Cat Sposato
Social Context of U.S. Immigration Law and Policy
Professor Salyer
"Ayuda En Teoría": An Examination of Undocumented Students and Equal Opportunity in Public Schools:
Introduction:
Undocumented students in public primary education have a longstanding and complicated relationship with academic success. Growing economic concerns about immigration and undocumented immigrants in the United States today is rooted within this demographic's lack of educational attainment, specifically their high rates of high school incompletion. As noted in the New York Times article The Immigration Equation by Roger Lowenstein, current populations of individuals who are out of status, specifically undocumented children, are increasing competition for native-born high-school dropouts within the labor sector, in turn lowering wages and worsening working conditions for everyone within this section of the workforce. These low levels of educational attainment are cited as a primary concern for native-born dropouts and is used to argue against the protection of undocumented individuals residing within the United States. In this project, I look to examine what hinders the academic success of undocumented students within public primary school systems in the United States. This paper will serve as an exploration of the lack of enforcement of legal protections for undocumented students, and the United States public school system and its inability to create comprehensive programming to accommodate for the issues that accompany students who are out of status, including but not limited to: de-facto segregation, cultural barriers, misinformation, and psychological distress. These barriers ultimately create unequal opportunities for undocumented students and serve as an obstruction their ability to successfully complete high school and obtain their diplomas. Through placing a broad analysis of political, legal, and historical scholarship in conversation with a series of interviews with undocumented persons and school administrators, I look to provide insight on these barriers in praxis.
Legal Implications of Plyler:
In order to understand the relationship between undocumented students and the public primary education system, we must first explore the legal precedents and federal policies surrounding the rights of students who are out of status within public schools. This inquiry begins with the landmark Supreme Court decision in Plyler v. Doe. In 1982, the Supreme Court decided on a 5-4 vote to strike down a Texas law barring undocumented students from receiving educations within public schools. The decision had much broader implications, as it established the legal precedent holding that states could not discriminate against undocumented children on the basis of their immigration status in the provision of public elementary and secondary education. In the majority opinion, Justice Brennan firmly established the role of public education in the lives of students across the country, describing the denial of K-12 education to certain groups as the inevitable creation of an "underclass" of individuals. Plyler's outcome affirmed the role of the public education system as a "legally permissible institution" where undocumented children could receive an education (Gonzalez et al, 3), and promised all students throughout the country access to integration into the social and economic systems of the United States regardless of status or documentation. This decision has remained influential in guaranteeing undocumented students the opportunity to enter into the public education system. Sadly, however, this is where Plyler's influence draws to a halt. In a post-Plyler world, K-12 public schooling has failed to serve as a stepping stone to accessing social and economic mobility for undocumented students in the way it had originally promised. De-facto segregation, cultural barriers, misinformation, and psychological distress act as four major barriers to equal opportunity for undocumented students within the public school system. Beginning with an investigation of the impacts of the four major barriers to equal opportunity for undocumented students in schools, we will examine where the school system creates pitfalls for its undocumented populations. By examining how the public school system fails to create positive policies and programming to counter these four major barriers, we can further demonstrate how the public school system fails to uphold the promises of Plyler's legacy.
Scholarly Investigation of Four Barriers:
This investigation of the four barriers to equal opportunity to public education will begin with the barrier of de-facto segregation and the high concentrations of undocumented students in certain school districts. Throughout the country, undocumented students are accessing public education within high-poverty, low-achieving school districts, and de facto segregated schools. This tendency towards high accumulations of undocumented students within certain school districts is due to the broader concentrations of undocumented peoples within certain communities. This is attributed to a number of factors, including familial connections to communities, decentralized municipal governments, the creation of "Barrios" and other cultural enclaves, white flight, and certain legal protections established to ease the enforcement of deportations. A combination of these factors entice undocumented individuals to conglomerate in certain areas of the United States, which is no different than the segregated neighborhoods throughout the country. Historically, recent migrants to the United States have a tendency to aggregate in ethnic enclaves, which is only exacerbated by white-flight and similar racist and xenophobic migration patterns (Gonzalez et al, 1). These de-facto segregation practices impact the economic success of school districts that have high concentrations of undocumented students because they create gaps in funding for school districts and in turn disproportionately deprive undocumented students of resources needed in order to succeed within their schooling districts. In the state of California, it was found that the largest populations of undocumented students were concentrated in the top 5% of underfunded school districts within the state (Hones et al, 7). This lack of funding inhibits the ability of school districts to provide for the resources necessary for their academic success. This lack of funding also renders these school districts unable to accommodate for the needs of their undocumented students (in the forms of positive policy-making and programming) and thus does not provide these students with an equal opportunity at obtaining a high school degree.
