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.”

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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The upward trend was even more pronounced in several major cities whose NAEP results are tracked separately. In Chicago, now home to the country’s , the score for English learners on the eighth-grade reading test shot up a jaw-dropping 17 points to 234, the highest level since reading data was first reported on this group in 2002 and 10 points more than the next-highest score of 224 in 2017. 

The same held true in Los Angeles, the district with in the country, where their eighth-grade reading scores leapt from 202 to 210. That eight-point gain essentially mirrors a all L.A. 8th graders made in reading on the 2022 exam. 

The 8th-grade reading scores for English learners in Albuquerque climbed from 211 to 223. Fort Worth, Texas also showed remarkable gains, with scores jumping from 219 to 231. Nationally, English learners’ scores on the eighth-grade reading test went from 221 to 225. 

The scores for English learners are still far below NAEP’s grade-level proficiency for math and reading and sizably lower than the scores for students overall, but remain noteworthy in a closely watched test where changes of even a few points are considered significant. They also are emerging after a pandemic that harmed all student learning, but was seen as particularly detrimental to English language learners. 

While some educators, including Los Angeles Unified schools chief Alberto Carvalho, point to concentrated remediation — the superintendent cited tutoring and summer programs targeting these children — others are less sure why these gains were made. 

“I don’t know that I have a good explanation for why that would be,” said Tim Boals, founder and director of , an organization that provides resources to those who teach multilingual learners. “I’d like to think that maybe we’ve been doing a better job of supporting ELs over the last few years, but I don’t have evidence to support that conclusion. It also flies in the face of the COVID panic about our kids losing even more ground.”

Grady Wilburn, a statistician and research scientist for the National Center for Education Statistics which administers NAEP, also could not explain these students’ success, especially considering the obstacles they faced throughout the pandemic.

Multilingual learners were, in some cases, more transient because of their parents’ job loss and unstable housing, and, as a result, often more difficult to find. They were also less likely to have reliable internet access and devices through which to learn remotely.

“Anything we saw that showed improvement we saw as a surprise,” Wilburn said. “We don’t have a good explanation as to why.”

Carol Salva, a Houston-based educational consultant who has worked with multilingual learners for 15 years and is recognized as a leader in the field, is unsure what to make of the results. While she hopes they reflect a substantive improvement — she observed that multilingual learners benefited from having additional time to complete assignments and were more likely to talk during online lessons when they could type rather than speak their comments — she’s concerned about their meaning. 

“While I’m grateful for any positive news when it comes to our multilingual students, this data gives me pause and I feel that it needs to be studied further,” she said. 

Chicago focuses on its English learners

Jorge Macias, chief of language and cultural education at Chicago Public Schools, said the improvement among English learners in his district was no shock: CPS, which currently serves 73,000 such children, has been focusing on this group for years, increasing the number of bilingual and English-as-a-second-language teachers from under 5,000 in 2014 to well more than 6,000 now.

The 325,000-student district also has invested in rigorous training for staff who then share their knowledge with teachers at hundreds of schools. Their tactics are constantly evaluated for their effectiveness and measured against student achievement, Macias said. 

The University of Chicago, in published in 2019, found that CPS students who started out as English learners and who demonstrated English proficiency by eighth grade had higher attendance, math test scores, and core course grades than their peers. So, even a force as strong as the pandemic couldn’t derail them, Macias said. 

“We had a four- or five-year runway of getting all of these structures in place to achieve that outcome,” he said. 

Los Angeles in the NAEP spotlight

Carvalho, the longtime Miami-Dade superintendent who took over in L.A. March 1, also cited an easier transition to online learning than some other major cities, although there have been multiple reports of L.A. Unified students struggling with remote instruction. And while Los Angeles was among the last in the country to return to in-person schooling, the district saw improvements for all of its students in 4th-grade reading and in both 8th-grade reading and math.

Carvalho has been on the receiving end of both and since the NAEP scores were released last week, especially because his students in both math and reading on the 2021-22 California state tests. The veteran superintendent noted that NAEP advises school leaders “to be careful about drawing conclusions based on NAEP data.” 

Longtime education researcher Tom Loveless put an even finer point on it, telling ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ, “tests are fluky, and they go up and down. L.A. may give up all those points in the next administration of the test. A lot of people who cheer the NAEP one year are downtrodden the next.” 

English learners narrow the gap 

Jennifer Lumb, who teaches multilingual learners at Oakbrook middle and elementary schools in Ladson, South Carolina, said her students’ attendance was solid throughout the pandemic for classes involving English language instruction. 

“The majority of my students missed the in-person peer/teacher interactions, so they looked forward to that connection with our daily virtual (English language) instruction,” she said. 

