| Rachel Durham
Pennsylvania State University
Linguistic assimilation: Social and cognitive determinants and its effects on early literacy
FIINAL REPORT:
This study examines fifth grade performance in reading, mathematics, and science among language-minority and non-language-minority students from immigrant and non-immigrant families. Using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten cohort, I estimate the salience of kindergarten English language ability as a mediator of generation status after controlling for ethnicity, region of residence, family structure, and socioeconomic status. Results demonstrate that a child's early English oral language ability has a statistically significant effect on subsequent performance during fifth grade in all subject areas. Students from all ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds who have weaker initial English ability are placed at risk for subsequent educational difficulties, since fifth grade performance is highly predictive of high school enrollment in math and science tracks, which in turn predicts whether a student is positioned for success in college coursework. Importantly, the true relationship between immigrant generation status and subject-area performance for language-minority students is apparent only when early English language ability is controlled. The findings also show that among non-language-minority students, the relationships between ethnicity, socioeconomic status and generation status are similar to those for immigrant students with identified language problems.
This study informs policy in several ways. First, the findings suggest that not only necessary for school success is the development of strong English ability is, but early development of English ability, as a student's oral language skills as assessed in kindergarten are predictive of academic performance until at least fifth grade. Policy should be directed toward providing high-quality, language-rich preschool environments for the children of immigrants, who are often underrepresented in center-based programs with a pre-literacy curriculum. Second, the study assists policymakers in identifying specific immigrant groups or risk factors associated with poor educational performance and subsequent school dropout. Immigrant students of Hispanic background, whose relatively lower performance cannot be fully accounted for by language-related obstacles or family background, are a group deserving special attention from researchers and policy makers alike, in order to identify additional school- and classroom-level factors that promote positive learning experiences for students who are historically underrepresented in U.S. schools.
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