Increasing Knowledge Related to the Experiences of Undocumented Immigrants in Public Schools - Teaching and Program Development - Volume 24 - January 2013

Oct 15, 2026

Increasing knowledge about the experiences of undocumented immigrants in US public schools guides this study through school personnel perspectives and former student reports. The paper identifies daily psychological stress for undocumented students and parents, multiple academic obstacles, and barriers families face when navigating education and social systems to access services. It also argues that inadequate attention to these needs is a civil and human rights concern. Research framing draws on social contract and social capital theories.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages15

Reading Time38 min

AccessFree to download

IMPORTANTANCE OF THE PROBLEM

OVERARCHING RESEARCH QUESTIONS

THEORETICAL FRAME

Increasing Knowledge Related to the Experiences of Undocumented Immigrants in Public Schools Kaetlyn Lad and Désirée Braganza St. Mary’s College of California This article describes the experiences of school personnel working with undocumented immigrants in public schools and the opinions and attitudes of school personnel. The resulting propositions are: (1) Undocumented students and their parents live with a great deal of psychological stress on a daily basis; (2) Undocumented students face multiple academic challenges and their families have difficulty maneuvering through the US education and social system to access services; and (3) The lack of adequate attention to the needs of undocumented students and their families is both a civil rights and human rights issue. Our interest in immigrant education evolved from two situations that occurred when working with “newcomer” students at a middle school in Northern California, the majority of whom were Latino. Newcomers are students who have lived in the United States for a year or less. The first situation was a conversation with a colleague on the first day of teaching anew class. She informed me that a group of students had been termed the “No-Good-MorningKids” by faculty because whenever someone said good morning to them, they stared back blankly. The second situation happened a few months into the school year and during an ordinary moment in the life of a middle school--passing period. One of my students made the shape of a gun with his hand and from behind, pointed it to my head yelling “¡La migra!¡Deme sus documentos!”(Translated from Spanish: Immigration! Give me your documents!) . Then, the student giggled and looked to see whether I “got” the inside joke. Until then, I had missed a key factor driving my students’ everyday existence: their fear of being deported from the United States because of their immigration status or, as the students said, failing to have the proper immigration documents. These were the experiences that generated my interest in how immigration status as well as other obstacles such as language (as in the No-GoodMorning Kids anecdote), policy, social and cultural differences impacted undocumented students as they transitioned to schools in the United States. IMPORTANTANCE OF THE PROBLEM The Immigration and Nationality Act, a core federal immigration law in the United States, labeled any non-citizen as a “nonimmigrant alien”. The Department of Homeland Security has used the term “undocumented immigrant” in defining immigrants who have entered the United States illegally (Pew Hispanic Center, 2006) . Legal immigration to the United States. Educational Leadership and Administration: Teaching and Program Development Volume 24, January 2013 ISSN 1532-0723 © 2013 California Association of Professors of Educational Administration The United States Supreme Court decision Plyler v. Doe in 1982 upheld the rights of both documented and undocumented immigrant parents to send their children to American public schools. This law made illegal (a) asking parents for documentation of citizenship status or social security numbers when registering their children in K-12 public schools. (b) Schools sharing knowledge of a child’s immigration status with other individuals or government agencies that enforce immigration laws (Joel, 2007) . Policies regarding the education of undocumented immigrant students have remained vague or absent in most school districts (Jung, 2006; Orfield, 1986) . This study examined the self-reported experiences of former undocumented immigrant students compared to the perceptions of the K-12 staff and faculty in the school districts that they attended. OVERARCHING RESEARCH QUESTIONS Three questions guided this study. (a) What obstacles do students who were formerly undocumented report as barriers that impacted their educational success? (b) How did the experiences of former undocumented students compare with the per

FAQs

What daily pressures do undocumented students and parents face in public schools, according to the study?

The study states that undocumented students and their parents experience substantial psychological stress daily.

What academic and system-level obstacles affect undocumented students’ educational success?

Undocumented students face multiple academic challenges, and families have difficulty navigating the US education and social systems to access needed services.

How does the paper explain undocumented families’ position using theory?

It frames experiences through social contract theory and social capital theory, describing weakened agreements and restricted social network access that can limit participation in children’s education.

Oct 15, 2026

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