The current administration and leaders in red states have pushed for keeping undocumented students out of public schools, but according to research by three college professors, the American public does not agree.
In mid-April 2026, with support from the Public Religion Research Institute – an organization that supports public scholarship on the beliefs of the American public – two colleagues and I worked with Ipsos to survey a nationally representative random sample of more than 1,500 Americans about their views on public education and immigration. It was a diverse cross section of people who held a range of political beliefs and affiliations.
We asked respondents whether they agreed with the statement: “I believe all children, regardless of immigration status, should have the right to public education.”
We found that there were obvious differences between survey respondents’ views, depending on their political affiliation. For instance, of the survey respondents who voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024, 95.7% of people agreed with the statement. Only 48.8% of survey respondents who voted for President Donald Trump agreed with the statement.
Similarly, 57.5% of Republicans overall agreed with the statement, while 93.9% of Democrats did.
But other than this political divide, we found strong support for universal education across all ages, ethnicity and faiths, with 75.5% of all Americans agreeing with the statement.
The survey revealed strong support for universal education, with 75.5% of all Americans agreeing with the statement. Among Hispanics and Latinos, nearly 86.9% supported the policy, along with 86.7% of African Americans, 77.7% of Asians Asian Americans and 69.9% of non-Hispanic white people.
Read the full article here at The Conversation.