s extension of changes from the last major tax overhaul in 2017, another 17 million of the country’s lowest-income households will still not have access to the full credit because they do not earn enough to pay federal income taxes — nor will an additional 1 million children who do not have Social Security Numbers. Before 2017, all children were eligible as long as their parents filed their tax returns and met the other credit requirements.

“This bill doubles down on that assault on those seeking the American Dream by stealing tax benefits and services to working people who are paying taxes,” Rep. Linda Sánchez, a California Democrat, said during a committee markup of the 2025 tax bill.

This version also eliminates the Direct File program, which allows households to file taxes with the IRS for free, and adds restrictions to applying for and receiving the Earned Income Tax Credit, potentially resulting in more families losing money meant to supplement lower-earning households.

The current House tax proposal will likely change significantly, with several other sections having garnered opposition from fellow Republicans in both chambers. But the principle of removing many immigrant and mixed-status households is likely to stay, as Republicans look to find any money to cut in alignment with President Donald Trump’s desire to slash federal spending.

More than 46 million taxpayers claim the child tax credit each year. During the pandemic, congressional Democrats and then-President Joe Biden temporarily increased the child tax credit to up to $3,600, expanded eligibility to more of the lowest-earning families and delivered the credit in monthly checks to recipients rather than in one lump sum. These changes lifted millions of households out of poverty. But the credit reverted back to $2,000 in 2022 — and soon after.

Last year, GOP senators and former Sen. Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Independent who used to caucus with Democrats, that would have moderately increased the credit, part of legislation that had already passed the House with bipartisan support.

The fact that Republicans had signed onto a House bill that expanded access to more lower-earning families —��with direct involvement from Rep. Jason Smith, the Missouri Republican who chairs the Ways and Means Committee — shows that those same improvements are financially possible to add again, according to Bob Greenstein, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution.

But last August’s bill was proposed under former President Biden, and Republicans signed on to some Democratic policies. Now that the GOP controls the House, Senate and White House, Republicans “threw that over the side,” Greenstein added. Combined with proposed deep cuts to Medicaid and SNAP, families with modest or low incomes will be adversely affected, he said.

“It’s curious — the reconciliation bill as a whole really slams the working family, working paycheck-to-paycheck,” Greenstein said. “Those families (were also) the key part of the Trump base in 2024.”

Senators have a wider array of ideas to increase or improve the child tax credit, including a proposal to offset a parent’s payroll taxes from Sen. Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican, though he has not yet filed official legislation, nor does he sit on the Finance Committee. Sen. Mike Crapo, the Idaho Republican who chairs the committee, has signaled interest in increasing the credit in some capacity, but he has historically been opposed to lowering the floor for qualifying family incomes, Greenstein noted.

Meanwhile, Democrats, led by Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet, have for an expanded, tiered credit system. But the bill is all but likely to gather dust in a harsh cost-trimming environment.

Lawmakers must decide on some change during the reconciliation process — otherwise, the credit reverts back to a $1,000 baseline in the fall.

A bill giving public school districts the right to refuse enrollment to children without legal immigration status advanced in the Tennessee House Wednesday as a packed audience disrupted debate by standing and singing spiritual music in protest.

The panel of lawmakers swiftly cast their votes 11-7 in favor of the measure and exited the room as people rose to sing “Jesus Loves the Little Children,” ending a contentious hour-and-a-half hearing. Three Republicans joined the committee’s four Democrats in casting a “no” vote.

The bill () by Sen. Bo Watson of Hixson and House Majority Leader William Lamberth of Portland — both Republicans — would give public school districts the option of verifying student immigration status and charging tuition of students who cannot prove they are legal residents. 

Alternatively, school districts could refuse to enroll children without proof of legal residency.

The bill has drawn large protests for weeks as it has wound through the legislative process. It was significantly amended Wednesday, stripping an initial requirement that all Tennessee public schools must verify the immigration status of every student and, instead, making checks optional for public school districts. The amended version of the bill would also exempt students refused admission by their local public school as a result of their immigration status from the state’s truancy laws.

Both of the bill’s sponsors have said they hope the measure could serve as a test case for the Supreme Court to revisit its 1982 Plyler v. Doe decision that established that all children in the United States have the right to a public education regardless of their immigration status.

“What we’re allowing (schools) to do is what Plyler prohibited them from doing,” Lamberth said Wednesday. 

Citing increasing numbers of English language learners in Tennessee schools, Lamberth said the measure is necessary due to years of federal inaction in controlling the nation’s borders, leaving states to bear the burden of educating children whose parents “skipped the line.”

“The families that we are talking about, the parents we are talking about have absolutely gone around that process,” he said. 

The bill drew fierce pushback from Democrats on the House Education panel.

“I think we all heard it here today, what this bill is really about,” said Rep. Sam McKenzie, a Knoxville Democrat, who called the legislation a “bully bill to try to undo the law of the land.”

“We have for over 40 years abided by this decision… because it’s the right thing,” he said. “We should not put our children — the least of us, those that cannot do for themselves — in the middle of an adult battle.”

A fiscal analysis of the bill noted it could jeopardize over $1 billion in federal education funding to the state. The bill will next be heard April 1 in the Senate Finance, Ways and Means Committee. 

A that would have similarly required children without legal immigration status to pay public school tuition, and financial institutions to check immigration status of customers seeking to wire funds overseas, failed Wednesday in a House Banking and Consumer Affairs committee.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Tennessee Lookout maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Holly McCall for questions: info@tennesseelookout.com.

“I got a question [about] whether or not ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] can look through your purse. I got a question about kids carrying their documents. One parent asked, if she elected a standby guardian and if that guardian took the child home, whether that would keep [her] kid from getting deported.”&�Բ�����;

Veronica Thronson, a law professor and the director of the Immigration Law Clinic at Michigan State University Law School is also making herself available to answer legal questions. She’s conducted a number of trainings at the , a local nonprofit supporting refugees in Michigan, and was a panelist on a recent Migration Policy Institute webinar about issues affecting immigrant families and early childhood systems. 

Thronson says Trump’s (regardless of its ) unleashed a flood of phone calls from clinic clients with children. “They were saying they heard from a neighbor that their kid is not a citizen anymore, and so we have spent a lot of time saying, ‘No, no, no, you are safe. Your child is a U.S. citizen’.”&�Բ�����;

The clinic Thronson leads is for second- and third-year law students who serve clients in East Lansing and surrounding areas who come from Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Cuba, Mexico, Venezuela and her own home country of Guatemala.

“We usually have them come to our office to meet with us,” she explains, “but now we’re saying, ‘No, we’re coming to you’ so they don’t risk getting stopped along the way because they may not have a driver’s license or they may not have a very good car that gets stuck in the middle of the road. We minimize the risk of them getting encountered by ICE.” Many of her students are immigrants themselves or are related to immigrants. “They are worried about enforcement against their own families,” she adds. 

To date, there have been some , but no confirmed raids on child care centers. 

Thronson says, “I’m really hoping that ICE has enough on their hands, targeting people who are serving a criminal sentence or people who have prior orders of removal. That gives us a chance to prepare the community.”&�Բ�����;

Immigration advocates and legal experts have differing opinions about the severity of the threat, but there are some consistent themes in how they are approaching the moment. 

Supporting Early Educators In Understanding The Rights of Children and Their Families 

Key advocacy organizations, including (CLASP) and the (NILC) are providing — and regularly updating — resources for child care educators. According to Suma Setty, senior policy analyst at CLASP, about one in five U.S. child care providers is an immigrant. “Unless something drastic happens, there are certain things that will remain true, like your Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights,” she says, referring to protection against arbitrary arrest and self-incrimination, respectively. “All people have a constitutional right to remain silent.”

She adds that child care providers and early educators should understand that the only warrants they must honor are those signed by a judge. 

Helping Child Care Programs Make a Plan

Setty suggests that child care programs should put protocols in place to protect staff and families and that that will help them ease the anxiety. “They need to know what to do in a situation that might be scary and intimidating, such as if ICE agents show up at their door,” she notes.

CLASP provides for how early childhood programs can create “safe space” policies to protect young children and their families. These policies empower staff to establish roles and responsibilities, including how to interact with federal immigration agents, how to minimize children’s learning and routines and how to notify parents about the presence of immigration agents. 

Ellefson-Porras says families also have a role. “Check to make sure all your paperwork with the preschool is up to date,” she recommends. “Who is authorized to pick up your child?” In some cases, she tells parents and caregivers to consider having someone else pick up their child and drop them off at school.

Finding Developmentally Appropriate Ways to Acknowledge the Threat

“The last thing you want is to scare a child,” asserts Thronson. “They are already afraid. Many children we represent have no idea they have crossed the border. They have no idea what immigration is. Why are we going to instill fear in them? At the same time, she notes, it’s very important to convey the message to kids: Do not open the door.” She advises parents to update their emergency contact to designate another person to pick up their children in case they get caught up in an ICE raid.  

Consequences for the Sector — and for Children

Setty notes that the threat of increased immigration enforcement has already caused damage. There have been reports of decreased attendance, which could harm child development as well as jeopardize funding. “There’s a concern that this will decimate an already-precarious industry,” she says. “If we’re talking about a lot of people disenrolling from Head Start or from other child care programs, it’s going to threaten child care supply.”

The situation is changing every day. “Something that might be relevant and apply now might not be relevant tomorrow,” says Setty. “The whole tactic of the Trump administration is to cause panic and anxiety and fear, but it’s important for folks to stay abreast of everything.”&�Բ�����;

Resources for Early Educators and Families:

• (American Immigration Lawyer Association)
• (Child Thrive Action Network)
• (The Center for Law and Social Policy)
• (Catholic Legal Immigration Network)
• (Immigration Legal Resource Center)
• () (Migration Policy Institute)

Attendance had already been low for about a week at Laredo Elementary School in Aurora when federal immigration agents showed up at an apartment building down the street before school started Wednesday, according to teachers.

The first hour of classes that day was punctuated by the sound of a plane circling above and dark SUVs driving up and down the street, a teacher said. At one point, one of the SUVs parked next to the school’s crosswalk.

While some students in Nate Madson Dion’s fifth grade class were absent, most made it to class, where he said “they have people they trust, and they feel safe. But all that concern is still lurking.”

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A third grader emailed her teacher to explain that she wasn’t at school because she hadn’t been able to leave her home because of the raids. “Hopefully, I’ll be back tomorrow,” she wrote, according to Madson Dion.

The Aurora school district had attendance of 89.44% on Wednesday and was at 92.25% the following day. According to Colorado Public Radio, attendance in the district had dipped to 79% on Jan. 30, the day the raids had been rumored to start.

In Denver schools, the district’s most recent lowest attendance date was Feb. 3 during a national movement for , but it had bounced back to about 86.9% on Feb. 5.

