Stephanie Lundquist-Arora writes for the Federalist about one impact of mass immigration.
This year, a quarter of the public high schools in Fairfax County, Virginia, located just outside of our nation’s capital, are likely to lose state accreditation. The declining performance of students, particularly concentrated in six failing high schools, coincides with the rising number of non-English speakers in the district after the board of supervisors passed a sanctuary policy titled “The Public Trust and Confidentiality Policy (Trust Policy)” in January 2021. By 2023, students classified as English-language learners accounted for 26.5 percent of the district’s students.
Fairfax County is among the last places one would expect to see failing schools. It is an affluent area with a median household income of about $145,000. Within commuting distance to Washington, D.C, the county is home to a high percentage of residents with advanced degrees, has one of the largest public school districts in the nation, and is one of the top per-pupil public school district spenders (totaling about $20,000 per student in fiscal 2024). For decades, Fairfax County has drawn families in search of quality K-12 public education for their children. …
… The institutionalized secrecy associated with the sanctuary policy in Fairfax County makes assessing which English-language learners are in the country legally or illegally difficult. It is clear, however, that the number of English-language learners has increased substantially since the implementation of the sanctuary policy. With this rise in migrant students, the school district is facing an intensifying problem with two particular state accountability metrics — chronic absenteeism and drop-out rates.
Fairfax County’s Justice High School for example, is currently accredited with conditions and is at imminent risk of losing accreditation. According to data provided by the Virginia Department of Education, its dropout rate was 13.99 percent in 2023. Meanwhile, its rate of chronic absenteeism, defined as the percent of students who missed 18 or more school days in the school year, was 24.63 percent.