Looking closely at school curriculums and classroom etiquette, there is evidence of a discord between traditional education within the classroom and the cultural education that happens within largely undocumented communities throughout the United States. Examining English as a Second Language departments and their curriculums, there is a clear discrepancy between the pedagogy surrounding these programs and the educational background of the students they are designed for. These programs are based on a standardized academic version of the home language they are transitioning students from. In communities with high concentrations of Latinx undocumented students, this means utilizing textbooks and classroom materials that are largely based on the Hispanic canon of the Spanish language. As detailed by Callahan, Wilkinson, and Muller in Academic Achievement and Course Taking Among Language Minority Youth in U.S. Schools: Effects of ESL Placement, English as a Second Language programming operate on the assumption that all students have the same understandings of the Spanish language, which forces them to learn a sterilized version of their native Spanish and ultimately hinders their ability to learn English. In this way, English as a Second Language programming fails its students, who have difficulties navigating the program's concentration on slang-free academic framings of foreign languages that do not align with the dialects that undocumented students come in with (Callahan et al, 3). For students out of status who have a dominance on the English language and are not enrolled in English as a Second Language programming, there are other forms of cultural barriers that prohibit their success within the classroom. This is one example of the gap in cultural competencies within the American public school classroom. Undocumented youth are forced to navigate their "Americanized" school grounds and the traditions and cultural norms of their country of origin (Oh, 7). Students who are out of status are faced with the burden of "code-switching" between their all-Spanish homes and their all-English classes, both in terms of language and cultural norms. Students who are out of status are forced to navigate classrooms that do not make space for their lived experiences. Instead, they must exist within spaces that do not acknowledge the contexts of their presence within schools and thus submit to the label of "unconventional" that alienates them from their learnings within the classroom (Oh, 9).
On top of these two factors, public school administrations and the national narrative surrounding undocumented students spread the misunderstanding that undocumented students are barred from obtaining equal access to educational opportunity. This misinformation further spreads via the lack of awareness of the legal protections granted to students out of status under Plyler v. Doe. According to Elżbieta M. Goździak's piece To Dream or Not To Dream, undocumented students are subjected to a category of "legal vulnerability" that is produced from the lack of access to information on their protections within school systems. This "legal vulnerability" is produced by a fear of administrative forces, that weaken the trust of undocumented students and their families in these institutions because of their lack of knowledge of their legal protections (Goździak, 12). Another way in which this culture of misinformation spreads in public schools is the lack of dialogue around college enrollment for undocumented students. Many undocumented students are unaware of the possibilities of enrolling in college despite being out of status, which oftentimes stunts student motivation for academic success and hinders their performance within the classroom. Students out of status who are uninformed about their legal protections are three times less likely to apply to post-high school education than students out of status who are made aware of their protections in higher education (Bowers et al, 82). This lack of awareness of the protections afforded to undocumented students in higher education has serious repercussions on their completion of high school. According to a study by Deborah L. Feldman, Antony T. Smith, Barbara L. Waxman, students who do not view college as a "viable option" after graduation are 2.5 times more likely to not complete high school (Feldman et al, 33). This issue is only exacerbated for undocumented students, who are likely to view college as unattainable because of misinformation in schools. Another contributing factor to this misinformation is the lack of cultural capital that the families of undocumented students tend to possess. In most cases across the United States, families of undocumented students will not have the general knowledge or language to successfully prepare them for the college application process. For many undocumented students, "their nuclear family lacks the cultural capital needed to fully access the college application process," (Lopez, 21). Therefore, many students out of status must "rely on institutional agents to give them access to social capital networks that will provide them access to college information," (Lopez, 21). This places the onus of informing students about the opportunities guaranteed to them on the schools they attend. The lack of effective policy changes in the U.S. post-Plyler makes it nearly impossible to ensure that this information is properly disseminated. Since there are no policies regarding the enforcement of the dissemination of rights or opportunities for undocumented students on a federal level, it proves "difficult to ensure" that all students have access to this information (Grigorenko, 5).
