Diep Nguyen separates myth from fact to explain what language educators can do about Plyler v. Doe
The Guarantee of Public Education for Students Regardless of Their Immigration Status
In 1975, the Texas Legislature passed a statute withholding state education funding from school districts that enrolled children who had not been “legally admitted” to the US. Two years later, the Tyler Independent School District went further, imposing a $1,000 annual tuition charge on undocumented students to compensate the state for expenses (Olivas, 2012). Mexican farmworkers—people who picked crops and kept the regional economy running—were told their children could not attend school without paying a fee that was simply out of their reach.
The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) sued on behalf of those families. After nearly five years of litigation, the case reached the US Supreme Court. On June 15, 1982, Justice William J. Brennan Jr. wrote for a 5–4 majority that the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment—which protects “any person within its jurisdiction,” not just citizens—prohibited states from denying a free public K–12 education to undocumented children (457 US 202). The Court held that a child’s immigration status alone provided no rational basis for exclusion, and that the money saved by denying children an education was “wholly insubstantial in light of the costs involved” to society at large.
Plyler prohibits not only outright exclusion but also any indirect practice that discourages families from enrolling their children, such as requiring Social Security numbers, sharing information about immigration status with enforcement agencies, and allowing immigration authorities to conduct enforcement activities on or near school campuses (American Immigration Council, 2016).
The impact has been profound. The decision has allowed over 1.5 million undocumented children to attend public schools across the US. Stavely (2026), in her EdSource article, reported that the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights evidence indicated that educated immigrant youth had gone on to contribute substantially to state and local tax revenues, economic productivity, and civic life over the four decades since the ruling.
In March 2026, the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government held a hearing titled “Immigration Policy by Court Order: The Adverse Effects of Plyler v. Doe” (House Judiciary Committee Republicans, 2026). Subcommittee chair Representative Chip Roy (R-Texas) declared the decision “constitutionally indefensible” and called for Congress and the courts to overturn it (K–12 Dive, 2026). The hearing was not an isolated event. Since 2025, lawmakers in at least six states have introduced legislation to bar undocumented children from enrolling in public schools, require immigration status documentation at enrollment, or impose tuition charges—all measures that would directly challenge Plyler. The Heritage Foundation has explicitly urged states to pass such laws in hopes of provoking a Supreme Court case (Stavely, 2026).
The political argument, building on four popular myths based on current anti-immigrant sentiments, can be potent. However, it is important to consider the status of the law, the empirical evidence on educating immigrant students, and how their education contributes to the overall national well-being. We, as language educators serving these students, need to distinguish facts from myths to make a clear-eyed assessment of these claims and defend immigrant students’ rights to a free public education.
Myth 1: Educating undocumented students harms the quality of education for other children
The Supreme Court examined this precise claim in 1982 and found it unsupported by the record—and it remains unsupported by evidence today. Recent research published in Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis found that the presence of immigrant students had a positive effect on the academic achievement of US-born students, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds (Figlio et al., 2024).
Myth 2: The costs of educating undocumented students are an unfair burden on taxpayers
This claim often conflates expenses associated with English learner (EL) programs with evidence of the financial burden imposed by Plyler (Williams, 2026). The fact is that most English learners in US schools are US-born citizens. English learners and undocumented students are two distinct student populations with overlapping needs, and blurring them obscures both the law and the economics. This argument also inverts the evidence. The fact is that Plyler beneficiaries have generated billions of dollars in state and local tax revenues, increased the gross domestic product, and reduced healthcare costs. It is estimated that they have generated over $633 billion more in lifetime taxes than their cost to educate (Levy and Connor, 2024).
Myth 3: Schools must or should help enforce immigration law
Under Plyler, the law today, school personnel have no legal obligation to enforce immigration law. In 2011, the US Departments of Education and Justice jointly reminded school administrators that they may not deny enrollment to students unable to provide a Social Security number or a US birth certificate (American Immigration Council, 2016). Immigration enforcement on or near school campuses is also recognized as a chilling mechanism that suppresses attendance and is a Plyler violation.
