Are there peer effects associated with having English Language Learner (ELL) classmates? Evidence from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study Kindergarten Cohort (ECLS-K)

The Effect of Having Classmates with Emotional and Behavioral Disorders and the Protective Nature of Peer Gender

“…The coefficients pertaining to the moderating effects of percentage of girl classmates correspond to effect sizes of approximately −0.04σ to −0.11σ . The magnitudes of these effect sizes are in line and extremely consistent with previous research on classroom peer effects in elementary school (e.g., Gottfried, 2012;Ammermueller & Pischke, 2006;Cho, 2012;Fletcher, 2010;Hoxby, 2000). Indeed, the effect size in Grade 1 is on the larger-end of the spectrum of effect sizes for studies in peer effects.…”

Disruptive school peers and student outcomes

“…It compares to results found in the class-size literature which finds effects of including an extra student of about 2-5 percent of a standard deviation (see Angrist and Lavy (1999) and Fredriksson, Öckert and Oosterbeek (2013)) and is a bit smaller than the effects of including an English Language Learner found in Cho (2012). Remember that we do not use class level variation but instead use school-cohort level variation.…”

“…Recent evidence suggests that inclusion of disadvantaged children in mainstream classrooms exert negative effects on the other learners (e.g. Figlio, 2007;Carrell and Hoekstra, 2010;Cho, 2012;Kristoffersen, 2013;and Diette and Uwaifo Oyelere, 2014).…”

“…Secondly, the availability of unique population wide individual level panel data allows us to improve upon the estimation strategy compared to much previous work. Like for instance Fletcher (2009) for children with emotional problems and Cho (2012) and Diette and Uwaifo Oyelere (2014) for English Language Learners (ELL), we employ a value added model which implies that our disruptiveness measure is only required to be exogenous with regards to changes in test scores, not with regards to levels of test scores. However, our strategy does not rely on variation in disruptive classmates within school-grade or within individual.…”

Impact of Bilingual Education Programs on Limited English Proficient Students and Their Peers: Regression Discontinuity Evidence from Texas

“…To our knowledge, our study is the only one to examine potential effects of educational programs for LEP students on non-LEP peers. Closely related, though, are Cho (2011) andGeay, McNally andTelhaj (2011), which estimate the impact of LEP students on non-LEP peers. These studies are pertinent to ours because as we discuss in Section IV.A, one channel through which BE provision may impact non-LEP students is through decreasing the exposure of non-LEP students to LEP students.…”