Madson Dion overheard his students having conversations about the raids last Thursday. A student who had been at the apartment building was telling the kids about it. He said seven people were taken from his building and some doors were knocked down.

Madson Dion said he stuck to most of his lessons for the day. He doesn’t guide any conversations about what’s happening outside, but lets students talk when they initiate conversations. He chimes in when he has information that could be helpful to students, he said.

“It’s super important for me to allow it to happen, while also not pressing it,” Madson Dion said. When a student was wondering what would happen if immigration agents knocked on his door, Madson Dion chimed in and told students, “Just don’t answer the door.”

Students already knew that, he said.

“Fifth graders know about warrants. Fifth graders shouldn’t have to know about warrants,” he said. “We have kids who are resilient in ways I wish they didn’t have to be.”

At nearby Hinkley High School, math teacher Beth Himes said her students had experienced many of the same things. Some had seen raids taking place and residents of apartment buildings hiding on rooftops.

“Students on their way to school had filmed people on top of a roof as they drove past the apartment complexes, and that was going around the school,” Himes said. “Students were all abuzz, they were very nervous, they were worried. Not necessarily for themselves, but for parents, other family, friends, neighbors.”

Her classroom has large windows through which students could see the immigration enforcement vehicles driving past.

The night of the raids was parent-teacher conference night at Hinkley.

Himes usually has between 12 and 14 parent meetings in a night. Last Wednesday, Himes only had six parent meetings. One parent had emailed her to ask for the information through email, and cited the raids for feeling unsafe to go meet Hines in person.

Most classes at Hinkley have gone on as normal, and while attendance is down, it hasn’t been significantly lower on any particular day, Himes said. Similar to at Laredo, she said she believes Hinkley students feel as safe as they can while they are at school. But getting to and from school can feel dangerous for them or their families.

“I think their anxiety goes up when they leave,” Himes said.

At Laredo, when an immigration SUV parked in the crosswalk in front of the school, some families felt uncomfortable crossing the street in front of that agent, so the families waited inside the school until they felt safe to leave again.

Teacher says it matters when leaders talk about immigration

In the nearby Adams 12 school district, the superintendent told his school board on Wednesday night that immigration concerns are taking a lot of time to address.

Superintendent Chris Gdowski said the district believed the parent of one Adams 12 student had been detained in Wednesday’s raids and that the child was in the temporary care of a neighbor.

Attendance had been down by as much as 5% at some Adams 12 schools, and the district was trying to problem-solve with families to find ways to get students back in classes, or find ways to keep them learning while at home, Gdowski said.

“It’s become a fairly significant part of many of our jobs on the security side in coordinating with our principals about what to do if this happens, and then there’s also fairly consistent communication needs that we have,” he said.

At a meeting the day after the raids, the Jeffco school board discussed the fears that seem to be keeping some children home from school. Although Jeffco didn’t discuss large attendance rate drops, staff told the board they will present recommendations for the superintendent in the next couple of weeks on how to help students who don’t feel safe coming into classes physically.

The board workshopped the on this Thursday to show support for immigrant and LGBTQ students who may be feeling unsafe. But board members struggled with some of the language, because they wondered what they could guarantee doing for students, especially as things keep changing.

Board member Paula Reed, was hesitant about saying the district won’t collect or share immigration information from students or families, because she said in the near future. Board members also wondered if they could control what happens outside their school buildings, and whether they should state that immigration actions that happen near schools are disruptive to students.

that is nearly identical to one the board approved in 2017 written with parent and student groups. It states that as one of the most diverse districts in the state, Aurora is dedicated to supporting and serving all students. The resolution includes updated demographic information showing that the district’s students now speak more than 160 different languages and that more than 42% of all students are learning English as a new language.

The resolution adds a requirement that Aurora schools update student emergency contact information twice a year instead of once per year and encourages families to include a non-family contact in case family members can’t pick up students.

Himes said the Aurora resolution matters because it supports school staff’s desire to keep students safe and to communicate that desire to the families and students themselves.

“It’s just been very well-communicated,” Himes said. “That’s the key.”

This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. Sign up for their newsletters at . 

Students, educators and advocates gathered at a library in Meriden Tuesday to call on state and local leaders to expand protections for immigrant students, as well as those in the LGBTQ+ community, and to fully fund Connecticut’s public schools.

The call to action came just two weeks into Donald J. Trump’s second presidential term, during which he has signed a slew of executive orders that have revoked previous limits on at schools and other sensitive locations, for transgender youth and pledged to  for “illegal and discriminatory treatment and indoctrination in K-12 schools, including based on gender ideology and discriminatory equity ideology.”

“We will not tolerate these unprecedented attacks on public schools, which are the foundation of our democracy, and we will not tolerate these attacks on our students, who are the leaders who will sustain our democracy in the future,” said Leslie Blatteau, the president of the New Haven Federation of Teachers.

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Speaking at a press conference at Meriden Public Library, Blatteau was joined by a half dozen other community advocates who are part of Connecticut For All, a statewide coalition that says its goal is to “reduce and eliminate systemic racial, economic, and gender inequities in Connecticut.” The group called for Gov. Ned Lamont and state lawmakers to commit to protecting students’ safety, providing support and ensuring “they’re able to succeed in their learning environment.”

One proposal put forth Tuesday was to strengthen the state’s , a 2013 law that limits state and local law enforcement cooperation with federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“We call on state leaders and community members to work together in ensuring that all students, regardless of their background, receive the education they deserve — that ICE does not rip their families apart, and that they honor sensitive locations,” said Tabitha Sookdeo, the executive director for Connecticut Students For A Dream.

“Education is a right. Safety is the right. Dignity is a right,” Sookdeo went on. “The classroom should be a place of learning and growth, not a place of fear and uncertainty. Ensuring protections and resources for these students allows them to focus on their education, just like any other kid, and contribute to their communities.”

Last week, state education officials on how local district leaders should respond to “immigration activities,” including in cases where federal immigration officers request student information or come onto school property.

The  addressed common questions the Education Department has received from school districts about changes in U.S. Homeland Security policy guidance, and it stressed that both state and federal law “protect a student’s right to attend public schools, regardless of their immigration status.”

Sookdeo said the memo was “good start,” but it fell “short of giving guidance to teachers if a school district does not put appropriate protocols into place.”

“What happens if a school allows an ICE officer to come in and take a student? What’s the protocol for that?” Sookdeo said.

Another growing concern is with students who identify as transgender or part of the LGBTQ+ community. One of Trump’s executive orders signed last Tuesday would, if enacted, withhold federal funding from institutions, including medical schools and hospitals, that provide gender-affirming care to youth under the age of 19. The directive also seeks to restrict coverage of those services from federally-run insurance programs, like Medicaid.

Connecticut Children’s CEO Jim Shmerling raised concerns about a cut to gender-affirming services last week, saying that he expects a “significant rise in suicide ideation and potential attempts in suicide.”

Advocates at the news conference echoed Shemerling’s concerns.

“We cannot expect a student to give 100% to their studies if they cannot be 100% of who they are,” said Tony Ferraiolo, of Healthcare Advocates International & Equality Now. “We are setting them up for failure when we take away a child’s ability to be seen,” Ferraiolo said. “What we’re telling them is that they don’t belong.”

Last year, Connecticut reaffirmed Title IX protections after the Biden administration issued new rules expanding protections for transgender students and a to block the rules. The Connecticut Department of Education directing Connecticut schools to recognize and respect a student’s preferences. Refusing to use a student’s preferred pronouns or call the student by a particular name may “constitute gender-based discrimination” and be “deemed discriminatory under Title IX,” the guidance stated.

The state also defined gender dysphoria and said it could qualify students for specialized instruction. It allowed school boards to develop policies regarding what information may be shared with parents. And it permitted districts to provide single-sex bathrooms and access to facilities that correspond with a students’ gender identity, granting “equal opportunity” in participation of both curricular and extracurricular activities.

The Biden administration’s 2024 guidance was  by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights which stated it will only enforce Title IX provisions from 2020, which were written under Trump in his first presidency.

“No portion of the 2024 Title IX Rule is now in effect in any jurisdiction,” wrote Craig Trainor, the acting assistant secretary for Civil Rights for the federal Department of Education. Trainor also wrote that under one of Trump’s recent executive orders, which called for the acknowledgment of just two genders, that the education department “must enforce Title IX consistent with President Trump’s Order.”

Trump has also threatened that federal funding could be rescinded “,” from schools that provide direct or indirect support toward the social transition of a transgender student.”

A spokesperson for the Connecticut Department of Education said the agency planned to review its Guidance on Civil Rights Protections and Supports for Transgender or Gender-Diverse Students “to determine whether revisions are required in light of” the Trump administration’s reinstatement of 2020 regulations.

While the Trump administration has threatened funding cuts to K-12 schools, it has also reaffirmed its commitment to through federal funding. School choice — the ability to seek education outside of an assigned, traditional public school — has been a . Proponents say it gives families autonomy to find the education model that works best for their kids, and opponents say it takes funding away from traditional public schools, segregates children and privatizes education.

“Every single child deserves to go to a public school that prepares them for life beyond the classroom, no matter where they live or the economic conditions they face,” Chad Cardillo, a Meriden City Council member, high school teacher and union vice president, said at Tuesday’s event. “Make no mistake that providing taxpayer dollars to private entities under the guise of choice provides one true choice — that of those private entities to exclude students who do not fit their mold.”

Unlike other areas of the country, Connecticut has not seen a serious push to expand school choice through voucher programs, to send their children to private or religious schools. But the approval of charter schools .

Five charter schools received by the state Board of Education and must now go before the state legislature for a final step in the process before they can open their doors and begin enrolling students. At that meeting, Elizabeth Sked, a union member part of the Connecticut Education Association objected to the opening of the schools, saying they “result in inequity, diminished diversity and concentrations of students with the greatest resource needs,” and that the state should instead focus on “sufficiently funding its existing public schools before expanding a parallel system of charter schools.”

Similar sentiments were also shared Tuesday, as Blatteau said “new charter schools and proposed voucher programs undermine the tenets of true public education.”

This first appeared on and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Updated Jan 22: As of Jan 21, the Department of Homeland Security has  its “sensitive locations” policy, allowing immigration raids where children gather including schools, hospitals and churches.

Parents showing their children where passports and other important legal documents are hidden at home. 

Mothers and fathers signing affidavits outlining who their childrens’ caregiver would be. 

Guardians making arrangements with schools for dismissal in the event they have been picked up by federal agents in a deportation sweep.

These are the daily conversations and heartbreaking realities mixed-status families — where not all kids, parents or grandparents hold American citizenship or legal status to reside in the U.S. — are rehearsing in case children come home to an empty house.

With Donald Trump’s border czar Tom Homan pledging to operate the largest deportation operation in American history in just days, parents, advocates, lawyers, and educators nationwide are working nonstop to protect and prepare families and school staff. 

