The New Demography of America’s Schools: Immigration and the No Child Left Behind Act

Posted on November 15, 2005

New research from the Urban Institute finds that limited English proficient (LEP) students are highly concentrated in a small share of America’s public schools. In fact, 70 percent of LEP students in kindergarten through fifth grade are enrolled in only 10 percent of the country’s public elementary schools. Among the findings: most LEP students were born in the U.S. And the share of students in kindergarten through 12th grade with a foreign-born parent tripled from 6 percent in 1970 to 19 percent in 2000.