How To Fund Newcomers in Every U.S. Classroom: Summary and Recommendations

According to the U.S. Department of Education’s Civil Rights Data Collection, in the 2017–18 school year, approximately 5 percent of the students at the south Florida high school I taught were identified as limited English proficient new arrivals. This may sound like a small handful, but as one of the only Spanish-speaking content-specific teachers in the building, I met and worked with almost all of them. I knew the school needed to systematically target support for newly arrived students as they transitioned into the district and acclimated to U.S. schools, but despite my advocacy, this was not prioritized.

My work in the immigrant advocacy space has put me in close proximity with many colleagues who witnessed similar missed opportunities to deliver a quality education to undocumented and newcomer students. There are countless stories of schools struggling to meet the bare minimum of providing adequate translation and interpretation services for non-English speaking newcomer students upon arrival, or of engaging families in their child’s education throughout their time in the district. Moreover, schools are often unprepared to provide specific programmatic needs, such as foreign transcript equivalency services for appropriate course registration and linguistically and culturally-responsive social-emotional supports for students who need it.

There are countless stories of schools struggling to meet the bare minimum of providing adequate translation and interpretation services for non-English speaking newcomer students upon arrival, or of engaging families in their child’s education throughout their time in the district.

Unfortunately, there is no public data mechanism to track newcomer academic outcomes in K–12 schools, and the limited information that is available paints a bleak picture. According to an analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data by the Migration Policy Institute, roughly 3,900 newcomers aged 14 to 21 were not enrolled in New York City schools in the period of 2015 to 2019. Additionally, anecdotal evidence from schools across the country reveal they lack access to equitable educational opportunities,¹ and given their intersectionality with many institutionally oppressed groups in U.S. schools, there’s no reason to believe they are being served any better across the board. All this, despite the fact that forty years ago, the Supreme Court ruled in Plyler v. Doe that undocumented students were protected under the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause, affirming their right to a free and public education without discrimination due to their country of birth or immigration status.

With adequate funding, schools [and districts] can deliver on a promise of an education for newcomer students. However, at this moment, there is only one federal government funding source that provides districts with funding explicitly to support newcomer immigrant students.² That source—Title III Immigrant student funding³—fails to provide districts with sustainable and consistent funding to support newcomer students throughout their first few years in U.S. schools, when language development, social adjustment, and physical and emotional stability are critical. There are a number of reasons Title III falls short.

First, restrictive eligibility requirements at the state-level such as the “significant increase” threshold and prioritization guidance make it challenging for all districts who are trying to meet the needs of newcomer students to access funding to sustain critical programs that can help. Additionally, a number of advocates and school-based practitioners have argued that school funding—especially for serving ELs and newcomers—is woefully inadequate, creating a zero-sum game where some districts receive funding while others do not. Ultimately, all districts that serve newcomers and aim to create meaningful programming to meet their needs require sufficient funding to do so. Title III, in its current structure and at its present level of resources, fails to support them all.

All districts that serve newcomers and aim to create meaningful programming to meet their needs require sufficient funding to do so. Title III, in its current structure and at its present level of resources, fails to support them all.

The government’s response to the unprecedented impacts of the Coronavirus (COVID) pandemic through the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) Fund has provided districts a unique opportunity to address gaps in services for their most underserved students. This unexpected influx of flexible funding gives us an excellent idea of what equitable funding could look like for newcomer students, as some districts have dedicated specific funds to meet their needs.

For example, according to Montgomery County Public School’s approved ARP ESSER plan, they have dedicated over $200,000 to create a coordinator position for unaccompanied minors. This full time employee is tasked with providing multilingual and culturally sensitive supports (including acculturation and trauma counseling), wraparound services, and academic support for Pre-K12 newcomers who arrive unaccompanied.