“Students can’t focus on learning when they’re worried about whether their parents will come home at the end of the day, when they see themselves dehumanized in the press, or when representatives of the federal government come to their city to say, ‘You’ll be first in line for removal,’” Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates said last month. The union has rolled out a “Sanctuary Training Series” for staff and parents on how to protect kids from federal raids.  

The 74 interviewed dozens of people working with some of the nearly six million families facing ongoing dehumanization and to understand how deportation plans are affecting schools and students. 

School leaders throughout the country have begun sharing : Ensuring bus drivers and front office staff are trained on legal policies; providing simple scripts for what to say when interacting with federal law enforcement; explaining what’s next if the worst happens and families .

Educators, like healthcare workers, are sharing tips on for interacting with federal agents. Immigrant coalitions and parents are leading “” trainings in schools. Some schools are increasing mental health offerings as widespread increases along with anti-immigrant hate. 

“We need to let you know, if you are a student who is undocumented or a family who is undocumented, we will take care of you,” former teacher and board member Scott Esserman vowed at a Denver school board meeting in . “That’s our responsibility.”

When pressed on what the Trump administration’s plans would mean for millions of families with young children, officials have advised deported parents to take their American citizen children . If their home countries won’t accept them, the administration has reportedly where they will be permanently displaced – places where they may have no cultural, linguistic connection to.

Immigration enforcement operations will start in , Illinois and , Colorado, just outside of Denver, Trump administration officials have said.  

In response, school districts including , , , , and have reiterated resolutions passed during Trump’s first term and are training staff on how to protect families’ privacy in any interactions with immigration enforcement. 

, the nation’s largest, has a clear cut policy: If immigration enforcement officers do arrive at a school building, staff must keep them outside, notifying the districts’ legal counsel to first verify any warrants or subpoenas.

“Protecting immigrant students in and around school is not only moral – it’s the ,” said Alejandra Vázquez Baur, co-founder of the National Newcomer Network and fellow at The Century Foundation. Accessing free education, regardless of immigration status, has been protected as a constitutional right for 42 years. 

And like hospitals, schools, afterschool programs and chldrens’ bus stops have long been considered “sensitive locations,” protected from federal immigration raids without appropriate approval. Dozens of families sought refuge in while immigration arrests spread during the last Trump administration. 

Today, advocates are preparing for a different ballgame. The Trump administration’s include scrapping the Homeland Security’s sensitive locations policy, a move legal experts expect would be challenged. 

“We don’t want people with contagious diseases too scared to go to the hospital or children going uneducated because of poorly considered deportation policies,” Lee Gelernt, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union told . 

While the legal logistical challenges to operate mass deportations are predictable and being planned for – Texas, for instance, has pledged for deportation centers – immigration law scholar Hiroshi Motomura expects a wildcard: the public’s political will. 

“When you have the rhetoric and focus on the wall and on the border, it’s easy to stick with this idea that immigration law is to protect ‘us’ from ‘them,’” Motomura told The 74. 

“But it really is different when you start depriving employees of their families, and kids see their classmates deported,” he said. “It completely shifts the political vulnerability and what’s going on here.”

The 74 spoke with school staff, advocates and lawyers in states with the highest volume of mixed-status families about what they expect and how they’re preparing for the Trump administration’s mass deportation plans: 

Priscilla Monico Marín

Executive Director of the New Jersey Consortium for Immigrant Children 

Reality set in for Marín and her New Jersey-based team over the summer: Trump’s second presidency was a distinct possibility. To reach as many immigrant youth as quickly as they could, they started brainstorming, identifying a new district partner, Jersey City Public Schools.

Marín felt “called” to support families like her own when anti-immigrant rhetoric resurged, swapping her career as a bilingual teacher to become an immigration lawyer. 

“No one wants to be defined by your hardest day,” she said, adding too often undocumented students are not defined by their “humor, their curiosity, or their strength,” but instead their status and trauma.

Her team leads workshops and shares resources for classes of multilingual learners, so that they can secure immigration case support, access to social services and help others work past barriers to school enrollment.

The current situation has created a sense of urgency to what Marín and her team do. 

After she leaves the schools, older students start calling their hotline for assistance to secure visas and more stable immigration statuses, and to ask, “I’m undocumented. How do I enroll in healthcare?,” while some navigate the web of government bureaucracy as the only bilingual person in their families. 

Prerna Arora

Columbia Teachers College Faculty, New York

— a professor who studies the mental and physical health impacts of immigration on children — is witnessing a culture of fear and pain that’s limiting learning as fears of deportation loom. 

Working with 100 immigrant youth and asylum seekers throughout New York City, she has seen more hesitance and skepticism to share their emails or names in recent months than ever before. 

Many expressed feeling “underestimated… People may expect them not to have any language skills or fewer than they have.” Arora said. “…A lot of them spoke up to say, ‘we want people to know that we actually do want to try, we do care.’” 

In addition, several noted bias, hate and harassment from both children and adult K-12 school staff. “Maybe it’s a comment in passing that nobody realized how harmful it was.” Students are especially hurt when teachers say nothing at all after an  incident. 

Particularly to curb absenteeism, Arora emphasized schools need to focus on providing several tiers of mental health supports, ranging from school-wide workshops to small group and individual counseling, and establishing a sense of safety so that “parents and kids feel like the school can be trusted.”&�Բ�����;

Miguel Bocanegra

Immigration Lawyer with Cornell University’s Path2Papers Program, California

A small team of lawyers have held over 500 free consultations since launching one year ago, quickly mobilizing to move as many working DACA recipients toward more permanent legal residency before the Supreme Court or Trump’s administration upends the program’s fate.

Their approach is “offensive as opposed to defensive … to assist people in getting visas, to move in a positive direction that would not keep them in permanent limbo,” said Bocanegra, who has been practicing immigration law for over two decades. 

Bocanegra anticipates the Supreme Court may put an end to DACA as soon as late 2025, though it . The Obama-era policy has enabled more than 700,000 “dreamers” brought to the country as children to attain temporary legal status and work authorization. 

Today, he hosts confidential consultations with teachers and on campuses and over Zoom, helping them and their employers secure sponsorship and more permanent statuses like H-1B visas.

Roughly 82% of the people they’ve worked with are eligible for more stable statuses via employment or humanitarian visas. 

“We’re advising employers to educate themselves and make decisions one way or the other about whether they can move forward with these visa options while there’s still some time.”

Alejandra Vázquez Baur

Co-founder of National Newcomer Network, New York

A former south Florida teacher who grew up in a mixed status household, Vázquez Baur has witnessed generations of kids live with fears of deportation that often led to school absenteeism. 

While the incoming administration’s agenda seems more willing to target families and threaten kids’ right to education, she urged school leaders to remember, “the law is still the law, nothing has changed yet.”

The fear school staff may experience when encountering federal law enforcement is  only mitigated by knowing what to do. Some have begun printing out and language that front office staff, bus drivers and security agents can use: “We follow district policy and cannot provide any information without consulting legal counsel.”

Maribel Sainez

Aspire Public Schools’ Director of Advocacy & Community Engagement, California

Sainez, who also grew up in a mixed-status household, is urgently spreading a resource she recently learned of: , where families can report if they’ve seen ICE agents, inquire about sightings in a given area, or get support after an interaction with the agency. 

She and her charter network that serves many undocumented students are partnering with local organizations to offer Know Your Rights trainings, which include exercises for families on how to interact with federal agents. 

“I constantly draw on my own lived experiences,” said Sainez. “… How can we counter that fear and panic and really promote a sense of solidarity, awareness, and power building?”

In Los Angeles, citizenship expert Motomura has analyzed decades of policy, and resistance to change it. He’s among thousands advocating for reforms to the immigration system, stuck in congressional limbo year after year.  

“The world has changed, the economy has changed,” Motomura said. “The only way we’re going to get out of it is to make it not about how high the border wall is, but ask ourselves why there are 11 million people in the country who are without papers.”

The night I returned to New York City at age 5, the city felt surreal — bustling, vibrant, and intimidating. As my parents, older sister, and I got into the taxi, the city lights appeared to converge and become one. Everything seemed larger here. As the cab slowly pulled away from the airport, so did my sense of reality. From the towering buildings to the flashing signs to the rushing cars, it was all so different from the villages of Fujian province, China.

The taxi took us to the Borough Park, Brooklyn, apartment where we would be staying. When we walked in, there were boxes, furniture, appliances, and bicycles crowded into a roughly 144-square-foot living room. How can anyone live like this? I thought.

My family of four slept in a room that was smaller still, crammed with a bunk bed, a square table, and two chairs. As the clock struck midnight on what would be my first full day back in New York, I sat on the bottom bunk and ate takeout. I was full of curiosity and excitement, yet there were certain nuances to my feelings. Who were my parents? Why had they come all this way to a foreign land? And most importantly, why had I lived so far from them?

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I was 7,000 miles — and a virtual world away — from Fujian, where I had lived alongside a pond overgrown with lily pads, where the breeze would fly across my face, where the sound of crickets would penetrate the otherwise silent night, and where my grandma would pluck chickens for us to cook and eat. Everything was calmer and quieter there, on our block with only a couple of houses.

I soon learned that I hadn’t always lived so far from my mom and dad. My parents explained that I was born in Flushing, Queens, less than 20 miles from Borough Park. But like many immigrants, my parents worked grueling schedules at minimum-wage jobs — my mother in a nail salon with minimal training and my father as a chef at a Chinese buffet. Overextended and unable to support a family of four, they sent my sister and me to live with our grandparents in China.

For my parents, America — a nation that purports to value individual liberty, growth, and prosperity — became nothing more than the place where they resided as they saved money to bring us back to them.

All this makes me what some researchers call a Lacking affordable child care, many Chinese immigrant families send their American-born babies to . When the kids are ready for school, at around age 4 or 5,

Because of this arrangement, I had the joy of getting to know my grandparents. But it came at a cost: I didn’t really know the very people who created me. We were family, and we were strangers — so close, yet so far apart.

In the months after I returned to my parents, I was often nostalgic for my simpler life back in China. I would think about the small shop in town where my sister would buy the most pointless toys and about the local theater where performers dressed in elaborate costumes and painted their faces to tell the story of an emperor’s favorite concubine. This longing is what happens when you’re caught between two worlds — one that holds the joyful memories of childhood, and another of a new and confusing country.

People sometimes ask me if I could go back, would I do it all again. My answer will always be yes. These memories are reminders of a time when I was smaller, but when my heart felt a little fuller.

In Borough Park, my parents enrolled my sister and me in school. As a little Chinese “immigrant,” I spoke no English. Nor had I developed a sense of independence, and I would often cry when my mother left for work. In America, life felt like a rollercoaster, terrifying but also thrilling.