Myth 4: The current political climate does not affect student learning outcomes
Finally, many working to erode immigrant student rights protected under Plyler assume that the law can be undermined gradually, without educational consequence. However, evidence proves otherwise. Dee’s study (2025) found that students in five California Central Valley counties missed an estimated 22% more school days during the spring 2025 semester compared to prior years, with prekindergarten absenteeism rising an estimated 35%, driven by fear of immigration enforcement (Journalists’ Resource, 2026). Pollock et al. (2022), in their argument for equity and immigrant students, cited a study by Ee and Gandara (2019) documenting that immigration enforcement created a climate of fear that resulted in absenteeism in schools.
The research is consistent and cumulative: fear is the reason many families don’t send their students to school, and this fear is compounded by the fact that many families are uncertain about a child’s right to be in school at all.
A Call to Action for All Educators
We, as language educators, in this moment of history, occupy a unique position. We work at the intersection of law, language, culture, and human development. We see what happens when a child stops trusting that the classroom is a safe space. We know that language acquisition and academic learning require a sense of psychological security that fear systematically destroys. And we understand that multilingual immigrant students are not a burden on schools or society, and that they in fact make substantial, positive contributions to our schools and communities.
Here is what the research supports and what Plyler requires of us today:
Know and communicate the law. Every educator who works with multilingual students should be fluent in what Plyler requires: no student may be denied enrollment because of immigration status; no school may require documentation of legal residence, a Social Security number, or a US birth certificate as a condition of enrollment; and no school may share students’ immigration status information with enforcement agencies. Schools should train their staff, post this information visibly, communicate it in families’ home languages, and ensure that every family knows their rights.
Know your obligations and rights as school personnel. School personnel are not immigration officers. Plyler and decades of subsequent guidance are explicit that schools have no legal duty to enforce federal immigration law. Educators should familiarize themselves with their districts’ policies and advocate within their professional communities for policies that clearly prohibit immigration-status data collection, sharing of student information with immigration officers, and consent to on-campus enforcement without a judicial warrant.
Protect schools and classrooms as sanctuaries of safety for learning. Research consistently shows that students—particularly immigrant students and English learners—perform better in schools where they feel safe, welcomed, and valued (Finch et al., 2021). This is not sentiment; it is evidence. We can integrate culturally responsive pedagogy, display multilingual welcome materials, and communicate explicitly and repeatedly to students and families that their children’s presence in school is not only legal but valued. The counter to a climate of fear begins in our classrooms.
Advocate publicly and professionally. AASA, MALDEF, and more than 110 other organizations have already submitted statements to Congress defending Plyler. Language educators and their professional associations—TESOL International, NABE, state bilingual education associations, and language teacher organizations at every level—have both the standing and the obligation to add their voices. Statements from us as educators who serve these students on a daily basis, such as op-eds, public testimony, and letters to school boards and elected officials, do carry weight.
Support families in understanding their rights. Many undocumented and mixed-status families are not aware that their children’s right to attend school is legally protected, or they are aware in the abstract but do not know what specific documentation schools may and may not request. We can provide parents and legal guardians with information about their students’ rights in accessible home-language formats and work with community organizations to conduct outreach. “Know your rights” materials are available in multiple languages from MALDEF, the National Immigration Law Center (NILC), and the American Immigration Council.
Plyler v. Doe is not an immigration policy case. It is an education case—one that recognized, over four decades ago, that a society cannot flourish if it deliberately relegates a subset of the children within its borders to permanent educational exclusion. The children who brought that case in Tyler, Texas, had no control over their immigration status. Their teachers, it turns out, have enormous power over what happens next.
