How Much Progress Has Really Been Made?: Making Sense of U.S. Education and Immigration Policies at the State Levels

• In Event: Poster Session 2
  In Poster Session: How Much Progress Has Really Been Made?: Making Sense of U.S. Education and Immigration Policies at the State Levels

Proposal

The 1982 Plyler v. Doe United States Supreme Court ruling guaranteed all children, regardless of citizenship status, would have access to a K-12 education. Since then, no ruling has been enacted to ensure undocumented youth are able to equitably access a post-secondary education. Each year an estimated 98,000 undocumented youth graduate high school (Strauss, 2019), upon graduating they are left in a state of limbo as their college options are dependent upon the legislation of the state in which they reside. For example, Alabama and South Carolina have policies that prohibit undocumented students from accessing public post-secondary institutions, while others allow access to public institutions.

Each state’s policies on college access and student funding for undocumented youth was researched. This entailed general qualitative methods that relied heavily on document analysis and use of online archival materials. A database was created using Microsoft Excel to document policy language for each individual state. Policy language was then color-coded to illustrate the intricacies of each states’ policy demands. Data was then mapped visually to make sense of our findings spatially and clarify how states differed in their approaches regionally, if at all. Thereafter, the states that appeared “friendly” to undocumented students were further color-coded based on the specific requirements needed to access higher education. The “friendliest” states clustered in 3 different regions of the country. These states then became our sample for our critical policy analysis.

The purpose of this poster presentation is to give a state-by-state overview of access to higher education and funding options for undocumented immigrant students. This work aims to make sense of the increasingly complex policy terrain as well as bridge the research-practice gap by providing support to educators, students, and families in order for undocumented youth to more adequately and equitably access a post-secondary education regardless of their documentation status. Additionally, we hope to exploit realities of interest convergence to communicate with politicians that it would be in everyone’s best interest to reevaluate its current stance on college access for undocumented immigrants, especially as we attempt to bring the economy back up to speed and fill vacant jobs due to Covid. Moreover, this poster presentation will engage conversation around the assertion that the United States is a model for educational equity and asks, How can we improve education for a more equitable world without also interrogating the important ways immigration policies intersect and influence these efforts?

In this poster presentation, the discussion of conclusions will center on visuals (maps and tables) that are a compilation of hundreds of hours of document analysis of policies, individual state reports, and other archives. Thus, the data sources, reported data, and conclusions drawn are seamlessly integrated. That said, the critical use of CRT opens up space for considering how concepts such as interest convergence can be used to reframe policy interpretation and implementation strategies to ensure “equal opportunities for all learners, regardless of their backgrounds and contexts” is part of the social contract rather than just a dream (CIES Theme, 2022).

Authors

• Paula Hernandez, University of North Carolina at Greensboro

• Katherine Cumings Mansfield, University of North Carolina at Greensboro