Denial by a Thousand Paper Cuts: Investigating the Use of Administrative Burdens in New Jersey Public School Enrollment Policies

Abstract

Administrative burdens impact Americans' ability to access public benefits, but no literature to date has comprehensively catalogued the burdens that families face in registering for public education. While existing scholarship has focused on immigration status inquiries, it has largely overlooked the ways in which districts may create greater burdens on renters and homeless students as well as the possibility that lower-resource districts may also create restrictions. Thus, an original data collection protocol was designed to investigate the prevalence and relationships among multiple dimensions of these exclusionary administrative burdens in public school enrollment in New Jersey. This is of special interest due to the unique fragmentation of New Jersey’s districts compared to other states. Data was collected on each public school district in the state and compared both against other variables via factor analysis and against school district demographics. Almost 4% of districts (15) ask about immigration status in some way, and 5% (19) ask about conditions of tenancy, both illegal in New Jersey. Many other districts are also violating the state regulations as well as McKinney-Vento’s required protections, with hundreds of districts asking for proof of residency for housing-insecure families while offering no protections. Factor analysis identifies three main dimensions of variation in district policies: a residency-proof-stringency factor, a formal-identity-verification factor, and an immigration-related factor. Districts in which higher fractions of students qualify for free and reduced-price lunch are less likely to create large administrative burdens for proof of residency, but more likely to do so for formal verification documents, a process which still functions as a deterrent for immigrants, especially undocumented immigrants, and homeless children. Based on these findings, greater enforcement of state laws and mandatory use of standardized, flexible, and clear enrollment procedures statewide are recommended.