The True Cost To Educate Children Of Illegal Immigrants In Tennessee

Image Credit: Michael B. / CC

The Tennessee Conservative [By Paula Gomes] –

According to a Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) report, the cost to Tennessee taxpayers for the education of children of illegal immigrants in 2023 was $571 million.

There are approximately 50 thousand children attending local schools whose parents are part of the estimated 162 thousand illegal aliens who reside in the state. Approximately 40% of those children attend Davidson County Schools.

The federal government mandates that states educate the school-age children of illegal immigrants, the vast majority of which do not speak English fluently. As more of these students with limited English proficiency (LEP) are enrolled in the state’s public schools, the more school budgets are drained and resources are directed away from Tennessee children.

When immigrant families first settle in Tennessee, they have not had the opportunity to pay any taxes – federal, state or local – before enrolling children in school, which means there is no offset for the more expensive educational costs that local school districts must absorb. 

With illegal immigrant families overwhelmingly earning low wages – and therefore paying virtually no taxes year after year – the cost of LEP programs becomes the fiscal responsibility of Tennesseans, both American citizens and those who are lawful immigrants. While some illegal immigrants do pay taxes, a large number receive “under the table” wages.

In addition to the fact that the poverty rate of newly settled immigrant families is more than 60 percent higher than US-born families, most of these families do not earn more than typical American families in the long run, meaning that the drain on school budgets will never be recovered.

The federal government provides less than 8 percent of funding in general for public schools so the lion’s share of the cost to educate children with LEP, also known as English Language Learners (ELL), comes from the state and local resources. Even worse, Congress provides not even 1 percent of the cost of these programs while requiring that states do the heavy lifting in educating the children in need of them.

That meager funding, provided through Title III of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), is supposed to help ELL students become proficient in English so they can meet the same achievement standards as other students.

However, according to TCAP scores in 2023, just 15.6% of all ELLs were found to meet benchmarks for English Language Arts. The proficiency rate is 38.1% for overall English Language Arts across all grades for the state as a whole.

According to FAIR, not only do these students lack basic English in most cases, they oftentimes had a subpar educational experience in their home country and so lag behind their peers in all subjects.

With ever increasing numbers of illegal aliens and their children pouring across the border, some of whom will certainly end up in Tennessee, school districts face significant challenges as budgets become increasingly strained to accommodate the rise in enrollment of this cohort of children.

The Tennessee State Government website states that Tennessee’s ELL population has increased significantly since 2011. From 2011 to 2017 there was an increase of 45 percent. By 2016-17, 132 districts and 1,451 schools served ELL students. The state had predicted that by 2020, there would be more than 60,000 of these students in public schools. No doubt, the pandemic cooled that trajectory somewhat, but with 50,000 current ELLs and no end in sight to the rush on the border, that projection is likely to become a reality within the next few years.

With the number of children of illegal immigrants sure to grow across the state, it remains to be seen if Tennessee’s lackluster proficiency scores will be even further negatively impacted by increasingly higher numbers of ELLs enrolled in the state’s public schools. Performance data does not immediately show the impact. 

Under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), the federal K-12 education law that replaced “No Child Left Behind” in 2015, Tennessee opts not to include the test scores of ELL students in their first two years of school enrollment. Their scores must be included in their third year of school. Most of these students will graduate out of ELL programs within six years, but some will continue to require ongoing ELL support services – and the additional funding that entails – throughout the entirety of their educational years.

Note: This is a segment of The Tennessee Conservative’s expansive piece entitled “What Tennessee’s Republican Leadership Doesn’t Want You To Know About Illegal Immigration” which can be read in its entirety HERE.

About the Author: Paula Gomes is a Tennessee resident and reporter for The Tennessee Conservative. You can reach Paula at paula@tennesseeconservativenews.com.