RAND Study Says Undocumented Children Need More Teachers, Funding

A RAND Corporation report estimates the number of undocumented and asylum-seeking children enrolled in the nation’s public schools between late 2016 and 2019. Their researchers describe students’ challenges and the needs of their districts for more funding to maintain teacher:student rations. The total number, 321,000, represents a subset of the 491,000 children under age 18 who arrived at the southern border seeking asylum in early 2020 from Central America and more recently from Haiti and Afghanistan. 

Roughly 75 percent of the children in the RAND study landed in 10 states: California, Texas, Florida, New York and Louisiana. 

“Their needs are fundamentally different from those of many other immigrant children, and they are part of the future of the United States…  They also have resilience and hopes and dreams—and by federal law they have a right to a public education.”

said senior policy researcher Shelly Culbertson.