But they didn’t always log-on for their core subject matter courses, she said. 

Nationally, scores dropped in eighth-grade math across the board, but less so for English learners. They slipped just two points — from 243 in 2019 to 241 in 2022 — while they nosedived from 285 to 277 for all non-English learners in that grade and subject.

Fourth-grade reading scores also decreased, but the shift was closer between the two groups and not as stark. They went from 224 in 2019 to 222 in 2022 for those students who were not identified as English learners — and from 191 to 190 for those who were.

In fourth-grade math, both groups saw their scores sink by four points — from 220 in 2019 to 2016 in 2022 for English language learners and from 243 to 239 for those students who were not.

But the gap between English learners and all other students — long thought to have widened during the pandemic — didn’t grow: It stayed the same for fourth-grade math, decreased a point for fourth-grade reading and decreased by six points each for eighth-grade math and reading.

And not all cities reported gains: Eighth-grade English learners’ reading scores held steady in Washington, D.C., at 224, and fell by a point in New York City to 208. Miami also suffered a loss, with scores dipping from 225 to 222. Boston dropped four points to 2016. 

More than 115,000 students took the eighth-grade reading test in 2022, down from roughly 146,000 in 2019, Wilburn said. The percentage of English learners who took the NAEP tests remained almost unchanged between 2019 and 2022. In 2019, 13% of all students who took the 4th-grade math test were identified as English learners, in 2022, 14% were. In 4th-grade reading, 13% of all students who took the 2019 test were English learners as were 15% of students who took the 2022 test. 

No matter the scores, Boals said, educators must advance these children.  

“At the end of the day, the issue is supporting the kid who’s in front of you and moving him/her forward,” he said. “That, for me, is always the main thing.” 

ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ’s senior writer Kevin Mahnken contributed to this report.

A child who does not speak English is made to enroll in school online — in a language they don’t understand.

A young Ukrainian refugee is told district staff won’t translate records from home, delaying their start date.

A newcomer student sits idle for weeks because they were not assessed for placement.

Kristina Moon, senior attorney with the Education Law Center of Pennsylvania, has fielded such reports from across the state — all tied to a recent wave of new arrivals. She and other immigrant advocates say it’s the type of discrimination that grows when these children come to the United States in numbers as they are now, with many speaking uncommon languages.

“It’s not fair that an English-speaking student can walk up to the local school and register in 30 minutes and someone who speaks another language is told to go across town or to another building or is given a web address to do something alone online,” Moon said. “These barriers are the first contact they have with the school and make them feel unwelcome, like it will be an insurmountable challenge to even get into the school — let alone learn all of their classes in English.”

U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported nearly 2.4 million “encounters” at the southern border from October 2021 through September 2022, up from roughly 1.7 million in that same time period a year earlier. The more recent figure includes , all of whom are legally entitled to enroll in the nation’s public schools.

Their arrival has sparked controversy around the United States’ responsibility toward new immigrants, prompting some Republican lawmakers to use undocumented people as political pawns, flying and busing families, including those with small children, to other, more “liberal” parts of the country. 

Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas, who has implemented some of the strictest anti-immigration policies in America, delivered hundreds of bewildered newcomers to in recent weeks. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis flew exhausted and confused new immigrants to tony in a stunt that has and landed him . Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey to Washington, D.C. Together, they’ve directed well more than 10,000 newcomers to northern states and face for the practice. 

President Joe Biden earlier this month implemented a new strategy to address at least some asylum seekers’ needs. It allows for to enter the country under humanitarian parole, apply in advance, have a U.S. sponsor, undergo screening and vetting and secure the proper vaccinations: A few have already arrived and , according to the Department of Homeland Security. 

But Venezuelans who cross the border seeking asylum outside this process are being entry under the same that served as a de facto immigration policy for years, angering immigrant advocates who seek a more permanent and humane solution. Biden’s new plan is similar to, but smaller and more restrictive, than earlier this year. Some say it’s not generous enough, with one advocacy group representing the immigrants shuttled to calling it “punitive to the point of cruelty.” 

A state of emergency

Local and state leaders of both major parties say the federal government needs a far better, more comprehensive short- and long-term immigration plan. New York City Mayor Eric Adams earlier this month because of the influx: More than — including — have arrived in the five boroughs since April. 

The mayor is asking for federal help to defray the costs, which he estimates to be $1 billion this fiscal year alone. 

After noting the city’s shelter system, , was near capacity, he said late last week that the numbers of new arrivals since the Venezuelan plan was put in place. 

“We were seeing anywhere from nine to 10 buses in the city,” filled with newcomers, . “We saw two in the last few days.”

