The Education Crisis and the Impact of Migrant Students

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There is currently an ongoing education crisis happening within the United States. This is in large part due to a Scopes v Monkey style debate happening again along with a severe lack of funding for public education. This directly affects the Migrants in our country because it is mainly the Migrants who come from poorer countries that are often at a disadvantage when it comes to learning. Then, when it is factored in that they have to learn an entirely new language to read, write, and speak, the odds stacked against them seem to be insurmountable. The Migrant student’s families often have a natural distrust of government institutions before their arrival here. This issue persists, and makes communication between the school and family tough. The New York City Department of Education recently created an initiative to expand their language diversity in schools. This would allow it to become more localised and acknowledge the prevalence of foreign languages in students' lives. That said, there is still extremely high demand for interpreters, TESOL teachers, teachers who speak more than one language, along with other jobs that are involved in linguistics. The underfunded DOE also has a management issue with the allocation of resources that could be more effectively used elsewhere. Some schools that are located in more affluent districts can afford the luxury of hiring external consultants to assist in the students' development. NYC has always been a melting pot of immigrants, and has always had foreign languages in the classroom. The DOE reported having around 16% of English Language Learners (ELLs) in the 20-21 school year. However, this number rose to a whopping 44% of ELLs in the 23-24 school year. In the past, teachers would usually explain the lessons to the class and then provide small-group instruction to help supplement. But now due to just under half of the registered students not speaking English or having it as their second language, their approach needs to be different to meet the needs of