By fifth grade, though, I stood on the podium at Brooklyn’s P.S. 69 Vincent D. Grippo School and gave a valedictory speech. Somewhere along the way, the naive village boy had become an industrious student in the big city. I couldn’t grasp how rapidly my life had been transformed.

Now, about a decade after leaving China and returning to New York, I’m a student at Staten Island Tech, one of a handful of elite specialized high schools in New York City. Sometimes I wonder: Does my success mean that my parents’ hard work has finally paid off? Does it mean they are proud of me?

I feel constant pressure to succeed. Not for my peers, not for my teachers, and not even for myself, but for my parents, who still work humble, low-wage jobs. This pressure doesn’t come from them, who urge me to “do what makes you happy,” but rather from within. Sometimes, the very opportunities that are supposed to liberate me feel more like a burden.

I know I’m not the only one who feels this way. Many experience this overwhelm. For us, the American Dream can feel like a our parents.

When I first returned to America, I didn’t even know what the American Dream was. I soon came to understand it to be the idea that if you work hard, you can succeed. I know now that it’s not that simple, that factors such as personal and professional networks, perseverance, health, and luck also play a role. Still, I always tell myself that I could be working a little harder, like when I finish taking a test and feel pessimistic about the outcome, despite having studied so hard.

The pressure could be something I, along with , navigate our whole lives. We learn to coexist with it. Success in high school and beyond feels like a given. And working in a field that doesn’t pay well or waiting for the perfect job isn’t really an option because we want to provide lives of comfort for our parents, who never lived such lives.

I feel the weight of it all because, deep down, I know that I am a big part of my parents’ American Dream.

Ocean Lin, a member of Chalkbeat’s 2024-25 class, is a high school junior who wants to pursue a career in chemistry. He hopes to make a difference and share authentic stories. Ocean started the Instagram poetry account Tide Tales to give marginalized groups a platform for creative self-expression.

This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. Sign up for their newsletters at .

Correction appended Sept. 30

Educators and advocates from across the country — many of whom say they have already seen the effects of anti-immigrant political rhetoric on their students — convened Wednesday night to strategize on how to counter it in their schools. 

Adam Strom, director of Re-Imagining Migration, told the webinar’s 93 attendees to take an active role in combating prejudice by facing the issue head-on. He encouraged participants to address bullying against immigrant students specifically in school policy — and to teach about stereotypes without unintentionally reinforcing them. 

“Xenophobia harms all kids,” he said, “particularly immigrant youth.”&�Բ�����;

The meeting came two weeks after former President Donald Trump claimed during a presidential debate that immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, . Debunked by multiple official sources, Trump and his Republican running mate, JD Vance, have persisted in repeating the lie, which resulted in bomb threats that shuttered six Springfield schools and two local colleges. 

Less than 30 miles away in Dayton, Joni Watson, a retired public school teacher, works for an adult literacy nonprofit that helps participants earn their GED. Watson’s group also helps Dayton-area newcomers learn to read and write English through free one-on-one tutoring. 

“This topic is near and dear to my heart as I am really in the thick of it on a daily basis,” she told The 74. “I am just sick about what Vance and Trump are doing and saying.”

In a pre-webinar survey of 74 respondents, 31% said they knew of immigrant children who had reported being bullied or teased at school. Twenty-three percent said they heard students make anti-immigrant comments on campus this school year while another 23% heard staff make such statements since the beginning of the year. Eleven percent said they heard or witnessed staffers make anti-immigrant comments to families and caregivers.  

Strom advised educators to reach out to young immigrants and their families to check in on how they are feeling during this turbulent time and to tell all students that bullying of newcomers is unacceptable. He said, too, that educators should respond immediately when such incidents occur. 

During the session, Strom unveiled Re-Imagining Migration’s new . The AI-powered tool, which fed off thousands of pages of information from the organization’s website, including reports and lesson plans, was developed to help users identify misinformation. 

It encourages them to check the validity of such claims by consulting credible fact-checking sites such as — and to learn and spread correct information to their school communities. Since putting Springfield , Trump has moved to inciting false fears over immigrant communities in and .

Psychotherapist Liz Carrasco said she wanted to attend the webinar because she’s seen the impact of hate speech on her students. 

“Many worry that their families could be torn apart, or that they will face discrimination in their pursuit of education and work,” she said. “For these students, political rhetoric is not just words — it has very real and immediate consequences for their safety and their future.”

A U.S. citizen who was born in Mexico, Carrasco works with UNLV PRACTICE Nevada Rural Communities Mental Health Outreach Program, which supports young people ages 12-25, and teaches at the university’s School of Social Work. Carrasco, who was not speaking on behalf of UNLV, said she works with immigrants who have gone through horrific ordeals, including some who were victims of human trafficking.

Strom asked participants to be honest about whether and how they teach about migration and instructed them to develop better, more robust lessons that capture immigrant students’ experiences. 

He said this can be done at all grade levels.  

“Think about how you might use childrens’ books to normalize the stories of newcomers,” he said during the hour-long event.  

Anindita Das, community engagement strategist at an Iowa college, said she was compelled to attend the event because reducing prejudice helps build a more inclusive and harmonious society.

“Being an immigrant myself, I know immigrants bring diverse cultures, perspectives and experiences, enriching the social fabric of the host country,” she said. “Immigrants contribute significantly to the economy through their labor, entrepreneurship and innovation. Addressing prejudice ensures they can fully participate and contribute.”

Correction: An earlier version of this story had an outdated description of Liz Carrasco’s job with the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

On a pretty fall day in Massachusetts last week, Morad Majjad began work by checking in with a middle school nurse to see if he was needed as a translator.

By the time the day was over, Majjad — whose title is family liaison for the West Springfield school district but who is better described as “interpreter-in-chief” — had translated for a misbehaving elementary school child, explained to a librarian’s class in another language how to check out and return books, dropped into a kindergarten class with newly arrived refugees who had trouble understanding what they had to do, and jumped onto a rowdy school bus to discuss proper behavior with a group of immigrant kids new to riding the bus.

“At the end of the day, I’m exhausted, but it makes me fulfilled,” said Majjad, a native of Morocco who speaks five languages — Arabic, Berber (a language spoken by many people in Morocco and Algeria), French, Spanish and English — and who is learning Portuguese. “Last year, I helped 300 families. This year, I think I will be able to affect the lives of many, many more kids.”

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The West Springfield, Massachusetts, school district has seen an overwhelming influx of immigrants in the past couple of years, in Massachusetts.

Democratic Gov. Maura Healey declared a state of emergency in August because of the rising number of migrant families and called on the federal government for help. She announced in August that Boston and the state will share a $1.9 million grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to expand shelters and transportation for the new immigrants. But that did not include money for schools. The state is providing schools with extra money for students housed in emergency shelters.

An increase in immigrant kids has created challenges for schools in areas that have seen a recent wave of migrants, from Texas to Illinois, Massachusetts to Florida.

Julie Sugarman, associate director for K-12 education research at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonprofit research group, said while many school districts have been dealing with English learners and migrants previously, the wave of the past few months means states are trying to provide guidance to schools without knowing exactly when and from where new students are coming.

“Finding [educators] with the right credentials can be challenging,” she said. “Having students come throughout the year is incredibly challenging.”

Take Chicago, for example. A census of the Chicago Public Schools, updated last week, showed that the “English learners” population grew nearly 11% from last fall to this fall, increasing 7,810 to reach 79,833, according to information provided by the district.

In a typical school year, the district said, there are about 3,000 new English learners, though not all are from migrant families.

The Chicago school district is ramping up recruitment and hiring of educators with bilingual skills. As of the 2022-23 school year, it has about 850 teachers with bilingual credentials and 2,100 teachers with both bilingual and English as a second language credentials, the department reported, up from about 2,100 in 2017.

In the Miami-Dade County School District in Florida, 7,519 new students from other countries had enrolled this year as of Sept. 9, spokesperson Ana Rhodes said in an email. That compares with 13,941 from other countries who enrolled throughout last school year, and 7,436 in 2021-22, she said.

This fall in New York City, a reported 20,000 new migrant students enrolled in public schools.

Increased costs

A large infusion of new immigrant families adds to the costs of schools but not greatly to the tax base that funds them, said Steve Camarota, director of research for the Center for Immigration Studies, a national research and advocacy group that favors reduced immigration. In general, schools are financed by local property taxes, though states and the federal government contribute. In some cases, he said, the increased costs are marginal — buying more equipment and books, for example — but others require capital expenditures such as new school buildings.

In addition to language issues, there is a “lack of familiarity with American culture, American education, American ideals,” he added. Those aspects all play into school employees’ work, such as the translations Majjad does in West Springfield. Camarota noted that while the kids generally pick up a new language quickly, parents and other family members acquire language more slowly.

West Springfield Superintendent Stefania Raschilla said the stock of materials she buys every year is based on a set number of students. “With the influx of refugees, it’s been a challenge because the state and agencies don’t know how many are coming, they don’t know the grades they are in, they just show up here,” she said in an interview.

She said space in classrooms, space in buildings, transportation and more than 50 different languages students speak at home are among the other challenges.

She hired a few more English as a second language teachers, anticipating the wave.

Massachusetts and New York City attract many immigrants because of mandates requiring that all people have access to shelter. New York Democratic Mayor Eric Adams recently a judge to suspend the requirement, in the face of overwhelming immigration.

Access to education

Every kid in the U.S. is entitled to an education, no matter how they came to live here. That’s because of a Supreme Court ruling about 40 years ago, in , that said all children are entitled to a free public education, regardless of immigration status.

In 2022, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, the ruling might be ripe for overturning. In comments on Texas radio and to local media, he said that states either should be able to set their own immigration policies, or the federal government should pay for the public education of children without legal status.

In Liberty County, a northeast exurb of Houston, where the immigrant population more than between 2017 and 2022, the Cleveland Independent School District has been unsuccessful in trying to get bond issues passed to build new schools. Undaunted, the school district is seeking $125 million with a bond this fall.

Matt Bieniek, spokesperson for the school district, which serves Liberty County, said the district now has 66 portable classrooms and may have to order more. He said because a state law requires the bond question to be described as a “property tax increase,” people were put off by it, even though it won’t affect property tax rates. But he is hopeful that it might pass this time if there’s better voter turnout.

He said most of the new immigrant population lives in a residential development comprising several subdivisions called Colony Ridge, which has been the subject of discussion by Abbott and the legislature. Abbott  the large number of immigrants buying homes there might become one of the topics to be addressed in a special legislative session planned for later in October.

But immigration status cannot be a reason to deny someone the right to buy property, noted Allison Tirres, a visiting professor at the Santa Clara University School of Law, who teaches immigration law. She said those immigrants who are buying homes are contributing to the tax base that funds schools. She said the “knee-jerk” anti-immigrant reaction is to “go scapegoating” when schools get crowded.

