Source: Florida State University     Released: Tue 19-Sep-2006, 12:50
ET 
Printer-friendly Version  
 

Making the Grade: Immigrant Children Keep Academic Pace with Peers
Libraries
Life News (Education)   Keywords
IMMIGRATION, IMMIGRANTS, FOREIGN, STUDENTS, EDUCATION, SOCIOLOGY,
ECONOMICS, ETHNICITY, RACE, GENDER, MINORITY, MINORITIES, MINORITY
STUDENTS,LANGUAGES, CULTURE, AMERICA, ADOLESCENTS, GRADES, SCHOOL
PERFORMANCE  
Contact Information

Available for logged-in reporters only 
Description

Far from being a burden on the educational system, research from Florida
State University in Tallahassee, Fla shows immigrant children perform as
well or better than their same-race, American-born counterparts.  


Newswise - Far from being a burden on the educational system, research
from Florida State University shows immigrant children perform as well
or better than their same-race, American-born counterparts.

FSU Sociology Professor Kathryn Harker Tillman found that first- and
second- generation children are no more likely than their
third-generation peers to have to repeat a grade despite the many social
and economic disadvantages they face. The finding is true for immigrant
youth of all racial and ethnic backgrounds or countries of origin. The
study, co-authored by colleagues Guang Guo and Kathleen Mullan Harris
from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, was published in
the journal Social Science Research.

"Immigrant children are more successful navigating the educational
system than would be expected," Tillman said. "Against the odds, these
children are performing as well as or better than their same-race,
third-generation peers."

The researchers used both the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and the
National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health to look at grade
retention among a total of nearly 20,000 school-age children. They
focused on grade retention rather than more traditional markers of
educational performance, such as high school graduation, dropout rates
or grades in order to see how immigrant children navigate the
educational system, not just the end result.

Not only are immigrant children no more likely to have to repeat a grade
than American-born children, first-generation boys are 54 percent less
likely to be held back than their male peers of similar demographic,
family background and ability/language characteristics, according to the
study. There is no such distinction among girls. Tillman found that
girls of all generations and backgrounds have the same rate of being
held back. 

"Our findings run counter to expectations derived from traditional
assimilation theory, which posits that outcomes should improve across
time and generation spent in the United States," Tillman said. "The
findings also run counter to expectations based upon immigrant
children's over-representation in high-risk background categories and
general public perceptions of immigrant students."

The results suggest that immigrant children are able to overcome many of
the disadvantages that have been found to place children at high risk
for grade retention, such as being a racial or ethic minority, having
parents with very low levels of education, having low levels of English
proficiency and attending schools in urban areas. The researchers
theorized that immigrant children may benefit from factors such as
higher than average levels of ambition and motivation, high parental
expectations, strong beliefs in the importance of education, and/or high
levels of family and community support for educational achievement.

"Our finding that males tend to experience more of an immigrant
advantage than females leads us to question, however, whether the family
and community contexts of immigrant children are equally beneficial for
girls and boys," Tillman said. "Given the traditional gender ideologies
of many immigrant groups' native cultures, high expectations and high
levels of encouragement and support for educational endeavors may be
aimed disproportionately at male children."

Although other researchers have found that immigrant children generally
do as well as non-immigrants in school, this is the first nationally
representative study to show that it is not achieved at the cost of
additional years of schooling because of grade failure or policies that
hold back students who are adjusting to a new language and culture, she
said. Instead, immigrant students succeed while keeping pace with their
American-born peers.

About one-fifth of the children in this country are either immigrants or
the children of immigrants. This group is expected to account for more
than 50 percent of the growth in the school-aged population between 1990
and 2010.

"If we can gain a better understanding of the mechanisms that currently
protect socio-economically disadvantaged immigrant children from grade
failure we could incorporate that knowledge into the curriculum,
policies and intervention strategies and enhance the academic success of
all children," Tillman said.

¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤
To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L Web interface
at: http://listserv.icors.org/archives/gambia-l.html

To Search in the Gambia-L archives, go to: http://listserv.icors.org/SCRIPTS/WA-ICORS.EXE?S1=gambia-l
To contact the List Management, please send an e-mail to:
[log in to unmask]
¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