This article examines the effects of neighborhoods and schools on the achievement gaps between adolescents of different nativities and ethnicities. We show that neighborhood and school conditions are better for natives’ than for immigrants’ children, and they are the worst for Hispanic immigrants. Using cross‐classified hierarchical models, we find that introducing neighborhood and school characteristics helps to account for the disadvantage of Mexican immigrants’ children but to reveal the advantage of Filipino immigrants’ children, compared to native non‐Hispanic Whites. Neighborhood and school effects are not universal: they influence school performance of immigrants’ children more than that of natives’ children.
Using data from the New Immigrant Survey, a study based on a nationally representative sample of legal immigrants, the present study extends prior research on the academic outcomes of immigrants’ children by examining the roles of pre- and post-migration parent characteristics and the home environment. An analysis of 2,147 children ages 6-12 shows that parents’ pre-migration education is more strongly associated with children’s academic achievement than any other pre- or post-migration attribute. Pre-migration parental attributes account for the test score disadvantage of Mexican-origin children of legal immigrants, relative to their non-Latino counterparts. The findings reveal continuities and discontinuities in parental SES and demonstrate that what parents bring to the United States and their experiences after arrival influence children’s academic achievement.
An international debate over student employment turns on the question of whether work generally helps or harms children's development. This article focuses on two indicators of child development that are goals in all education systems: math and science achievement. After reviewing the major theoretical perspectives on school achievement and employment, we propose a general framework for analyzing their relationship. We then present the results of our cross-national study. From the U.S., we use cross-sectional and longitudinal NELS data. In the U.S. and in 22 other nations, we use cross-sectional TIMSS data to examine the effects of after-school work during the eighth grade. Our findings from each investigation are consistent: For boys, and to a lesser extent for girls, there are negative effects on math and science achievement that are associated with adolescent employment, even after controlling for family background and, in the NELS, after controlling for prior achievement.
Abstract.
Based on the 2003 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, the authors find that negative associations between student employment and academic achievement are stronger in some countries than in others – differences likely to result from country‐specific work opportunities and needs. Turning to the 2004 Educational Longitudinal Survey of the United States for causality, they observe a curvilinear association between employment and math proficiency: working up to ten hours per week has a modest positive effect, 10–19 hours has no effect, and 20 hours or more has a substantial negative effect. The possible endogeneity of work‐hours is then tested with instrumental variables.
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