How Immigration Is Impacting American Education

Introduction 

In the post-modern time, globalization and more integration has far reaching effect on mobility of people. A matter of international significance is the migration of persons. Numerous deliberation are ongoing regarding the impact of immigrant population on the native communities. The influx of people into a new area have implication on the host’s social, political and economic circumstances as was evident in United States (Grigorenko, 2013; Newman, 2013; Peri, 2012). Two spectrum of immigrants are witnessed in the U.S. One group constituted by “well-educated white-collar workers” while the other group are “uneducated blue-collar workers.” It is rather difficult to fully elaborate the implication of immigration on a nation’s education, both positive and negative effects have been documented (Nesvisky, 2018). 

Pertinent issues facing non-English speaking children of immigrants is enrolment into a novel academic program which may necessitate assimilation of foreign culture within the school. The big question: How does the immigrants affect the United State education? What are the consequences of immigration for public schools in America? What is the impact immigration on high school curriculum? What is affecting programs aimed at helping educate non-native English speaking students in public high schools? This paper aims to understand what new education programs have been implemented, which target foreign students. Drawing to the current influx of immigrants into United States, this paper aims to offer a detailed and critical discussion on the effect of immigration on schools and education system of United States of America. 

Historical Perspective 

The nuanced connection with schools is shown by historical perspectives among immigrants. This is usually based on their integration and success in the foreign land while concurrently offering resistance to their burdens upon antagonism to their intentions and values. Consistency in the desire for education among immigrants has been highlighted by historical evidences. “Their contemporary aims for education are not in contrast with a golden age of seamless integration that has allegedly ceased to exist in the fragmented society. On the contrary, immigrants seem to want from education today what they have historically wanted: integration and mobility in the new society along with a fair recognition of their identities” (Gold & Nawyn, 2013). 

Impact of Immigration on American’s Education 

Status Quo 

Currently, different groups of immigrants are interested in attaining educational achievement including the curiosity in structural and cultural intersection. This is so since some groups are disadvantaged with limitation in economy (Abu, 2007). However, emergence of disconcerting issues like lower attainment of educational level due to higher rates of school drop-out have been evident among Latino youth in comparison to other groups (Gold and Nawyn, 2013). Nevertheless, one out of four students in public institutions are from legal or illegal household of immigrants. This is significantly high raising the contentious agenda of assimilation (Pollock, 2009). 

Figures of students from poor backgrounds and who speak foreign language have immensely been added to public school by immigration. These compounded problems in regions struggling to offer education to students from disadvantaged or marginalized communities characterized by low income per household (Griffith, Camarota & Zeigler, 2017). According to Camarota (2017) only 7% of students in public schools as at 1980 were coming from households of immigrants; significant increment up to 23% has been registered currently. Higher figures have even been seen in some states, for example, in Nevada a maximum of 35%; in New Jersey and Texas up to 34% and 31% respectively. Despite such increments in public schools, trivial deliberation is ongoing regarding the school capacity for educating and integrating these immigrant students (Camarota, 2017) . Misrepresentation of non-English speaking students in the national curriculum is analyzed by Grigorenko (2013). Issues surrounding acquisition of novel language and acculturation in the midst of adapting to a new curriculum and the labelling of immigrants as being unintelligent are overlooked in spite of the reality of language barrier and culture shock (Abu, 2007). 

Implication on Public Schools 

Variation and Quantity are among the 2 avenues in which immigrants affect US public schools. Approximately twenty percent of the world’s immigrant’s population reside in United States which is about fifteen percent of US population with nearly twenty percent being in the bracket of school going age. The tremendous challenge on top of quantitative numbers of immigrants is there variability in nationalities. Therefore educating such people with immense variability in language and culture is extremely difficult using a common language of communication (Arias & Faltis, 2012). In typical classroom in public school, these variabilities result in language barrier with difficulty to administer lessons to every student (Hollins, 2015). Other compounded issues include difficulty in maintaining a common classroom culture and challenges in school-teacher-parent integration (Grigorenko, 2013). 

Effect on School Curriculum 

One of the major burden of immigrants in US from a cultural and financial perspectives is curriculum adjustment. Assimilation and English language program are being instituted to assist the immigrants (Pollock, 2009). This adds on the cost to fund school curriculum through employment of more teachers in addition to offering alternative courses that suits the need of immigrants. Arias and Faltis (2012) discussed the demerits of “Structured English Immersion (SEI) classes.” SEI separates immigrants for hours from Native Americans which eventually affects the content of academic. Moreover, “SEI programs are generic frameworks for teaching students, regardless of an individual’s language proficiency or intelligence.” (Arias & Faltis, 2012). 

