During a time of anti-immigrant fervor in the U.S., The 74 set out to test whether schools are wrongfully turning away older newcomer students — and to capture high-stakes enrollment conversations that otherwise take place beyond view.
As a means of probing schools’ actual practices vs. their stated policies, senior reporter Jo Napolitano called 630 high schools in every state and D.C. asking them to admit a 19-year-old student named “Hector Guerrero,” who recently arrived from Venezuela. Jo told school staffers Hector was her nephew, that he had limited English skills and his education had been interrupted after ninth grade.
More than 300 schools refused to register him — including 204 denials in the 35 states and the District of Columbia where high school attendance goes up to at least age 20. In addition to rampant and often illegal refusals, our investigation revealed that high school enrollment, a pivotal entry point to success in America, is arbitrary and unpredictable for these vulnerable students. Schools in the same state, the same county and the same district gave contradictory answers. Different staffers within the very same building sometimes disagreed.
We also told the stories of older, immigrant teens in the U.S., some who were allowed to attend high school and others who were not, and the difference that made in their lives and their future. Jo traveled to South Carolina, where high school enrollment goes up to age 21, and profiled two young South American women. One was permitted to enroll at age 20, going on to graduate high school and attend college, and the other was turned away at 18, working at a factory and a Charleston-area Walmart. Their high schools are less than eight miles apart.
There was no uniformity in which school staffers answered this critical enrollment question, and their responses, often given without hesitation, were rife with bad information. There was a concerted effort to steer Hector toward GED programs, community college or adult education — anything but the K-12 public school. Several staffers said he could enroll but they would allow him to take only ESL classes or bar him from extracurricular activities. Such disparate treatment is illegal under federal civil rights laws. Many refusals were based on a bedrock belief that Hector would never graduate, a litmus test that several state education officials told us had no legal basis and should not be applied to any student.
Our investigation uncovered widespread hostility and suspicion toward these newcomer students at a moment when then-candidate, now-President Donald Trump was vilifying immigrants. The Trump administration has since moved quickly to further block these young people from the schoolhouse door, pursuing mass deportations and family detention; attempting to undo birthright citizenship, lifting the restriction against immigration enforcement in schools and strategizing on a legal end to undocumented students’ right to a free, public education set forth in the Supreme Court’s 1982 landmark decision, Plyler v. Doe.