The school district’s Bieniek said some resentment in the community comes because “you have some pushback from the community who want things to be the way they always were. We are doing everything we can to continue the small-town feel,” he said, “while getting our community adjusted to the change in the district.”

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When Cristian Dubon Solis��was getting ready to graduate from a Boston high school in 2020, he started planning to apply to college. It was only then he realized that as an immigrant lacking permanent legal status, he wouldn’t qualify for in-state tuition at Massachusetts state universities, nor for state-sponsored financial aid.

With no way to afford a four-year school to pursue his dream major, environmental science, he put those plans on hold.

“I took a few gap years afterward,” said the now 21-year-old from East Boston, a community where about half the residents are Hispanic or Latino. Solis now advocates for young immigrants as a student coordinator for a nonprofit group called SIM, which formerly stood for Student Immigration Movement.

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One of four siblings, Solis came to the United States from El Salvador at age 3. His three younger sisters were born in the U.S., he said. Family and friends didn’t discuss their immigration status, so he never heard about the tuition restrictions.

“In families of the immigrant community it’s very hush-hush, you don’t talk about it,” he said. “It’s hard to figure out what options I had or didn’t have, because nobody talked about it.”

But now Solis is about to apply to colleges in Massachusetts, including UMass-Boston.

Democratic Gov. Maura Healey signed the state budget this month with a provision that will allow certain immigrants without permanent legal status — those who have attended high school in Massachusetts for at least three years or who have earned a GED certificate — to pay in-state tuition rates at public universities. The law takes effect immediately.

The idea has bipartisan appeal, with some conservative supporters this year saying it helps reduce workforce shortages and boost tax revenue.

In June, Nevada Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo enacted allowing immigrants who have been granted status under the federal Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Act, or DACA program, to qualify for in-state tuition after living in Nevada for 12 months. That action expanded on a law that allowed high school graduates lacking permanent legal status to do so.

And in Florida this year, state lawmakers rejected a proposal from Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis to scrap in-state tuition for students without permanent legal status. He had wanted to include it in a bill to on immigrants living in the country illegally.

But critics of the in-state tuition changes argue states are facing an influx of immigrants and already are stretched thin to pay for needed housing and services. Missouri Gov. Mike Parson, a Republican, in June signed a 2024 budget that included a boost for higher education funding but prohibited students without permanent legal status from getting in-state tuition or state scholarships.

Massachusetts became the 24th state to grant immigrants without legal status access to in-state tuition, according to the , a website run by a coalition of 18 higher education and immigration organizations to provide information and resources to immigrant students.

In-state tuition is generally thousands of dollars less per year than for out-of-state students. For example, the undergraduate tuition and fees at Massachusetts state schools averaged $10,036 for state residents and $28,813 for out-of-state residents in the 2022-23 school year, according to College Tuition Compare, a nationwide college evaluation website.

Seventeen of the states granting in-state tuition also allow the students to be eligible for financial aid, as does the District of Columbia, according to the .

Four states — Delaware, Iowa, Michigan and Pennsylvania — restrict the number of public universities at which immigrants without permanent legal status are eligible for in-state tuition, according to the portal.

Five states — Arkansas, Idaho, Maine, Mississippi and Ohio — provide that tuition discount only to young immigrants who have DACA status. The Obama-era DACA program allows immigrants who were brought to the United States as children and who meet other qualifications to avoid deportation and obtain work permits. New applications for the program are on hold while long-running court battles play out.

By contrast, nine states specifically block access to in-state tuition or state financial aid for residents lacking permanent legal status, the immigration portal found. They are: Indiana, Missouri, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Tennessee, Wisconsin, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina. The last three have laws that prevent students without permanent legal status from even enrolling in all or some public colleges, though there may be some exceptions for students with DACA status, according to the portal.

Opponents of extending in-state tuition argue that scarce state resources should not be spent on immigrants living in the country illegally, particularly when states are dealing with a wave of new immigrant families that strains the states’ safety net.

While the Massachusetts law garnered wide support in the Democratic-controlled state, some Republican opponents pointed out that the Healey administration recently called for the federal government to speed funding to provide shelter and services for immigrants in the state and encouraged state residents to take families into their homes.

“It’s the wrong priority at this date and time,” said Republican state Sen. Ryan Fattman in an interview with Stateline. “The governor declared a state of emergency for migrant influx into the state. We have a lot of shelters that are overrun. [At the same time,] we are providing a lot of benefits to people who are not lawfully in Massachusetts, in-state tuition being one of them.

“The question is can we continue to afford this?” Fattman said.

But advocates for granting in-state tuition say the state must educate young immigrants if it wants to make up for the number of residents who are leaving the state and taking tax revenue with them. Massachusetts lost 110,900 people to out-migration from April 2020 to July 2022, according to the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, a nonpartisan research group. In-migration in 2022 was about 43,000, the organization found.

“What Massachusetts did is good for the people of Massachusetts, it’s good for the ‘Dreamers’ who get a chance to go to school and pay in-state tuition,” said Don Graham, a founder of TheDream.Us, an organization that gives scholarships to students who came to the U.S. illegally before age 16 and before Nov. 1, 2017. (“Dreamers” refers to young people brought to the United States illegally as children by family; the term stems from never-passed congressional legislation called the DREAM Act.)

“They become a health care worker, they become a teacher, they become a computer programmer. Seems to me that’s good for the ‘Dreamers’ and good for the state,” said Graham, who also is chair of the board of the Graham Holdings Company and former publisher of The Washington Post.

Miriam Feldblum, co-founder and executive director of the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration, a group comprised of university leaders, said consideration of in-state tuition for students without legal status has become increasingly important in light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision to end affirmative action programs on campuses.

“As colleges and universities look at how to attract diverse populations, it is incumbent upon all institutions to look at immigrant students,” she said in an interview with Stateline. “It is one important strategy to attract a diverse and talented crop of students.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on and .

It’s 3:45 p.m., an hour since the final bell rang at Ella Risk Elementary School, but Patricia Montalvo’s classroom is still full.

She points to the white board, prompting the class of third and fourth graders — many of whom immigrated to the country within the last year — to read a word that’s broken down by syllable: ex | er | cise.

Hands shoot into the air and Montalvo cues them to read together. Voices echo through the classroom, but most pronounce the last syllable with a short vowel, “siz” instead of “size.” The teacher, who herself grew up in nearby Providence after moving from Bolivia when she was 3, reminds her students that the last letter is a “bossy E” that makes the “i” say its name.

“E����-cise.” She exaggerates the last syllable and lets the class repeat her pronunciation. “What’s exercise?”

“When you work out,” a student offers.

“Ejercicio,” another calls out, providing the Spanish translation.

“In Spanish it’s ‘ejercicio,’ ” Montalvo nods. “Did you guys do exercises today?” Her class had just come from their recreation period. “What did you do?”

“Play with balloons,” a young boy responds. “It was taking a lot of energy,” he adds, smiling as he manages to incorporate another piece of vocabulary, “energy,” from the whiteboard.

This lesson is exactly the sort of English-learning opportunity Central Falls parents have been requesting for years. Now, thanks to pandemic stimulus funding, the district has finally been able to deliver — and leaders hope the programs can close long-standing achievement gaps between English learners and native speakers.

More than a third of the city’s residents were born in another country and some 45% of the school system’s 2,900 students are classified as multilingual learners. 

There’s a “clear discrepancy,” Superintendent Stephanie Toledo said, between the testing outcomes of students who are proficient in English versus those who are not, and English learners perennially lag behind.

But in the pandemic’s aftermath, Central Falls has gotten the chance to reimagine its programming with $23 million in federal grant money — its share of the unprecedented $190 billion nationwide for K-12 education delivered through three COVID stimulus packages.

For decades, state officials have considered Central Falls among Rhode Island’s most challenged school systems. The per capita income of the one-square-mile, 22,500-person city is Rhode Island’s lowest, below $18,000 a year, and financial control of the district has been in the state’s hands since the 1990s. In 2010, the district made national headlines when its leadership as part of a federal push to turn around low-performing schools.

With the infusion of COVID funds, leaders recognized the unique opportunity to uplift the school system. They crunched academic data to identify what student investments might deliver the highest impact. About 600 multilingual learners, they found, remained below the minimum English proficiency level to succeed in English-only classes, and many had languished there for years. 

Boosting these long-neglected students could address a “root cause” of the district’s years of underperformance, Toledo believed.

“We wanted to focus in on kids who have been with us but are not yet developing in English,” she said.

Afterschool language learning academies like the one where Montalvo teaches have become a key component of that new strategy. Research shows longer school days can improve students’ , and . Since October, some $308,000 has funded programs across all five of the district’s K-12 campuses, according to spending records the district provided to The 74, with $1.4 million devoted to their continuation.

Though the programs are voluntary, more than 225 students have already enrolled, the district said, adding two hours of English learning to their daily schedules. The elementary school offerings are at capacity and have lengthy waitlists. The high school program, where some students work jobs or play sports after school, still has open seats. At full scale, the district says it will be able to serve all 600 English learners that the intervention targets.

It’s the right approach, believes Jannet Sanchez, who works as a guidance counselor for multilingual learners at the high school and coordinates the extended day program there.

“The amount of hours in the day that students get for English acquisition isn’t enough,” she said. The “biggest request” she gets from students and parents is for more language learning opportunities, she said.

Compiled over the course of the year, the afterschool sessions will add roughly 50 extra school-days’ worth of instruction, more than doubling the English-learning time students would likely get otherwise.

“Two extra hours a day is a lot,” said Buddy Comet, principal of Ella Risk. He had long advocated for a program like the one they now run and is thrilled the new funding makes it possible. “It allowed us to do something I already wanted to do,” he said.

Montalvo, who teaches multilingual learners both during the school day and in the afterschool program, recognizes what makes the afterschool sessions special. In her experience, youth who are still picking up English typically have a “silent stage” while absorbing the language. But in the extended day program, with 10 or fewer students per teacher, youngsters have a safe environment to develop their speaking skills. 

The context conveys to students, “Here we’re practicing. Make those mistakes. We’ll practice, we’ll learn and we’ll learn from each other,” Montalvo said.

That’s exactly what’s happened for Maribel Gregorio’s son David, who is 5. Speaking through a translator, she told The 74 she enrolled him because he was shy, but the elementary schooler has already “loosened up” and is now “more expressive” in English.

Once when she picked him up early from the program, he cried because he didn’t want to leave, she said.

An investment in equity

The afterschool program consists of three 40-minute blocks: one for speaking, one for reading and one for recreation. Every month or so, the leaders coordinate a field trip. In November, they brought students to watch Lyle Lyle Crocodile. For many, it was their first time ever going to a movie theater. So many friends and family wanted to come that the school had to upgrade to a bigger theater. Students were glued to the film and parents pitched in by forming a spontaneous popcorn-passing brigade, Principal Comet said.