Finally, it is important to examine and understand the psychological distress that students who are out of status experience while navigating the public school system. Undocumented students across the country are faced with the constant pressure that comes with disclosing their status to those they know. As highlighted within Speech or Silence: Undocumented Students' Decisions to Disclose or Disguise Their Citizenship Status in School by Ariana Mangual Figueroa, undocumented students are faced with the burden of their status. As they navigate school situations and build relationships with their peers and members of their school's faculty, they must constantly weigh the pros and cons of disclosing their status at all times. Disclosing to the wrong person could "put students at risk of losing everything: the safety of themselves and their families," (Mangual Figueroa, 3), and expose them to entities that could trigger their removal, via agencies such as the Immigration and Customs Enforcement. This constant pressure can take a toll on the mental well-being of undocumented students. The most common impacts of these pressures on their mental health take the form of panic and anxiety disorders. When left untreated, these psychological pressures have a large impact on the academic performance of undocumented students, preventing them from focusing on their school work. As demonstrated by Angela Valenzuela in her work Subtractive Schooling, recent immigrants tend to "reject the process of schooling" because schools rarely discuss or incorporate issues of immigration status or documentation within the classroom, excluding students from their curriculums which in turn makes it more difficult for these students to connect to their material (Valenzuela, 64). Some students reported becoming afraid of confronting these issues at school, which led to an increase in the numbers of classes they missed throughout the academic year (Mangual Figueroa, 7). On top of this, undocumented students also experience other factors that take a toll on their psychological health. According to research conducted by Beverly Araujo and Luisa Borrell in Understanding the Link Between Discrimination, Mental Health Outcomes, and Life Chances Among Latinos, "acculturation, parental educational attainment, and socioeconomic status" are correlated with depression (Araujo & Borrell, 2006). These psychological distressors place the burden on undocumented students to navigate their understandings of their mental health, forcing them to navigate psychological distress on their own while also attempting to succeed in school.
Purpose of Case Study:
In order to understand the implications of these effects on Barrio Latinx enclaves throughout the country, I will examine a case study through a series of interviews that highlight the way the city of Passaic, New Jersey, approaches the education of undocumented students within their high schools, and details the personal experiences of both students and administrators. Through these interviews, I will explore some of the barriers and obstacles that impede undocumented students from graduating, the legal and political dynamics that prevent this public school in particular from accommodating their large undocumented student population, and the reasons why this community fails to adequately provide equal opportunity for their student out of status population. This qualitative research method will help further understand the complicated relationship between undocumented students and the public school system.
Case Study Background:
The Passaic public school system in Passaic City, New Jersey, became the center of this case study because of its large undocumented immigrant population. Out of its small population of 70 thousand residents, the city of Passaic is home to an estimated 17 thousand individuals out of status (and potentially many more unaccounted for by the data), and is home to the fourth largest undocumented population in the state of New Jersey (City of Passaic: Mayor's Office Report). According to data recorded by the Office of the Superintendent of the school district, the Board of Education estimates that about one-fifth of their entire student body is out of status and that two-fifths of their student body live with at least one family member who is out of status. The city of Passaic has the third largest English as a Second Language department in the state of New Jersey, with estimates that place approximately 39% of their student body as having participated in at least stage of ESL instruction at some point, from K-12. 23% of their student body is currently enrolled within ESL instruction full time (Passaic City: NJ School Performance Report).
