Parents report persistent disparities in safety, mental health, and attendance — including heightened concerns about school safety and immigration enforcement among multilingual families
August 19, 2026 by EdTrust-Massachusetts 
CONTACT:
Chanthy Lopes
Clopestoro@edtrust.org
New Massachusetts Poll Finds That Students Who Need the Most Support Face the Steepest Barriers to Safety, Mental Health, and Regular Attendance
Parents report persistent disparities in safety, mental health, and attendance — including heightened concerns about school safety and immigration enforcement among multilingual families.
BOSTON, MA — As Massachusetts schools prepare to welcome students back for a new academic year, a new poll released today by EdTrust in Massachusetts finds that while most parents report positive school experiences, those experiences are not shared equally.
The statewide tracking poll, conducted by The MassINC Polling Group among parents of K-12 students, points to a consistent pattern of inequity. Families of Latino students, multilingual learners, and students with disabilities, as well as families concerned about their child’s academic progress, are significantly more likely to report challenges related to school safety, bullying, mental health, discrimination, and regular attendance. These challenges can undermine students’ ability to feel safe, attend school regularly, and fully engage in learning. For multilingual families, these challenges are further compounded by concerns about physical safety and immigration enforcement.
“This poll reinforces that school climate and culture aren’t peripheral issues — they are central to students’ ability to show up and succeed,” said Jennie Williamson, state director of EdTrust in Massachusetts. “It also reminds us that students are navigating very different realities, and that recent years have brought new challenges — from harmful rhetoric and heightened tensions to ongoing uncertainty — that don’t affect all students equally and can contribute to widening opportunity gaps. The state should partner with districts to address these multifaceted barriers and strive to create more affirming environments — spaces of genuine empowerment and excellence where all students feel safe, seen, and valued.”
The poll arrives as Massachusetts continues working to address chronic absenteeism — defined as missing 10% or more of the school year (approximately 18 days) — which remains above pre-pandemic levels. During the 2024-25 school year, 18.8% of Massachusetts students were chronically absent, compared with 12.9% in 2018-19, with rates particularly high among Latino students, multilingual learners, students with disabilities, and students from low-income backgrounds. Research shows that regular attendance is closely linked to stronger academic achievement, greater student engagement, and a higher likelihood of graduation. While physical illness remains the most commonly reported barrier to attendance (28%), parents also point to mental health, bullying, transportation, and other challenges that can keep students out of the classroom. Together, these findings show that attendance challenges are shaped by a range of academic, social, and environmental factors that influence students’ ability to consistently access learning.
Key findings of the poll include:
Among parents of multilingual learners, the poll finds that school safety concerns and immigration enforcement activity are reported as barriers to attendance at significantly higher rates than among parents overall. These findings come amid heightened concerns about immigration enforcement in communities across Massachusetts and the country. Although many multilingual learners are born in the U.S., the Supreme Court’s response to a 2025 emergency request in Vasquez-Perdomo v. Noem cleared the way for federal immigration agencies to consider factors including language, race, and location when carrying out immigration enforcement activities, regardless of immigration status. This has contributed to a chilling effect among immigrant families and families who speak languages other than English at home, including concerns about sending children to school regularly, traveling to and from school, and accessing school-based services and supports. The findings also come as Massachusetts has seen significant changes in its immigrant student population, including a decline in immigrant high school enrollment from 2023-24 to 2024-25.
“These poll results confirm what many of us as advocates have long known. Children need to feel safe in order to learn, and too many immigrant children and families do not feel safe in this moment,” said Diana Santiago, legal director of Massachusetts Advocates for Children. “We are deeply grateful to our lawmakers for taking action and passing the PROTECT Act. Now that it is law in Massachusetts, we have an important foundation for building that sense of safety. We must now do the harder work of implementing the protections in every school and every district. Rights have power only when families and communities know about them, and schools and state agencies uphold them. Let’s spread the word and continue to listen to families.”
42% of parents report concerns about their child’s mental health — a level that has remained consistent over years of parent polling — though below the pandemic high of 60% reported in 2021. However, parents of multilingual learners, students with an individualized education program (IEP), and parents who have concerns about their child’s academic progress report higher levels of concern about their child’s mental health.
Key findings include:
While most Massachusetts parents report that their child feels safe at school, the poll finds important differences across student groups.
“We cannot separate how a child feels from how a child learns,” said Dr. Jennifer Herring, executive director of Worcester Education Collaborative. “When students do not feel genuinely safe or experience a true sense of belonging at school, academic success becomes unattainable. If Massachusetts is committed to closing opportunity gaps, we must also address the safety and belonging gaps that continue to deny too many students the essential conditions for success.”
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About EdTrust: EdTrust is committed to advancing policies and practices to dismantle the racial and economic barriers embedded in the American education system. Through its research and advocacy, EdTrust improves equity in education from preschool through college, engages diverse communities dedicated to education equity and justice, and increases political and public will to build an education system where students will thrive.
About The MassINC Polling Group: The MassINC Polling Group is a nonpartisan public opinion research firm serving public, private, and social-sector clients. MPG elevates the public’s voice through rigorous research and analysis. Based in Boston, MPG serves a nationwide client base.
Methodology: These results are based on a survey of 1,069 parents of K-12 students in Massachusetts. Live telephone interviews and online interviews were conducted in English and Spanish from April 1 to April 14, 2026. Telephone respondents were reached by both landline and cell phone. Oversamples of Black, Latino, and Asian respondents were obtained to bring the total interview count up to at least 170 for each group in the base sample. Results within race and ethnicity were weighted to age, gender, geography, and education level for each group. Groups were then combined and weighted to the population parameters by race for the state as a whole. The credibility interval for this survey is +/- 3.7 percentage points for the entire sample, including the design effect. The poll was sponsored by EdTrust.
