Last year, Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security advisor, claimed immigration was the reason behind most of America’s societal woes.

“If you subtract immigration out of test scores, all of a sudden our test scores skyrocket,” he said. “Issue after issue we talk about these things as if they just happen to us. The schools just suddenly fail. Violent crime just suddenly explodes. The deficit just suddenly skyrockets. These are a result of social policy choices that we made through immigration.”

According to Jean Twenge, professor of psychology at San Diego State University and author of 10 Rules for Raising Kids in a High-Tech World, a recent bath of negative test scores stoked this sentiment. 

The latest data point came from Harvard University’s Center for Education Policy Research and Stanford University’s Educational Opportunity Project, which released the nation’s Education Scorecard this month showing drops in reading and math achievement beginning in 2013. From 2015 to 2025, average reading scores fell by nearly a grade level, showing a decline in almost every state. When Twenge posted about the scores on social media, her replies showed several users attributing the trend to an influx of immigrants in the U.S.

But in a recent Substack post, she pointed out Census data shows the proportion of foreign-born children under 18 in the U.S. ticked up from 3.37% in 2015 to just 4.36% in 2024.

“Even if we assume that the foreign-born kids performed worse on reading tests—and that definitely wasn’t true of all of them—this is too small a shift to explain the dramatic declines in reading scores,” Twenge said.

She found a similar pattern in foreign-born adults, who made up 16.47% of the U.S. population in 2015 and 17.61% in 2024, leading her to conclude that there has not been a large enough increase in the U.S. immigrant population to drive a steep decline in test scores.

Research may even suggest that a greater proportion of immigrants in classrooms may boost testing performance. A 2021 study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research found U.S.-born students with high exposure to immigrant students at their schools had better reading and math test scores than counterparts with fewer exposure to immigrants. These results persisted, even when immigrant students performed worse than their U.S.-born peers. Researchers speculated one reason for this outcome could be that being exposed to better-behaved children leads to less disruptive classrooms, noting that foreign-born students are disciplined less than U.S.-born students.

Meanwhile, the recent crackdown on immigrants is being felt in the classroom. A working paper published last year by the same authors found that among Florida students, there was a modest but significant decline in Spanish test scores both for foreign-born and U.S.-born students following increased immigration enforcement intensity in the region.

Rhetoric around immigrants dragging down the education system and the economy have grown alongside the Trump administration’s policies to toughen border protection and deportations. President Donald Trump has argued immigrants are taking jobs from U.S.-born workers, for example. But assertions around foreign-born individuals negatively impacting the economy have been counter to emerging research. Immigration clampdowns have led to less labor force participation, even among U.S.-born workers, and other data indicate immigrants cost the U.S. government less than domestic-born Americans, in part because many come to the country after completing or aging out of schooling.

Why is technology behind dropping test scores?

Rather than immigration negatively impacting test scores, Twenge instead argued poor reading and math assessments have been more strongly correlated with the rise of technology in and out of the classroom, presenting students with easy access to distracting social media platforms.

“The timing lines up: Daily social media use soared in popularity beginning in the early 2010s, and became more algorithmic throughout the decade,” she said. “Social media and other digital media—whether it’s on a phone or a laptop, even a school-issued laptop—distracts students in class when they should be learning.”

Twenge is not the first to make this connection. Earlier this year, neuroscientist Jared Cooney Horvath argued Gen Z would be the first generation less cognitively capable than their parents, citing correlation in declining test scores with increased screen time and blaming students’ unfettered access to technology in the classroom. 

In 2017, Fortune reported that Maine’s public school test scores had not improved in the 15 years it has implemented the Maine Learning Technology Initiative that put 17,000 Apple laptops in seventh grade classrooms across 243 middle schools. Then-Governor Paul LePage called the initiative a “massive failure.”

Tech troubles have persisted across grade levels. A 2014 study surveying and observing 3,000 university students found participants engaged in off-task activities on their computers for two-thirds of class time.

Some education experts, such as Mary Burns, an education consultant, see benefits to using technology in the classroom. She argued that while technologies like AI can enable cognitive offloading that inhibit critical thinking, educational technology can also generate bespoke lesson plans and help English speakers in particular, as teachers can use AI to change the level of a particular reading passage.

Twenge still sees the need for parameters on access to this technology, however. She recommended delaying students having smart phones until at least high school, suggesting children have just a flip phone for emergencies. Schools can also limit when students use tablets and laptops, making sure not to send kids home with extra screens.

“There are some things students do need for college and long-term success,” Twenge said. “The ability to focus, think critically, and understand complex ideas. Devices undermine each of those. Books teach them all.”