The interviews were conducted in two parts. In Part One of the interviews, I conducted qualitative field research in which I interviewed three undocumented students. Miguel Medina, an undocumented individual hailed from Mexico who dropped out of Passaic High School in his sophomore year, Rosa Alcantara, an undocumented individual hailed from the Dominican Republic who graduated in 2018, and Andrea Guzman, an undocumented individual hailed from Mexico who also graduated in 2018. These are three students who went through the Passaic school system and shared their experience. Each student has asked that their names be changed for the purpose of protecting their identity. In these interviews, I asked these students six main questions regarding their experiences: (1) When did you attend Passaic High School? (2) When and how did you leave Passaic High School? (3) Did your identity as an undocumented student impact your experience at Passaic High School? Please elaborate. (4) Did you feel supported by Passaic High School? Why or why not? (5) Why do you think you are allowed to go to public school? (6) Have you ever heard of Plyler v. Doe, the Supreme Court case on the right of undocumented students in schools? I also asked follow-up questions for clarification based on their responses.
In Part Two of the interviews, I met with four administrators who are in charge of creating and enforcing education policies at varying levels within Passaic High School in particular: Angelica Merced, former guidance counselor for "newly arrived" students for the English As A Second Language department at Passaic High School for over 7 years; Grace Romero, former teacher in the district for over 10 years and current Vice Principal of Passaic High School; Peter Rosario, current Board of Education president; and Pablo Muñoz, current superintendent of the Passaic School District.
Part One of the Interviews:
This investigation began with Angelica Merced, who served as a guidance counselor in charge of "newly arrived" students enrolled in the Passaic English as a Second Language program between 2010-2018. The "newly arrived" student category is used to demarcate students who are recent arrivals to the United States and had never been enrolled in any U.S. educational institution prior to their time in Passaic. On average, Merced was in charge of approximately 730 students per academic year. According to Merced, approximately 46% of her students had disclosed a lack of documentation to her per year. For this 46 % of newly arrived students, the dropout rates for this group of students seemed particularly alarming. "It's a … one in two chance of them making it [to graduation]; that's the group I would label the most at risk," (Merced, 11/15/18). When asked about why she believes this is an issue, Merced pointed to two contributing factors: the English as a Second Language program and the psychological distress of the students.
Similar to the research of Callahan, Wilkinson, and Muller, Merced expressed concern about utilizing sterilized versions of Spanish within the classroom. The information she provided was largely emblematic of the issues with the English as a Second Language program presented earlier. "It's so hard… looking at students who are in these programs, you ask yourself, ‘How do you get them to care?' especially in the transitional Spanish-to-English learning classes. They say, ‘Miss, I do not understand the Spanish in these books,' and then get points off for using slang and other colloquialisms that are largely accepted by their cultural norms and educational backgrounds prior to arriving in the American educational system but deemed unacceptable by Americanized standards. How can we get these students to really learn English if we are constantly reteaching them Spanish [their language of origin]?"
When asked to elaborate on the issues of psychological distress, Merced said this: "I've had students who have seen things that nobody should see. I've spoken to students who have watched family members die crossing the border, I've spoken to students who have no idea where their parents are, living with distant family members that they don't really know… And I try, I go to them [the administration] and say, ‘Where can I send them?'… they tell me, ‘Can you just deal with it?'… There are no grief counselors or therapists. These kids … carry the weight of emotional trauma, and are told to deal with it," (Merced, 11/15/18).
This overall sentiment of being told to "deal with it," was echoed in interviews conducted with three students who navigated the Passaic school system as out of status individuals. After talking to Miguel Medina, Rosa Alcantara, and Andrea Guzman, the lack of support provided by the schooling district for the needs of undocumented students became even more apparent.
Miguel Medina was a student at Passaic High School from the years 2013-2015. Medina was supposed to graduate in the spring semester of 2017 but dropped out during his sophomore year in order to work full time. When asked about what stopped him from pursuing his education further, Medina cited issues with the misinformation on opportunities upon graduating and an Americanized curriculum. "It felt like a waste of time… I knew that I could never go to college because I could never pay for it, and even if I could, one of my teachers told me once that undocumented students can get deported for going to college… that in those places it's easier to get caught. I had a job opportunity and I took it. It didn't make sense to keep up with doing something that wasn't going to get me anywhere," (Medina, 11/18/18). Medina’s experience is reminiscent of the research conducted by Feldman et al. In his experience, Medina did not view college as “viable option,” (Feldman et al, 8), and thus viewed his high school career as a roadblock to his social mobility.