To finance the operation, the district has so far spent roughly $8,000 on field trips, $17,000 on staff professional development, $71,000 on contracts with vendors and $212,000 on employee salaries, according to its expenditure records. Teachers who work at the afterschool program earn $40 per hour plus a stipend to compensate their lesson-planning time. Other afterschool staff such as paraprofessionals can earn $35 or more per hour thanks to overtime pay, Toledo said.

Receiving some $1,000 more in her monthly take-home pay is like “the extra whipped cream on top” for Montalvo. The work in itself is meaningful, she said, but as a teacher who already works long hours, she’s glad for the additional compensation.

Simultaneously, she knows the time also gives a reprieve to working families. “It’s a time for parents to have their kids here until 4:30,” the teacher said. “They can work a little longer.”

The afterschool lessons work in tandem with another new program for English learners — called a “newcomer academy” — which operates during school hours. Recently arrived immigrant children learning English alternate between bilingual classes and general education classes, meaning they get the chance to both learn in their native language and also be integrated with their English-speaking classmates. 

Now in its second year, the results have been immediate and dramatic. At Ella Risk, where the newcomer academy operates, multilingual learners outperformed their native English-speaking peers on the most recent state exams and had proficiency rates five times the state average for that group, Superintendent Toledo said, adding that the results “thrilled” her.

It’s too soon for quantitative outcomes from the extended day program, which launched just months ago. But Principal Comet already sees students’ growth. One of his main goals is to build students’ speaking abilities, an area where his multilingual learners have struggled on tests, historically. Classroom by classroom, the school leader sees students’ newfound confidence. 

As Comet walks into a new classroom where youngsters are playing with blocks, the principal is met with calls of, “Look!” as kids motion for him to see their block structures.

On his way over, a student pulls the principal aside to deliver a message and grins to reveal a gap in his smile.

“My tooth go out.”

Bumpy progress

The scene is more tempered at the high school, where about two dozen students stay for afterschool lessons one late November afternoon. 

In one classroom, students take turns reading aloud from a graphic novel. Most mumble, and several scroll on their phone or whisper among themselves while the teacher’s attention is elsewhere. When it’s time for a written reflection, the instructor resorts to begging.

“It’s no stress, write.” She walks from table to table pointing at the students’ worksheets, which sit mostly empty. “Even if it’s one sentence. One word.”

Next door in Jessica Olarte’s classroom, the vibe is more upbeat. She teaches multilingual learners during the school day and now leads a dozen students in a game of , quizzing them on English vocabulary and grammar. Students are unable to contain themselves and yell out when they know the answer. One names his avatar “The Best” and Olarte puts the nickname in ironic air quotes every time she reads the leaderboard. She appreciates the casualness of her time in the afterschool program.

“It’s not too strict. Like if they want to check with their Snapchat or their Instagram, go ahead. It’s not school.” It helps teachers “connect a little more” with their students, she said.

But the energy level is not the only difference between her classroom and the one next door. Olarte is the only instructor at the high school program whose racial and linguistic identities match the majority of her students. She is Hispanic and grew up in Pawtucket, the city that borders Central Falls. Meanwhile, the other teachers are white and monolingual. 

Research shows that educators of color and those who speak multiple languages improve outcomes for all students, but provide a particular boost to students who share the same identity. Central Falls has invested in helping its teaching assistants, who are predominantly Hispanic, earn their bachelor’s degrees and teaching licenses, but the process takes several years.

Teacher diversity — or lack thereof — is “something I wish would change over time,” said Montalvo, who, aside from several paraprofessionals, was also the only Spanish-speaking teacher at the Ella Risk extended day program. 

“When you have that background of, you’re undocumented, you’re from the same culture, you understand the social cues.”

Even for the handful of youth who speak Portuguese, not Spanish, Olarte makes an effort to learn some of their language as well as teach them English.

Stacy Lopes is one such student. The high school senior moved to Central Falls four months ago from the Cape Verde islands off the west coast of Africa. She’s clear why she spends the two extra hours after school each day.

“I want to learn English because I’m going to college and I will need it,” she said, looking up from a game of tic tac toe during recreation period.

Marvin Hernandez Trinidad shares her motivation. The 12th grader moved from Mexico a year ago and intends to go to college for engineering. He is “happy” during the afterschool lessons because he learns new English words, he said.

Montalvo, who works with the elementary schoolers, reminds young people of any age to take pride in their native tongue as they hone their skills in new one.

“Being bilingual is their superpower,” she said.

The book, which called an “inspirational must-read for educators, policymakers, and parents” and “empathetic call for change”, brings to life historic struggles to improve immigrant education, profiles innovative classrooms across the country, and shares inspiring stories of Lander’s own students’ immigrant journeys and how they created their own American identities. 

In the below excerpt, adapted with permission, Lander shares the inspiring story and advocacy of four Texas families who, in the 1970s, risked deportation to establish the right of undocumented children to attend public schools: 

***

The sun had yet to surface when Lídia and José Lopez gently shook their five children from their slumber, dressed them in their Sunday best, and tucked the family into their white Dodge Monaco. The sedan was piled high with books, clothes, pots, even the family’s small TV, but the Lopezes were not embarking on a road trip. Their destination was a mere two blocks away, at the federal district courthouse in Tyler, Texas.

Alfredo, nine and the oldest, remembers little. It was a Friday, the week after the start of school, the year 1977. The little black-haired boy should have been entering second grade, his sister should have been starting first. But just as classes were set to resume, their parents received a letter informing them that tuition was required if they wished their children to study in the public schools. For the Lopez family, the fee was unaffordable.

Just over two years earlier and more than two hundred miles south, in Austin, the legislature had revised the state’s education code. But before the final vote was cast, the border city of Brownsville slipped in a provision that, at the time, went largely unnoticed. Going forward, public schools would no longer be obligated to educate their community’s undocumented children. and, the state would contribute no funds to support those children’s academic futures. Public schools were left with a choice: cover the cost themselves, charge tuition, or exclude such students altogether.

In the blistering summer heat of 1977, the Tyler school Board, arguing that the city was on the precipice of becoming “a haven” for undocumented families, voted to charge tuition for every student who could not prove legal residence—one thousand dollars per child, roughly one-fourth of most undocumented texans’ annual income.

The city of Tyler, in the eastern corner of texas, was founded in the mid-1800s, built by enslaved Black Americans, and named for a Us pres- ident who initiated the annexation of the Lone Star State. Surrounded by vibrant blooms, it was a city that proudly proclaimed itself the “rose capital of America.” and it was here, in 1969, where José Lopez found work tending rosebuds after crossing the southern border. Within a few years he sent for his wife, and then for his children, who left their home in the small Mexican city of Jalpa and traveled hundreds of miles north to reunite.

On arriving in the United States, Alfredo was enrolled in elementary school and attended dutifully until, in the summer of 1977, the school board changed its policy. of the city’s nearly 16,000 students, less than 60 were undocumented, and they were suddenly ineligible to study in the city’s schools.

Growing up in Mexico, neither José nor Lídia Lopez had been able to stay long in school. Their families needed them in the fields. But, for their children they wished for a different future. And so, a week later, a little before 6 a.m., the Lopez family pulled into the parking lot of the federal district courthouse, the sky just beginning to bloom pink. There they met three other undocumented families. Together they had made the perilous choice to sue the city’s schools. It was a decision the parents made knowing what might happen. That was why, the night before, Lídia and José Lopez had packed the Dodge Monaco to the brim. as Lídia would recall years later, in walking into the courthouse they were prepared to be immediately arrested and deported. But for their children, it was a risk they chose to take…

***

…The judge assigned to the case was William Wayne Justice. As the Washington Post would write of Justice a decade later, “Justice in Texas is not an abstraction, but flesh and blood and, as only real life can render it, a federal judge.” The descendant of Norwegian immigrants and confederate soldiers, Justice was born in east Texas at the dawn of the Roaring Twenties. He grew up destined for a career in law. His father, a lawyer, left little to chance, designating his son his official legal partner when Justice was just seven years old. A child of the Great Depression, Justice credited his father with teaching him the essence of his name. As Justice would recall, for his father, “a farmer in bib overalls was entitled to no less dignity than the president of a bank in a pinstriped suit.

Decades later, President Kennedy appointed Justice as a US attorney, and then President Johnson appointed him a federal district judge. He joined the court two months after reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis and arrived in Tyler to a segregated city firmly rooted in the Deep South. Two years into his tenure he definitively ordered the desegregation of Texas schools. When he ordered the city’s own Robert E. Lee High school to take down its profusion of confederate flags, incensed white students took their flags and circled the courthouse shooting epithets. As one student would recall, “Justice was blamed for everything.”

In Texas, Justice was hated and revered. A shy, slightly stooped, bookish man, Justice spent a lifetime, as he would share years later, trying to live up to his name.

On Friday morning the families filed into Judge Justice’s court. They were joined by the state’s bleary-eyed assistant attorney general, sporting blue jeans; she had arrived in the wee hours of the morning and the airline, she apologized, had lost her luggage. (As Justice would recall twenty-five years later, “she plainly thought that the whole proceedings were insane, being there early in the morning like that and being confronted with these extraordinary allegations, that the children of illegal aliens would be entitled to a public education. She obviously thought that was such a ridiculous proposition and it really didn’t deserve her appearance there.”)

As the Tyler parents offered testimony, their children, four-year-olds, six-year-olds, eight-year-olds, watched silently. Their lawyer, Larry Daves recalled, “They were the cutest, quietest, most unbelievably disciplined children I’ve ever seen. They were probably mystified, but they sat for hours, quiet as mice, watching the proceedings.” It would be the last time Daves would see the children at the center of his case. While the full trial would not take place for months, following the Friday hearing, Judge Justice ordered the schools, in the meantime, to readmit their students. The following Monday, Tyler’s undocumented children were back behind their desks. They had missed only a week of school…

***

…Alfredo Lopez, who had been set to start second grade when he sat in Justice’s courtroom, had just begun third grade when Justice handed down his ruling in September 1978. “Already disadvantaged as a result of poverty, lack of English-speaking ability, and undeniable racial prejudices,” wrote the judge, “these children, without an education, will become permanently locked into the lowest socio-economic class.” as both sides affirmed, “The illegal alien of today may well be the legal alien of tomorrow,” acknowledging that many undocumented immigrants might eventually be granted permanent residency. Of the school district’s argument that its policy would discourage migration, the judge was dismissive: such a plan was “ludicrously ineffectual,” he wrote. Justice was disdainful too of the district’s attempt to slim educational costs by “shav[ing] off a little around the edges.” It was a policy, the judge openly suggested, that might have been made because the “children of illegal aliens had never been explicitly afforded any judicial protection, and little political uproar was likely to be raised in their behalf.”

