In my previous blogs, I voiced a “big picture” objection to the DREAM Act, which is probably a bit more conceptual than advocates would like because the legislation, for so many people, is not conceptual - it is something that affects them deeply and personally. In this blog, I would like to instead critique the assumption that the DREAM Act, if passed, is going to succeed in practice.
First, it should go without saying that just because I feel a piece of legislation is flawed does not mean that I find it inherently wrong. Many of our laws our flawed - they are flawed because while they may have correct intentions, they do no work. Our educational system itself is flawed, and this, in fact, turns out to be the cornerstone of my objection to the DREAM Act.
Right now, my concern is not so much whether or not the DREAM Act will pass, or will succeed. My concern is whether or not it can succeed.
To set the stage, let me tell you a little bit about myself. In September of 2007, I started working as a peer mentor at City College of San Francisco, for a student organization called “Students Supporting Students’, which made a point of reaching out to student students of marginalized ethnic and economic backgrounds. (The specific term they use is ‘students of color’, which is a title that I do not like, so I will refrain from using it.) From day one, I was given one thing to keep in mind: retention rates for these groups in college were terrifyingly low, and consequently, dropout rates were disconcertingly high. (For anyone unfamiliar with the jargon, retention rates are simply the rates at which students are retained and complete their stated goals in college). This is not a matter of immigration, per se. It was not about residency or status.
It was about infrastructure.
Putting immigration aside for a moment, our postsecondary education system does not operate in a way that fosters success at large, even in community colleges which are supposed to be the most accessible option to “marginalized groups” of students. Specifically, one should look at the placement and testing process for English and Mathematics classes - for those who have not been subjected to the process, placement tests dictate a level at which a student must begin their classes in these areas, and they must work their way up. The low-placers are placed at the very beginning of a track where they must start a chain of classes, up to four or five which have to be taken one by one, not concurrently, and are largely non-transferable to four-year institutions because they are too remedial. Finishing these string of classes will get them enough Math and English to begin the sequence of classes needed to transfer to a university.
Moreover, even if the classes were designed to foster success, there are not enough of them. A student may enter the system highly motivated, highly intelligent, fully prepared -- and still, through no fault of their on, not get a single class that they need for an entire year or more.
Now, back to the DREAM Act.
I am not making a value judgment as to who is entitled to an education and who is not. I am taking a step back and attempting to make a pragmatic judgment of whether or not the educational system can sustain such an influx of new students as would be caused by the passage of the DREAM Act. Can a system that is already overburdened and leaving thousands of students to fail realistically handle an increase to that burden?
When the Titanic hit an iceberg and was starting to sink, should it have picked up more passengers?
This is not to say that undocumented students are inherently any less capable, but it is to pose the question: do supporters of the DREAM Act think that undocumented students will be more capable than their documented counterparts? Will students under of the purview of the DREAM Act somehow be immune to marginalization and low retention rates that are rampant if not universal in postsecondary education.
If the DREAM Act passes, immigrant youth will indeed be given a chance. They will be given a chance to enter a fundamentally flawed educational system that generally yields more failures than successes. The DREAM Act is a move towards equality -- immigrant youth will partake in an equal share of success, and failure. However, while the failure of a citizen or legal resident in school means one more person on welfare, or one more person working minimum wage in retail or food services, the failure of a student provided for by the DREAM Act means costly deportation procedures.
From point A to point B, let’s follow the potential path of an immigrant youth who we will refer to as Juan Doe.
Juan Doe enters community college and begins at lower level Math and English classes. He is not discouraged by this, because there are a lot of people who tested at the same level as he has. However, semester after semester, Juan finds that he is staying in school much longer than he would have liked, because all of the people who tested into the same level as he had are trying to get into a handful of class sections - some semesters, he is lucky if there’s more than one section of the Math class he needs. As he continues through school, the government continues to invest its money and resources into him as a student. Jaded, he, alongside many other non-immigrant students, drop out. The system simply cannot sustain all of them, regardless of their immigration status. The difference with Juan Doe, however, is that now the government must again invest money and resources into him in the form of his deportation proceedings.
DREAM Act proponents place the burden of their argument on the successes of immigrant youthm of which I am sure there will be many. However, there will also be failures, many of which will not be the fault of the students, but nonetheless, these failures will be doubly costly.
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