Of all the disastrous consequences of the 10-20 million illegal border crossings over the past four years, one of the most overlooked – and perhaps most damaging long-term – is the impact on the American education system.
According to a shocking new report from researchers at Syracuse University, American K-12 schools have been burdened with at least 500,000 school-age migrant children since 2022 alone. Nearly all of these children speak no English and are crammed into already overcrowded classrooms which do not have the resources to handle the influx.
A 1982 Supreme Court ruling, Plyler v. Doe, requires that public schools educate all resident children regardless of immigration status. The Federation for American Immigration Reform estimates that this costs taxpayers about $80.5 billion per year.
In New York City, where per-pupil costs have ballooned to $38,000, the district was forced to take in 21,000 new migrant students last year – adding $800 million to the taxpayers’ bill.
The Syracuse report delved into the situation in school districts across 23 states, stretching from Texas to Alaska. It spans densely-populated urban districts to the quaint Hot Springs Elementary in rural California, which boasts just 16 pupils, shedding new light on the immense challenges teachers are grappling with – a harsh reality that has so far been severely underreported.
The researchers reached out to districts between August and late September, just as classes were starting again this fall. Many educators and parents reported “inflamed social tensions” as American students are forced to compete with migrant children, many of whom were brought here illegally, for taxpayer-funded resources. Teachers say they are struggling to navigate disparate cultural norms with students who do not speak English. One-third of districts in the survey said the growing number of migrant children had a “significant” impact on their ability to provide a quality education.
Denver Public Schools Superintendent Alex Marrero, quoted in the report, described the pressure that the increase in students exerted on his schools as “tremendous.” The report also documents the desperation many teachers have felt, with one instructor saying she was forced to use a translator app on her phone to communicate with her students.
17 districts in the survey had requested additional funding from the government to deal with the migrant influx. Of the 12 that received any money, all said it was not sufficient to hire the needed number of ESL (English as a Second Language) teachers.
The city school district in Springfield, Ohio – recently in the headlines for the problems created by a flood of 20,000 Haitian migrants to this community of 60,000 – said that schools were in desperate need of textbooks in Creole, the French dialect spoken in Haiti, and Spanish.
Charleroi, Pennsylvania, another small community south of Pittsburgh, has also become a flashpoint for the migrant surge. The number of non-English speaking students in that district has exploded from just 12 in the 2021-2022 school year to 220 this year. About 80 percent of those students are Haitian.
As a result, the district has hired five new staff members at a cost to taxpayers of about $400,000 per year.
Many American families are now choosing to leave the public school system entirely given the new challenges. Charleroi Superintendent Ed Zelich revealed that at least 37 students had instead enrolled in a local charter school, with parents saying that their kids were falling behind because teachers were spending so much time trying to communicate with non-English speaking students.
The Denver, Colorado, public school district has seen an even more dramatic increase. During the 2022-2023 school year, 4,763 migrant children enrolled in the district. That number is expected to be even higher this school year.
For students in inner city schools, where most of the migrant arrivals are concentrated, this sudden surge of new students has been particularly devastating. In the Baltimore City School District, 23 schools had zero students who tested as proficient in math in 2023, while just 15 percent of students in the entire district tested as proficient in reading. Yet Maryland has by far the highest rate of migrant children per capita, burdening schools that are already failing American children.
To gain some perspective on this problem, I spoke with retired Spanish business professor Juan Antonio Pelaez, who helped develop a European Community response to a wave of migration from Central Europe after the fall of the Soviet Union. As he explained, sound immigration policy should prioritize factors like whether prospective immigrants speak the language of the country they are coming to. Countries should also employ strict quota systems to avoid overwhelming schools and local government services.
“Back then, we were overly cautious, dreading the possibility of a massive influx created by mismanagement,” Pelaez said. “The outcome we feared is now evident in America.”
Retired law professor Gregorio Bencivenni, who worked with Pelaez, said that his focus was “avoiding conditions that created an obligation on the state which could not be met.” As German Chancellor Helmut Kohl once said, “the West has limits.”
Educating the next generation is a critical component in building a stable and strong society. By every indication, the uncontrolled flow of migrants into the United States over the past four years has made that mission exponentially more difficult – a consequence that the country will now be dealing with for decades to come.
Ben Solis is the pen name of an international affairs journalist, historian, and researcher.