But the recent slowdown does not diminish the challenges some newcomer children face. Many they endured prior to and during their journey to America and are far behind their peers academically. They and their families, many of them living in transitional housing, also need help with food and clothing. 

New York City schools, home to roughly 1 million children, employ some 1,600 certified bilingual Spanish-speaking teachers. The district served roughly school year, nearly 62% of whom spoke Spanish. More than half lived in Brooklyn and the Bronx. 

The school system has made some . Chancellor David Banks the city would expand transitional bilingual programs in schools that are seeing an uptick. The city is also creating new “borough response teams” to organize food and clothing drives to help these students and their families, whose needs echo those of the more than already in the system.

Tim Boals, founder and director of , an organization that provides resources to those who teach multilingual learners, said no matter their challenges, it is incumbent upon all schools to educate these children using translation services, pictures, graphics, simplified language and hand gestures, among many other tools. 

“While knowing a student’s language is ideal, there are other methods that work,” Boals said.

Adams, who’s for the way he’s managed the influx, including his decision to house some newcomers in , said the federal government must allow asylum seekers to legally work upon arrival, help spread them across different regions of the country and “deliver long-awaited immigration reform, so we can offer people a safe and legal path to the American Dream.”

DACA battle drags on

But this nation of immigrants has never come to clear, comprehensive terms with its latest newcomers. The prolonged fight over the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which provides deportation relief and work permits to undocumented residents brought here as children, continues to illustrate that uncertainty. 

On Oct. 14, a federal judge in Texas, who already ruled the program illegal, said he would for existing registrants only while he decides whether President Biden’s efforts to into federal regulation addresses its legality. If he rules against the administration, the case will likely head back to a conservative 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, which also issued an earlier ruling agreeing that DACA was not implemented lawfully. Ultimately, the issue could end up in front of the U.S. Supreme Court, where a 5-4 majority on technical grounds in 2017 no longer exists.

Biden has pushed for for the roughly 600,000 so-called Dreamers, . But that measure would have to go through Congress where Republicans oppose him on immigration reform and continue to use the latest wave at the southern border as in the upcoming midterm elections. 

JosĂ© Muñoz, spokesman for United We Dream, an immigrant advocacy group founded in 2008, said those enrolled in DACA are “in a game of ping pong” between the federal courts deciding their fate.

“We are living our lives in two-year increments, not knowing when the court will strip us of our work permits and subject us to deportation,” said Muñoz, 32 and a DACA recipient who arrived from Mexico when he was 3 months old. 

DACA has boosted high school attendance and graduation rates for young immigrants: More than 49,000 additional Hispanic students earned their diploma because of it. DACA also likely prompted a jump in college attendance within this group, researchers said. 

Yet the latest wave of newcomers continues to struggle with one of the most basic elements of their educational careers: enrollment. 

Even when students are able to register electronically, as some schools have required newcomers to do, their requests go unanswered for weeks, said Moon of the Education Law Center. And many fail to acknowledge a state law that allows children relocating from outside the country an additional 30 days to provide immunization records. 

“When we hear that immigrant families continuously have these challenges — which are predictable, preventable and solvable — it’s really very frustrating,” Moon said, adding that the schools and state departments of education should be better prepared. 

Young immigrants have been flocking to the United States for years, Moon said, and must be provided the language support to which they are legally entitled: Bilingual education programs must be based on sound educational theory, be implemented effectively with all of the necessary resources and evaluated regularly, according to federal guidelines established through . Moon was part of a legal team that won a landmark case against the partly on this premise. 

While the percentage of immigrants in the U.S. has never exceeded 14.8, a high reached in 1890, the numbers have exploded since then: living in the United States in 2019 were born outside the country, a figure that has doubled since 1990. 

Adam Strom, executive director for Re-Imagining Migration, a Boston-based organization which aims to help schools rethink the way they teach immigrants and other children, said newcomer students’ talents are too often ignored. 

Concerned about their educational experience, his group recently partnered with the Immigrant Initiative at Harvard University and Youth Truth to craft a national school climate survey around these issues. They are searching for participating districts now. 

“They go through school untapped, bored,” Strom said of many multilingual learners. “The kids don’t feel challenged academically — or, on the other end of the spectrum, they don’t get the help they need to do the assignments.”

Teachers know far too little about the children they serve, he said. He was shocked, upon visiting a school in March, that one student’s teacher hadn’t yet discovered that the child, who hailed from Brazil, spoke Portuguese — not Spanish — as was presumed. So much of what had been said to that student was lost, Strom said. 

Under supported in school, educational outcomes are often worse for these students. Graduation rates for English learners lag in a vast majority of states: It was just for the 2017-18 school year compared to , according to the most recently available data from the U.S. Department of Education that captures both groups.