Interviews with Elk Grove Unified School District in California and Coppell Independent School District in Texas reveal thoughtful, data-informed initiatives to expand support for newcomers using ARP ESSER funds. Elk Grove intends to use its ARP ESSER grant to build two additional newcomer welcome centers that will have staff that speak a variety of different languages spoken by newcomers and their families in the district. Coppell has committed a significant amount of its ARP ESSER funds to run a month-long summer program over the next two years for newcomers, in grades 1–12, who are at the early stages of their English language development.

These cases demonstrate the unique opportunity ARP ESSER grants have given some districts to invest in newcomers throughout the pandemic. Unfortunately, these funds will run out, leaving districts to once again depend on Title III to meet their newcomer students’ needs. Districts that have established systems for serving them—and those that don’t yet but are seeking guidance and resources to do so—need long-term, sufficient, and sustainable options to serve students within their first years in U.S. schools. A new Title III funding structure is needed to advance equity for newcomers.

The following federal recommendations are based on findings from qualitative interviews with district leaders, an analysis of the Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015, and a document review of Title III and ARP ESSER expenditures across thirteen districts carried out by the author in the spring of 2022. They are discussed in detail in a full report, alongside district spotlights and related analysis.

Recommendations

Moving forward from the COVID pandemic, the federal government should adjust Title III in the following ways to meet the demonstrated needs of newcomers in classrooms across the country:

1. Formalize a federal definition for newcomers in Title III.

Advocates and practitioners agree that the Title III immigrant student definition is inadequate. The name fails to signal the inclusion of many students who could benefit from newcomer programming but may not describe themselves as “immigrants,” such as refugees and asylees. Further, it is often conflated with immigration status—putting undocumented students and their families at risk of discrimination and deportation.

In the absence of an adequate federal definition, states and districts have been left to create their own definitions. All of the districts interviewed for this report thought about and formalized a definition for their newcomers that allowed them to better support their students. Unfortunately this means that newcomers who move districts or states may not qualify for newcomer-specific services they received elsewhere. Setting a standard definition at the federal level is a necessary condition to ensure consistency in naming practices across SEAs and LEAs, further disaggregate and track outcome data, and inform policy and target supports to meet the specific student needs of newcomers, including when they move districts both within and across state borders. ED should also examine in this new definition whether or not three years is an appropriate or adequate window for “newcomer status” qualification.

2. Remove the proportions stipulated for ELA and Immigrant subgrants within an SEA’s total Title III allotment and establish a formula grant system for Title III Immigrant subgrants.

As demonstrated throughout this report, the existing funding model is restrictive, and due to the limited funds SEAs have to distribute Immigrant subgrants and the eligibility criteria established by Title III for those grants, many SEAs create a de facto competitive grant process which leaves many LEAs with insufficient funding. The current law also caps the amount that can be used for Immigrant subgrants at 15 percent, which allows states to allocate less than that amount and prevents districts from accessing these crucial funds to develop and maintain important newcomer programs and services. Even without an updated federal newcomer definition, ED makes Title III allocation determinations based on the existing immigrant student definition that includes any new arrivals that have been in U.S. schools for less than three years. If immigrant students are eligible for special status at the federal level for up to three years, the student should receive targeted newcomer supports for the entirety of those three years (at the very least), when language development, social adjustment, and stability are critical.

A formula grant that bases its allocation on the number of students who qualify under Title III immigrant student status would allow all districts serving newcomers to make data-driven decisions and provide sustainable critical services from a baseline source that will be dependable throughout those students’ first years in the country. Additionally, with a formula system for both ELA and Immigrant subgrants, the law does not need to stipulate a cap for either so long as each SEA makes at least one of each grant each year and grants are distributed based on need for qualifying students in both categories.

3. Improve transparency on newcomer student outcomes by including newcomers in federal accountability systems.

ESSA already requires the collection of different data indicators for accountability purposes, and ED should disaggregate all collected indicators by newcomer status (with the new federal definition). At the federal level, this would allow ED (and other federal policymakers and advocates) to understand how newcomers are doing in schools systemically and inform policy to more meaningfully address newcomers’ needs.

