Amid a recent surge of federal immigration enforcement activity, educators across the country are reporting growing concerns that immigrant families fearing deportation have started keeping their kids home from school.
New Stanford research substantiates their suspicions, showing a sharp increase in student absences starting in January at schools in California’s Central Valley, a region with a high population of Latin American immigrants.
Analyzing three years of daily attendance data from five school districts in the Central Valley, the study found on average a 22% increase in student absences in January and February 2025, compared with the same months in previous years.
Considerable jumps were seen in all age groups but particularly for younger students, with the increase among K-5 students more than triple the effect among high schoolers.