Unauthorized Alien Students: Issues and “DREAM Act” Legislation

Andorra Bruno
Specialist in Immigration Policy

Supporters of comprehensive immigration reform have urged the President and Congress to pursue reform legislation. While legislative action on comprehensive reform does not appear likely during the remainder of the 111th Congress, there are efforts to enact a measure, commonly referred to as the “DREAM Act,” to enable certain unauthorized alien students to legalize their status. On December 8, 2010, the House approved DREAM Act language as part of an unrelated bill, the Removal Clarification Act of 2010 (H.R. 5281).

Unauthorized aliens in the United States are able to receive free public education through high school. They may experience difficulty obtaining higher education, however, for several reasons. Among these reasons is a provision enacted in 1996 that prohibits states from granting unauthorized aliens certain postsecondary educational benefits on the basis of state residence, unless equal benefits are made available to all U.S. citizens. This prohibition is commonly understood to apply to the granting of “in-state” residency status for tuition purposes. Unauthorized alien students also are not eligible for federal student financial aid. More broadly, as unauthorized aliens, they are not legally allowed to work and are subject to being removed from the country.

Multiple bills have been introduced in recent Congresses to address the unauthorized student population. Most have proposed a two-prong approach of repealing the 1996 provision and enabling some unauthorized alien students to become U.S. legal permanent residents (LPRs) through an immigration procedure known as cancellation of removal. Bills proposing this type of relief for unauthorized students are commonly referred to as the DREAM Act. While there are other options for dealing with this population, this report deals exclusively with the DREAM Act approach in light of the widespread congressional interest in it.

A number of stand-alone DREAM Act bills have been introduced in the 111th Congress. Some of these bills (H.R. 1751, S. 729, S. 3827), like most DREAM Act bills introduced in prior Congresses, would repeal the 1996 provision and enable eligible unauthorized students to adjust to LPR status through a two-stage process. Other bills (H.R. 6327, H.R. 6497, S. 3962, S. 3963, S. 3992) would establish a two-stage adjustment of status mechanism for unauthorized students, but would not repeal the 1996 provision.

The DREAM Act language approved by the House as part of H.R. 5281 is the same as in H.R. 6497. Under this version of the DREAM Act, aliens granted cancellation of removal would initially obtain conditional nonimmigrant status (as opposed to conditional permanent resident status, as under most other DREAM Act bills). To become LPRs, the aliens would need to meet additional requirements.


Date of Report: December 14, 2010
Number of Pages: 22
Order Number: RL33863
Price: $29.95

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The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA): A Legal Overview

Jody Feder
Legislative Attorney

The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) of 1974 guarantees parental access to student education records, while limiting the disclosure of those records to third parties. The act, sometimes referred to as the Buckley Amendment, was designed to address parents’ growing concerns over privacy and the belief that parents should have the right to learn about the information schools were using to make decisions concerning their children. Although no substantial changes have been made to FERPA since 2001, recent amendments to the Higher Education Act require an institution of higher education to disclose to an alleged victim of any crime of violence or a nonforcible sex offense the results of any disciplinary proceeding conducted by the institution against a student who is the alleged perpetrator of such a crime or offense. The amendments also seek to clarify rules regarding disclosure of student information in the event of a health or safety emergency.


Date of Report: December 15, 2010
Number of Pages: 9
Order Number: RS22341
Price: $19.95

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The Elementary and Secondary Education Act, as Amended by the No Child Left Behind Act: A Primer

Rebecca R. Skinner
Specialist in Education Policy

The primary source of federal aid to K-12 education is the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), particularly its Title I, Part A program of Education for the Disadvantaged. The ESEA was initially enacted in 1965 (P.L. 89-10), and was most recently amended and reauthorized by the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB, P.L. 107-110), which authorized virtually all ESEA programs through FY2008. It is widely expected that the 112th Congress will consider whether to amend and extend the ESEA.

The NCLB initiated a major expansion of federal influence upon several aspects of public K-12 education, primarily with the aim of increasing the accountability of public school systems and individual public schools for improving achievement outcomes of all students, especially the disadvantaged. States must implement in all public schools and school districts a variety of standards-based assessments in reading, math and science; make complex annual adequate yearly progress (AYP) determinations for each public school and district; and require virtually all public school teachers and aides to meet a variety of qualification requirements. State AYP policies must incorporate an ultimate goal of all public school students reaching a proficient or higher level of achievement by the end of the 2013-14 school year. Further, participating states must enforce a series of increasingly substantial consequences for most of their schools and almost all school districts that fail to meet the AYP standards for two consecutive years or more. All of these requirements are associated with state participation in the ESEA Title I-A program.

Other major ESEA programs provide grants to support the education of migrant students; recruitment of and professional development for teachers; language instruction for limited English proficient students; drug abuse prevention programs; after-school instruction and care; expansion of charter schools and other forms of public school choice; education services for Native American, Native Hawaiian, and Alaska Native students; Impact Aid to compensate local educational agencies for taxes foregone due to certain federal activities; and a wide variety of innovative educational approaches or instruction to meet particular student needs.