In his ruling, for the first time in US legal history, Justice afforded these children explicit protection based on the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution. The amendment stated that no state could “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” A century earlier, in a San Francisco case involving the discrimination against Chinese business owners, the Supreme Court, pointing to the drafters’ choice of the word “person” and not “citizen,” ruled that the Due Process clause applied to everyone. In a case a decade later, the Court found constitutional protection for four undocumented Chinese men. Building on this logic in 1978, Judge Justice ruled that undocumented people were also protected under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection clause. As he would describe years later, “I guess I made my own little contribution.”

In the decades to come, In the coming years, the case would make its way up to the Supreme Court. In its 1982 decision in Plyler v. Doe, the Court would conclude undocumented children were protected under the Fourteenth Amendment and that no matter their legal status, children were entitled to study in American public schools. In classrooms across the country, many undocumented children came to see themselves as American. But that belonging was bounded. With no path to legalized status, as Harvard Professor Roberto Gonzales has written, “for undocumented youth, the transition to adulthood is accompanied by a transition to illegality. . . . Youthful feelings of belonging give way to new understandings of the ways that they are excluded from possibilities they believed were theirs.” And so new families took up the mantle. They marched, testified, organized. Texas became the first state to allow undocumented students access to in-state tuition for college in 2001 and the Deferred Action for childhood arrivals (DACA) program was announced on the thirtieth anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision in Plyler v. Doe.]

***

In the living room of his parents’ home hangs a framed copy of the Supreme Court’s synopsis of its decision in Plyler v. Doe. Lídia and José Lopez have lived in the same house for more than forty years. It is the same house where, before sunrise one morning in 1977, they woke their children and bundled them into their packed Dodge Monaco to drive two blocks to the federal district courthouse.

Near the end of his life, looking back over nearly four decades as a federal district judge, Judge William Wayne Justice singled out one case out of hundreds he had decided: Plyler v. Doe. “I feel that’s the most important case that I’ve ever had.” Justice wasn’t sure how many children had been able to study because of the decision; he reckoned a hundred thousand at least. In actuality, the count is more than a million. Of his career, he had one wish: “I hope people remember me for someone trying to do justice. That’s what I’ve tried to do.”

Excerpted from by Jessica Lander. Copyright 2022. Excerpted with permission from Beacon Press.

Rosemely Osorio is swiftly becoming the educator that, years ago, she wished for.

When, at age 9, she and her family came to Rhode Island from Guatemala, Osorio recalls struggling academically as she navigated an unfamiliar system.

“When I came here and I started at the schools, I remember, I didn’t know how to speak any English. … I didn’t have a mentor who told me, ‘Hey, it’s really important that you work extremely hard in high school so then your GPA is good.’ I didn’t know what a GPA was,” she said.

In 2014, she graduated high school, the first in her family to accomplish the feat, but college remained out of reach because of finances and her immigration status — Osorio is a DACA recipient, the Obama-era program that provides deportation relief and work permits to undocumented residents brought here as children.

Now, years later as an adult learner in College Unbound and the Equity Institute’s TA to BA program, she’s just a semester away from earning her bachelor’s degree and teaching certification, key steps toward becoming exactly the role model she yearned for as a young person. At the same time, she works as a paraprofessional in the Central Falls high school she once attended, which serves a high share of Central American immigrant students.

“They see in me someone that they can count on,” said Osorio. “They’re like, ‘Oh, she knows how to speak Spanish. She looks Hispanic. So I can actually talk to her.’”

After only two years in operation, the teacher training program that opened doors for Osorio has scaled up more than six times beyond its original capacity and is launching cohorts in a second city, with talks underway to expand to a third, leaders say.

“The program has grown pretty tremendously,” said Carlon Howard, who helped launch the TA to BA fellowship and is chief impact officer at the Equity Institute. “There’s a lot of interest in initiatives such as these given that, across our country, schools and districts are challenged to find enough educators to staff their buildings.”

The Rhode Island program, which served 13 fellows in its inaugural 2020-21 class, will train 75 paraprofessionals this year. Two new, 10-student cohorts will launch in Philadelphia, where College Unbound already operates other programs, thanks to funding from the school district. Over 40 people remain on the waiting list, said David Bromley, College Unbound’s Philadelphia coordinator. In nearby Camden, New Jersey, the college is working with the teachers union to roll out programs there, too, he added.

“Investing deeply in our staff who already work closely with our students to bring them to the next stage of their career is a shining light of positivity in the midst of a difficult few years,” Larisa Shambaugh, chief of talent for Philadelphia public schools, said in an emailed statement to The 74.

‘Untapped talent’

Many paraprofessionals are highly skilled educators with years or even decades of classroom experience, Howard said, but still may feel like they have a “glass ceiling above their head” because they lack college degrees and financial resources.

Participants in the fellowship often study tuition-free thanks to the Equity institute’s “last dollar” scholarships covering costs not offset by federal Pell grants.

“We target folks who already work with kids … and all we’re trying to do is help them realize their greatest potential,” Howard said.

TAs are an “untapped talent” pool from which to recruit and train high-quality educators, agreed David Donaldson, managing partner for the National Center for Grown Your Own educator pipeline programs.

Students take two College Unbound courses a semester, scheduled outside of the work day, plus a lab component specifically geared to prepare them to lead a classroom. Thanks to a process at the college for measuring and awarding credits for prior learning experiences, some students are able to take an accelerated path to graduation. Osorio, for example, will finish in under two years.

“It’s been a lot of work,” she admits, cramming in classes while also working full time and taking care of family responsibilities. “But I don’t regret it.”

Addressing diversity, combatting shortages

Educators like Osorio — those who reflect their students culturally and linguistically — are in short supply in Rhode Island’s schools and nationwide. Roughly 1 in 10 teachers in the Ocean State are people of color while 4 in 10 students identify as Black, Hispanic, Indigenous or Asian. Meanwhile, educators of color and those who speak multiple languages improve outcomes for all students, but provide a particular boost to students whose identities they match, research shows.

Classroom aides, on the other hand, tend to be much more racially and linguistically diverse than teachers. The positions generally do not require a college degree and can be more accessible to people from low-income backgrounds. All her fellow teaching assistants, Osorio said, speak Spanish and the vast majority are people of color, whereas the teachers at her school are predominantly white and speak only English.

“To be honest, everything we see is all these teachers in the classrooms with a bunch of Hispanic kids, but the teacher doesn’t speak their language,” said Osorio. “That’s what my biggest motivation was to apply and getting certified was that students need teachers in the classroom that they can relate to.”

David Quiroa is joining the TA to BA fellowship this fall and works as a paraprofessional in his home community of Newport, Rhode Island.

“So many TAs who are in the [Black, Indigenous and people of color] community already have been putting in the work for several years … and they’re never given the opportunity to pursue higher education,” he said. “With TA to BA and College Unbound, it really is showing these communities, ‘Look, we are here, we are federally approved, we have all of the accreditations, we have so (many) established connections here in our community. You guys have been doing the work. We just want to give you your proper salary.’”

Meanwhile, districts across the country are facing acute staffing shortages and going to extreme lengths — including tapping college students or dangling $25,000 bonuses — to entice new hires.

In this climate, the grow-your-own approach is “getting a lot of attention now,” Donaldson said, even though turning to programs that provide a work-based pipeline to train new teachers is a longer-term solution.

His organization recently announced that seven states with existing or emerging apprenticeship programs to train educators launched an all-new National Registered Apprenticeship in Teaching Network. It comes on the heels of a June announcement from Education Secretary Miguel Cardona urging states to invest in grow-your-own programs, including those that begin in high school and with apprenticeship programs.

“Missouri, like other states, is struggling to address staffing issues created by teacher shortages. The Teacher Apprenticeship is an additional, innovative model to help address this issue,” Paul Katnik, Missouri’s assistant education commissioner, said in a release after the network was announced.

The other participating states are California, Florida, North Dakota, Texas, West Virginia and Wyoming.

‘We got you’

The relationship faculty build with participants is a secret to the program’s success in Rhode Island, and soon in the new Philadelphia cohorts, fellowship leaders and students say.

Osorio’s advisor “has played a big role in the way that I have been able to develop in this program,” said the College Unbound student. In addition to checking in academically and emotionally, the faculty member who runs her teaching lab class allowed Osorio to make up credits when she fell behind after a devastating miscarriage. And when Osorio was short on cash to renew her Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals status and fearing she would lose her work permit, she again asked for help.

“Don’t worry about it. We got you,” was the response from College Unbound. “And they actually sent me a check home so I could pay for that application.”

That support is by design, said Howard, who explained that the program trains its faculty to uplift participants and be there for them. Even as the fellowship scales up, he’s confident the family-like culture among cohorts will remain.

The TA to BA leader believes it’s within the program’s reach to train 200 paraprofessionals into full-time teachers in the next three to five years. If all goes according to plan, he hopes to serve 500 by 2030 and may also add a high school teaching apprenticeship component.

Quiroa, the Newport TA, is “thrilled” about the expansion, he said, because there are “absolutely” others in his field who could benefit from the opportunity. “Having this organization, this program, thrive … I think is the best thing we can do to move forward and break a lot of these inequities.”

Osorio, for her part, can visualize the impact that seeing someone like her at the helm of a classroom could have for immigrant students. Hispanic role models were vital in her professional life after graduating high school, she said, and now she can finally pass on the favor.

“I get how important mentors are so now I can be that for those students.”

Early Learning Nation spoke to experts from (KIND) and the (MPI) to learn more about how educators and community partners can welcome and support the youngest new Americans. KIND offers legal support and social services to unaccompanied minors. MPI strives to come up with realistic policy solutions to manage migration, immigration and integration

Here are seven insights for teaching and serving immigrant children.

1.  Immigrants live everywhere. Historically, we think of Texas, California, Florida and New York as immigrant hubs. While these states have the largest shares of immigrants, the picture is far more spread out, says Essey Workie, director of the Human Services Initiative at MPI. “We’re seeing more and more immigrants in rural communities,” she notes, “whether it’s because of the price of housing or because of agricultural work opportunities.” (.)

2. The journey from Latin America is especially traumatic. Children come to the U.S. from all over the world, often escaping violence and persecution. In the case of new arrivals from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras (which account for most unaccompanied children and families arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border), gangs and the threat of sexual and gender-based violence have forced them to flee for their lives. “Children flee trauma,” says Kena Mena, social services supervisor at KIND. “Then they experience trauma again and again on their journey here and throughout their experience.” According Workie, the trauma they experienced may not be fully expressed until children begin to feel safe with a parent or sponsor.

3. “Trauma doesn’t define migrant children,” declares Argelia Tlatelpa Perez, senior social services coordinator at KIND. Teaching respect and inclusivity with a culturally responsive lens can help them to cope with trauma and to get ready for school. Perez recommends being especially patient with these children as they acculturate to the U.S. They may not reveal their feelings right away, but careful listening can bring about trusting relationships. Young children are remarkably resilient, says Mena, but only with the help of caring adults.

