Rise in English learner students in ‘new destination’ states helps academic outcomes for existing students

English learner (EL) students represent the fastest growing student group in the United States over the past two decades, with numbers of EL students in public schools soaring in “new destination” states across the South and Midwest. Some commentators have expressed concerns about the possible adverse effect of immigrant students on current students if they require additional resources that are diverted from their peers.

However, a study in Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis finds significant positive spillover effects of new EL students in these states on existing students’ test scores, especially in reading.

The study, “Educational spillover effects of new English learners in a new destination state,” was conducted by Sy Doan, Samuel Enrique Morales, Umut Ozek, and Heather Schwartz, all from RAND, a nonprofit, nonpartisan policy and research institute.

Looking at the impact of new EL students on the academic achievement of their peers in their first year in a new destination state, the authors found that the benefits are mainly concentrated among former or current ELs. They found no adverse effects on non-ELs.

“Our findings contradict the narrative that the arrival of EL students lowers student performance overall,” said study co-author Umut Ozek, a senior economist at RAND. “While new ELs may require additional educational resources initially, they do not harm the academic achievement of existing students.”

“In fact, our research suggests that incoming ELs could even improve the academic achievement of the existing current and former ELs in the first year, which might help close the gaps between ELs and non-ELs,” Ozek said.

The study is the first to examine the spillover effects of the large influx of EL students in new destination states over the past two decades. States that were below the national average in 2000 in the percentage of enrolled EL students account for 90% of the increase in EL students across the U.S. since then.

The authors analyzed student-level administrative data from Delaware covering all students in grades 4 through 8 enrolled in the state’s public schools between the 2015–16 and 2018–19 school years. The number of EL students in Delaware has increased seven-fold over the past 20 years.

Ozek noted that traditional destination states, such as California and New York, benefit from pre-existing infrastructure to accommodate newly arriving students that is unavailable or newly built in new destination states. EL policies and practices also vary greatly across states and school districts, and the composition of immigrants and refugees examined in prior research is likely different from that of the newly arriving EL students in new destination states.

“To be certain, a large influx of any population into a school system places strain on districts, as they have to grow to accommodate incoming students,” Ozek said.

“And the specific needs of incoming students can trigger a host of necessary social and academic supports. But our study should assuage concerns by state and federal policy makers that large inflows of recent immigrants may be overwhelming school districts and harming classroom achievement.”