Influence on the Native’s Educational Attainment 

Contrary to the widespread claim that immigration has had negative effect on education of native-born students, Jennifer Hunt stated that net impact of immigration is positive in public schools. Based on various reports “( the 1940-2000 censuses and the pooled 2008-2010 American Community Surveys),”Jennifer focused on immigration implication on the possibility of native-born American’s completion of schooling within twelve years. It was found that a rise of 1% in portion of immigrants aged eleven to sixty four increased the possibility that native Americans aged eleven to seventeen finally completing twelve years of schooling by 0.3% (Nesvisky, 2018). 

Two avenues of implications on outcomes for Native Americans on schooling by immigrants are stated by Nesvisky (2018). Firstly, there is competition for schooling resources between Native American children and the Immigrant children. The net effect is low return to Native American children and discouragement to complete high schooling. Secondly, to evade competition within the labor relation, Native American are motivated to complete schooling so as to outdo their immigrant counterparts who dropped out of high school. Conclusively as was established by Hunt, the net effect of these two operational evidences is positive especially when referring to Native-born Blacks or Hispanics. Therefore, comparatively, immigrants in U.S. may be highly or poorly educated with reference to their native counterparts (Nesvisky, 2018). 

Private Schooling vs. Spending on Public Education 

Deliberations are ongoing associating spending on public education and influx of immigrants. This discussion emerged in US when there was debate on permitting illegal immigrant children to join public education system “as part of the 1982 Supreme Court decision of Plyer v. Doe ” which typifies the fact that immigration heightens the cost on expenditures on the public (Mavisakalyan, 2011). Mavisakalyan (2011) found that enrolment into private school was raised by the immigrants across counties which reduced expenditure on public education. The driving factor in the decline were responses to immigrants from high income countries and who share similar culture. The idea suggested is that the mandate of public schools in increasing cohesion socially among population of different diversity is weighted against other issues pertaining funding of education in regions with influx of immigrants (Mavisakalyan, 2011). 

Conclusion and Recommendation 

To conclude, immigration has far reaching implication on US education. A surge in the number of immigrants into US schools has been noted in the present time due to enormous influx of immigrants into US. Challenges derived from these increment include integrating immigrants into the US education program owing to their variability in culture and language. Intercalated programs have been integrated into public schools to help with language barrier on the part of immigrants. Government expenditure on education has skyrocketed due to the upsurge of immigrants into public schools. Private schools have been equally flooded with immigrants from developed countries given a decrease in spending in public school. The notion that immigrants have contributed to a decline in Native American educational attainment has been rejected by some perspective which argued that immigrant positively impact on Native American educational attainment 

Justified by the challenges experienced in trying to integrate immigrants into the education system and the impacts of immigration on US education, the following recommendation are brought forward in this paper: there is need to introduce novel programs into schools were cover the diversity brought by immigrants such as offering academic program using additional major languages other than English. Recruiting more of qualified immigrants into the learning institution to serve as teachers to help with diversity issue. Promoting more government funding of public schools to sustain the already running programs plus the intercalated programs in the interest of immigrants in addition to expanding the capacity of public schools or building new ones especially in states with more immigrants. Lastly, enacting policies that minimize illegal migration. 

References 

Abu El-Haj, T. R. (2007). " I was born here, but my home, it's not here": Educating for democratic citizenship in an era of transnational migration and global conflict. Harvard Educational Review , 77 (3), 285-316. 

Arias, M. B., & Faltis, C. (Eds.). (2012). Implementing educational language policy in Arizona: Legal, historical and current practices in SEI (Vol. 86). Multilingual Matters. 

Camarota, S. (2017). Consequences of Immigration on America’s Public Schools. Retrieved from https://www.dailysignal.com/2017/03/23/how-large-scale-immigration-has-impacted-american-schools/ 

Gold, S. J., & Nawyn, S. J. (Eds.). (2013). Routledge international handbook of migration studies . Routledge. 

Griffith, B., Camarota, S., & Zeigler, K. (2017). Mapping the Impact of Immigration on Public Schools. Retrieved from https://cis.org/Report/Mapping-Impact-Immigration-Public-Schools 

Grigorenko, E. L. (2013). US immigration and education: Cultural and policy issues across the lifespan . Springer Publishing Company. 

Hollins, E. R. (2015). Culture in school learning: Revealing the deep meaning . Routledge. 

Mavisakalyan, A. (2011). Immigration, Public Education Spending, and Private Schooling. Southern Economic Journal , 78 (2), 397-423. doi: 10.4284/0038-4038-78.2.397 

Nesvisky, M. (2018). The Impact of Immigration on the Educational Attainment of Natives. National Bureau of Economic Research. Retrieved from https://www.nber.org/digest/sep12/w18047.html 

Newman, B. J. (2013). Acculturating contexts and Anglo opposition to immigration in the United States. American Journal of Political Science , 57 (2), 374-390. 

Peri, G. (2012). The effect of immigration on productivity: Evidence from US states. Review of Economics and Statistics , 94 (1), 348-358. 

Pollock, M. (2009). Colormute: Race talk dilemmas in an American school . Princeton University Press.