Giving undocumented young people protection from deportation came with a big education bonus: It made them more likely to finish high school and enter college, according to a study released earlier this week.

It’s new evidence suggesting that the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, benefits individual students as well as society as a whole — and comes as Congress continues to debate the fate of DACA recipients. Education advocates from a variety of perspectives have called for extending the program for both human rights and educational reasons.

High school graduation rates increased by nearly 4 percentage points among all non-citizens and nearly 11 percentage points among Hispanic students.

College enrollment among Hispanic non-citizens jumped by over 7 percentage points — a more surprising finding, since DACA directly encouraged high school graduation but not college enrollment.

In addition to the academic benefits, the study also finds teenage pregnancy rates dropped and upticks in work among 17- to 29-year-olds.

Read the full article on DACA by Matt Barnum at Chalkbeat