Mathematics Achievement Of Immigrant Students PDF Download

ABSTRACT: Immigration is a rapidly-growing global phenomenon. Although many countries devote significant resources to investigate the outcomes of adult immigrants, both governments and researchers have given much less attention to the outcomes of younger immigrants. With this study, I aim to increase our understanding of immigrant student achievement, first through a synthesis of the existing evidence in the form of an extensive literature review, and second, through a quantitative analysis of the so-called 'immigrant achievement gap'. I examine the gap for fourth graders utilizing two cross-national assessments, the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) via a multilevel analysis with students nested within schools nested within countries. First, I ask whether or not a gap exists for fourth graders as it has been largely found for older students. Second, I assess whether or not existing literature provides a good guide to explain variability in the gap. Third, I delve deeper into the gap by examining sub-groups of students in order to better understand the achievement of young immigrant students. Finally, I highlight cross-national trends that emerge from the findings, as previous literature has done. I find evidence of an immigrant achievement gap for both mathematics and reading, and that existing literature provides a good skeleton by which to examine the immigrant achievement gap. Contrary to some of the existing literature, I find that the gap is larger in mathematics than in reading. Next, I find that student characteristics are strongly associated with student scores in both mathematics and reading. Findings corroborate research based on adolescent populations which suggests that, in general, students who are native, with native parents, who speak the language of testing, have better educated parents, and are of higher socioeconomic status outperform their counterparts on these standardized academic assessments. Further, I find that the immigrant achievement gap is smaller or non-existent between the highest-achieving immigrant and native students, that there is no gender gap between immigrant boys and girls, that 2nd generation immigrants outperform 1st generation immigrants, and that students who immigrated between the ages of 1-5 outperform their younger and older counterparts in mathematics, suggesting some evidence for the `vulnerable age hypothesis'. I also find evidence which suggests that immigrants attend lower quality schools, that the immigrant achievement gap is largest between the most advantaged immigrant and native students, and that there is no difference in scores among immigrant students when the gap is analyzed by the language students speak at home. Concerning the multilevel analyses, I find few school- and country-level variables predict the immigrant achievement gap significantly. Other than peer effects, no school variables predicted either outcome. Corroborating extant evidence, findings suggest that attending high-achieving schools predicts both outcomes positively and significantly. Concerning the country-level, results indicate that countries with exclusionary policies, non-traditional settlement countries, and countries that attract low-skilled immigrants tend to have larger immigrant achievement gaps. However, only exclusionary/inclusionary policy as a variable was predictive of the outcome and only for the mathematics model. Gross Domestic Product was significant in both models although the coefficient in both instances was zero. This study contributes to the current understanding of young immigrant students' achievement by providing a synthesis of the extant literature as well as by comparing their mathematics and reading outcomes to those of their native counterparts. Although the variables utilized in this study are not all-encompassing of the extensive factors that have an effect on immigrant student achievement, they do provide a well-defined picture of what is associated with mathematics and reading outcomes. This study illuminates the current understanding of a number of dimensions for young immigrants - incoming resources, race/ethnicity, gender, student attitudes, and host culture variables (e.g., institutional- and school-related variations). It corroborates many of the findings from literature based on adolescent populations, suggesting cross-national trends that span a wide age range. However, dissimilar results also suggest that fourth-grade immigrants' academic success is associated with influences that are different than those of adolescent immigrants on several dimensions. Many limitations of this study spur from the focused definition of who is an immigrant, which is only based on country of birth, and as such limits the generalizability of the conclusions. Further, the use of secondary data limits the range of variables that can be tested in the model and therefore excludes many factors that may be considered essential to include in statistical models predicting student achievement.