4. Know who is in your community. As a teacher, you may know the names of the children in your classroom, but do you know where they’re from? Workie encourages educators to know “the languages they speak at home, the cultural practices they have, the faith groups they affiliate with,” adding that while it isn’t appropriate to ask about religion at the time of enrollment, these discoveries can be made through family engagement. “That’s a great way to honor the students’ background and heritage,” she says.

5. Get familiar with available resources. As Workie describes it, the fate of children processed by the (ORR) is anything but straightforward: “When a child leaves federal custody and goes to live with a parent or other sponsor in the community, ORR doesn’t have legal custody anymore. The parent or sponsor is responsible for the child’s well-being, but they are often unauthorized themselves and have limited access to benefits and services. And there often isn’t intensive case management to help them navigate this very complex maze.” Educators may not have the knowledge to serve as advocates, but helpful resources include:

• The Child Welfare Information Gateway’s list of
• The Kaiser Family Foundation’s report

6. Immigration enforcement often exacerbates the stress. Imagine you’re living in a new country, trying to learn a new language and make new friends, but at the same time, law enforcement officials are targeting your family and people who look like you. According to a , “Immigration enforcement actions—and the ever-present threat of enforcement action—have significant physical, emotional, developmental and economic repercussions for millions of children across the country.” have decided not to voluntarily share immigration status and other confidential information about students and their families with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (this agency’s warrants are not legal but rather administrative).

7. Mental health supports matter for these kids. Immigrant children often feel like they have nowhere to go for emotional relief and no one to talk to. Feelings of loneliness, sadness and worthlessness are common. As Workie explains, one-on-one counseling with a psychologist is rarely an option—especially when Spanish-speaking therapists are in such short supply. She mentions peer-support groups and sports or arts activities as vital for managing mental health and stress levels. “Play matters,” says KIND’s Mena. Her organization provides puppets, song, sensory toys and stickers for children in shelters run by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Experts say teachers have not been adequately trained to spot these students’ gifts and that schools’ failure to recognize and grow their talent could turn them off to school entirely.  

Educators’ increased focus on English language learners comes as school districts around the nation reassess their elementary gifted and talented offerings after New York City’s program was by the outgoing mayor for its failure to include Black and Hispanic students. The program won a , though concerns about equity will likely remain.

Immigrant advocates in New York and elsewhere say English language learners’ exclusion marks a major loss not only for those who have been shut out, but for their families, communities and the nation at large.

While advanced programs at the elementary level are dubious — most major long-term academic gains — a student’s selection signals to schools, parents and the child that they have special gifts, boosting their confidence and exposing them to advanced materials.

Carly Spina, who taught English language learners inside Glenview School District 34 near Chicago for 15 years, said that in some cases, a child’s participation in gifted programming in their elementary years is a prerequisite for their enrollment in advanced courses in higher grades.

“It’s all about access,” said Spina, who now works with educators who serve these children statewide. “Our students deserve to be there.”

And it’s more than an ethical issue: It’s a legal obligation.  

Kristina Moon, senior attorney with the Education Law Center, said English language learners have the right to equal opportunity in all school programs.

“They cannot be excluded … just because they are not proficient in the English language,” she said, citing the federal .   

Those concerned about these students’ overlooked abilities are re-evaluating their methods. 

Jonathan Plucker, president of the , said schools around the country are beginning to abandon costly non-verbal gifted assessments for English language learners because they yield the same results as traditional verbal tests.

“We cannot figure out why that is the case,” Plucker said. “These districts are finding it’s expensive and they aren’t getting different data. For the life of us, we never expected that.”

‘We don’t have any talented students’

English language learners represented of students nationwide in 2018 according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Yet they accounted for just 2.4 percent of the nation’s 3.3 million gifted children that same year, the last for which such data is available, according to the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. 

While the data alone do not prove discriminatory conduct, the civil rights office said in a statement, members of the public who believe these students are being unfairly excluded are invited to on their behalf.

A survey by The 74 of school districts across the country reflects the national disparity. While some managed to include a proportionate — or nearly proportionate — number of non-English speaking students in gifted programming, most included only a fraction of these children.

English language learners accounted for 18 percent of the student body in the Broward County Public Schools in Florida, but make up only 1.5 percent — just 39 of 2,607 children — in its gifted elementary program.

Other districts, including those in Prince George’s County, Maryland, and Florida’s Palm Beach, Brevard and Miami-Dade counties, report similar statistics.

Educators who work with gifted students are taking note and trying to make change. 

Their efforts coincide with a massive uptick in crossing the nation’s southern border now that immigration and pandemic-related restrictions have eased.

These students face numerous hurdles upon arrival: Educators often underestimate their intelligence and ability, working under the false assumption that they are somehow deficient or in need of remediation. 

What schools fail to realize, experts say, is that many of these children have already mastered multiple languages in their home countries, a reflection of their acumen.

“It is not rare for me to talk to a principal who says, ‘All of this is really important,’” Plucker said. “‘And I say, ‘What can we do to help you with your school?’ And they say, ‘Oh, we only have low-income Hispanic kids here. We don’t have any talented students.’”

Part of the reason for this, experts say, is schools’ overreliance on test scores as a means to assess student’s ability. 

English language learners often score low on state and other exams, but for some, it’s language, not a lack of brainpower, that holds them back. Experts say a child who earns low marks might still be gifted, but their skills need to be identified in other ways.

“We have all of this talent just sitting there,” Plucker said. “And the child isn’t benefiting from their own skills. That is a massive societal failure. We simply have to do better.”&�Բ�����;

Amal Altareb, 20, knows what it’s like to struggle with a new language. She arrived in the United States from Yemen at age 11 unable to speak English. Determined to learn — she was a gifted student back home — she spent hours each night translating her assignments.  

“I pulled so many all-nighters,” said Altareb, who attended school in Memphis, Tennessee. “I was not giving myself any mercy.”

While some educators failed to recognize her abilities — her math teacher openly laughed at her homework because she so badly misinterpreted the instructions, she said — her English as a Second Language instructor, who spoke her native Arabic, knew she was gifted. 

“I have so much gratitude for him,” she said. “I would ask him questions from the beginning of the class until the end.”

Altareb scored high enough on her end-of-year math and science assessments to be placed in gifted classes the following year. She was even permitted to study Russian even though she had not yet fully mastered English, a reflection, she said, of her principal’s faith in her abilities.

“People believed in me after I proved myself,” she said.

The teen enrolled in college-level Advanced Placement courses in high school and went on to become valedictorian. 

She is now a political science major at Yale University. 

New, non-verbal tests use animation

There are only 137 English language learners in Prince George’s County Maryland’s gifted and talented program in grades 2-12, comprising less than 1 percent of the 11,560 participating students. Non-English speaking children make up 19.7 percent of the overall student population.

Theresa Jackson, the district’s supervisor of talented and gifted programs, said an additional 1,469 participants are former English language learners who have tested out of the program. Still, she said, their linguistic ability is typically not on-par with native English speakers. 

Jackson said, too, that her school system is always striving to increase identification of historically underrepresented populations, including those students who receive free and reduced-priced meals, an indicator of poverty, in addition to Hispanic students and those who receive special education services. 

“I am not sure I will ever be fully happy, but we are inclusive of all sub-groups,” she said.

In Palm Beach County, Florida, just 1.9 percent or 84 children of 4,519 gifted and talented students were English language learners. Yet these children comprise more than 23 percent of the district’s elementary school population. The figures include the district’s

Walter G. Secada, vice dean of the School of Education and Human Development at the University of Miami, said many educators believe a child’s English must improve before they are identified as gifted.

But that’s untrue, he said, adding the narrative only serves as an excuse for teachers not to look for talent in this group.

“It locates the problem within the child and not in our delivery system,” he said.

Experts say schools’ role as gatekeepers to advanced learning can be problematic: Many campuses rely on teacher and parent referrals to identify gifted children, both of which lead to the exclusion of those just learning English.

Kathy Escamilla, interim executive director of the BUENO Center for Multicultural Education at the University of Colorado, Boulder, said newcomer families face unique challenges in communicating with their local schools and are often reluctant to push back, not wanting to seem disrespectful.

“Non-English speaking parents aren’t going to go to school and say, ‘I think my kid is gifted,’” she said. “They are much too humble and rely on the school to do those kinds of things.”

Spina, of Illinois, said some parents are required to write a letter explaining their position and win the support of other teachers, a difficult task for families who do not speak English.

The longtime teacher, has, in some cases, informed parents of their legal rights, helped them write rebuttals, accompanied them to meetings with school administrators and worked to make sure translation services were available.

“We have to embrace our space as change agents,” Spina said. “We have to advocate. If we are not fighting for them, we are not walking our walk here.”

English language learners’ exclusion from gifted programming is a long-standing but not unsolvable problem. Escamilla said schools can use high quality non-verbal assessments —  some have just been released — and better train staff to assess non-English speaking students through observation.

They can also use tests written in the child’s native language, she said.

Jack Naglieri, a psychologist and research professor at the University of Virginia, created one of the most widely used tests for assessing the ability of non-English speaking children.

He’s recently developed a new exam for this purpose, the first of its kind to use animation.

“There is no doubt in my mind we will find more children who do not speak English doing well on these tests,” he said.��

Quick to understand cultural norms

Marcy Voss of Kerrville, Texas, has spent more than 35 years working with or on behalf of gifted and bilingual children either as a teacher or an administrator. Like Plucker, she and Escamilla are aware of the shortcomings of non-verbal tests.

Voss said educators should look at a portfolio of work — not a single test score — in order to identify advanced English language learners. 

Voss said, too, these students should not be evaluated based on what they already know: Some have missed years of school in their home countries and simply didn’t have the opportunity to learn. 

She and many other immigrant advocates believe these children should be evaluated based on how well they comprehend new material — an approach some administrators have been slow to embrace.

“There are gifted students in this population,” she said. “I’ve seen them and they deserve to have their educational needs met.”

Whenever Voss is tasked with identifying a gifted child, she tries to understand the way their mind works, how quickly they catch on to new concepts and their ability to solve problems, she said.

With non-English speakers, she considers a number of additional factors, including how fast they learn the language.

Gifted English language learners might also adapt more easily to their new environment as compared to other newcomers — they might be quick to understand the cultural norms and nuances of their newly adopted country — act as ambassadors for other students and their own parents, all of which reflects their ability to make connections quickly, she said.

“They understand the hidden rules of order without having them explained,” said Voss, who facilitates the Emerging Leaders Program for the.

But even after they gain admission to advanced programming, English language learners can face nearly insurmountable obstacles: Many teachers of gifted and talented students don’t feel they need to make language accommodations for non-English speaking participants, Spina said.

Spina is sensitive to teachers’ time and workload, but will challenge those who shirk this responsibility, telling them, “You don’t get to opt out.”