Rosa Alcantara was a student at Passaic High School from the years 2014-2018. Alcantara managed to graduate, at the bottom of her class (she disclosed that she ranked in the bottom 100 of the graduating class). She did not go to college after graduation and went to work in a factory instead. When asked about the obstacles she faced on her path to graduation, Alcantara cited the English as a Second Language programming as her greatest inhibitor. "You know I always tried my best, but not even my Spanish was good enough. I tried hard, but when your classes are half in English that you do not know and the other half in a Spanish that is unfamiliar to you, what was I going to do?… At my school in the Dominican Republic, I was top of my class. My Spanish teacher here said my Spanish was terrible; how does that make sense? That was the only language I knew! Also, if you are in English as a Second Language, your ranking is lower because you cannot take many AP classes or even honors classes. You are forced to start at the bottom. The climb is too uphill to be fair. You can only go lower from there," (Alcantara, 11/18/18). Similar to the work by Callahan et al, Alcantara’s narrative reflects the impact of ESL programming on the success of undocumented students within the primary public education system. In her view, being placed in ESL programming inhibited her chances of succeeding in school. The differences in Spanish within her transitional courses made it difficult for her to navigate the school system, leaving her behind in comparison to her English speaking counterparts.
Andrea Guzman was a student at Passaic High School from the years 2014-2018. Guzman managed to graduate, as one of the top 10 students of her class of 650. Guzman's academic record was outstanding; her SAT score was almost double the school overall average of 750. After graduation, Guzman ended up enrolling at a community college. She cites the school's lack of information and her family situation as the main reasons explaining why she did not apply to a four-year undergraduate institution. "Looking back, I get so mad! I had the grades and everything for it, you know? I know I could have gotten into some of the schools my classmates went to. But I was told by my guidance counselor that undocumented students can't receive financial aid or scholarships. [Her guidance counselor] sat me down and said, ‘Well, at least go get your Associate's degree because it's free in the state now for undocumented students.' And I said, ‘Okay, at least I'm going to go.' It's so frustrating looking back now and seeing that I could have made it… I feel cheated out of my future," (Guzman, 11/19/18). Guzman’s experience highlights the issues that come from not having familial cultural capital. In Guzman’s circumstance, she had to rely on her guidance counselors and teachers for all of her knowledge and information on the college application process (Lopez, 21). This misinformation barred Guzman from accessing a four year undergraduate institution, which could create major social and financial setbacks for her later on.
Although all of the students' personal stories reflected variations of hardship in their experiences, there were some universalities to a few of their responses. The most similar answer appeared in responses to questions posed about their protections in schools. To the question "Why do you think you are allowed to go to public school," all three students stated (in varied language) that they believed it because they were eligible for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. When asked, "Have you ever heard of Plyler v. Doe, the Supreme Court case on the right of undocumented students in schools?" all three students replied that they had never heard of the case before, despite its significance to their daily life as students.
When placing these interviews in conversation with the four barriers explored in the first half of the paper, it is evident that these issues bar undocumented students from obtaining full access to equal educational opportunity. What also becomes evident is that the lack of intervention in these demonstrated areas of need by schools and their administrators. While these issues are important to acknowledge, they are not the only blockades to equal opportunity. The more pernicious and pervasive danger within these schools is the inaction on the part of the administrators.