Date of Report: December 16, 2010
Number of Pages: 27-
Order Number: RL33960
Price: $29.95

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Accountability Issues and Reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act

Rebecca R. Skinner Specialist in Education Policy 
Erin D. Lomax Analyst in Education Policy

Federal policies aiming to improve the effectiveness of schools have historically focused largely on inputs, such as supporting teacher professional development, class-size reduction, and compensatory programs or services for disadvantaged students. Over the last two decades, however, interest in developing federal policies that focus on student outcomes has increased. Most recently, the enactment of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB; P.L. 107-110), which amended and reauthorized the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), marked a dramatic expansion of the federal government’s role in supporting standards-based instruction and test-based accountability, thereby increasing the federal government’s involvement in decisions that directly affect teaching and learning.

As states and local educational agencies (LEAs) have implemented the federal accountability requirements, numerous issues have arisen that may be addressed during ESEA reauthorization. Among these issues are those pertaining to the comparability of data across states and the development of state accountability systems of varying degrees of rigor, the one-size-fits-all set of consequences applied to schools that fail to make adequate yearly progress (AYP), the narrowing of the focus of instruction at the school level, and the evaluation of teachers. 

• Commonality versus flexibility: States have had the flexibility to select their own content and performance standards, as well as the assessments aligned with these standards. This has resulted in a different accountability system in each state, making it difficult to sum up where students are in terms of skills and knowledge and to gauge the net effect of the NCLB. 
• Absolute versus differentiated consequences: Schools simply do or do not meet AYP standards, and there is generally no distinction between those that fail to meet only one or two required performance or participation thresholds to a marginal degree versus those that fail to meet numerous thresholds to a substantial extent. 
• Incentives to focus on proficiency: Schools and LEAs are held accountable for the achievement of all student subgroups. They are not, however, held accountable for students at all levels of achievement. Because the goal of the current system is for 100% of students to become “proficient” by school year 2013-2014, schools and teachers may target instructional time and resources towards students who are nearing proficiency rather than distributing resources equally across students at all achievement levels. 
• Assessment and the narrowing of the curricular focus: Because assessments are aligned with state content standards, there may be a risk that “teaching to the standards” becomes “teaching to the test.” The practice of “teaching to the test”—whether intentional or unintentional—may narrow the curriculum. 
• Teacher evaluation and accountability: The NCLB added a requirement that all teachers be highly qualified. Over time, however, the requirement has come to be seen by many as a minimum standard for entry into the profession and a growing body of research has revealed its underlying emphasis on teachers’ credentials to be weakly correlated with student achievement. As such, the Administration has moved toward measuring teacher effectiveness based on student achievement, and promoted a focus on output-based accountability for teachers.

Date of Report: December 15, 2010
Number of Pages: 40-
Order Number: R41533
Price: $29.95

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Document available via e-mail as a pdf file or in paper form.
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Unauthorized Alien Students: Issues and “DREAM Act” Legislation

Andorra Bruno
Specialist in Immigration Policy

Supporters of comprehensive immigration reform have urged the President and Congress to pursue reform legislation. While legislative action on comprehensive reform does not appear likely during the remainder of the 111th Congress, there may be an effort to enact a measure, commonly referred to as the “DREAM Act,” to enable certain unauthorized alien students to legalize their status.

Unauthorized aliens in the United States are able to receive free public education through high school. They may experience difficulty obtaining higher education, however, for several reasons. Among these reasons is a provision enacted in 1996 that prohibits states from granting unauthorized aliens certain postsecondary educational benefits on the basis of state residence, unless equal benefits are made available to all U.S. citizens. This prohibition is commonly understood to apply to the granting of “in-state” residency status for tuition purposes. Unauthorized alien students also are not eligible for federal student financial aid. More broadly, as unauthorized aliens, they are not legally allowed to work and are subject to being removed from the country.

Multiple bills have been introduced in recent Congresses to address the unauthorized student population. Most have proposed a two-prong approach of repealing the 1996 provision and enabling some unauthorized alien students to become U.S. legal permanent residents (LPRs) through an immigration procedure known as cancellation of removal. Bills proposing this type of relief for unauthorized students are commonly referred to as the DREAM Act. While there are other options for dealing with this population, this report deals exclusively with the DREAM Act approach in light of the widespread congressional interest in it.

A number of stand-alone DREAM Act bills have been introduced in the 111th Congress in the House and the Senate. Some of these bills (H.R. 1751, S. 729, S. 3827), like most DREAM Act bills introduced in prior Congresses, would repeal the 1996 provision and enable eligible unauthorized students to adjust to LPR status through a two-stage process. Other bills (H.R. 6327, S. 3962, S. 3963, S. 3992) would establish a two-stage adjustment of status mechanism for unauthorized students, but would not repeal the 1996 provision. Under the bills, aliens granted cancellation of removal would be adjusted initially to conditional permanent resident status or, in the case of S. 3992, to conditional nonimmigrant status. To become full-fledged LPRs, the aliens would need to meet additional requirements.


Date of Report: December 1, 2010
Number of Pages: 21
Order Number: RL33863
Price: $29.95

Follow us on TWITTER at http://www.twitter.com/alertsPHP or #CRSreports

Document available via e-mail as a pdf file or in paper form.
To order, e-mail Penny Hill Press  or call us at 301-253-0881. Provide a Visa, MasterCard, American Express, or Discover card number, expiration date, and name on the card. Indicate whether you want e-mail or postal delivery. Phone orders are preferred and receive priority processing.