At the local level, SEAs and LEAs must know those communities and their students and collect and track data to make smart and intentional investments in immigrant and refugee communities and better understand their academic and behavioral experiences in schools beyond just language needs. Each of the districts interviewed for this report has made data-driven funding decisions for newcomers based on robust data accountability systems that identify newcomers in order to track their outcomes and experiences. SEAs currently review district plans to ensure funds are aligned to the scope and intended outcomes of the work funded by Title III. With additional funds reaching LEAs to support newcomer student outcomes, we need better transparency about the effectiveness of those funds. In order to ensure that funding and programs are having the intended effect on outcomes, LEAs that aim to receive Title III Immigrant formula funding should be required to collect this data and make it available to all school, district, and state education officials to monitor and target funds. Finally, any LEA submitting Title III Immigrant spending plans to SEAs should intentionally address this data to justify items in their spending proposals in order to receive subgrants.

4. Boost the total Title III allotment.

In order to address learning gaps and meet the social emotional needs of ELs, newcomers, and all subgroups of ELs such as long term ELs and students with limited or interrupted formal education, we must commit to equitably funding them. As of 2019, there are about 5.1 million ELs in the United States, and there are an estimated 1 million newcomers (many of whom are dually identified as ELs) according to the latest biennial report to Congress. Cost studies that assess EL education estimate that districts need 39 to 200 percent more or an additional $41 to $700 per EL to provide equitable educational supports for ELs. There are currently no estimates for the additional investments needed to support newcomers, but we can use the aforementioned ranges as proxies to provide consistency for Title III allocations across both subgrants. As such, Congress should change the calculation that determines the total Title III allotment by weighing the national per-pupil expenditure (about $13,185, according to the Education Data Initiative) with a percentage that falls in the recommended range divided by the total enrollment of ELs and newcomers from the previous year. This new formula would increase the total Title III allotment far beyond President Biden’s FY23 Title III proposal of $1.1 billion and would give ED sufficient funds to increase per-pupil support for ELs and newcomers in all districts that support them.

5. Establish an emergency fund for unexpected increases in newcomer enrollment.

Title III Immigrant grants were initially established to address these sudden influxes of new students, often due to external causes such as refugee crises or mass migration due to war or climate displacement. However, as the newcomer population grows as a larger proportion of our students, it’s important to have a baseline source of funding to meet their needs throughout their first years and establish a separate emergency use fund that is distributed at the discretion of the secretary to address sudden influxes and assist districts in adapting to community changes while maintaining services for those students already in the district.

Project SERV (School Emergency Response to Violence) and the Disaster Recovery Unit (DRU) are similar models housed in ED that have been employed to aid districts responding to unexpected emergencies that impact the learning environment and normal school functions, such as the recent mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas and hurricanes in Florida and Puerto Rico in 2017. LEAs that apply for grants to support unexpected increases in newcomer enrollment should collaborate with community based organizations to coordinate culturally and linguistically responsive and appropriate spending and implementation to meet the needs of incoming families, as well as other relevant state and federal organizations that contribute to the ecosystem of assistance in these situations, such as relevant divisions within the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, etc. This emergency pool of funding can enable districts to respond to influxes when they happen without having to stretch the funds that maintain long-term programming.

1. Author’s conversations with students and school administrators between 2017 and 2022.
2. The U.S. Department of Education uses the term “immigrant students” defined by Title III Sec. 3201(5) as students who are aged 3 through 21, were not born in any U.S. state, and have not attended any U.S. school for more than three full years.
3. ESSA Title III Sec. 3111(c)(2)(A)(ii). https://oese.ed.gov/offices/office-of-formula-grants/school-support-and-accountability/essa-legislation-table-contents/title-iii-part-a/#TITLE-III-PART-A