Immigration changing education system in California

Sara A. Carter:

Like Monte Vista, many schools in the Inland Empire seek innovative ways of closing the educational and cultural gap between children of immigrant families and those from native households, said Vicki Ford, director of Monte Vista's after-school program.

But the price of integrating and educating immigrant children is a contentious political issue one that raises questions ranging from the high cost of educating undocumented residents to the potential threat to national security posed by foreign students.

"California's system of education 20 years ago was the finest in the country," said John Keeley of the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank that supports stricter immigration limits. "No one would speak to that today. When you have hundreds of thousands of foreign-born children without comprehension of the English language, it strains the system and impacts the schools."

That strain is the result of a wave of immigration from Mexico and South America. The influx has changed the state's demographics, with the impact most profoundly seen in the makeup of California's schoolchildren. In 2004, one-third of California's population was Latino; for public school students, the share was 46 percent. At Monte Vista, 80 percent of the students were Latino.

Clearly, not every Latino student is an immigrant or a native-born child of immigrant parents. But studies show that the educational system bears a disproportionately higher share of immigration's cost than do other public services.

Of the 1.6 million students in California classified as Limited English Proficiency (LEP), just 175,000 are immigrants who arrived in the past three years. Because those who were born here are not counted as "foreign-born" in the U.S. Census or other studies, they are considered by some to be one of the "invisible" impacts of immigration.

Overwhelmingly, students born to immigrant parents in the United States require special attention to learn English because their primary language at home is usually the parents' native language.

And we all know who ends up paying the bill for this education:

"There is nothing wrong with people wanting to make a better life for their children" Keeley said. "But it's the California taxpayer that bears the burden. It's a very difficult issue, and until we have a dispassionate discussion of the situation on the ground, there isn't really any hope."

Immigration accounts for virtually all of the national increase in public school enrollment over the past two decades, according to the Center for Immigration Studies.

It's not clear how much it costs each year to educate immigrant children. The state only tracks the number of schoolchildren who are "newcomer" immigrants, meaning they arrived in the past three years. In 2004-05, that number was 270,000, costing $2.6 billion to educate.

Assuming that most of the 1.6 million non-English speaking students in California are the children of immigrant parents, the cost of immigration swelled to $15.7 billion in the 2004-05 school year.

Considering roughly a quarter of the state's immigrant population is estimated to be undocumented, the strain placed by illegal aliens on the education system approaches $4 billion. The Federation of American Immigration Reform estimates the total to be higher, around $7.7 billion. Of course, the cost to educate native-born students in California is a whopping $46.1 billion.

"Every politician for the last 10 years who's attempted to discuss the issues has their toes bitten off," Keeley said. "There's no tolerance for a legitimate policy debate on the issue of illegal immigration."

The fastest-growing group of immigrant children in California is Latinos. According to census projections, their numbers are expected to increase 82 percent nationwide over the next 25 years.

As more and more immigrants and children of immigrants have found their way into classrooms in California and around the country, policymakers have struggled with the issues posed by an increasingly foreign student body.

Emphasis on bilingual education misplaced

Making Grade in U.S. Schools