Offices of the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education are pictured June 11, 2024. (Photo by Emma Murphy/Oklahoma Voice)
As students return to school across the state, one thing is clear: Oklahoma’s leaders are not committed to improving education for our students.
In addition to continuously failing to adequately invest in our public schools, Oklahoma leaders have long undermined students’ education through a variety of policies, such as promoting election lies, marginalizing trans youth, and disinvesting from public schools that serve 90% of Oklahoma students.
While these sorts of attacks are not new, this year leaders seem particularly eager to target Oklahoma students with an immigrant background by passing or attempting to pass policies that directly harm these students.
For instance, the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education have revoked a policy that allowed some immigrant students lacking legal status to pay in-state tuition at state colleges and universities. The regents made this change after a federal judge affirmed Attorney General Gentner Drummond’s joint request with Trump’s U.S. Department of Justice to end the practice, which had been Oklahoma law for almost 20 years.
That law allowed some immigrant students to pay in-state tuition rates if they had lived in the state for at least two years before graduating from an Oklahoma high school. To qualify, students also had to submit a notarized affidavit attesting that they were seeking, or would seek, lawful immigration status.
Attending college is already expensive enough for Oklahoma families, with annual in-state tuition and fees at OSU and OU costing $13,920 and $15,135, respectively. Charging out-of-state tuition prices would more than double those costs, raising the price to $29,440 and $33,255. In a time when we are facing labor shortages for professionals like doctors and nurses, it does not make sense to effectively bar hundreds of Oklahoma high schoolers from attending college in the state they call home solely because of their immigration status.
This policy will do nothing to address the broken immigration system in the United States. All it will do is punish Oklahoma students who already live in and contribute to our communities, want to pursue higher education, and who intend to continue giving back to our state — yet currently have no way to adjust their immigration status.
Of the 44,000-plus students who graduate from Oklahoma high schools each year, immigrant students who qualified for the in-state tuition rate make up fewer than 1,000. Out of these, about 400 are currently in college and would be affected by the ruling.
Our attorney general is publicly targeting a tiny fraction of future college-bound high school students and current college students for his own political gain.
State leaders have also targeted young students.
Earlier this year, state Superintendent Ryan Walters proposed an administrative rule to collect the immigration status of children who enroll in public schools. Although the rule was ultimately rejected by the Legislature, it created a lingering fear in immigrant communities that schools would become part of the immigration enforcement apparatus.
These fears, compounded by heightened immigration enforcement and toxic rhetoric towards immigrants from state and federal leaders, will have devastating impacts on families and students’ education.
Years of research have shown that heightened immigration enforcement increases absenteeism and negatively impacts students’ academic performance, consequences that will impact students far beyond the classroom, as education is closely correlated to future earnings and health outcomes. Unfortunately, many of these concerns have already materialized, with schools nationwide already reporting higher absenteeism rates following immigration raids, as parents decide to keep their kids at home rather than risk separation.
As the new school year begins in Oklahoma, the federal effort to target communities with immigrants will have real impacts, potentially lowering students’ attendance rates and academic performance significantly. But Oklahoma’s families also face attacks from our very own state leaders, who are choosing to pander to federal leaders rather than protecting students.
Instead of playing politics with the lives of our families and children, Oklahoma leaders should focus on strengthening education — passing policies that support schools, boost attendance, and encourage students to seek higher education.
Oklahoma’s future depends on whether we choose fear and division or invest in every student’s right to learn, thrive, and contribute to our state.
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