What Does Immigration Mean for Public Education?

Unless you've been living under a rock the last few weeks, it's been pretty obvious that immigration remains a highly contentious issue in the United States. Today, up to 180,000 people are expected to participate in a pro-immigrant demonstration on the National Mall, just a few blocks from my office.

Regardless of what your stance is on the political questions about immigration now before Congress, it's clear that immigrants and children of immigrants have become a significant part of the U.S. population, and that, for both demographic and economic reasons, they're going to continue to be one.

In fact, according to a recent report from the Urban Institute (which I highly recommend reading), nearly one in five school-aged children in the U.S. is either an immigrant or the child of immigrants. The majority of these children were born in the United States, and are proficient English speakers, but such changing demographics do raise new questions for public schools. In particular, many schools lack the resources or expertise to effectively educate the 6 million children who do not now speak English proficiently, and the increasing geographic dispersion of immigrants--who are now settling in non-border states and places not traditionally seen as destinations for immigration--means more schools that lack experience teaching children of immigrants or English language learners must now face these challenges. There's also the question of what role public schools play in equipping immigrants, children of immigrants, and, indeed, all the children they serve, to be good citizens.

Unfortunately, because the conversation about immigration is so polarized (as are questions about public education), there's not a lot of honest public conversation about these issues that isn't laden with political baggage.