The rate was stunningly low in New York state at just 31% that year.

Detained

Of all the children who cross the nation’s southern border, unaccompanied minors, who come to the country without a guardian, are uniquely vulnerable. Most captured by Border Patrol must be transferred from one of its holding sites — its has been well documented — to the Department of Health and Human Services within 72 hours. But they’re often held longer and their numbers have been rising for years. 

The Office of Refugee Resettlement received 13,625 unaccompanied minor referrals from DHS in the year ending Sept. 30, 2012 and . 

Once the children are in HHS care, the Office of Refugee Resettlement places them inside one of several shelters — they vary in quality — while staffers work to find a more permanent solution. All are expected to meet ORR standards — and include an educational component — and most must be licensed by the state as facilities housing children, though Texas and Florida no longer vet these sites, removing a critical layer of protection. 

There were 9,620 unaccompanied minors in government care on Oct. 25, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. They spent an average of 28 days in federal care as of April, often in highly restrictive and punitive shelters where , according to immigrant advocates. 

It’s after this experience that these children enroll in school — and they’re not always welcomed. 

Laura Gardner, founder of Immigrant Connections, a consulting group that works with educators to understand the backgrounds, strengths, and needs of newcomer students, said the national battle around immigration often plays out in schools’ front offices when these children attempt to enroll. 

It’s there, she said, that district employees with little to no experience in education policy or knowledge of the law — and who may bring their own biases to the counter — can decide their fate. 

“Principals need to recognize the importance of the climate of the front office and provide staff with training,” Gardner said. “A staff member who resists enrolling a child in school is ruining its climate.”

That’s the top message from a new issue brief by UnidosUS (formerly the National Council of La Raza) that focuses on ways that parents, family members and other adults can help multilingual preschool-age children cope with stresses and trauma of the continuing COVID-19 pandemic.  (also available ) describes the language development of multilingual children and how to nurture them through daily conversations and other interactions.

UnidosUS, the nationwide civil rights and advocacy organization, “empowers Latinos to define and achieve their own American Dream.” It pushes for economic, educational and social goals that advance prosperity and achievement for Latinos, and its network of 285 community-based affiliates around the country amplifies the voices of a diverse array of Americans.

Robert Stechuk, director of early childhood education programs, who coauthored the paper with Ingrid T. ColĂłn, education research program manager, shares about how persistent misconceptions have exacerbated the stress and trauma faced by families during this challenging period.

One of those myths is that children’s home languages interfere with their academic success. For generations, Latino parents have been told to stop speaking Spanish at home if they want to support their children’s achievement. A  demonstrates that children have the capacity to be multilingual and should not give up their home language to learn English.

Stechuk says the research shows that a child’s first language is part of a child’s identity and a resource for developing a second or third language. Instead of suppressing Spanish—or whichever language(s) a child learns first—parents should be encouraged to nurture them, using them as a springboard for self-expression, thinking and early literacy.

Focusing on multilingual 3- to 5-year-olds, the issue brief notes the following common behaviors:

• Repeating phrases heard from adults and even imitating their tone, pitch, phrasing and pronunciation
• Engaging in “active recall,” as the child reconsiders and rethinks past experiences
• Using language to connect pieces of information. For example, the weather outside and the appropriate clothing to wear

The UnidosUS affiliate enrolls several thousand children in Chicago’s poorest neighborhoods. The program reports that nearly a quarter of their parents have contracted COVID-19, while more than half have had their hours of employment reduced. Indeed, the pandemic has had a disproportionate impact on immigrant families. found Hispanic immigrants of working age are over 11 times more likely to die of COVID-19 than U.S.-born men and women who are not Hispanic. Researchers will be exploring the adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) stemming from this period for years to come, but already we know that many immigrants lack access to primary care, health insurance and the supports necessary to take care of themselves. Undocumented immigrants face an even more severe health crisis.

At the same time, Stechuk says that the pandemic has increased awareness of the resilience of foreign and U.S.-born Latino communities and has highlighted the strengths of the affiliate’s ECE programs. “The stories are so inspiring,” he says, citing programs for Latino families that serve migrant farm workers that include home visits and YouTube videos, Zoom-based writing workshops for children and online cooking classes for families held as collaborations between programs and area restaurants. He also cites the range of multilingual resources available for promoting and sustaining culturally responsive literacy. These can be books and reading materials, and videos, TV shows and street signs that can also promote language development.

“The challenges are severe,” he acknowledges, “but as the report makes clear, parents, family members and key adults can affirm and celebrate children’s multilingual development, giving them the foundation to grow up happy, confident and whole.”