High school teacher here. 4-5 years ago I had small class of seniors who had not passed state mandated assessment – my job to teach to test so they could pass it and graduate. About 2/3 of way through school year with one retake test date left, all of my students had passed. We're onto other tasks related to citizenship, graduation, career planning. Then this new "student" shows up in my class. A new enrollee. New to the district, new to the state, new to the country. NIgerian. He's about 6'7" and can barely speak, read, write English. And I'm supposed to help him pass the state test so he can "graduate" in June. But wait…that's not the worst of it, oh no.
The worst of it was that he was OBVIOUSLY about 30 years old. Guidance counselor had sent an email preceeding his actually showing up to class – "So & So from Nigeria looks older than he actually is due to a hard life. We are awaiting documentation from Nigeria. Step mother/aunt (never did get which it was) had taken him in."
That at least was the official story.
After that first day, I marched up to the Guidance Dept. and pitched a fit on the counselor and the administrator. Yes, they had their concerns,too. They were investigating, but no, they could't deny him entry. Just do the best you can, they told me, in the meantime.
Well, "the meantime" ended up lasting till the end of the school year. And I did the best I could for the man, but he didn't pass the test. Still, in broken English I learned that he had been recruited by a "club team" in the U.S. who had promised him both a high school and a college education. He never did admit to being older than 19, but he knew I knew and every now & then he'd slip up on a detail and I'd call him on it. The long and the short of it is this: that guy was totally bamboozled into coming into the U.S. (by exactly whom, I don't know), and he was practically in tears to realize that he was not only not going to get a college degree out of the deal; he was not even going to earn a high school diploma. It was sad, truly.. But the thing that bothered me most is that I clearly had a 30-something old man in my classroom among 17 & 18 year olds. And doncha know, a few of the girls began to warm up to him, too. But that's another story. /t