An expert’s advice on how journalists can better report on the education being provided to 1 million newcomer children in U.S. schools. The latest in our series on covering migrant students. By Julie Sugarman, Migration Policy Institute
While people may hold differing views about the merits of immigration, there is no question that federal education law unequivocally supports the rights of all children, regardless of immigration status, to have equal access to public education.
For reporters investigating whether school systems live up to this obligation, the complexities of educational policy and the enormous diversity of approaches across states and districts pose a challenge in untangling and clearly communicating the realities playing out in America’s classrooms.
The stakes are high — for the individual children and for communities receiving immigrant families. Immigrant youth ages 14 to 21 are less likely than non-immigrants to be high school graduates or still enrolled in school. Further, schools are often the first public institution that immigrant families encounter, so a welcoming and supportive environment also means referrals to social services and a place to learn about their new home.
As reporters do their work, there are four areas that seem the most recurring and challenging ones: oft-changing terminology, interpreting assessment outcomes, finding immigrant student data, and identifying funding sources.
There are four areas that seem the most recurring and challenging ones.
According to the most recently released federal statistics, public schools enrolled just over a million recent immigrants (in the U.S. three years or less) in the 2021-22 school year. There were also 5.3 million students learning English — roughly 10% of kids in K-12 education.
There has been robust media coverage of the growing numbers of immigrant students in the time since those data were collected. These children represent a variety of nationalities and languages and settle in every type of community: rural, suburban, and urban and districts both long-established and new to serving such students.
Reporters often tell the stories of individual immigrant children and their families, but they also play an important role in raising attention to the extraordinary work of educators as well as to systems that fall short in serving students equitably.
A PLETHORA OF WORDS
Journalists and others often seek information on immigrant students and specific populations such as refugees and unaccompanied minors. These students have unique profiles and educational needs, but it is very difficult to get information on them. This is because the Supreme Court ruled in Plyler v. Doe (1982) that schools cannot discriminate based on the immigration status of children or their families. As a result, schools are not allowed to ask questions that might directly or indirectly reveal this status when enrolling students.
Since immigrant-origin students are rarely identified as such in data, the closest proxy is students identified as English learners (ELs). For reporters and others new to this facet of the education world, terminology can be a source of confusion. Federal officials, educators, and researchers may use different words to refer to the same concept, and the terms they use have also changed over time.
For example, federal K-12 education law described students as “limited English proficient” (or LEP) until passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) in 2015, when the term shifted to EL. (LEP is still used in some adult education and language access contexts.)
More recently, advocates and others have pressed for terms like “multilingual learner” or “emergent bilingual” to reflect the language skills that such children bring with them. What is tricky about these new terms is that many multilingual children are fully proficient in English. So it is important to understand the context in which those terms are used: Are they meant to represent the full range of linguistically diverse children in school or the subset falling under the federal definition for children still learning English?
Programs serving ELs also go by many names. What once was typically “English as a second language” (ESL) may also be “English for speakers of other languages” (ESOL) or “English as a new language” (ENL). In the world of bilingual education, “dual language” is sometimes used as an umbrella term for any program whose goal is for students to become bilingual and biliterate, and other times for the subset of such programs that enroll a balance of ELs and fluent speakers of English.
Somewhat confusingly, “dual language learners” is used in the early childhood education and care field to refer to children who are exposed to languages other than English at home but may be too young to be formally assessed and classified as ELs. These children may or may not be in bilingual education programs. And in another case of a program name and a type of student being conflated, it is technically correct to refer to immigrant students as migrants. However, this could lead to confusion with students eligible for the federal Migrant Education Program. This program serves students who move frequently due to their or their parents’ jobs in agriculture or fishing (and may or may not be ELs).
Using the term “immigrant” for foreign-born students, especially in the context of the services they receive in school, avoids this possible misunderstanding.
Using the term “immigrant” for foreign-born students … avoids this possible misunderstanding.
INTERPRETATION OF EL ASSESSMENT OUTCOMES
The way that journalists report EL standardized test results can greatly affect the public’s perception of these students and the programs that serve them, as Barbara Gottschalk adeptly described in 2020 and 2022 for The Grade.
Reporting on EL outcomes is complicated because, in contrast to other student groups (such as racial/ethnic categories), the EL group is not static. Instead, students are no longer reported as ELs once they become proficient in English (or within a few years of that redesignation) and so the highest performers are continually taken out of the reporting group.
Current ELs typically score well below their non-EL peers on standardized language arts and math tests in English, but former ELs tend to score as well or better than their never-EL peers. Both parts of the story are necessary to understand how well ELs are served. Reporting on indicators like the number of students who remain ELs longer than five years and their progress toward English proficiency also provide important information about school effectiveness.
Providing some context for EL outcomes, such as the revolving nature of the reporting group, and offering results on both content and English language proficiency would go a long way to painting a full picture of EL student achievement.
Providing some context for EL outcomes … would go a long way to painting a full picture of EL student achievement.
FINDING THE DATA
Data on the nation’s 5 million EL students and their share of overall enrollment at U.S. and state levels can be found through the National Center for Education Statistics. Data are also available on their performance on the outcome measures described above.
While statistics on foreign-born students are hard to come by, for the reasons described above, interestingly, schools receiving funding through Title III of ESSA are required to count the number of recent immigrants (those who have attended U.S. schools three years or less). However, states are not required to collect information for longer-residing immigrant students, nor to provide results for immigrant students on academic achievement.
When writing about individual immigrant children, obviously their context can be made clear, but when reporting group data, sometimes the best you can do is to use the EL subgroup and explain how it might or might not be a perfect proxy for the story you are telling.
When reporting group data, sometimes the best you can do is to use the EL subgroup and explain how it might or might not be a perfect proxy for the story you are telling.
THE ROLE OF FEDERAL AND STATE FUNDING
Finally, with growing attention to the increasing numbers of new arrivals to U.S. schools, many journalists have been interested in the need for and amount of funding dedicated to ELs. The most high-profile source of funds comes from the federal government through Title III of ESSA.
These funds, set at $890 million for the 2024 fiscal year, are critical for ensuring schools have adequate teacher training, learning materials, and parent engagement, among other uses. The majority of Title III funds are targeted to ELs, with a smaller portion set aside for districts with a significant increase in recent immigrants. Yet the amount of funding under Title III has not kept up with increasing numbers of students and inflation over the last decade or so.
These funds, however, are not meant to cover all of the costs of educating ELs and immigrants. Instead, states and school districts are primarily responsible for funding the main services they provide to ELs. Several states have recently revised how they allocate funds to serve ELs, but states vary enormously in the amount of support they provide.
When reporting on funding, it’s important to keep in mind that federal rules for funding seek to “supplement not supplant,” as well as the principle that states and localities are ultimately responsible for EL education.
When reporting on funding, it’s important to keep in mind that federal rules for funding seek to “supplement not supplant,” as well as the principle that states and localities are ultimately responsible for EL education.
With attention to the nuances involved, reporters can play a vital role explaining how schools and immigration intersect and in assessing whether school systems are meeting their mandate to provide high-quality educational opportunities to all students.
Dr. Julie Sugarman is associate director for K-12 education research at the Migration Policy Institute’s National Center on Immigrant Integration Policy.
Previously from The Grade
Reporters share tips on covering immigrant education
My dad was a teenage factory worker
How a ProPublica immigration reporter profiled a high school student trying to get out of MS-13
Keeping the spotlight on English learners
Including English learners in COVID-19 coverage
How to write smarter stories about English language learners
Globe reporters describe how they cover immigrant English learners