The current effort to overturn or hollow out Plyler is not an abstraction. It is happening in real legislative chambers, with real votes, in the same towns and cities where real multilingual students are trying to learn. What hangs on the line for our immigrant students is not abstract—it’s their rights to an education that will have a positive impact on their future. We, as educators who serve those students, are, at this moment, among the most important defenders of these rights. Know the law. Protect your students’ rights. Advocate with urgency.
References
American Immigration Council. (2016). “Public Education for Immigrant Students: Understanding Plyler v. Doe.” https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/fact-sheet/plyler-v-doe-public-education-immigrant-students
Dee, T. S. (2025). “Immigration Enforcement and School Absenteeism in California’s Central Valley” [Working paper]. Stanford University Graduate School of Education. [As reported in Journalists’ Resource, January 2026.]
EdResearch for Action. (2024). “Promoting School Success for Immigrant-Origin Students” (Brief No. 9). https://edresearchforaction.org/research-briefs/promoting-school-success-for-immigrant-origin-students
Ee, J., and Gándara, P. (2020). “The Impact of Immigration Enforcement on the Nation’s Schools.” American Educational Research Journal, 57(2), 840–871. https://doi.org/10.3102/0002831219862998
Figlio, D., Giuliano, P., Marchingiglio, R., Ozek, U., and Sapienza, P. (2024). “Diversity in Schools: Immigrants and the Educational Performance of US-Born Students,” The Review of Economic Studies, 91(2), 972–1006. https://doi.org/10.1093/restud/rdad047
Figlio, D., and Ozek, U. (2025). “Immigration Enforcement and Student Academic Performance” [NBER working paper]. National Bureau of Economic Research. [As reported in Journalists’ Resource, January 2026.]
Finch, H., Hernández Finch, M. E., and Avery, B. (2021). “The Impact of National and School Contextual Factors on the Academic Performance of Immigrant Students.” Frontiers in Education, 6, 793790. https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2021.793790
Johnson, K. R., and Trujillo, B. (2011). Immigration Law and the US–Mexico Border. University of Arizona Press.
Levy, S. D., and Connor, P. (2024). “The Power of Plyler.” FWD.us. https://www.fwd.us/news/the-power-of-plyler
Olivas, M. A. (2012). No Undocumented Child Left Behind: Plyler v. Doe and the Education of Undocumented Schoolchildren. New York University Press.
Plyler v. Doe, 457 US 202 (1982).
Pollock, M., Deckman, S., Mira, M., and Shalaby, C. (2022). “Civic Knowledge, Equity, and Immigrant Students in US Schools.” Education Policy, 36(5), 1011–1053. https://doi.org/10.1177/0895904820925819 [Citing Ee and Gándara, 2019, within PMC 2022.]
Stavely, Z. (2026) “The Supreme Court Case That Affirmed Undocumented Immigrants’ Rights to a Free Public Education.” EdSource. https://edsource.org/2026/the-supreme-court-case-that-affirmed-undocumented-immigrants-right-to-a-free-public-education/755492
Williams, C. P. (2026). “In the Push to End Plyler, a Blurring of the Truth about English Learners.”The 74. www.the74million.org/article/in-the-push-to-end-plyler-a-blurring-of-the-truth-of-about-english-learners/#:~:text=Data%20on%20English%20learners%20routinely,students’%20linguistic%20and%20academic%20success
Dr. Diep Nguyen is the president and CEO of the Center of Applied Linguistics (CAL), a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting multilingualism and language education. In her current role, she leads professionals to conduct research to inform language policies, develop quality ELD assessments, and provide professional development resources for educators.
“I wanted to say how much I appreciated Diep Nguyen’s piece, “Hanging the Rights of Immigrant Students on the Line.” The myth-vs-fact framework was exactly the kind of clear, grounded analysis educators need right now, and the call to action at the end gave it real purpose. This is the kind of work that reminds me why Language Magazine matters, especially at this moment for multilingual learners and the educators who serve them.”
Dr. Debbie Zacarian