Part Two of the Interviews:
The second part of this investigation began with Grace Romero, who served as a non-honors middle school English teacher for the city of Passaic for 10 years before becoming a Vice Principal at Passaic High School in 2016. She was a formerly undocumented person and lived in the United States without documentation between the ages of 4 and 16. When asked about her relationship to her students without documentation, she believes that she serves as an advocate for them. "I've been there… I've had students in my classrooms who would tell me, ‘Miss, they took my father'… And I know what that's like. My mother died when I was 16 because she didn't have access to health care [as an undocumented person]. I look at these students and I see myself in them. I try my best, but it's hard," (Romero, 11/25/18). When asked to elaborate further, Romero stated, "Oh you know. This bureaucracy thing… it's all red tape everywhere. One wrong move and we could get our funding pulled from us. As an educator and as a Vice Principal, I've asked for programming. I've tried to start a mentoring program for undocumented students. But it outs them. If you're a kid in a mentoring circle for undocumented students, everyone will know [that you are undocumented]… it's hard to create programming that doesn't forcibly announce your status, or rather your lack thereof, to the world," (Romero, 11/25/18). Romero’s insight highlighted a major issue in the administrative realm concerning the education of undocumented students. Many of the conversations had by education policy scholars, like Michael Sulkowski, are centered around creating programming under new labels and categories for students impacted by lack of documentation (Sulkowski, 11). Administrators, however, are hesitant to enact these policies due to fears surrounding the effects that the potential “exposing” of students and their lack of status can have on their wellbeing.
This attitude towards creating positive policy programming for undocumented students appeared once again in interviews with both Peter Rosario and Pablo Munoz, the president and superintendent of the Passaic Board of Education. After sitting down to speak with both Rosario and Munoz, it seemed that policy-making aimed at creating programming for undocumented students faced many roadblocks. When asked about what has prevented support for undocumented populations in the past, Munoz responded, "It has only been very recently that we have been able to start thinking about creating policies that cater to the needs of undocumented students… under Christie (former governor of New Jersey), anything that sounded like it supported undocumented persons would place a target on our backs when it came time to receive our funding… we wanted to help but we couldn't risk the losses," (Munoz & Rosario, 11/29/18). When asked to respond to the issue of informing students of their legal protections within schools, Munoz pushed back. "We don't teach civics here. If we randomly teach one group of students about their legal protections, we would have to teach all students… (lengthy pause) we have to pick and choose sometimes," (Munoz & Rosario, 11/29/18). Rosario also chimed in: "We don't get funding for any kind of civics education, so we can't teach it. That's something to take up with the state," (Munoz & Rosario, 11/29/18). After trying to point out that this school, in particular, had a large undocumented student population, Munoz fought back, stating, "our numbers are all speculation. We don't have the hard data to prove that we actually have these populations because as a school, we can't ask for status. It's out of our control. We cannot force students to disclose their status with us, and we can't even give them the option to. We must treat all students neutrally. This inability to obtain and use data really makes creating policies and programming difficult. We can't ask for funding because we cannot prove that these needs exist," (Munoz & Rosario, 11/29/18). Rosario also responded, stating, "We don't even get enough funding as it is. Demanding funds for a population that we shouldn't know exists is almost impossible. We try our best to create programming that works, but we have to remain facially neutral, at least for now… There's no way to get all teachers to inform students about the legal rights of undocumented students or to all say the same things when asked about their ability to go to college. We have no way of enforcing such a policy. It is up to the teachers and guidance counselors to decide whether they'll discuss that with their students… It's hit or miss. But we don't have much leeway in matters like this," (Munoz & Rosario, 11/29/18).
Conclusion:
The experiences of undocumented individuals who have gone through Passaic’s public school system demonstrate the ways contemporary public schooling fails to adequately address material challenges to the promises of the Plyler v. Doe decision. On the one hand, Plyler grants undocumented students access to a legally sanctioned space to obtain potential social and cultural capital without singling them out for their lack of documentation. On the other hand, because Plyler does not deconstruct the notion of students' illegality, and sothe schools that educate undocumented students are “limited in their ability to help them fully participate,” within these spaces (Gonzales et al, 7). Plyler’s promise remains unfulfilled because it fails to establish a school system that allows students to confront the realities of their lack of documentation with the support of their schooling communities. Instead, Plyler’s promise remains empty; students have access to school regardless of their documentation status, but do not have access to their truths. Undocumented students are forced to hide their identities, and remain ignored by administrators who cannot expand their purview in order to create programming to overcome the barriers blocking from accessing equal educational opportunity.