FACT SHEET

FACT: Immigrants Are Raising Educational Standards

Immigrants play a small role in school enrollment. The nation's public and private school enrollment is expected to hit a record 53.2 million during the 1999 academic year. But the baby boom echo, expanded pre-school programs and the recognition of the importance of education are the leading factors for this dramatic hike in school enrollment. Immigration is a minor player in the increases.

Immigrants are above school age. More than 70 percent of immigrants are over 18. In other words, they don't use our public and private elementary schools. Almost two-thirds of recent immigrants (63.2 percent) have a high school degree. 

Immigrants are well educated. The median level of education for newly arriving immigrants is 10 years, all of which was received abroad. Seventeen percent of recent immigrants had bachelor's degrees, and 12 percent have graduate degrees. Only 16 percent of U.S. citizens are college graduates, and only eight percent have completed graduate school. 

Test scores are rising. Critics say immigration over the past decade has damaged America's educational standards. Yet this decade has seen the highest-ever rise in scores on a leading college placement exam. Contrast that to the 1960s and 1970s - the decades immigration critics call the "golden age" of immigration - when college entrance test scores fell by 2.3 points. During the 1990s, student achievement on national tests in math, science, and reading also have increased.

More students are graduating from high school. During the 1986-87 academic year, 2,959,000 students received high school diplomas. The following year, 2,959,000 students graduated from high school. Those numbers are expected to increase by 45.2 percent over the next eight years. Thus, charges that immigrants are driving down high school graduation rates are patently false.

Sources: "The Baby Boom Echo: No End in Sight," U.S. Department of Education, Aug. 19, 1999; "A Fiscal Portrait of the New Americans," Cato Institute, July 1998; "Scores Increase," American College Testing, Aug. 17, 1999; National Assessment of Educational Progress, 1986-1997; "Graduates of public and private high schools," U.S. Department of Education, Aug. 17 1999.