Silent Crisis: The Adverse Impact of Illegal Immigration on America’s Schools
March 28, 2016 By Marc Ferris 15 Comments
classroom_foto_flickrIn Boston, high school students recently walked out of school to protest budget cuts. In Lexington, Nebraska, school officials lowered graduation standards to accommodate an influx of immigrant students with limited English fluency. And, in a suburb of Washington, D.C., the NAACP threatened to sue the school district over plans to create facilities for newcomers with limited English proficiency.
These events portend the changes that are coming to our overburdened public school systems across large parts of the country. The impact of legal and illegal immigration will have profound effects on our schools and society.
Students with Limited English Proficiency (LEP) are the fastest-growing segment of the public school population and few districts are prepared for them. Missouri, for example, will need to hire 912 new certified LEP teachers in the next five years – if they can be found – at a cost of more than $43 million. The taxpayers of California must come up with almost $1.2 billion to hire more than 17,000 certified LEP teachers over the next five years.
These issues will continue to fester, since schools are beginning to absorb 127,000 unaccompanied alien minors (UAM) that crossed the border since 2014 (and those are just the ones the Border Patrol apprehended). The federal government sent 1,888 UAMs to Prince George’s County, Maryland, 704 to Boston and 208 to Omaha.
Beyond the traditional immigrant magnets, districts in the heartland are confronting the issue of serving a population
