From Court to Classroom: Deportation Proceedings and Reading and Math Achievement for Elementary Students from 1998 to 2016

Purpose: With rising numbers of deportations over the last 2 decades, there has been a particular concern among educators and researchers that immigrant-origin students and their peers are experiencing educational consequences due to increased stress, anxiety, and fear of the unknown. This study examined the relationship between immigration enforcement and student achievement in counties across the United States. Research Methods/Approach: Data come from two nationally representative samples of kindergartners, the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study—Kindergarten Classes of 1998–99 and 2010, and the number of deportations ordered from each immigration court provided by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. Employing a cross-sectional, longitudinal design, a student, school, and year fixed-effects model was used to examine the association between deportations and achievement in elementary grades, exploiting variation of deportations between counties and years. Findings: The results of the analyses indicated that increases in deportations coincided with declines in Latinx student achievement in math. Declines were most pronounced for Latinx students in urban schools, Latinx English learners, Latinx second-generation immigrant students, and Latinx students attending Title I schools. Declines were not observed in the second term of the Obama presidential administration. Implications: This study adds to the extant body of research detailing who is subject to the educational impacts from immigration enforcement and in what ways, in hopes that future research continues to explore ways to mitigate these consequences for students. Attention from policy makers and educators is needed to mitigate disruptions that deportations introduce into the learning context for young children.